It's sort of a strange
sensation reading early confirmation that the Star
Wars trilogy (plus three other movies) are on the way to
Blu-Ray and realizing that I'm legitimately excited. That's the news of
the day courtesy of IGN; Lucasfilm's
Director of Fan Relations Steve Sansweet confirmed as much at today's
C2E2 convention in Chicago.
Sansweet promises a "very
full set of all six movies on Blu-ray with lots of extra material".
There's no release date per se and I'll remind the world that we may
have more than a year to go if Lucas plans to tie in to the original
film's 35th anniversary in 2012. But this is still a great sign that,
at least, we're not going to get a bare bones initial Blu-Ray (James
Cameron, I'm looking
a you.)
Is my fandom an abusive
relationship? Didn't I buy the original VHS tapes only to replace them
with the THX updated VHS tapes and then moved on to the Special Edition
VHS tapes only to have the DVDs denied until more than half a decade
into the format's life? And even then didn't I only get the Special
Edition versions which I later replaced with additional DVDs that
finally featured the original versions but only in sub-par transfers?
And I never even had a laserdisc player. That crowd got a whole extra
go-round or two.
Will the Blu-Ray be any
different? Am I just setting myself up to be disappointed? Sansweet does
say, "I won't call it the Ultimate Set because we keep finding stuff."
Is there a secret message that says, "Fans aren't going to get
everything they want?"
For a moment, I don't really
care. I'm genuinely delighted at the prospect of tossing away more
money for the original
trilogy in the Blu-Ray format. I'll put away prequel and special
edition cynicism for just a moment and enjoy this big, fanboy smile in
my soul. I'm hoping it'll last at least as long as it takes for me to
run out of Blu-ray puns.
