Just this week I watched all three of the first Trilogy of Star Wars. It's something you have to do every so often. This time the movies I saw were not the same as the ones I had seen in the theater or the even the ones I had seen on TV or on video. These new DVDs are updated with new scenes that George Lucas has added or amended to "improve" the films and remake them the way he had originally intended.

Here's what Lucas has to say about it:

To me, the special edition ones are the films I wanted to make. Anybody that makes films knows the film is never finished. It's abandoned or it's ripped out of your hands, and it's thrown into the marketplace, never finished. It's a very rare experience where you find a filmmaker who says, "That's exactly what I wanted. I got everything I needed. I made it just perfect. I'm going to put it out there." And even most artists, most painters, even composers would want to come back and redo their work now. They've got a new perspective on it, they've got more resources, they have better technology, and they can fix or finish the things that were never done.

I wanted to actually finish the film the way it was meant to be when I was originally doing it. At the beginning, people went, "Don't you like it?" I said, "Well, the film only came out to be 25 or 30 percent of what I wanted it to be." They said, "What are you talking about?" So finally, I stopped saying that, but if you read any interviews for about an eight- or nine-year period there, it was all about how disappointed I was and how unhappy I was and what a dismal experience it was. You know, it's too bad you need to get kind of half a job done and never get to finish it. So this was my chance to finish it.

Of course, these are Lucas' films and he can go what he wants with them, even if it rubs some fans, like me, the wrong way. I think some of the improvements, like the addition of matte paintings of Mos Eisley in A New Hope or the changing of the song at the end of Return of the Jedi are good. Almost all of the changes give the films more texture and depth. There are only two that bothered me.

The first was the scene between Han Solo and Jabba the Hutt in Mos Eisley just before the Millenuim Falcon takes off on its abortive mission to Alderaan. Lucas cut this scene from the original release because the didn't have the money or the technology to make Jabba realistic, which is understandable considering it was in the mid 1970s and George Lucas was a relatively unproven commodity working on a film that the studio simply did not get. However I think it was a stroke of good luck that removed Jabba from the film because he became sort of mythic character until he was finally revelead in Jedi. The shroud of mystery has been lifted that make his appearance in the final film so outstanding.

The second is relatively minor in comparison. At the end of Return of the Jedi, when Luke is moves away from the celebrations at Endor and sees Obi-Wan, Yoda and Anakin in the Force, he used to see Sebastian Shaw along with Alec Guinness and the Frank Oz puppet of Yoda. Sebastian Shaw played the older Anakin Skywalker when Luke removed Darth Vader's mask. Now, instead he sees Hayden Christensen. It just doesn't make any sense. If he sees a young Anakin, why not a young Obi-Wan. He should he Ewan McGregor instead of Guinness. I know it's not a big deal, but there it is. I don't know how that could have been Lucas' original intent since Hayden Christensen wasn't even born when the first movies were made. But, whatever, there are his films and he can do what he wants with them.

These are still great, timeless films. Something about the timing( I was 7 when the first "Star Wars" came out and people were lining up around the block to see it), the casting (can you imagine Kurt Russell as Han or William Katt as Luke) and the technology were serendipitous. I will love them to the end of my days and I hope one day to be able to share them with my kids.