Well, as we all know, George Lucas is a tool. As such, he’s insisted not only on tooling around with his flashy new crappy movies in the Star Wars series, he’s repeatedly re-tooled the original good ones (as well as Return of the Jedi).

He’s repeatedly said the hell with those of us who made the series successful in the first place, most of whom really would prefer him to keep his ham-fisted attempts at revision to himself, and has no respect for the folks like John Dykstra who created at-the-time cutting edge special effects to make his vision come to the life, but now are having their historical and wonderful work relegated to Lucas’s circular file for eternity.

I will never release the original versions, quoth George. Not even alongside my new “better” versions.

And now, apparently Frank “Shawshank Redemption” Darabont turned in a marvelous script for the fourth Indiana Jones flick, a script that Spielberg and Ford really like…and Lucas said nah. It’s not up to his standards, doesn’t hold a candle to Episode 1: The Fucking Mess, Espisode 2: Attack of the Crap, or even the classic Howard the Duck.

Well, fuck ‘im.

The original Star Wars trilogy is due on DVD this year. The bastardized CGI versions, not the actual beloved originals. Han doesn’t shoot first. And Lucas will make a billion dollars off them anyway because the fans will buy them even if they want the real ones.

Don’t. Do. It.

If you buy this set, you give Lucas no incentive to provide the originals. You do your part in screwing over Dykstra and his team as their effects are replaced with digital effects that don’t even look as good as the original effects did. And you do your part in giving old George a far more comfy retirement than he really deserves.

Know what you should do? Download the originals on BitTorrent or Kazaa or Limewire or one of those bootlegging services. They’re out there, and they’re rips of actual laser-disk versions, so they’re even digital and widescreen. And they’re bits of history Lucas promises never to let us get our hands on, so you’re not even taking money from his pocket since he doesn’t intend to sell them. Download them, burn ’em onto disk, watch ’em. Share them with your kids, so they can see what George Lucas once had in him (or what his collaborators like Lawrence Kasdan and Irwin Kirshner had in them). And don’t buy the DVDs.

Who knows, if enough fans take this route, maybe the old bastard will ultimately cave in to market forces and give us the originals.

Download the real things.

Don’t buy the damaged versions.

Enjoy Star Wars and kick Lucas in the fiduciary gnards.

It’ll be all good.