BLU-RAY REVIEW: STAR WARS: THE COMPLETE SAGA (1977-2005)

Awesome review.

Hopefully everyone here we'll give this little Lucas cash grab a miss as well, next year.

So much review!

Awesome. Been looking forward to this. Will read asap.

Your review inspired me to rewatch the prequels. Thanks, I think?

Interesting read and its good to know you put a lot of effort into the review.

Wish Nick had done one.

Beautiful review. 

Your ability to stay objective against impossible odds, against the weight of over thirty years, is to be commended. Furthermore, your subjective views on the versions as they stand now is also commendable, seeking out the quality in what is rather than in what was. 

I'm still holding to my vow to not watch any of these films again for a few more years, but you've convinced me the prequels are worth another shot (when the time comes). Menace, if viewed on its own, is passably fun fare; Clones has the Obi-Wan subplot and the last half hour; and I've always been a Sith defender.

As for the discrepancy of the Jedi being viewed as myth only 19 years after the purge, here's my fanwank: I've always figured, and the comics lend credence to this (I know, that doesn't help the movies) that the Jedi were only really known in the core systems. The people of Coruscant see the Jedi on tv all the time, but in the boonies of Tatooine they're just rumor and legend.

As well, after having been blamed for an attempted assassination and overthrowing of the government, the Emperor probably had a smear campaign and plenty of propaganda to ruin their reputations, and it was probably advised to not talk about them for fear of reprisal. It's notable that the Rebellion, in contrast to Han's comment about "hokey religions", has appropriated "may the Force be with you" by New Hope.

Bravo, Justin. Wonderful work, and sums up exactly my flip-flopping over Star Wars in recent times.

I have to admit, in recent weeks I've backpedalled slightly from my 'blu-ray boycott' stance I adopted when the changes were released. At the time it felt like the final straw; I'd weathered Lucas' changes so far, but I felt they'd reached a point where they were making the films actively worse on a filmmaking/dramatic level (Or at least, done so enough times that it had become patently clear that Uncle George had lost any idea of what made his films work in the first place) I still loved the films - well, the originals, the prequels I liked to tolerated - but I just reached saturation point and didn't want to play anymore.

But still, that soft spot for Star Wars remained. I started realizing that despite the odd daft added line/Hayden ghost/Greedo silliness/pick your own tinkering, I still loved the films for the experiences they are. I remembered how they made me feel as a kid, and it occurred to me that if someone had showed me the newest versions when I was eleven I would patently not give a shit about what was changed where; it'd still be the stories that gripped me, the characters, the sheer coolness of being a Jedi and having a lightsaber. Those things are still there, despite the plethora of unneeded additions and adjustments. Reading Drew McWeeney's wonderful series on Hitflix chronicling him showing the movies to his kids has only reawakened my memories of how the original trilogy made me feel as a kid, and illustrated how those qualities still work today.

Sure, the additions are daft. I'm still not a fan of Vader screaming "Nooo!'" as he pitches Palpatine into the Big Fucking Vent of Doom, or Young Anakin proving that the biggest arseholes yet to be young and sexy in the afterlife. But what you brought out superbly in your article is that the films were never consistent, be it dramatically or tonally. George has always vacillated between epic drama, immature silliness and mysticism in ways that, when looking at the films with a critical eye, make no sense. If anything, the years of tinkering have only proved that whatever vision he's trying to perfect is just as vague and scattershot as it's always been. Without a Kurtz or Kershner to rein it in, of course this stuff has been more obvious in recent years, but those tendencies were always there.

Having said that, I don't know if i'll still buy the blu-ray set. What's become clearer than anything over this last couple of months' musing over Star Wars is that I kind of want to give it all a break for a while - move on, cleanse the palate and come back fresh in a few years. We've been bashed over the head with Star Wars almost constantly since 1997, when I think one of the reasons the movies are so special to our generation is how, in the pre/early VHS sell-thru era, you couldn't get hold of the films any time you wanted. Watching Star Wars was an event. Nowadays, we're ponying up for these movies once every few years, analyzing them to death... I think it's time to walk away for a while. I certainly don't think I can justify buying these movies all over again, not this time, anyway. We've had twelve years of outrage, nitpicking and overanalysis to the point where the forest and the trees have become one, and I think picking these films clean over and over is starting to become a disservice to the films; not what the films have become in the latest version to hit the shelves, but what the films ARE and always have been at heart.

But yeah, that's a hell of an article, Justin.  

I'm a little late to the party with this, but that review was a fantastic piece of work.  Kudos, sir, kudos. 

Friggin' epic review, Justin.  One of the best takes on the entire saga I've ever read.  Insightful, objective, extremely well written. 

However, I just wanted to point out one or two typos...