Quick Thoughts on the release of the Original Unaltered Star Wars Trilogy:

Even with all the imperfections, the colour fluctuations, the occasional white specs of missing emulsion, the boxes or matte lines around comped in objects and vehicles....or maybe BECAUSE of these very same imperfections....it felt like coming home. It felt familiar and true. It was like opening a box of stuff you'd put away a long time ago only to find it contained a near mint action figure you'd adored as a child, having handled it as gently as if it were made of glass, one that you'd thought lost forever to the sandboxes or friend's houses or backyards of time...maybe it was even one of the slightly rarer ones! As previously retouched scene came and went as they had been in 1977, the sparse gang of sandtroopers finding evidence of droids, the old shots of the Jawa's sandcrawler cresting the dunes, all the old cantina aliens right where they should be and, of course, Han shooting Greedo under the table like the experienced con we always loved him for being, it felt as if the actual film was allowed to breathe again rather than be roped in and constrained by out-of-place, anachronistic special effects additions and second guesses that tried so hard to fit in but ended up just belittling the beauty of what was done all those years ago. I felt like the heroes and villains and their galaxy were one again, united into a coherent whole. Every actor was young again, innocent, full of energy and hope, the cynicism that the new special effects betrayed could almost be forgotten. I got so comfortable and contented, like a baby suckling from its mother's teat, that I began to drift off to sleep and finally had to pause it just as our heroes had been sucked in by the Death Star, about to face the Empire head on and with all the youthful, enthusiastic idealism that I'd remembered!

So, thanks George! Finally! And though it's probably just a cash grab, at least it's a cash grab I can benefit from, spiritually.