Eeda choota, Solo?*

There. Now you know. I'm a Star Wars dork. I know dumb trivia, quote movie lines, and have even read MANY SW novels. Which is why yesterday was such an important day for me.

I consider myself a Star Wars purist - a dying breed in a generation weaned on a Star Wars that means Jar Jar Binks and Droidikas. A Star Wars with so much CGI, calling it "special effects" is a misnomer, since EVERY shot is computer generated. And the acting. Ugh. Don't get me started...
But back to yesterday. Yesterday marked the release to DVD of Episodes 4-6 as God intended: sans Special Edition touch-ups and extra scenes. Nope, this is the Star Wars I grew up on: pure and unadulterated. I don't need an extra couple cloud cars zooming by Cloud City. I don't need a few more weird creatures on Tatooine. And I ESPECIALLY don't need an extended song/dance sequence in Jabba's palace. Seriously...What the heck is that??

But most importantly, this rectifies George Lucas' (and probably all of mankind's) worst blunder: Greedo shooting first. Here's the scene: a shady looking Han Solo is about to leave an even shadier looking alien Cantina when he's stopped by Greedo. Turns out this bounty hunter has decided to bring Solo in to Jabba for the reward. They take a seat (inexplicably). Han tries to smooth talk his way out of this, but Greedo is persistent. So Han casually eases his blaster from his holster (which is concealed by the table) and blasts the unsuspecting (and apparent amateur) Greedo. Then comes the money line: as Han's walking out, he tosses the bartender a coin and says,"sorry about the mess".

Awesome. Coolest part of the whole stinkin' movie. I'm eight years old at my kitchen table with a blaster made out of Legos, trying to smooth talk a teddy bear into giving me more time to get the money to Jabba. Han Solo was a bad dude! We just met him (at this point in the movie) and already we see he's a guy who'll play by his own rules. He's the MAN (and one of the reasons that Epsiodes 1-3 suffer is due to a lack of a great character like him. But that's another blog...).

In 1998 Lucas decided to "re-release" his classic movies, with some "effects touch-ups". Sounds ok, right? Technology has come a long way since '77. But he wouldn't stop there. Oh no. He had to go tinkering.

The end result of that scene I just described had Greedo shoot first AND MISS. He's five feet away from Han, blaster aiming at center mass and he misses? Isn't shooting like, part of his job description? Maybe he should have left "deadly accurate at close range" off of his resume...

What makes matters worse is that the scene appears to be edited in a way that makes it look like Han dodged the blast slightly. Sigh... I'm not even going to touch that one. Let's move on. A rumor I heard was that Lucas altered the scene to show that Han wasn't a "cold-blooded murderer". True or not, I don't know. But come on! You took an incredibly awesome scene and sucked the "cool" out of it so that it just looked lame and completely unbelievable.

Well, thankfully I don't have to watch that horrible re-edit of one of my favorite classic cinematic moments of all time ever, EVER again. And just as soon as I can scrape up $20 bucks to buy the DVD at Target, my agitated soul can finally be at rest after 8 long years. Just like Yoda, Ben, and Anakin when they show up to nod approvingly at Luke at the Ewok party.

Yub yub, my little furry friends. Yub yub.


(*Rodian to Basic translation: "Going somewhere, Solo?" Major dork points if you knew that.)