Star Wars Incomplete: Complete Saga Hype Hit by Fox Death Star
Fox Movies (NWS) and Lucasfilm had hyped a May 4 Star Wars-related announcement. A counter tracked the passing of days and minutes. What was the surprise? Could it be details of the Star Wars: The Complete Saga contents for the Blu-ray 9-disc set? Tough to say, because Murphy's Death Star took aim and splattered the online promotion into eensy weensy little electrons.
According to the Lucasfilm Star Wars site, "all will be revealed" at 6AM Pacific on May 4th:
Clicking on the link brought visitors to a countdown clock:
The magic hour came ... and went. At first, the clock started to count backwards. A refresh of the browser brought a blank screen for a while. Repeated efforts finally brought the Fox Movies link:
And ... nothing related to Star Wars. Fox advertised the upcoming X-Men: First Class film, along with Water for Elephants, Mr. Popper's Penguins, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Monte Carlo, and What's Your Number?. But no Luke Skywalker, Millennium Falcon, cute pugilistic teddy bears, or Jar-Jar the Annoying Hologram.
Star Wars Incomplete.
Actually, there was information ... just on the home entertainment link at the bottom of the page with no indication that you'd find anything special there. Maybe Obi-Wan Kenobi had used a Jedi marketing trick to cloud consumer eyes and prevent them from seeing the information.
If you followed all the links through and finally got to the description, you learned that list price of the 9-disc set is $139.99, pre-order price is $99.99, the release date is September 16, and ... that's about it. Nothing about the content, other than you get all six films (kinda obvious, eh?) and that the discs were "utilizing the highest possible picture and audio presentation." (No surprise there, either.) Clearly this was a marketing campaign that was actually dressed in the Star War Emperor's new clothes.
In other words, these weren't the droids you were looking for. You can go about your business.
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Erik Sherman is a widely published writer and editor who also does select ghosting and corporate work. The views expressed in this column belong to Sherman and do not represent the views of CBS Interactive. Follow him on Twitter at @ErikSherman or on Facebook.
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