George Lucas begins the audio commentary on the Star Wars DVD by quipping that he made the film "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away." Although it is meant as a joke, the line comes across as poignant and nostalgic rather than funny. The original Star Wars trilogy was released on DVD for the first time this September in an elegant boxed set from 20th Century Fox. It contains a great deal of bonus content, including audio commentary for all three films by Lucas, Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia), Ben Burtt (Sound Designer) and Dennis Muren (visual and optical effects). Lucas, whose name launched an entire industry of visual effects, begins talking about his first Star Wars-ish ideas. Almost tentatively he recalls the struggles he faced in pitching a story no one believed could be told. He began with a 200 page script which took him over two years to develop-the entire story of what became the first three Star Wars films is encapsulated in that script.

Although Lucas had moderate success with American Graffiti (1973), he did not have the clout in Hollywood to sell a high-budget space epic of those proportions. Reluctantly, Lucas says, he revised the project and turned the story's first act in to a narrative all its own. The rest of the plot, Lucas vowed to himself, would be told one way or another. Between Lucas, Burtt and Muren (Fisher says little), the audio commentary serves as a wonderful reminder of the innovations and risks involved in making 'Star Wars' a reality.

Like many audio commentaries, this one is full of anecdotal material -tales of trials and triumphs from the sets, offices and special effects warehouses. These stories have a particular resonance, though; they are told about scenes and characters and ideas that have since become dramatically central to the vocabulary of American science fiction. The sound of a blaster - the laser-gun used by the various battling characters in all three films-was almost accidentally discovered by Burtt. Today that sound is almost exclusively synonymous with the sound of science fiction weaponry.

The stories that were most captivating are those told by Lucas. When he speaks, one can hear both the Lucas of the original Star Wars and the Lucas of the newer trilogy. His explanations of how the vision for Star Wars developed resonates like a quasi-religious aesthetic code. He desired to create a universe without explaining it-to dump his viewers in to the middle of a world that looked and felt old.

He wanted to move away from the designs of earlier science fiction films, most notably 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968). Lucas insisted that the space ships be dented and dirty, that the buildings look lived-in and that the 'droids' look worn down and out-dated. Additionally nothing of this old-looking universe was to be explained.

The characters in Star Wars speak about their technology as if everyone around them knows exactly what they're talking about, including the audience on the other side of the screen. Luke Skywalker grumbles about "power converters" to his Uncle Owen, and (very deliberately) no one ever says anything at all about how a lightsaber works.

Compared to an older, VHS recording, the images on the new Star Wars DVDs are very crisp. For 1977 visuals, they hold up remarkably well to 2004 scrutiny, especially after the intense restoration and re-vamping of these films for their 1997 theatrical re-release. The recent Star Wars installments not only look un-approachably clean (a side-effect of computer animation being 'too good'), but even the mystical 'Force' itself is explained away.

Clearly, Lucas still recalls his former ideals, and from the tone of his voice, he still believes them. Re-watching these original Star Wars films, and hearing Lucas describe the cares which he took in creating them only deepens the mystery of how the newer films lost their depth.

A review of this DVD release would not be complete without mention of the controversy surrounding the use of the 1977 "Special Edition" rather than the original versions of the films.

Purists have been calling for a release of a 1977 version of Star Wars (and for releases of the 1980 and 1983 The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi) since the 1997 "Special Edition" versions were brought to the screen with computer-generated additions, alterations and augmentations. Insisting on the DVDs being as up-to-date as possible, 20th Century Fox used the most recent version, that is, the "Special Edition", even updating it further. Hayden Christensen (Virgin Suicides) is even inserted as the ghost of Anakin Skywalker at the end of Return of the Jedi.

The value of the new changes is questionable. It can be argued that many digital additions are distracting, and clutter what are otherwise expertly rendered scenes. Even purists forget that there were at least three separate versions of Star Wars in 1977 in the United States alone and that there were even changes between those releases and the initial VHS release.

Unlike most films, Star Wars seems to have no definitive 'original version', and the practice of making changes before a re-release or a release to a new medium has a great deal of precedence in the Star Wars history.

Ultimately, a great deal more would have to be changed before these films lose their entertainment value. It seems that nothing at all could be done to them to decrease their importance as milestones in special effects, science fiction and the vocabulary of today's American cinema.