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"Alert my Star Destroyer to prepare for my arrival." What was the point? — Page 2

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I was being sarcastic, miker71. I know sarcasm isn't always clear in writing. And this is me being serious now. (Or am I? Shit...am I a clone?)

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vote_for_palpatine said:

I was being sarcastic, miker71. I know sarcasm isn't always clear in writing. And this is me being serious now. (Or am I? Shit...am I a clone?)

i really should pay more attention to who writes what - perils of being a casual forum reader here, doh

 

keep up the good work :-)

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vote_for_palpatine said:

I HAVE, AS EXPECTED, BESTED LUKE SKYWALKER IN A LIGHTSABER DUEL AND, RATHER THAN SURRENDER TO ME, SKYWALKER PLUNGED TO HIS APPARENT DEATH; HOWEVER, MY COMMAND OF THE FORCE HAS PRESERVED SKYWALKER FOR NOW -

and....

It's like finally getting to see the Wampa monster feeding while Luke struggled to free himself. Why was Luke hanging there before? Now we know!

Stop, Stop!  you're killing me!  Dang, you hit the nail on the head.

"Close the blast doors!"
Puggo’s website | Rescuing Star Wars

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Baronlando said:

http://filmsound.org/starwars/starwars-AQ.htm

Burtt says it's from 77. I don't think they say "star destoyer" in the final cut of the movie but there is pre-Empire material like comics and publicity stuff that use the name.

Han Solo said "Two Imperial Star Destroyers, I'm gonna try and outrun 'em" when they were escaping Tatooine.

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Um, in the film itself?  Han said, "Looks like an Imperial Cruiser.  Our passengers must be hotter than I thought," but he never said that line.  At least, not in the final film.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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The voice is definitely James Earl Jones. It was the modulation they used on his voice. ESB focused more on clarity in voice, where new GL films focus on making him sound like he is talking through a toilet paper roll. They were trying to get more of a machine feel to the voice.

"The other versions will disappear. Even the 35 million tapes of Star Wars out there won’t last more than 30 or 40 years. A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD version [of the Special Edition], and you’ll be able to project it on a 20’ by 40’ screen with perfect quality. I think it’s the director’s prerogative, not the studio’s to go back and reinvent a movie." - George Lucas

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skyjedi2005 said:

The entire special edition was pointless.  The restoration was necessary, but the changes and bad added cartoon cgi added nothing and actually take away from the experience. Things i'm for are reducing or removing the garbage mattes or blue screen bleed or fringing.

Exactly my feeling. I don't mind minor clean-ups  (as were done on the Raiders of the Lost Ark restoration), but wholesale destruction of scenes is completely wrong.

I loved Vadar's "Bring my shuttle" line for years... since I was a boy in the early 1980s, and it was never confusing. It was one of the best moments in TESB; and swapping it out for that p*ss-poor line and then inserting a totally useless scene, ruining the pacing of the escape sequence (and the brilliant music score that goes along with it) just proves how clueless Lucas and his sycophant Yes-men are.

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 (Edited)

This addition to EMPIRE is a clear case for what I call the "Law & Order" mentality.  In "Law & Order," they don't waste time or slow down the episode to show the cops driving down the street, getting out of the car, stepping onto the sidewalk, walking up to the front door, and ringing the doorbell.  There's no practical need to show that.  They just cut right to the point.  Just like on "Star Trek," they don't always show someone beaming up from the planet every time.  If you've seen it enough times, you can move forward without seeing it happen.  Granted, that was likely done to cut down on the effects budget, but regardless of that, it's not needed to show how someone gets from point A to point B everytime.  You can put the pieces together yourself.

Vader says, "Bring my shuttle."  This means he intends to be leaving, and with everyone else making their escapes from the planet at this point, you'd assume he also is leaving the planet.  Then, a few minutes later, he's on the bridge of the Super Star Destroyer.  Simply conclusive.

And yes, the entire sequence damages the pacing of the film's climax.  Even a fellow filmmaking friend of mine, who prefers the prequels over the OT and likes most of the SE & DVD '04 alterations agrees with me on this point.  The film, at this point, is trying to build momentum in a seemingly hopeless situation.  Intercutting with the shuttle's journey kills that momentum.  Why Lucas chose to add this?  I do not know.  I do agree that Vader appearing on the Executor bridge maybe could've benefitted from a more proper entrance, and perhaps that was his irritant with the scene.  Doesn't bother me, never has, but that's a maybe.

