My answer to George Lucas' continued misdirection: I'm done

After reading that article about Gary Kurtz' lambasting of Lucas' turn to the dark side by making everything about the toys (?!), George's continued refusal to release a remastered version of the ORIGINAL holy trilogy of "Star Wars" on DVD or even Blu-ray, and a major spark of recognition brought on by the impending release of the documentary "The People vs. George Lucas" that so many other fans have become disenchanted with the direction of the franchise, I have made a momentous decision.

I am completely DONE with buying "Star Wars" toys and I WILL NOT buy another release of the special editions on any format until those precious 1977, 1980, and 1983 versions are given their proper due.

Like I mentioned before, a full-on remastering of the original three movies may not happen until after Lucas has passed away. Unless he has some stipulation in his will that 'nobody touch nothin'!' But I cannot continue to support his obvious mis-direction of the "Star Wars" legacy. With his complete and total focus being away from the quality of the movies and squarely on toy production and marketing, I cannot in good conscience give my hard earned cash to a man whose artistic vision is a thing of the past. Clearly the prequels were atrocious, even though I will say they did have a few brief good moments.

I own the prequels on DVD because at the time of their release I honestly thought I wanted them in my collection. Even the soundtrack for each of the new episodes was something I purchased right away during each of the movie's initial theatrical release. Just the other day one of the tracks shuffled on my iPod and I actually found myself a little annoyed, and this wasn't the first time that happened. Once again I recognized the piece of music right away and quickly muttered in the car, 'no, not the fucking prequels!' This is certainly not a reflection on John Williams who I thought did an excellent job on all six of the films. It was just a connection to Lucas' lame, below-standard efforts on those last three movies.

Believe it or not, I'm actually contemplating selling my prequel DVDs and soundtracks at Amoeba Music in Hollywood just to reclaim what I shouldn't have put-out in the first place. Today I'm certainly removing the three soundtracks from iTunes and my iPod. The last version of the original trilogy I purchased on DVD was the individual discs that included not only the special editions but the original theatrical release versions of "Star Wars, "Empire", and "Jedi". However, Lucas couldn't even be bothered doing anything special with those and simply used the laserdisc masters from 1995! Yeah, they did a great job with those when the movies were released in a 13 lb., 9 disc boxed-set (which I still own), but they needed to be upgraded! We didn't even get an anamorphic 16x9 picture, just the 4x3 versions! What a rip!!

As for the toys, everything I own is from the original trilogy and I certainly won't be getting rid of any of those. The last item I purchased was the giant 31" long Milllenium Falcon about a year and a half ago that proudly adorns my coffee table. But from this point on....no more.

I'm even amazed at my decisions here! In fact I think I'll feel a sense of joy when I actually hand over the prequel DVDs to Amoeba for cash. After re-reading this post, I'm wondering how frustrated I would've been by the direction of Celebration V in Orlando this month. Comic-Con clearly showed that emphasis on "Clone Wars" toys completely smothered the recognition of the 30th anniversary of "The Empire Strikes Back". Surely a similar, multiplied situation in Florida would've been annoying. Crazy isn't it?....how the times (and "Star Wars") have changed.