DVD/Movie Collection Review: The Star Wars Trilogy

 

This one is one of the original DVD sets of the original Star Wars trilogy. It was a good set and had a lot of good bonus material, including the great Empire of Dreams documentary, that outlines the making of the entire original trilogy, with a ton of archived material. The only real drawback, and the reason that I got rid of the set when the blu-ray set came out, was that it does NOT include the original releases of the movies as they were shown in the theaters. You just get the special edition releases with all the edits and additions that Lucas did to the movies for the 20th anniversary of the original movie and leading up to the release of the prequel trilogy. Of course, Lucas famously hated the movies as they were originally released because they did not have the look he was going for because of the limitations of special effects when they were made. And, once the movies were released with all the digital effects that were available for him to use in 1997, he vowed that the original movies would not be released again. Now that was not quite true because there was a very horrible DVD release of the original movies that you can find online for an exorbitant price, but long ago went out of print. But, it was basically a transfer from the laserdisc release of the movies, that looked horrible, and a lot of people never bothered getting them. So, the only "easy" way to see the original versions of the original trilogy movies remains to this day on VHS for those old enough to have purchased the old VHS tapes and kept them all these years (and who still have a working VHS player). And, it does not seem that Disney is ever going to release the original versions of the movies as well, even though it easily could given that it owns the rights to everything Star Wars. So, assuming you have upgraded to blu-ray, 4k blu-ray, or switched to streaming, there is no reason to get this set anymore.