Just to lay my cards out on the table, there is almost no possible way for any DVD set of the original Star Wars trilogy to meet my greatest hopes. Lucasfilm could put out a series that dwarfs the upcoming 10 disc Matrix extravaganza, and I would still want more interviews, more documentaries, and more behind the scenes footage from the making of the films. And I am almost certain that at some point down the road, probably when high definition video is as commonplace as DVD is today, there will be an Even More Special Edition of these films with additional extras. (Digital Bits has already reported that such a thing is in the works, in fact.) That said, I really enjoyed this 4-disc set, and it delivers very good value for the $40-$45 most retailers are selling it for.

Each film has been tweaked even further from the 1997 Special Edition updates, so let me do a quick rundown about the films themselves:

Star Wars: The changes here are less than you might have heard in the rumor mills - no Senate or Emperor scenes and no new score, just to name two. The Jabba scene has a better Jabba model, but it still slows down the movie and Han stepping on Jabba's tail still looks ridiculous and fake. The Greedo scene is not quite as awkwardly handled as before and no longer damages the flow. It seems like almost every shot of the Death Star dogfight has been replaced by CG, and while some of the shots are a little more dynamic than the original, I'm not sure they're enough of an improvement to justify the tampering. On the other hand, DVD makes the matte rectangles in this movie stand out even more, which you can see in the Falcon's escape from the Death Star. Something has gone a bit awry with the sound on Tarkin's "Then name the system!" line, and some audiophiles have commented on some oddities in the surround sound mix that might be disorienting. Some minor tweaks were nice - the rotoscoping of the lightsabers is a little better, and the controls of the tractor beam have been relabelled in alien lettering. But all told, I will probably never watch this DVD when I want to see the movie. I'll stick with VHS. And whichever version I watch, I'm still not sure whether the apparent lack of seething hatred coming from Vader in his duel with Obi-Wan seems inappropriate given what we now know, or if that actually serves as a highly effective illustration of how the Dark Lord has changed in the 20 years between Episodes III and IV.

The Empire Strikes Back: I used to like the Emperor in this movie, as dubbed by Clive Revill, more than the Emperor in Jedi played by Ian McDiarmid. But now that McDiarmid is doing a fine job establishing Palpatine/Sidious as the overall villain of the Star Wars universe in the prequel trilogy, it makes sense to provide consistency. And with a little tweaking of the dialogue, the new footage gives a slightly different perspective on Vader's pursuit of the Rebels and his relationship with the Emperor, emphasizing that Vader has his own agenda. Temuera Morrison's voice has been dubbed in for Boba Fett, another change I can't argue with. (Morrison's voice was not used for any of the stormtrooper dialogue in any of the three films, suggesting that there's at the very least a mix of clones and human enlistees/conscripts among the ranks.) The snowspeeder action looks tremendous, maybe better than it ever has; I don't think the layout of the shots was altered in whatever improvements were made. I liked the old bright white look of Bespin, but I also like the new digital backgrounds. The only thing about the DVD edition of this movie that bugs me at all is the insertion of shots of Vader taking a shuttle back to his Star Destroyer. I really didn't spend 17 years wondering how he did that. Not only do the shots slow down the movie a bit, but they absolutely wreck the timing of John Williams' music cue. Still, I'd say that most times I want to see Empire, I'll probably go with the disc.

Return Of The Jedi: The only thing I'm going to say about the new musical number is that it shows that in the real makeup/costumes vs. CG debate, the worst thing you can probably do is mix the two together. Did the older puppets look fake at times? Sure. But so do CG creatures. When you maintain a consistency of style throughout the illusion, it's a lot easier to suspend disbelief than it is when you have two styles butting right up against each other, because each winds up highlighting what the other doesn't do so well. The celebration scenes at the end are kinda nifty, though. As for the digital replacement of Sebastian Shaw's head with Hayden Christensen's . . . I'm not sure Lucas gave us any good reason for this in Revenge of the Sith. Indeed, that movie makes you wonder how Anakin so quickly discovered a technique that is supposedly known only to Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Yoda. But Anakin's spirit is undoubtedly powerful, so I can handle him finding a way on his own or assuming he learned something himself in the intervening decades. Once you accept Anakin appearing at all in ghostly form, it makes a certain amount of sense that his self-image would be of himself before he turned to evil, so I have no problem with the change. And to follow up on the comment I made about Palpatine a moment ago, Sith really improves Jedi for me. I used to think the Emperor was an idiot for egging Luke on every time he was about to do something out of anger or hate; it always seemed like that gave Luke a moment to regain his composure. But Sith shows how well that technique worked on Anakin, and I now find it quite compelling to see Luke pass through the trial that his father failed and succeed.

Now, I admit I was curious about the McDiarmid and Christensen changes, and one reason I relented on my "Original versions or bust!" mantra was that the notion of Lucas making changes in order to tie all six movies together interested me more than the idea of him making changes just because he could. But what I really wanted from this set were extras and information. And like I said at the top, there is absolutely no way they could have quenched my thirst there. But they did a real nice job of feeding me tidbits I didn't know while still not assuming that everyone who watches these extras has spent 25 years absorbing minutiae about the films and their fictional universe. Each film has a commentary track, similar to those found on the prequel discs, with Lucas, sound designer Ben Burtt, effects guru Dennis Muren, and Carrie Fisher. My one wish about these commentaries is that the ratio of Burtt to Fisher comments could be reversed. Burtt's a good guy, bless 'im, and he truly did a magnificent job of making the fantastic Star Wars universe sound both alien and real. But I didn't need to hear the painstaking detail of how so many background sounds were created, and worse, he often repeated himself. Fisher, on the other hand, has a nicely irreverent attitude about the whole thing, but is still very respectful of the strength of the story and Lucas' determination to bring it to life. She brings a very helpful human perspective to the whole thing, and the commentary tracks could have used more of that.

