Blu-ray Review: 'Star Wars: A New Hope' (2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment Reissue)

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© 2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) 


On September 22, three months before the theatrical premiere of Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker, Buena Vista Home Entertainment reissued the Blu-ray editions of all of the 10 live-action Star Wars feature films released by both 20th Century Fox and Walt Disney Motion Pictures since May 1977.  This re-issue, the first since The Walt Disney Company acquired 20th Century Fox earlier in 2019, includes all of the Skywalker Saga films, as well as Lucasfilm's Star Wars Anthology entries, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Solo: A Star Wars Story. 
Promotional photo showing the new packaging for the "Multi-Screen" 2019 re-issue. Note that The Force Awakens Blu-ray is placed with the Prequel Trilogy, and that the two Star Wars Story standalone films are not pictured. ©2019 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)

In the video trade, this re-issue is dubbed the Multi-Screen edition because, in addition to the Blu-ray that contains the feature film, each newly-redesigned package includes a digital download code for Movies Anywhere, iTunes, Vudu, and Google Play. This allows consumers to either download the film or stream it on their preferred online venue, including Amazon Prime Video.

Luke Skywalker Begins a Journey That Will Change the Galaxy

Young farm boy Luke Skywalker is thrust into a galaxy of adventure when he intercepts a distress call from the captive Princess Leia. The event launches him on a daring mission to rescue her from the clutches of Darth Vader and the Evil Empire. - Blu-ray back cover blurb, Star Wars: A New Hope


Another promo photo, this time only showing nine of the 10 Star Wars films included in the Multi-Screen re-issue. This one shows the films in proper in-universe chronological order but omits The Empire Strikes Back. ©2019  Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)


What's New...and What's Not

Essentially, the 2019 Multi-Screen edition of Star Wars: A New Hope is a repackaged version of the 2011 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment/Lucasfilm Blu-ray release. The packaging is new, of course; the front cover art features a photorealistic montage that features the seven Rebel protagonists (Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Artoo Detoo, and See Threepio), as well as images of the first Death Star, a trio of X-wing fighters, a Y-wing fighter, Luke's Tatooine homestead and a binary sunset, and the duel between Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi. 



On the reverse side there is another photomontage of stills from A New Hope, dominated by a shot of a distant Luke striding away from the Lars homestead's dome to look at the aforementioned binary sunset. Below this are four smaller photos: a publicity still featuring Harrison Ford (Han), Carrie Fisher (Leia), and Mark Hamill; a rear-view shot of the Millennium Falcon; a still from the scene where Luke first sees Princess Leia's hologram; and another publicity photo of Darth Vader (David Prowse) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness). 

On the outer pressed slipcover, there is no reference at all to Twentieth Century Fox, the studio that financed Star Wars in the mid-1970s. However, Fox is mentioned in the credits on the Blu-ray jewel box package's back cover.

The physical disc also has new label art: the BD features a still from the scene where Princess Leia is sending Artoo Detoo off on his mission aboard the now-captured Tantive IV. All of the copyright and informational copy on this label omits any references to Fox (which presumably ceded the rights to its new corporate owners when the Disney-21st Century Fox merger was finalized earlier this year). 

However, once you insert your Multi-Screen Edition Blu-ray disc (BD) into a player, you will learn that beneath the new packaging, the content is exactly the same as the 2011 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment edition. This, Dear Reader, makes the 2019 edition of A New Hope the fourth release on Blu-ray. (Before the merger, Fox issued its six Star Wars films in 2011, 2012, and 2015, each time giving the Blu-rays different packaging but adding no new extras.)

The Blu-ray presents 1977's Star Wars in its final supervised-by-George Lucas version as released in the 2011 Star Wars: The Complete Saga box set. It contains the 125-minutes-long film, along with two audio commentaries (one ported over from the 2004 DVD release, the other edited from archival sources, including interviews from the 1970s with cast and crew, as well as bits of more recent interviews done for Kevin Burns' Empire of Dreams documentary). These commentaries are presented not only in English audio and subtitles for the deaf and the hearing impaired but also in all of the other European languages featured on the Blu-ray's audio tracks.  

