gaming simplified

You can argue all you want, for and against, about how George Lucas has made countless alterations to the six Star Wars movies over the years, but there’s no denying the impact each one has had since Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope was first released back in 1977. Whenever there is a new home video format, one of, if not the first, movies that people want is Star Wars. I’ve purchased nearly every release of Star Wars on various formats over the years – the only format I didn’t get them for was LaserDisc. I was very excited to learn that the Star Wars saga would be making their way to Blu-Ray. And while I am slightly disappointed that George Lucas made more tweaks to the six movies, this isn’t a review about those changes – it’s about how well I feel each movie has fared in their transition from DVD to Blu-Ray.

(Okay, maybe I will go into some of the more odd changes Lucas has made – but just a tiny bit. I mean, c’mon. You have to, right?)

Let me first talk about the physical set itself. I think this is one of the nicest box sets I’ve seen for a movie collection. The discs are held in a nicely constructed book style case where each disc gets appropriate art work, where just a glance can tell you what disc you’ve turned to. It’s really beautiful art work and just helps to sell the fact that someone put a lot of love and care into designing this set. Who ever you are, thank you! I love the design!

Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, and Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi each look very good on Blu-Ray. My understanding is that Lucasfilm did not make a new transfer for this release and that these movies are from the same transfer used for the 2004 DVD release. Despite this, fine details are still much cleaner and distinct on Blu-Ray than they were on DVD. Each scrape and spec of dirt on R2-D2 and C3PO are plainly visible – it’s quite amazing. Even more amazing was seeing the texture detail on Darth Vader’s helmet (not to mention the dust specs on his body armor in Return of the Jedi).

However, not all is grand on Blu-Ray. Both A New Hope and Return of the Jedi suffer from weird artifacting at moments. For example, in A New Hope, the scene where R2-D2 and C3PO first land on Tatooine is seemingly rendered at a lower bit rate than the rest of the film. The scene looks muddy, blurry – whatever you want to call it – and isn’t crisp as the rest of the film. In Return of the Jedi, when Han and the rest of the rebels take over the shield generator station for the second time, there is a Imperial soldier in a grey uniform in the background whom looks totally out of place. He’s surrounded by a blue glow and is in a lower resolution than the rest of the actors. I don’t know how to describe it other than looking like it was a bad Photoshop job.

Speaking of Return of the Jedi… Time hasn’t been kind to Episode VI at all. George Lucas has made the most horrendous edits over the years. In the 2004 DVD release, he added a music and dance scene to Jabba’s palace and changed the ending scene yet again to include the planets from Episodes I – III. For the Blu-Ray release, Wicket and some Ewoks now have new eyes that are supposed to make them more realistic and, maybe more famously, Darth Vader now says “Nooooo!!!” before killing The Emperor. I don’t mind Vader saying “Nooooo!!!” all that much. Out of context, as seen on YouTube, it seems bad but works for the most part in the film. My bigger complaint would be the new eyes on the Ewoks – it looks too fake now. By adding new eyes, Lucas has effectively removed any sense of emotion from the Ewoks because they just stare blankly out towards the distance when they’re on screen. Even more odd is that not every Ewok has new eyes – only Wicket and a handful of others do. The large majority of Ewoks still have the regular eyes. But by far, the worst addition to Return of the Jedi was the music and dance scene for the 2004 DVD release. It’s out of place and ruins the mood of the scene that was originally there.

Thankfully, The Empire Strikes Back has had the fewest changes and remains mostly as it was. Most of the edits are cosmetic and only help to clean up the film. Episode V also looks the best out of the original trilogy as it doesn’t have any weird artifacting that are noticeable in Episodes IV and VI. The one thing that I did notice, however, was some weird temporary aspect ratio stretching in some scenes of Episode V and VI when the plane of focus changes from the foreground to the background. They could have been there in the original prints and I just never noticed before. But I noticed them on the Blu-Ray release and thought I’d mention them anyway. Most people probably wouldn’t notice this, as it only happens for less than a second.

A collection showing some of the more noticeable changes.

Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith have been, for the most part, left unchanged. Any edits that were made to either film were just for cosmetic purposes. Both Episode II and Episode III look very good on Blu-Ray with Episode III clearly looking the best out of the six films in the Star Wars saga.

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace is the only film out of the six to get a new transfer for the Blu-Ray set, all because of the addition of a computer generated Yoda to replace the odd looking puppet that was originally there. This presents an interesting problem for Episode I. While the new Yoda looks great – he has realistic looking cloth, for example, and shows off all the latest of computer generated effects technology – he makes the rest of the special effects in Episode I look very dated. Compared to the new Yoda, the old special effects seem flat and boring. It’s especially noticeable when Jar-Jar and other creatures are walking around on Tatooine. They appear to be floating along the ground rather than walking. They stand out horribly. You’d think it’d be a similar thing as putting all the computer generated creatures into the original trilogy, but it just seems to not work in Episode I. (Or is that a testament to how well the special effects were done in the original trilogy and how poorly they were done in Episode I?)

A larger problem in Episode I, as well as in a lot of recent movies that are being transferred to 1080p HD, is digital noise reduction. Digital noise reduction removes dirt, film grain, etc. from the movie to present a cleaner image for the viewer. This is all well and good unless it smooths the details out of the movie, for example, The Lord of the Rings Blu-Rays. I’m not a fan of this side effect. It needlessly ruins movies. Hopefully, the rest of the Star Wars films can avoid going through similar digital noise reduction processes.

If you ask me, Star Wars: The Complete Saga is worth picking up. Yes, there are unnecessary changes. We don’t have to like them at all, nor buy the new movies.  They are George Lucas’ movies to edit however he pleases and it’s not like he’s forcing us to buy them. I personally enjoy seeing these changes, as it makes each film unique in some way. It’s not that big a deal to me, as I’ll always have the countless other versions on hand to watch if I really want to. (Someday, Lucasfilm will just release those lovely THX versions they made in 1995 on a digital format, right?)

While Lucasfilm’s first Blu-Ray release wasn’t spectacular or mind-blowing, it offered the fans what we’ve been asking for – Star Wars on Blu-Ray. Each movie is presented in the highest quality currently available (until a new transfer is made) and there are three entire Blu-Ray discs filled with hours of extras and behind the scenes footage. What more could a Star Wars fan ask for?