To Market, To Market

As you may or may not know, I've recently moved. Which is why my column is late again. Ugh! Anyhow, during this move, I've had very little contact with the outside world. On Nov. 10, my Internet service was disconnected. On Nov. 13, my cable was disconnected. So, as you can imagine, I felt completely disconnected from the world. "Do we know who's President, yet?" became my common refrain.

I was re-connected to the Internet Nov. 21. I just got cable hooked up Nov. 29, and the local paper has done a less-than-stellar job of reporting national news. I'm still not sure who's President. I've been out of the loop on more than current events, however. Apparently, I completely missed a big news item from the Star Wars universe.

I rented The X-Men a couple of days ago. In a trailer preceding that movie, I saw an announcement for the release of a new collector's edition of the original trilogy. The selling point? Footage of the making of Episode 2. The Lucasfilms marketing machine is back in business, and none too soon. There are only 26 shopping days left until Christmas.

I have to rant a little here. I think this has gotten completely out of hand. I mean, didn't we all faithfully run out and buy the first three movies as soon as they became available on video? Weren't we all excited when the movies were re-released on the big screen with additional footage, stampeding to the theaters to share the Star Wars universe with our children the way we remembered it? Then didn't we go out and buy the trilogy all over again, so that we could watch it with the new footage and compare it to the original version? These videos also had the added bonus of interviews with George Lucas and a behind-the-scenes look at what was once left on the cutting room floor and what was added with computer graphics.

I, for one, do not intend to buy a third copy of Episodes IV, V and VI. Two of each is quite enough, thank you very much. I am quite disappointed that Lucas and his conglomerate have decided to capitalize on their fans once again, instead of just incorporating the Episode 2 images onto the Official Star Wars Website. (See links at right.) We buy the movies, the books, the comics, the posters,the action figures, the costumes . Hell, we even buy the toothpaste. We, the fans, thoroughly support Lucasfilms Enterprises. Don't we deserve to get a little something in return?

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