Those new Star Wars DVDs on sale today? Don't buy 'em...

At least, I certainly won't be buying them. Why should I? We already got the classic trilogy - A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi - on DVD just two years ago. There isn't a single thing that's been changed in this new release from the previous one... nothing at all.

Except the three individual DVDs on sale today also have their respective "original versions" packed inside as a separate DVD disc. Which is something that a lot of fans (myself included) have been wanting for a long time now. What isn't being told to the average consumer is that the original editions of each movie are fairly low quality, having been taken from the laserdisc release of the trilogy back in the 1990s.

Basically that's all you're getting if you buy this new release hoping for something new: a re-release of a letterboxed (NOT anamorphic like just about every DVD produced today is) laserdisc that will not look clean and pristine compared to the more modern prints... to say nothing of how bad these are going to look on a large-screen television.

Star Wars fan though I am, I just can't see how anyone can justify getting these DVDs, if they already have the 2004 trilogy set. Now, if Lucasfilm ever "discovers" good quality prints of the original editions (they claim they were all destroyed in the making of the Special Editions... which would be archival sacrilege if they really allowed that to happen) and makes an archive-quality DVD set of the very first editions of the classic Star Wars trilogy available... well you better believe that I'll be there first in line to buy them all.

But that's not what we're getting today. And there's no reason why we shouldn't be getting them.

So if you haven't already surrendered to temptation, have the courage to hold up... and be content with the 2004 DVDs. I mean really: why would anyone want to buy an exact copy of something they already have?