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Star Wars EP1 On DVD Confirmed By Lucas
Bigmell was one of several people to write about a phone call George Lucas made to KROQ Radio in Los Angeles. Ain't-it-cool-news also had a piece running with the same information. In any case, it looks like a DVD is being worked on, with a September release date. Bonus material includes unfinished scenes from Episodes 4-6. Harry @ aintitcool also had a release date of Sept 12.
Does anyone else find it kinda hypocritical how /. is always so much against the MPAA and telling us to boycott them and the like, but then when news like this comes up, it creates such an excitement? "WOO! The DVD! Now I can go support the people who I was just saying are trying to screw us over!"
Pick a side, stay there... don't jump back and forth.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
And to think everyone pooh-poohed the petition!
I think that the reason why George Lucas has decided to do a DVD version of Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace is simple: there are now enough DVD players and DVD-ROM drives out there to justify the sales that can recoup the investment necessary to master this movie onto DVD (and make a nice, handsome profit).
With standalone players dropping under US$200 in price, DVD-ROM drives showing up on new computers AND new laptops in a big way, and this fall massive sales of Sony PlayStation 2's that can play DVD movies, not to mention lots of computer geeks wanting to see the movie just for its stunning technical details, I expect DVD sales of TPM to be at least 1 to 2 million copies in a matter of days.
In fact, now that it appears that Sony will most likely ship the US version of PlayStation 2 on September 9, 2000, wouldn't it be a heck of a tie-in for PS2 owners to get a discount coupon to buy the TPM DVD at the same time?
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
As far as the Aint-it-cool-news piece, I wouldn't put too much stock in it. First of all, this news comes second hand from a minimum-wage employee of a video store, not the greatest of sources. Also, on the very same page is someone else who seems much more reliable saying that there will be absolutely no DVD in the forseeable future. Furtheremore, Lucas has said time and time again that there will be no Star Wars DVDs until all 6 are finished, so I think it's a safe bet that we still have a long wait ahead of us.
According to The Force.net article dated Mon, Apr 17, 00 04:18:47 AM EDT
The Force.net
***Ronald Epstein, who runs the 'home theater forum' of the Digital Bits, confirmed that there won't be an Episode 1 DVD release this year (The editor of The Digital Bits, Bill Hunt, seems to have some undisclosed inside information about the upcoming Star Wars DVDs). According to Epstein, "There are specific reasons why a DVD release is still quite a ways off, though the intent has been announced". However, the final result will be worth the wait: "You will be absolutetly floored!".
***
Many people believed Lucas, and bought the VHS version under the false impression that a DVD version was not forthcoming. What Lucas should be required to do is offer all the poor saps who bought the VHS version an option to upgrade their copy to the superior DVD format.
I imagine that in 4-5 years Lucas is going to come out with a special edition DVD/VHS box set with all Star Wars movies. This means that if you listen to the marketing machine at Lucas films, and bought all of the versions of his Star Wars movies you'll have
If I did my addition and multiplication right, it means you'll have bought 16 copies of the various Star Wars movies for a total price of of at least $400. Pretty amazing.
Sig goes here
What on *EARTH* are you talking about?
Go to www.imdb.com, and see the second headline:
Over $100 million in VHS sales in its first two days of release!
This is ridiculous. This is informative?
matt
Let's consider the options on whether to believe this. I figure there are two options:
Option one, Lucas decides to release the DVD version of Episode 1. By doing this, he goes back on several years of announcing there would be no DVD version until the series was complete. In addition, he decides not to make a general announcement but instead leaks the information to one distributor, forgoing the chance to make a big deal of the fact that this will indeed be the first Star Wars DVD released.
Option two, Suncoast messed up by announcing something that doesn't really exist, which happens all the time
Seriously, in all likelihood this is just a misunderstanding based on a mistake made at Suncoast.
What gets me is how retarded this whole thing about 'racism' is. Yeah, Jar Jar had an accent. Some people say it sounds Jamaican, but I don't see it. For the sake of argument, we'll say that it was meant to sound like that.
Then you've got the Trade Federation, with their strange accents. These I could see as having been based on Mandarin or something.
These characters are either considered 'bad/evil', or 'foolish/stupid'.
So what?
In the original trilogy, how did all of Vader's henchmen speak? In a very clear British accent. They were considered bad/evil type people. How did C3P0 speak? Something like a British butler, and he was the fool throughout the series. All of the 'good guys' more or less spoke with normal American accents - not exactly unexpected, given that these were American movies.
Why isn't anyone complaining about the unfair treatment of the British in the original trilogy? Because they are apparently fair game according to the PC crowd, and the British actually have a sense of humor and didn't care.
People seem intent on turning anything into a racial issue. Give me a break - there are plenty of cases of real racism and injustice out there to go after, you don't need to make them up.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
GL was on KROQ radio(Los Angeles) and was asked about DVD. He said that it was "in the works. but Episode 2 is taking to much of his time" He said nothing about a release date, and I would presume(no fact in this at all) that it won't be released until after episode 2 at the earliest.
If any employee, outside the highest levels of management, knew of a release date you would here about it in the news.As sad as that is.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Sadly, the Star Wars news needs to be laid to rest. I didn't see TPM when it was released, because there was just too much hype, and I didn't want to get sucked in by it. I have great memories of the first three movies, so I was certainly eager to see it, but I didn't. I finally saw TPM recently and, in all honesty, there's only one thing that can be said about it: It's a bad movie.
The characters were flat; you didn't care about them at all. The acting was wooden, with no exceptions. The plot was poorly written and suspenseless. It jumped all over the place, throwing out names and terms like crazy, but I just didn't *care* about what was going on. The presentation waffled between trying to be complex--with all the diplomatic nonsense and so on--and trying to be a kids movie, with goofy characters that used comedy accents (Italian, Asian, JarJar's faux Jamaican). Nothing was played up like it should have been. Darth Maul was just sort of thrown into the plot in a casual way and didn't seem to fit. And yet he turned out to be in the climactic battle at the end? Strange. Anakin accidentally blows up the control ship to save the planet? Uh, I guess that was supposed to be the force guiding him but that was never brought up. An army is exterminating JarJar's people, yet he's making pratfalls throughout the scene. Come on, why didn't Saving Private Ryan bring out the vaudeville during battles? And that oh, so sophisticated droid army doesn't seem to have advanced beyond US revolutionary war tactics: get in a big line and march forward so to be easy targets.
The CG effects were nice, but they didn't save the rest of the movie. I like SF, but I have to admit that TPM was abysmal. To say otherwise would be to belittle the good movies I've seen in the last few years.