-NJM

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Actually I think the only real pace-breaker is the actual landing sequence. Everything from that rather nice matte of Vader going up to the shuttle to it flying off into space before the breathtaking "space dawn" shot looks nice without really breaking anything. And seems to add needed pause to a scene that otherwise feels a bit rushed.

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BmB said:

Actually I think the only real pace-breaker is the actual landing sequence. Everything from that rather nice matte of Vader going up to the shuttle to it flying off into space before the breathtaking "space dawn" shot looks nice without really breaking anything. And seems to add needed pause to a scene that otherwise feels a bit rushed.

There was never any need for a "pause" in this sequence. The quick cuts and short bits of dialogue were perfect.

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No, really, I feel like some tension is missing in there. The shuttle sequence adds that, but then finally destroys it with the boring landing.

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 (Edited)

The last act of Empire is nearly operatic in its intensity and is absolutely BEAUTIFULLY scored and PACED! It's not even the change in Vader's voice, or the pointless shot of Vader arriving, it's the total and utter DESTRUCTION of the musical flow in that scene! It's just completely and utterly ruined! For the sake of about 5 seconds of needless exposition.

It's the single most offensive change to the entire original trilogy in my humble opinion, and shows that either Lucas, or Ben Burtt (Perhaps both) haven't a CLUE about the importance of musical pacing in a scene. It's almost like they see music as a generic sound effect - you can cut and paste it all you like as long as the general feel of each piece is roughly the same. This kind of attitude towards the importance of John Williams' masterpiece(s) really is quite offensive. I would love to know his feelings when he saw this edit.  This scene was scored in a way few films regrettably are these days (or even then) - it was a perfect marriage of editing, FX work, and of course musical scoring. It was at this point I realised Lucas had lost control of whatever it was he had in the first place, and he was just using the original films to play about with CGI in anticipation of the prequals.

I actually didn't mind many of the changes to Empire, but this one change rendered the Special Edition unwatchable for me. It bugs me just thinking about it. Even though the GOUT is such low quality, it's still the one I goto now for any of the films.

I'd rather watch a faded masterpiece than a cleaned-up patchwork mess of a classic film.

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Well put Nerfherder! I completely agree with everything you said.

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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Actually the shuttle sequence fits in between a musical cut anyway.

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 (Edited)

BmB said:

Actually the shuttle sequence fits in between a musical cut anyway.

I disagree - it may fit VISUALLY, but no way in hell does it fit in musically. In the good old days of fim appreciation when people had attention spans longer than 3 seconds the music was often considered a work of art in its own right, and FLOWED with the visuals enhancing the on-screen action and providing much of the emotional connection between viewer and story/characters. This is just an absolute trashing of a once beautiful and 'heart pounding' scene with absolutely top notch pacing and editing. It now resembles the kind of thing you'd get in a computer game cut scene quite frankly. This piece of music was scored to the 1980 version of this scene. It consequently fits it like a glove. One change in the scene disrupts the intended musical flow - Whoever was responsible should be ashamed at doing such a bad hatchet job.

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"Alert my Star Destroyer..." ruins the pacing and logic of the scene semantically, too.

"Bring my shuttle" means Vader is leaving, and he's leaving now. He's not going to walk to where his shuttle is, he's having it brought to him. In the SE, he walks to his shuttle, which is much less urgent.

"Alert:" Something is going to happen, but it's not happening yet. While everything else is happening in real time, the command to alert someone to do something draws our attention away from the action into the future. This would be okay if the future we were considering had some direct bearing on the action ... "Alert my Star Destroyer to prepare for bombardment," etc ... but it really doesn't. Lucas breaks into the action to ask us to consider something utterly mundane.

"... to prepare for my arrival." This implies that Executor is not, in fact, prepared for Vader's arrival. There are troops in contact and starfighters cleared hot, so by this point everyone should be "prepared" for every contingency. Approach, IFF, etc should be handled by the shuttle crew and flight ops as in RotJ, there is no need for the passenger to do it. The implication behind this line is that

a) Vader expects some kind of pomp and ceremony when he boards, or

b) Executor is an inefficient ship and has to be continually reminded to be ready for the squadron commander to embark.

