Daily Archives: May 4, 2006

A Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, in a far off western kingdom, there lived a boy.

Now the boy, through no fault of his own, had an offsite backup copy of Episode IV on Betamax. He watched that movie repeatedly until his VCR died. This made the boy sad, because he really enjoyed Episode IV. Even if, midway through the movie, a “flip laserdisc” notice interrupted Luke’s training sequence on the Millenium Falcon. Right before Han dismissed the force as a “hokey religion.”

Then, the boy moved east to seek his fortune and met other people who enjoyed Episode IV as much as he did. They reveled in the remastered theatrical releases, and spontaneously quoted the movie to each other whilst in the theater, much to the dismay of the three people that were watching it for the first time.

Suddenly George Lucas decided to “fix” the movies. It is important to note that at this time, they were not broken. Many people were angered, including the boy.

The boy resorted to watching divx copies of the original versions of the story, ripped from laserdisc editions not available in the United States. He had heard that many people distributed them illegally, but he wouldn’t have known anything about that. Nothing at all.

Then, George Lucas’s handlers decided that maybe they should listen to the people (make more money) and give them what they wanted in the first place, which was digitally remastered copies of the original theatrical releases.

The boy, and everyone else rejoiced—until they remembered Episodes I, II, and III.