i fucking hate george lucas.

let's back up.

the first movie i remember seeing was the first star wars movie. i saw it 4 or 5 times when i was extremely young (4 or 5 years old). when i livedi n nashville, two of my cousins lived near chatanooga and we used to visit them all the time. the younger cousin, who i grew up idolizing, was a huge fan of star wars. whenever i visited, 'a new hope' popped into the vcr, recorded straight off the tv with ads and everything. after the initial 4 or 5 viewings, my cousin decided to share the amazingness that is 'the empire strikes back' and 'return of the jedi', movies that i could not have comprehended existing after seeing 'a new hope'. these movies were central to my childhood. i loved luke skywalker, thought leia was kinda weird, and han solo was the fuckin shit. i mean, _the shit_. too cool for words that i could say at age six.

my love of these movies were sustained until 1995 by watching tapes of tapes of showings off the tv, until finally the trilogy was put on vhs. of course, having non-stop access to these videos made my love grow exponentially, and being old enough to finally understand everything that was going on didn't hurt. also, around this time the rumors were coming out that the star wars movies were going to be remastered and sent to the theaters. "lucas's true vision" and whatnot. as you can imagine, i was very, very excited.

then george lucas crapped on my heart.

not only did i get craptacular explosions that looked much less realistic than the ones in the originals, not only did i get a spliced in hayden christensen at the end of return of the jedi, not only did i get the stupidest goddamn celebration sequence ever (who the fuck touches the ewok dancing scene, honestly?), i got greedo shooting first, one of the greatest travesties in the history of cinema. who the fuck makes greedo shoot first? who the fuck undermines the entire character development of han solo?

i mean... seriously.

what a travesty.

then i find out that new vhs tapes are out, but they are the travesty edition of the trilogy. and the new dvds coming out are the travesty edition too. and thats what really hurt. vhs is a shitty format. tapes die after 2 or 3 years, with flicker and just awful sound. they degrade, unlike dvds. but there are no dvds of the originals, no dvd version of han shooting that fucking greedo first and of the aged redeemed anakin skywalker overlooking the celebration at the very end. and of course, non-cartoonish explosions.

these things matter. if you don't think so, then you don't care as much about star wars as i do, and thats fine, but go fuck off, because these things matter to the people that care about star wars, and its not just me. these people care. this guy cares. all these people care.

so as i mentioned the other day, i built a new computer. this included a new hp dvd burner that supports pretty much every kind of media on the market at this point (including dual layer). so, with the new dvd burner in hand, i did a little homework.

and as we speak, i'm obtaining a homemade transfer of the original pre-travesty edition star wars trilogy. dvd images made up from a laserdisc source. remastered but no content edits. no ridiculous sound effects (did i mention those before?). no terrible explosions. no greedo shooting first.

i am

quite pumped.