Take a look at this Jawa:
Either the seller truly believes that this must be rare – perhaps it is a rare vinyl caped Jawa figure! Or (s)he hopes to find someone else who believes this and would be willing to spend $300 on a generic loose Jawa that isn’t actually worth more than about $2…
Or am I missing something?
I’m beginning to like this Will Brooker chap, his views on Star Wars are very much inline with my own. With rumors of a new Blu-ray release of the original Star Wars trilogy on the horizon, let’s take a look at how fans reacted to the long awaited 2004 DVD release…
by Derek Johnson.
Although DVD titles have been distributed in the United States since 1997, three of the most popular and high-grossing films of’ all time—Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983)-have only recently been digitally restored and released worldwide in the format.1 With the theatrical rerelease of all three films in special editions in 1997 and the launch of a prequel trilogy in 1999 with Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace and its continuation with Episode II—Attack of the Clones in 2002, the Star Wars saga has remained in the public eye throughout the entirety of this absence. While each ot these cultural events represented a chance for a cross-promotion and has kept Star Wars in the public eye, Lucasfilm, Ltd. (the production company of franchise creator and overseer George Lucas), did not deign to circulate this original trilogy on DVD until September 2004. In the interim consumer demand was allowed to simmer; retailers like amazon.com claim these three films went unchallenged as the number one, two, and three most requested DVD titles throughout the majority of the seven-year wait.2 This perceived demand was borne out by the DVD release itself, in which 2.5 million copies of the four-disc box set (retailing at $69.98) were sold on the first day of release, setting a record for single-day multidisc titles but also {with the concurrent launch of the Star Wars: Battlefront video game) for the amount of money—$115 million-spent on an entertainment franchise in a single day.3
This first issue of Reel Fantasy recounts the story of Star Wars, takes us behind the scenes, provides us with cast information and a look into the Special Effects wizardry – everything a fan was clamoring for in the early days of Star Wars. Despite having read a ton of books on the subject, including Rinzler’s brilliant The Making of Star Wars and watched just about all the documentaries in the subject, there are still a number of things in these articles that I didn’t know. For example, I didn’t know that Obi-Wan was supposed to act a little crazy when he was first introduced, before revealing himself as the wide old Jedi, but that Guiness talked Lucas out of it. Or that the Biggs scene was originally cut only to make the film closer to 2 hours running time.
