George Lucas’s widely anticipated Blu-ray update of the Star Wars series hits store shelves this Friday, September 16, 2011. Titled Star Wars: The Complete Saga on Blu-ray , the box set includes re-edited versions of the Star Wars films and more than 30 hours of special features and bonus materials.
At a retail price of $139.99 US/$179.99 CAN, purchasing Star Wars: The Complete Saga is quite an investment. Can casual movie fans justify paying the steep price? Check out these pros and cons before you buy.
Pros
Picture and Sound. Lucas’s updates for Blu-ray will delight audio- and videophiles. Crisp and sharp, the enhanced picture quality and numerous audio improvements add texture to the home theater experience. A good example of Lucas’s fine-tuning is the replacement of Ben Kenobi’s Kryat dragon call with new audio. Click here to check out a clip. Star Wars aficionados will delight in Lucas’s painstaking attention to detail, but non-HD viewers and casual fans probably won’t notice the differences.
Bonus Materials. Lucas has gone all out to load up the Complete Saga with bonus materials and collector footage, most shot in 1080p. Hardcore fans will love Star Wars Tech, a 45 minute feature on how the films influenced and were influenced by technology. Also entertaining is Star Warriors, an 84 minute 480p feature on zealous fans who dress up as their favorite characters from the Star Wars universe. The bonus materials also include some engaging shorter vignettes that highlight concept art, extended scenes, and Lucas’s character design process.
Fixed Plot Points. In the Complete Saga, Lucas fixes some common complaints of Star Wars fans. For instance, in Episode IV: A New Hope, the bounty hunter Greedo no longer takes the first shot before Han Solo kills him with his blaster. Many of the changes in the Complete Saga are nowhere near as substantial (for instance, in Return of the Jedi the Ewoks now feature eyes that blink), but the few fixes put the finishing touches on plot lines that fans have pored over since A New Hope‘s release in 1977.
Cons
Digitized Landscapes. Although the changes provide better consistency throughout the films, fans of Episodes IV, V, and VI may end up disappointed with Lucas’s landscape updates. The newly digitized landscapes, while impressive, stick out and seem oddly anachronistic. The effect is something like looking in your photo album at a favorite photo only to discover that the background has been digitally enhanced. It might look better, but it’ll never look quite right to eyes accustomed to the old version.
Remote Control Necessary. The bonus materials make shelling out over $100.00 possibly worthwhile for true Star Wars fans. However, many of the bonus materials are short vignettes that seem like they end almost as soon as they get started. That translates to lots of use of the remote control to switch among features. The content is great, but the wait time and need to keep the remote handy is annoying–some of the extra features might be better delivered as clips on the web rather than stand alone items in the Blu-ray set.
The Bottom Line
Hardcore Star Wars fans probably won’t be able to live without the Star Wars: The Complete Saga on Blu-ray. The controversy over Lucas’s changes will be an inevitable part of fans’ discussions of the films, and the bonus content is compelling in its own right.
But casual fans probably won’t benefit from the investment: there’s not enough changes for a casual fan to notice. And the casual fan probably won’t care enough about the bonus materials to justify the price.
Star Wars: The Complete Saga on Blu-ray hits shelves on Friday. Read more about the release and place a pre-order at the official Star Wars website.