All the existing Star Wars movies are finally being made available as legitimate digital downloads beginning April 10, with pre-orders already available on many platforms including iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Xbox Video and Google Play, and more, with the general price at most retailers set at $20 per movie, or $90 for the whole collection (which means you can save yourself $30 by only buying the original trilogy, as is the only sane course of action).
Before you ask (and this was my first question), sadly the original trilogy consists of the “special edition” features, which means you’ll have to deal with George Lucas’ random smattering of weird CG elements and animals, and the betrayal of Hayden Christensen’s ghost.
The downloads are also HD resolution, meaning that at least you’ll be able to enjoy this on your HDTV set or on your mobile device in high resolution, and you get various extras along with your purchase, including documentary features, deleted scenes and behind-the-scenes vignettes. Depending on the outlet, you might find additional bits included along with the films, as well.
Part of me is thrilled, of course, but I’m holding out hope that there’s a special bonus feature included which is actually just completely untouched high-resolution versions of the original trilogy without any Special Edition modifications. It very much looks like we’ll have to put up with the digital “enhancements,” however, but that still won’t stop me from purchasing the original trio of movies for what is probably the fifth or sixth time at this point.