By Jonathan Hicks

I was thinking the other night - how many of those individuals all over the world who slagged off George Lucas for not releasing any Star Wars DVD versions rushed out and bought this as soon as it hit the shelves? As true Star Wars fans (which they claim to be) could they have physically held in the excitement and eagerness to own this movie on video? Would they have waited a long time to own the ultimate version of this film? After all, VHS is dead - long live DVD, as they say. That’s fine if you own a DVD player. Which I don’t.

Hah! I’m pretty sure they did, justifying the fact by saying that they were buying the video as a ‘stopgap’ measure until they could get the DVD version.

I watched this on my big TV (it’s not a widescreen one but it’s still pretty large), in full surround sound (I don’t have the technology and the amp for anything else) with the volume up as far as I could get it (considering where I live it would be annoying to the neighbours if I turned it up too high). And do you know what? It was still excellent. It was still exciting and wonderful to watch.

In fact, in many ways it works better on video. For me, anyway. You see, I’ve been watching Star Wars on video for the last ten or so years, as have most other Star Wars fans probably, so it seemed natural to watch yet another instalment on the video. Not only that, but you’ve got the option to scrutinise, wind back, point things out to your friends. One thing that I did notice - at the end of the film, when the orb has been given to Boss Nass and the camera shows a shot of the parade and all the Gungans jumping about in celebration, there’s a Gungan on the lower left pumping both his arms at the crowd. He looks like he’s offering everyone on that side of the street out for a fight. Noticing stuff like that is, well, fun. All those little details and effects and things going off in the background. It shows the depth and skill of the special effects guys at ILM, what lengths they go to create the world on screen. Fair enough, too much stopping and winding will ruin your tape, not like DVD, but I doubt that everyone will do that continually.

Will you?

I have problems with certain aspects of Episode I, the same as everyone else, but its part of the Star Wars universe now and the more I watch it the more I like it.

Not sure about the packaging, though. The gold box is a little... well... lame, for want of a better word. The cover is nice, but the spine isn’t very good and it looks a little out of place on my shelf with my other tapes and box set. Ah, well, I guess you can’t have it all.

Like the DVD version.

9/10 for the movie on video

6/10 for packaging.

God, I hate marking stuff out of ten. It makes me feel like George Lucas’ schoolteacher. ‘Oh, yes, George, that’s a very nice story. Have a lolly’.