A long, long, LONG time ago...

Lucas has finally made the original versions of Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi available on DVD — no Special Edition embellishments, no modified dialogue, no scenes “resurrected” from the cutting-room floor, no ghosts of Hayden Christensen, and Greedo never fires a shot.
No. Fracking. CGI.

I have purchased the original Trilogy four times already (the original full-screen VHS box, the early-90s THX widescreen box, the late-90s Special Edition box, and the 2004 Special Edition DVD box) — so I'm reluctant to shell out one more dime for these movies.

Except.

These are, finally, the originals, in full widescreen, untouched and unmolested by the fidgety, obsessive Spurious George's legions of digi-monkeys. The opening crawl for Star Wars doesn't even inlcude the title Episode IV: A New Hope. Fine, then. Looks like I'll be reaching into my pockets for the fifth time — but only because this will be the last time. After this, I will have the version I wanted all along, and George and I will have no more business between us.

That is, until the next video format emerges... the one where you shove a tiny capsule up your nose and the movie is projected onto the back of your eyelids. Oh yeah, I'll be exchanging federal americredits for that one, too.

Just to be sure, though (no, George, I don't trust you), I went out and rented one of these DVDs for a test-drive. And oh baby, how I've missed you. The ships are plastic models, the aliens are foam rubber puppets, the backgrounds are airbrushed matte paintings. Stop-motion effects punctuated by firecracker explosions. All the good stuff. My god, these movies look like they come from the Seventies!

One thing that really struck me as I watched the non-CGI version for the first time in more than 10 years is how tactile the Star Wars universe was before digital effects came into play. Because no matter how fake the robots, creatures, sets, and locales looked, they were in fact real objects being photographed. Real dust, real dents, real shadows, real motion.

When a team of digital animators need to make a computer-generated R2-D2 fall over, they have to factor in his apparent size and weight, the type of surface he'll be falling onto, the appropriate arc of motion, the effects of his fall upon his digital environment, and the many laws of physics that come into play whenever gravity brings two objects together in this manner. In 1977, this was accomplished by having a stage hand push R2-D2 over. And which method do you suppose creates a more authentic and convincing thud?

Case in point: Compare these two scenes — one from 1977's Star Wars, the other from last year's Revenge of the Sith:

Which one do you believe? The second image is a well-done and much-appreciated homage to the first, and clearly, the second one is much more... picturesque. Owen and Beru stare hopefully towards the horizon, holding the future of the galaxy in their arms. You can hear the music swelling, can't you?

When I look at the first picture, though, with its muted, natural colors and empty sky, I can hear the wind. I can feel that sudden, sharp chill of desert air at sunset, when the sand is still warm. It looks like a real place to me, someplace I might have actually been.

The first image is so empty, the second is so full. And I believe the first one.