Well, folks, rarely have I been proved so spectacularly wrong. Here I was, just a short month ago, confidently predicting a glorious new whinge-free era of Star Wars fandom. Still, optimism's an admirable trait, right?

Back on 4th May, Lucasfilm announced the original theatrical versions of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi would appear as bonus discs on this autumn's release of Episodes IV-VI. "Rejoice!" shout all the purists, the old school fans and the card-carrying members of the Han Shot First Club.

Er, well, not quite.

As with most things Star Wars-wise, the majority of people are either quite pleased about this unexpected treat, or aren't particularly interested. But then there is a much louder contingent who aren't quite so jubilant:

- "They should be anamorphic!"
- "Why isn't the picture being remastered?"
- "They should be in 5.1 sound!"
- "The cover art's rubbish!"
- "They're too expensive!"
- "Where's all the bonus features?"
- "How dare Luca$ do this to us?"
- "They should be pan-and-scan like my old VHS tapes!"
- "They should have super-dooper bells and whistles so they look beyond perfect on my $25,000 hi-def 400" plasma screen with Dolby 28.1 sound (and hyperactive hyperdrive and astroturf); Anything less and we're being cheated!!! DAMN YOU, LUCA$$$!!!!!!"

*shakes head sadly in despair*

This is the uglier side of SW fandom. The side which will never be happy no matter what. The side that, if George gave them a million dollars each, they'd all be complaining that it wasn't two million.

Okay, people care about these movies. They care deeply. That's nice, but if they love them that much, shouldn't they be listening to the lessons in those movies? As a a very wise man once said:

"Anger, fear, agression - the Dark Side are they. Once you start down the Dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

"Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."

Getting a pixel-perfect copy of the OOT in some idealised cover in an idealised picture transfer isn't going to magically recapture an intangible lost magic from halcyon days of youth. Okay, an anamorphic, cleaned-up print would be nice, but isn't the whole point of this release that it's a nostalgic trip? In the words of Uncle George:

"The point of the movie is to get on with your lives, to take that challenge, to leave your Uncle's moisture farm, to go out into the world and change it and save the universe."

The world has moved on. Technology has moved on. Star Wars has moved on. Wanting a copy of the films you saw as a kid for a bit of fun is fair enough, wanting them in some ways (but not others) spiced up to 2006 levels of technology is inherently paradoxical.

The 2004 versions of the films are the hi-tech, super-clean, modern editions. We can't have it both ways. The sheer variety of changes and work that has been done on them with the Special Editions (and since then) makes it tricky to draw a line.

Sure, you can say Greedo shooting first, or 'Jedi Rocks' are major changes, and cleaning up the print is not, but there's a whole spectrum of alterations in-between.

In the Raiders of the Lost Ark DVD, a glass screen separating Harrison Ford from a snake was digitally removed. A simple clean-up to get rid of unwanted reflections. So, should the same thing apply to Star Wars? Why not accept that erasing matte lines or the 'Force field' under Luke's landspeeder is just such a clean-up. Oh, and while we're fixing effects, let's sort those lightsabers out and make them look good, shall we? Yes, and let's re-do some of those spaceship model shots....

Before you know it, we've got the Special Editions all over again.

So, I don't mind that I'll only be getting the original versions in a better format than I've ever seen them before. At least we're getting them. That's better than the situation we were in before, right? This should be cause for happiness, right? Right?

At the end of the day, this is a release that, like any other DVD release, people who appreciate it will buy, and people who don't can save their money for something else and be none the worse off. It shouldn't be cause for major distress and aggression.

Quite frankly, all the negativity makes me want to just forget about Star Wars for a while, and wibble on about Doctor Who instead. Just you see if I don't.