I guess I'm getting old...
As a recent blog mentioned, Lucasfilm aren't releasing Revenge of the Sith on VHS.
Bugger...
I have pretty much every version of every Star Wars film on VHS (even got a few on V2000, anyone remember that!) and while DVD is the shiny new format for the Sunny D generation, Star Wars lived for millions of us on video cassette.
I saw Star Wars 150 times on VHS, same for Empire and Jedi, Caravan of Courage, The Great Heep, Making of Star Wars. Kids today (and no, not trying to sound like a wise old man) will never have the joy of listening to the needle bump across vinyl, read-a-long adventure cassettes, 8-tracks, cine films with no sound, slide shows or any of the things that kept the saga alive between episodes from '77 to '83.
I remember well a conversation (well, an arguement actually) I had in a comic shop in Worcester about 11 years ago. I was there on a day off, drove the 50 or so miles to check out a good sci-fi shop I'd read about in Starburst and entered. It was when Star Trek Generations and Stargate were out, so the trailers were on a loop, and being a big Trekker I got a stack of Trek-related stuff.
Which would have been fine if a spotty, clueless 18 year olfd shop assistant hadn't been ripping a new one into a kid who had taken an interest in a box of (even then) old Star Wars Weeklys (us UK kids got a weekly Star Wars comic from Marvel back then, reprints of the US issues with exclusive UK stories plus back-up titles like Spider-Man, Tales of the Watcher and Killraven)
Spotty McZit was berating this poor lad, saying how badly written and drawn the Marvels were, how they were embarrasing and rubbish and tried to direct him towards a batch of the (admittedly excellent) Dark Horse titles.
Now, I'm sure that in his ham-fisted way he thought he was doing the kid a favour, but I couldn't let this one go. Having collected those comics as an 8 year old myself (and throwing them away in what I can only describe as a fit of temporary insanity, only to buy them back years later at a much higher price!) I just had to take Squirty McPockmark to one side and explain the following.
In 1977 you didn't have home video. You didn't have Dark Horse, or Bantam knocking out five or six novels a year. You didn't have West End Games, the internet (still fairly new back in '94) , the Galaxy Magazine, the Insider or any of the shiny new stuff you had back then.
You had Vinyl or cassettes. If you were a posh kid you had the silent, ten minute-long super-8 twin reel. You might have the Sphere print of the Star Wars novel, Splinter of the Minds Eye and Han Solo at Stars End. The Topps cards and the figures. If you were lucky, Mom and dad might sign you up for Bantha Tracks at Christmas.
But they, for the most part, were based on the actual film itself.
Above all that, certainly for me, was the comic. Between 77-80 and 80-83, those comics were the lifeblood of Star Wars fandom. They kept the stories alive, kept the ideas ticking over. For me they were the initial influence that started me writing fan fiction, something I still do today. Without those Marvel comics I likely wouldn't be writing this blog. My interest in Star Wars could likely have waned a long time ago if I didn't feel so involved in it all.
Looking back I am proud of my little rant that day.
But the whole point of this blog is to make a plea. Star Wars, for years, lived on video (videodisk and laserdisc). How may times did LFL re-release those films on video, in new packaging? "Improved digital sound", the remastered versions, the Special Editions, the list goes on.
To not release Revenge of the Sith on video isn't only a bad business decision (come on George, you know us guys are completists!). It's kind of an insult to us old school fans who were there in 1982 when Star Wars came to video, in 1984 when Empire hit the rental stores. In 1986 when Jedi came to this galaxy. I queued at midnight in 2001 for Phantom on video (and it was darn cold too!)
Do the right thing GL - you know it makes sense!