Why is George Lucas such a.....

[Thundrchez]

ahartman, just a minor correction: the laserdisc release in Japan is an official and legal release. Yes, it does have Japanese subtitles, but it is the english soundtrack/audio. This will be a very good master for the dvd pirates to use as their master source, though.

If I want to stay legal and get TPM with what I consider acceptable quality, I have to pay out the @%% to buy it from somebody who is importing the laserdisc from Japan, and I will get Japanese subtitles. Because George Lucas is going through the trouble of actually making an official laserdisc release, why is he not releasing the laserdisc in the US?

Although I have been a star wars fan ever since the original star wars was first in the theatres, George Lucas's selective commercialization of the actual movie is turning me off.

[uberlad]

ahartman-

The widescreen _is_ available outside the US. Should I want to I could get it for only 14 quid here in the UK, without lots of extra merchandising junk.

I would personally be happy to buy DVD's of all the movies now, and if the ones in six years are better then I'll frickin' buy them as well.

Lucas must be crazy but hey, what can we do?

Uberlad

[WereWolf]

Jeez...

I'm not talking about JUST TPM... That's secondary! I'm talking about the other movies... ring a bell? ding dong!

I agree TPM was made JUST to make money (Although it has its moments), but I dare you to say that about the first 3 films. Those are absolute classics. You don't make a classic film just by taking the financial aspects in consideration. You make it by having a team of people who are dedicated to making a good movie, which sells itself.

[Gurm]

Werewolf (et al),

I think you're all being WAAAAAY too hard on TPM. No, I don't like the Midichlorians (sp?), but overall it was a well done movie. Yes, Jar Jar is irritating. Yes it is trite. Have you REALLY WATCHED the other three any time recently? Can you say "EWOK"? Can you say "But Uncle Owwwwweeeeennnnn"? Please. The other movies were silly and trite. AND they were classics. This one was overhyped and over anticipated - and maybe a little sillier. But it was still a good movie.

And for the record, I thoroughly enjoyed watching it on a 40" TV from 5 feet away with AC-3 the other night.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Genom]

Ya know, I have always been a DVD hopefull, and am glad I stcuk it out so far. Some kickass movies are out with lots of Extras. The Abyss takes on a whole new meaning if you watch the original version. But all this Star Wars on DVD thing has me laughing my ass off in 2 aspects. First of all, even most Star Wars fans (of which group I am not I have to say) agreed the newest movie was kinda boring. I wont go on to express my opinions since I only managed to watch the first 20 minutes before walking out of the theatre and going to dinner, but this whole DVD issue for it is just too funny. Poeple, he is not doing movies for the love of it. Lucas is a business man. And he knows what he is doing. he has every Star Wars fan foaming at the mouth for a DVD release (Well, star wars fans that HAVE DVD players that is). And ya know what? Every loving one will whine and moan for the however long it takes to get the flicks out, and buy them the instant they are out and probably pay some hideous overprice like 179.99 for all 6 movies in a speacial tin foil lined box set with a bit of Lucas's beard tossed in for your patience. Ya know what? screw him if you really arent happy. Get a real boycott going if you feel this strongly about it. But that doesnt mean just saying bad things about him. Stop buying the toys. Stop buying the games, etc. If he ever notices the drop in revenue, well guess just what will happen? I'm sure you can.

[Thundrchez]

I just ordered a big wad of movies. Star Wars The Phantom Menace was not one of them because every one I ordered was a DVD. If SW:TPM was available on DVD, I would have ordered it. VHS, even at its very best, is still a very low quality product in comparison to a good DVD or laserdisc. I am still appalled that they dare to slap that "THX" logo on a VHS tape.

Lucas started his Star Wars series because he is a creative genius and that is what he wanted to do. It was successful and it quickly lead to two successful sequals. I'm sure that Lucas has more money than he knows what to do with. I doubt that he did TPM exclusively for the money, though. He is raking it in big time; no doubt about that. But if he did not want to do it, he can easily afford to not do it.

It is just unfortunate that he is leaving such a big gap in the market by not having a DVD release of TPM. The pirates are stepping up to the plate to fill that void, though.