Empire has become the height of the series in many fans' eyes, including my own, and so it doesn't surprise me that it's also my favorite commentary track. And like the film itself, in large part that's because of the presence of Irvin Kershner. He sounds like he had fun making this movie, and that shines through decades later. With Lucas talking about the story construction and themes of the story, and Kershner talking about the performances and the little moments where he sought to add depth and personality to the story, the commentary makes abundantly clear how the push and pull between Lucas and Kershner's strengths made the movie so much more than the sum of its parts. I was kind of surprised by Kershner's emphasis on humor, given Empire's reputation as a dark film - he constantly points out gags, usually by saying that said gag a) is old and b) works. And he's right on both counts; I think the familiarity of those little moments really helped the characters come alive.

The fourth disc of bonus material contains one 2 1/2 hour documentary, Empire of Dreams, and three featurettes. Empire of Dreams is great, great stuff, especially in its first hour or so as it talks about Lucas's effort to make Star Wars happen. I've always been a Lucas booster, but I was enormously impressed by the sheer act of will it took to make the film. Lucas wasn't just making a movie. He was creating an entire industry. I was not even two years old when the movie premiered, so I have no first hand knowledge of the way things used to be. But this documentary really helps make clear that in its storytelling style and its use of visual effects, Star Wars was a revolution, one that almost didn't happen and one that few people other than Lucas (and Gary Kurtz, Alan Ladd and a couple of others) truly believed in. I liked seeing the efforts Lucasfilm made to build anticipation and awareness for the film, including publishing the novelization early, landing a comic adaptation at Marvel, and making a presentation about the movie at the 1976 San Diego Comic-Con.

The documentary has interviews with many of the cast and crew, and also includes screen test footage of Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher. What you don't see is Harrison Ford's screen test - because Ford was brought in to feed lines to the auditioning actors, and convinced Lucas to hire him that way. Even with Ford off screen much of the time, and with the focus on the auditioner, you can hear Ford create and become Han Solo. It's fun. You also see some of the other auditioners, including Cindy Williams for Leia and Kurt Russell and William Katt for Han and Luke. No slight intended, but Katt makes a better Greatest American Hero than Jedi Knight, while even in the screen test Hamill just seems to embody the idealistic but way too sure of himself young Luke. (And yeah, I'm that one kid in a hundred who wanted to be Luke and not Han, so take my perspective with a grain of salt.) The documentary glosses over some of the more problematic areas - Kurtz's split with Lucas isn't covered, and whatever problems may have resulted from Jedi director Richard Marquand's unfamiliarity with visual effects are only briefly touched on in the context of a discussion of Lucas' problems with the film guilds over the unconventional placement of the credits at the end of the movies - problems that apparently prevented Lucas from handing the director's chair for Jedi over to Steven Spielberg.

The featurettes are nice, but don't have as much meat as I'd like; I think they're in many ways targeted at the non-junkies. I did like the featurette on the influence of Star Wars, where directors like Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and heir to the epic film fantasy throne Peter Jackson talk about the impact seeing Star Wars had on them. The Revenge of the Sith preview is now, I suppose, a preview of the DVD for the final prequel, and it works nicely as a small bridge between trilogies to see how the Ep III crew re-created such a classic costume for a new actor. Of course, I'm sure the eventual DVD and almost-inevitable six-film box set will build an even larger bridge, but for now, I'll take this. The Episode III game preview is fine if you want to see a lot of people waving lightsabers around in front of a green screen, but other than that, it's not much.

There are lots of other goodies, like production photos and worldwide poster artwork. I had seen most of the artwork thanks to the Star Wars Galaxy trading card set Topps put out years ago, but it was good to see them larger and in a format that would reach a wider audience. (I was also happy to see that the classic poster art was used on the discs themselves; I understand why the individual disc packages were designed to be consistent with the prequel discs, and I think that's a nice touch. But I'd hate to see the iconic images totally ignored. The end result is a very nice design that balances old and new.) The trailers and TV ads blew me away - it almost feels like promotion and advertising have changed more than movies themselves in the last twenty years. The earliest Star Wars trailer, with no logo and no John Williams music, seems so primitive. And the initial teaser for Empire featured no movie footage at all - just pans of Ralph McQuarrie paintings and closeups of publicity shots of the actors. (That said, I can certainly imagine those paintings getting me plenty enthused in 1979.)

There is the possibility of more content to come - if you have a DVD-ROM player. There's already a little bit of content on the web, including a script-to-screen feature for Star Wars, with the promise of more on the way. All that said, there are also some apparent omissions. There are no deleted scenes, which I'm sure a lot of people would have liked to see, but their absence didn't really bother me that much. For archival purposes, I would have liked to see the old making-of specials that were made contemporaneously with the films.

I guess that's one more reason to be glad I have an extra copy of the old letterbox collector's edition VHS set. These DVDs won't make me throw out those old tapes, and they certainly aren't the last word on these movies either. In that sense, it's hard to give this set a perfect rating. But in terms of how much I enjoy these films, how much I enjoyed the extras that are here, and the value for the money, I can't really see myself giving them only a three either. If you are a diehard purist, stay away, and maybe rent the fourth disc from Netflix or something. But I think everyone else will get quite a kick out of these.

Reviewed by Dave Thomer
theLogBook.com Assistant Editor