I come before you today to make a case for calm in a troubled world. We are all aware that the Star Wars saga has been released on Blu-ray, and that the original theatrical versions of the original trilogy are not included. Not even as extras! All we get are the blasphemous “special editions,” plus the prequel trilogy, which nobody wants anyway.

We mourn this loss, as we should. Yet as we work through the five stages of grief, we seem to have gotten stuck in the Anger stage. (That’s stage two. Stage one, Denial, we breezed through pretty quickly: “There’s no way Lucas will withhold the original theatrical versions on the Blu-ray– aw, crap, who are we kidding, of course he will.”) We need to move faster, lest we become mired in vitriol and bitterness. Staying angry is unhealthy. As a wise alien monster made out of foam rubber and/or CGI once said, “Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” So let’s get past Anger, and past Bargaining and Depression (neither of which will avail us anything), and get to the final stage: Acceptance.

I know we’re talking about emotions here, but we should try to be rational.

And rationally speaking, there is no logical reason to be angry with George Lucas.

Disappointed, yes. Disappointment makes sense. We would love to see the original theatrical versions of the first Star Wars trilogy on Blu-ray, and Lucas isn’t making them available to us. That is legitimate cause for disappointment.

But it doesn’t make sense to be ANGRY. To be ANGRY suggests that you’ve been wronged, that someone has done something harmful TO YOU. That’s not the case here. We had no contract with Lucas requiring him to release the movies in a certain way, or at all. He doesn’t “owe” us anything. He made some movies; we bought our tickets and watched them; our transaction with Lucas was thus finished. He’s under no obligation to release the movies in any format. (No obligation to us, anyway. He might have contractual obligations with 20th Century Fox.) Yeah, it’s common practice to release home-video editions of theatrical films. But unless you pre-paid for it when you bought your ticket to the movie, you aren’t “owed” it.

The digital revolution has made it so that the majority of all the movies ever made are available for viewing, many of them in pristine formats. We live in a golden age, and it’s getting golden-er. The downside, however, is that now we expect this. It wasn’t always that way. I remember how it took forever to get the Star Wars movies on VHS. The Empire Strikes Back didn’t arrive until 1984, and Return of the Jedi didn’t show up until 1986 — four years and three years, respectively, after those movies played in theaters. Those were pan-and-scan versions, too. The laserdisc editions were letterboxed, but the movies weren’t released in widescreen on VHS until the ’90s. And they didn’t come to DVD until 2004, long after most of the other blockbusters of years past had been upgraded to that format, and of course those were the “special editions.” We didn’t get the original theatrical versions on DVD until 2006 … as second-disc “bonus features.”

The thing is, as tantalizing and frustrating as those delays were, nobody felt like Lucas was “cheating” them. Lucas didn’t want to release his movies on VHS or DVD yet? That was weird, and disappointing, but oh well. I don’t remember people ranting and raving about how Lucas owed them something, or how it was unfair of him to deny us these things. If people did rant, they were disregarded. How would anyone be entitled to a particular version of a movie in a particular format? What kind of sense does that make? No kind of sense, that’s what. Yet today people are FURIOUS. What’s changed? We have.

We should also remember that the original theatrical versions are on DVD, on those aforementioned 2006 editions. There might be some justification in being indignant if the original films were simply going to disappear from the digital realm, but that’s not the case. We’ve got ‘em. Yeah, the sound is 2.0 and the picture is non-anamorphic, but — and I don’t want to sound like an elderly person here, but so be it — that’s a lot better than watching the videotapes, which is what we had to do for twenty years.

Now, I’m not saying you CAN’T be angry with Lucas. It’s a free country. You can to be angry at whoever you want, for any reason you choose, and far be it from me to suggest otherwise. What I’m saying is that there’s no logical reason to be angry, and it isn’t productive. Anger is never a useful emotion unless it spurs you to action in righting a wrong — and here there is no wrong to be righted. No one has violated a contract or misled the public or refused to deliver on a promise. We have not been denied anything that we’re entitled to. Even if there were some injustice being done against us, we’d be powerless to change it. Lucas holds all the cards. So why waste our brain power and energy being furious about something that 1) we can’t change and 2) there’s not any logical reason to be furious about anyway? Let’s accept it and move on. This is what Yoda would want, if he were alive, and real.

Tags: angry nerds, blu-ray, eric d. snider, george lucas, Our Take, star wars, Yoda