Today marked the DVD release of one of the greatest movie trilogies ever to grace the screen. Ol’ Uncle George has always tended to keep his properties locked tightly away to be released according to some mysterious schedule. Just look at the surprise of fans when Episode I came out on DVD only a year after its theatrical release. Now we’re just waiting for the original trilogy.

Today, however, we celebrate Indiana Jones being transferred from old film stock to digitally remastered, THX certified home-theatre goodness. Given what Lucasfilm had to work with, and after browsing all three flims, I consider the transfer to be very good, and the specially included fourth disc with the boxed set contains a very satisfying amount of bonus material.

The bonus disc contains a set of four featurettes detailing the stunts, sound, music and special effects of the trilogy. Although not known for it’s work on this movie, ILM still managed to pull off a memorable sequence with the “Opening of the Ark” and it was cool to see how it was done. It also has some of the original theatrical trailers for each of the films, and some “unlockable” content that can be viewed at the official site. You need one of the DVDs in your computer and that stupid Interactual player installed to be able to get it though. Beyond some concept art and behind the scenes photos, there isn’t much at the DVD-exlusive site worth checking out. Where the Special Features really shine are the individual documentaries on each of the films, kind of like what Lucas did for the THX remastered VHS release of the original Star Wars trilogy in 1996. We all knew Tom Selleck was originally up for the role of Indy, but to see a screen test of him and Sean Young (as Marion Ravenwood) was something else. All of the Documentaries and featurettes include various retrospective segments from Lucas, Spielberg, Ford and the rest of the behind-the-scenes crew, who recounted on how they helped create one of the most memorable movie heroes of modern cinema.

It shows that Uncle George and Steven Spielberg really took the extra effort to dig into the archives to give fans material that has never been seen before to make this an excellent package. And along with the remastered DVDs of the trilogy I can’t say I’m disappointed.