Either way, the Imperials come off looking kind of dumb. If Vader expects a reception in the midst of combat, he has a grossly-inflated sense of self-importance. If he is micromanaging his shuttle and Star Destroyer crews, he has a grossly-deflated sense of their competence (or they are, in fact, quite incompetent). And in both cases, the sense of urgency is deflated.

Ah, well. Star Wars is effectively dead to me. Star Trek, too. Maybe this "Firefly" thing I hear so much about will catch on.

"It's the stoned movie you don't have to be stoned for." -- Tom Shales on Star Wars
Scruffy's gonna die the way he lived.
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Nerfherder said:

BmB said:

Actually the shuttle sequence fits in between a musical cut anyway.

I disagree - it may fit VISUALLY, but no way in hell does it fit in musically. In the good old days of fim appreciation when people had attention spans longer than 3 seconds the music was often considered a work of art in its own right, and FLOWED with the visuals enhancing the on-screen action and providing much of the emotional connection between viewer and story/characters. This is just an absolute trashing of a once beautiful and 'heart pounding' scene with absolutely top notch pacing and editing. It now resembles the kind of thing you'd get in a computer game cut scene quite frankly. This piece of music was scored to the 1980 version of this scene. It consequently fits it like a glove. One change in the scene disrupts the intended musical flow - Whoever was responsible should be ashamed at doing such a bad hatchet job.

I may be mistaken, but the shuttle takeoff is positioned between the "Escape from Bespin" and "Hyperspace" cues, no? That's what I meant. It fits, or rather sits- in the space where there was a musical cut before. A seamless one but a cut nonetheless.

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Don't know why, but I never had a problem with the SE shots of Vader's shuttle.  I DO think that the "bring my shuttle" line should be restored, it just fits better with the scene. 

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 (Edited)

I just watched ESB (the special edition), and paid attention to this series of shots.

It's not even the line that annoys me the most. Or the shot of the Lambda shuttle flying toward the Executor. It's the fact that they cut away to an extremely slow shot of Vader landing on the Death Star in the middle of what is supposed to be the most tense part of the film (the rescue of Luke). In an instant, all of the drama falls away and we are left to stare at a miming Moff Jerjerrod. Why?!

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Judge said:

It's not even the line that annoys me. Or the shot of the Lambda shuttle flying toward the Executor. It's the fact that they cut away to an extremely slow shot of Vader landing on the Death Star in the middle of what is supposed to be the most tense part of the film (the rescue of Luke). In an instant, all of the drama falls away and we are left to stare at a miming Moff Jerjerrod. Why?!

 I agree.  I do think the new line is stupid, but the shot of the shuttle flying towards the Executer can stay.  The recycled footage is a joke though, really cheap. 

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Scruffy said:

"Alert my Star Destroyer..." ruins the pacing and logic of the scene semantically, too.

"Bring my shuttle" means Vader is leaving, and he's leaving now. He's not going to walk to where his shuttle is, he's having it brought to him. In the SE, he walks to his shuttle, which is much less urgent.

"Alert:" Something is going to happen, but it's not happening yet. While everything else is happening in real time, the command to alert someone to do something draws our attention away from the action into the future. This would be okay if the future we were considering had some direct bearing on the action ... "Alert my Star Destroyer to prepare for bombardment," etc ... but it really doesn't. Lucas breaks into the action to ask us to consider something utterly mundane.

"... to prepare for my arrival." This implies that Executor is not, in fact, prepared for Vader's arrival. There are troops in contact and starfighters cleared hot, so by this point everyone should be "prepared" for every contingency. Approach, IFF, etc should be handled by the shuttle crew and flight ops as in RotJ, there is no need for the passenger to do it. The implication behind this line is that

a) Vader expects some kind of pomp and ceremony when he boards, or

b) Executor is an inefficient ship and has to be continually reminded to be ready for the squadron commander to embark.

Either way, the Imperials come off looking kind of dumb. If Vader expects a reception in the midst of combat, he has a grossly-inflated sense of self-importance. If he is micromanaging his shuttle and Star Destroyer crews, he has a grossly-deflated sense of their competence (or they are, in fact, quite incompetent). And in both cases, the sense of urgency is deflated.

Ah, well. Star Wars is effectively dead to me. Star Trek, too. Maybe this "Firefly" thing I hear so much about will catch on.