And even though Buena Vista Home Entertainment went out of its way to dress up the Blu-ray in new non-Fox clothing (figuratively speaking), the disc-loading icon (an animated rendition of Artoo Detoo), the menu screen, and even the 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment logo prove that this is the same BD that was produced by Fox before Disney purchased its parent company from the Murdoch family. 

So, Is The Multi-Screen Edition Worth Getting? 

If you already own the 2011 or the 2015 Star Wars: The Complete Saga or the Steelbook reissue of A New Hope and are not interested in streaming or downloading a digital copy, you don't need the 2019 Blu-ray. The disc itself offers nothing new, so unless you are a consummate completist, this edition of Lucas's 1977 classic film may not be your cup of blue milk. 

However, if you want the digital edition (which includes playability on Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, Movies Anywhere, or Vudu), you will get extras that are not available on the physical media edition.

These extras are: 

  • Conversations: Creating a Universe - Director Joe Johnston, who was a storyboard and concept artist for Star Wars in the 1970s, and Roger Christian, who was a set decorator for the same film and eventually moved on to direct the second unit on Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, meet for the first time and discuss their experiences on set
  • Discoveries from Inside: Weapons & The First Lightsaber, a look at some of the classic props made for the original film
Now, if you purchased 2015's Star Wars: The Digital Six-Film Collection, you don't need the Multi-Screen edition of Star Wars: A New Hope because the two documentaries mentioned above are included in that collection's bundle of extras.

However, I have only purchased the physical media released originally by Fox, and none of the Star Wars Blu-rays released by the studio before the sale to Disney included codes for digital copies. So, for me, I was sold on getting the Multi-Screen Edition of Star Wars: A New Hope when I saw that it has the Movies Anywhere digital code as a bonus. 

I haven't watched the entire movie on Amazon Prime Video, but I did try watching the opening logos/title crawl scenes to see if Prime Video's X-ray feature (which are info pop-ups with behind-the-scenes stuff, sort of like MTV's pop-up videos) is included. To my surprise, it is! Obviously, you have to be logged into your Prime Video account; the X-ray feature is only available when you are streaming it on Amazon. But I love that feature and have long wished that Lucasfilm would add trivia tracks to their Star Wars and Indiana Jones home media releases.

For me, purchasing Star Wars: A New Hope was a "the cup is half-full" experience rather than a "the cup is half-empty" one. I was disappointed that the physical media element does not bring something new to Star Wars fans. I mean, seriously, Lucasfilm? You couldn't be bothered to tweak the menu or add, as Paramount Home Media did with the Indiana Jones BDs, the trailers for the featured movie? 

Still, now I have a digital copy of my favorite film of all time, and as long as I am an Amazon Prime member, I can watch it online on Prime Video, with or without the X-ray feature. That balances out my disappointment over the physical disc's lack of new material. 

Blu-ray Specifications:

Video

  • Codec: MPEG-4 AVC
  • Resolution: 1080p
  • Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
  • Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1



Audio

  • English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
  • English: LPCM 2.0
  • English: Dolby Digital Mono
  • Japanese: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • German: LPCM 2.0
  • French: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • Italian: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • Spanish: LPCM 2.0
  • Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono
  • Portuguese: Dolby Digital Mono
  • Polish: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • Hungarian: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • Russian: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • Ukrainian: Dolby Digital 2.0
  • English: LPCM Mono
  • Music: Dolby Digital 2.0

Subtitles
  • English, English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Korean, Malay, Mandarin (Simplified), Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese

Discs
  • Blu-ray Disc
  • Single disc (1 BD)

Digital
  • Movies Anywhere, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play

Playback
  • Region A

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