Today marks the release of the original unspecial versions of the Star Wars Trilogy. This should be a day that even casual fans of the trilogy celebrate, but contrary to the surface appeal of this quaint little package, I feel more slighted than anything.

Pardon my cynicism for a moment, but based upon George Lucas’ history of infuriating treatment of his fans, I cannot comprehend why he chose to finally unveil the original three films sans the changes made to them over the last decade beyond a thinly veiled marketing scheme posing as an act of concession. The logical assumption is that once we’ve been swept up in his narrowly focused, semi-Nazi revisionist blitzkrieg, there would be little to no chance of ever possessing the unaltered versions beyond obtaining a bootleg laserdisc version ripped to DVD. As history has repeatedly shown us, what George Lucas wants, he gets (with the sole exception of the eradication of the Star Wars Holiday Special) regardless of whether popular opinion is on his side or not.

Now, normally I endorse directors who refuse to compromise their values in favor of public demand, but this isn’t some lofty artistic vision we’re discussing here; it’s Lucas’ right to insert a goofy and potentially racist animated character into a film where it neither belongs nor integrates convincingly into the existing environment. This would be the aesthetically disastrous equivalent of Leonardo Da Vinci painting a goofy moustache on the Mona Lisa because he claimed he intended it to be that way all along – perhaps that’s a poor analogy since Star Wars can hardly be compared to the Mona Lisa and George Lucas certainly is no Da Vinci, but you get the idea.

In any case, it’s beside the point and certainly I’m touching upon a discussion that has been dragged through the mud more than a few times, somehow leaving Lucas unfazed until now. My major frustration concerning this superficial change of heart is that if you’re anything like me, you gave in and bought that bloated, gaudy box set released last year as an act of desperation, forced to choose between either a tampered product or no product at all. This being further marred by the fact that Lucas himself claimed that the original prints of the films were destroyed following the alterations made to them in the late 90s. If that we’re honestly the case (and the jury’s still out on that one) where’s he getting these prints from? Straight from the laserdisc copies?

Actually, that may not be that far-fetched considering that a vast majority of responses I found on sites like Amazon have commented on the poor quality of the image for these new editions – almost as if it looked ripped straight from laserdisc. Apparently all the time and effort he put into restoring, touching up and then subsequently raping the Special Editions with cartoon characters doesn’t transfer over to the effort put into repairing the original versions of these very same films. Go figure.

Truth is this is just another attempt by Lucas to repackage his product and inveigle his loyal fans out of more hard-earned money. I wouldn’t be surprised if the films grow into something of a perennial release, dragged out every year around this time to jam down the throats of consumers right in time for the holiday shopping season. Add that to the list of certainties in life: Death, Taxes, and a Star Wars Trilogy box set in time for Christmas.