 Awesome post!

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 (Edited)

It would be interesting if this line is re-inserted into the Blue Ray version of the SE of EMPIRE, but I sincerely doubt it. If anything, I'm pretty sure we're in store for more negative changes.

Honestly, the only added scene to the SE that I truly love is the Wampa sequence in EMPIRE. Being a big fan of suitmation, I was absolutely floored by the Wampa costume when I first saw it. The shot of him sitting up with the blood dripping down from his mouth, and then shuffling over to Luke looks absolutely fantastic.

While it kind of demystified the Wampa a little bit (you get very quick shots of it in the original trilogy, and is always seemed like an "elusive" creature, what being able to blend in with his environment and creeping on unsuspecting victims!), I felt it was a fine addition to the SE version of EMPIRE, and I still stand by that. The other changes, I could DEFINITELY live without.

The changing of Boba Fett's voice and the sequence with the Emperor (in the 2004 version) are the two things that down right piss me off, and make the SE of EMPIRE almost completely unwatchable for me.

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Several of these revisions to the films might not be so bad if they didn't seem like such half-assed rush jobs.  I'm talking more about the 2004 revisions.  Hayden at the end of ROTJ mght be tolerable if they just took the time to do it correctly, and specifically shoot footage of Hayden for that purpose.  Changing Boba Fett's voice is stupid because him being a clone of Jango Fett is stupid.  It serves no purpose to any storyline, plot, or character development.  How does making Boba a clone of Jango improve his character, or serve the plot of AOTC or ESB?  It doesn't.  It's a nonsensical alteration to the character that wasn't needed, and was likely just done because George thought for two seconds it might be "cool."  I think it's creepy that's Jango's acting as father to a clone of himself.

I am in agreement about the Wampa additions.  I might take out a shot or two of it somewhere, but all in all, I think it helps to see the physical size and primal nature of the creature.  Seeing it chewing on the dead Taun Taun with blood dripping down its chin is an unsettling sight.  Would've helped more if they could've gotten both Luke & the Wampa in the same frame.  Something like a shot over Luke's shoulder showing how the Wampa dwarfs him.  Easily done with a stand-in for Mark Hamill.

Now, I think this whole sequence in question would just be better with no dialogue at all.  Vader just storms down the hallway, and they get on the shuttle and go.  There's no need to have any dialogue there if George is gonna show us the shuttle's journey.  Why does the Executor need to be alerted about his arrival BEFORE they even board the ship?  Nothing they can really do until you're close enough to the SSD to begin docking procedures, anyway.

-NJM

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I think the main focus was on the new footage of Vader walking to his shuttle.  If the original line was kept, the shuttle should not have already been there waiting for him, so the team probably decided to change the line for that reason.  It became less about the line and more about the visuals.

I cannot wait for Adywan's ESB:Revisited, because he is restoring this line :)

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Stampede said:

 

I never understood the point of this scene at all. The original had a suitably sullen/disappointed Vader making his way back to his ship. Never one for small talk (or pleasantries it seems) he utters "Bring my shuttle." I mean, he has failed the Emperor, unburdened a harsh truth to his son (after cutting his hand off first) watched said son then plunging to a possible death...

At the same time, his leverage is escaping, his son is hanging on for his life (I'm sure Vader could sense he was still alive...) I just find it hard to believe he would really care for his Star Destroyer to stop what they are doing and set up a parade for his return. I mean, if he had come jogging out of the shuttle, shoving the officer out of his way so he could quickly get to the destroyers command centre, then maybe I would have bought it instead of tacking on an unused scene of Jerjerrod (?!?) from Jedi. I have seen people praising this scene as an well used addition to the film. Am I missing some great potential in this shot? What reminded me of this is that the Wookieepedia and EU material have retconned Jerjerrod to have really been present in Empire the whole time. 

Also, his voice when he commands his destroyer to prepare for his arrival sounds off to me.

yeah, of all the changes this is the one that really annoys me.

"Bring my shuttle" was one of the fiercest sounding readings JEJ ever gave and they cut it out!!!! And stick in the single worst lamest sounding reading ever of the new lines which don't even fit into the story as well. And was there a single person who ever got confused by what Lucas thought needed to be spelled out in the new scene?

I really miss that "Bring my shuttle" line it just fit perfectly and had such a perfect reading!