Star Wars VI: Return of the Jedi (Limited Edition) [DVD]

To be fair - these are the films I saw and loved back as a kid. No altered / added scenes, all of the dialogue that was used the first time around. (Bring my shuttle). The transfer is fine, not in anyway as bright and sharp as the 2004 set, but still the colours now look as I remember them. One small problem, ANH is a bit fuzzy in places and a small number of scenes have a 'speckled with white flickering dots' look but these are minor points. The matte errors are back in Empire and Jedi, although those in ANH are now hardly visible compared to the hideous green squares in the 2004 set. No pink cored lightsabers, no music cues drowned out and no scary Hayden. (there are no differences I can see having a quick look at the SEs) I would have liked to see them properly restored, but they didn't get it right with the last disks so I'm not really complaining. Boba Fett has a decent voice once again, no CG and Han indeed shoots Greedo in an awesome fashion.

NB: As is their wont, Amazon have bundled together reviews for various editions of this title - including the audio CD. This review refers to the two-disc DVD release including both the original theatrical cut and the special edition.

Watching the original versions of the original Star Wars trilogy on DVD is like travelling back in time - not so much to the innocence of youth but more to the days when picture quality was never much of a consideration on video releases and Fox had the reputation for the worst transfers in the business. Watching the PAL DVDs is to step back into an age of low resolution standards conversions from NTSC to PAL with all the loss of detail and motion blurring that that entailed: certainly if you've got one of the old remastered video releases you might as well hold on to that, because the quality isn't as poor as this. The sound quality is pretty awful as well. From Lucas' past track record it's all too easy to imagine this is just a scam to allow him to sell a remastered version a couple of years down the line, but it's even harder to dispel the notion that somewhere Lucas is whining "See how soft the focus is? How can you say these are better films?"

Return of the Jedi isn't as bad as the scarred memories of working at a movie theatre showing it five times a day for 12 weeks would have it, but it's still the least of the series. With no producer or studio to rein him in this time, Lucas offers something that's little more than a rehash of the first two films, but with bigger Death Stars, more spaceships, more teddy bears and far, far too many Muppets, it's crippled by an atrocious opening section where one after another the heroes try to rescue Han Solo only to get captured in the most tedious ways possible. Richard Marquand's inability to direct action is much to the fore in this section, and he's not much better in the rest of the film, while Harrison Ford gives a particularly bad performance that's all too indicative of a bored man with nothing to do but stuck here anyway because of contractual obligation. If you can forget the dire first third, the rest of the film is okay when it's dealing with the Skywalkers' family feuds but less successful on the ground in the Teddy Bears Picnic - sorry, Ewok scenes. Still, it does have Princess Leia in the slavegirl outfit...

I remember seeing Return of the Jedi in my local Odeon when I was a sprog, loved it then and still love it now. The first half of the movie in Jabba's palace is superb, years later I'm still seeing creatures in the background I've never seen before! You've also got the original Max Rebo band song in this version too.