[fds]

I don't care about any silly star wars getting released on DVD. The only thing I really liked in the sw series is the music.

Indy would be nice to have on DVD though.

[Gurm]

I had another thought. I don't think it's the money at all. I don't think Lucas or Spielberg really need any more of our money - or want it bad enough to be so irritating. I think it's a case of principles. I think that Lucas is SO uptight about Star Wars being HIS that he doesn't want anyone else involved, and current DVD distribution schemes involve signing away some rights. I think Spielberg is the same way.

Just a thought.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Joel]

And another thing to think about. Why do DVDs and Music CDs for that matter cost so much? From what I understand it is less expensive to produce them over their tape counterparts and the duplication is faster also.

Joel

[Gurm]

Joel,

Because people will PAY more. That's the only reason.

The US Government is actually considering stepping in on the CD price problem. Strawberries, Tower, and other big chains routinely charge $18 or even $20 for new CD's. Best Buy and Circuit City, on the other hand, charge $12. So Tower, which has MORE buying power for music than Best Buy, and is OBVIOUSLY getting a better deal on the CD's, is charging 50% more. Since we know that these stores take a huge markup already (several dollars on a CD), Tower and Strawberries are tripling their cut.

In addition, the middle men are making out like bandits. It's really rude, but the artist sees only a couple bucks of the $18 you spend on a new CD, and the rest goes to greedy suits.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[RAB]

Maybe no one would pay George and Steven to launch DVD, but can you just see the hipe when HDTV-DVD's are launched with new and improved versions of SW. I would like to see SW on DVD, but SW in 1350x760 progressive scan on a big TV with THX-EX sounds like it will sell a lot of electronics as well as HDTV-DVD's.

RAB

[ahartman]

I've always wondered about the costs of CDs - if BMG can give them away for shipping & handling costs, it can't cost more than a buck or two to burn a CD in mass quantites.

A DVD I can see costing more - CDs are single layer. Most DVDs these days are dual-layer and require a special burning process. Also, the burning/encoding method has to be very different on a single-layer DVD anyway - 6.5G on a DVD vs 800M on a CD.

[Gurm]

ahartman:

The machine costs more, the materials are about the same.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[LAMFDTK]

Brother Gurm, "
but the artist sees only a couple bucks of the $18 you spend on a new CD"

Most big-ass artists like Aerosmith (they are locals for you right?) Get big pay days in multi Album contracts.
But the Goo GOO Dolls of the world might get 10-20 cents a unit...might..

The printed sleeve on a CD cost more that the rest of the product.

Napster ...less sound quality ...great price!

[Himself]

I like the Star Wars movies when they came out, great eye candy for the day, wouldn't want to watch them again though, once was perfect. Seeing them again just spoils them IMO. Thing about DVD is that you'll be watching the damn thing over and over again just because it's a DVD, so pick your movies wisely.

About TPM, I like the intro effects under water with the big fish eating bigger fish theme, from there on it was a letdown, the production of the effects to make it seem like a prequel was overdone, I wanted to see a 1999 Star Wars movie not one made to look like the originals or worse. The jurassic park meets Roger Rabbit character was unfortunate, just like the ewoks. The rest of the jurrassic like critters all had that disney-esque quality, you can't blame just the rubber faced rabbit, all flat characters with nothing to make them interesting or for you to want to care about them, just slapstick effects. At least the ewoks had some dignity and were critters you could at least think were cute and maybe realistic like a bunch of pug faced dogs, dogs act overfriendly at times as well. That jarjar thing just had the wrong personality, didn't matter what it looked like, you'd still want to punch it. One thing I liked about the first movie was that some of the aliens made you wonder about their sex lives and they were somewhat plausible alien characters, not cartoons. Another thing, there were too many robots in the movie, the actors included, no human emotions shown at all, I mean I don't go to a movie to see bored looking actors, might fit the characters, but made for a dull movie. It didn't help that it was a prequel, it was like reading a book from the middle on then going back to read a few paragraphs in the first chapter. Definitely a made for MacDonalds movie.

My $02