Alderaan

flametitan said:

I haven’t watched any of them, but I assume that if I had to, I’d turn on somebody’s fan commentary to go over it (If you guys have any recommendations, I’d like to hear them. Perhaps not RLM if he made any, though; I’m not a fan of his style of humour)

Seriously, don’t even bother. If you’ve seen the OT, there were all kinds of implied and unexplained things that the audience could be left to wonder about on its own. The prequels not only filled in those blanks in wholly unsatisfactory, contrived, and often contradictory ways, but they were aimed primarily at 5 year olds, took a **** on some of the most sacrosanct concepts and beliefs in the originals, shoe-horned in completely out of place characters and bizarre infantile gags, but they also managed to do all of that in the most boring and vapid manner possible.

Even disregarding the way the prequels attempted to ruin Star Wars, they are objectively boring, often obnoxious, and extremely poorly designed, shot, acted, and edited.

There is a reason RLM became famous breaking down these utterly detested and vile video game movies.

Not for me. I will never watch them again and as far as I’m concerned, they don’t exist story-wise in relation to the OT.

Han saved the day at the very end of the last battle. It’s supposed to be like that.

It’s totally different than some random grunt in the middle of battle yippee-kay’ing through the skies while all of the main characters are dying.

CatBus said:

I’m guessing that’s the stereo mixdown h_h was warning about. 5.1 mixes mixed down to 2.0/2.1 get softer than if they’re played back on a native surround system. I think there’s even some cases where you could hear this on a surround system, if your TV doesn’t do 5.1 passthru on optical, so it mixes down to stereo, then your receiver mixes it back up again.

But basically, the advice holds: if you’ve got a stereo system, listen to the stereo mix. It’ll be clearer due to lack of mixdown.

Thanks, Cat. I’m working Premiere right now and I just went ahead and adjusted the levels where I felt like it was warranted.

Did anyone else feel like the dub was out of sync sometimes on 2.0? It could be from the original production, but it just feels inconsistent to me. Some scenes the audio sync seems spot on and other scenes it seems a frame or two off.

Maybe I just need more sleep though. I’ve seen this film probably a thousand times but I’m not used to scrutinizing it in HD.

It really is incredible how insecure Trump is.

There are overweight bullies at the local playground with higher self esteem than him.

Hard to remember for me but my 80s lifetime rental copy of Star Wars was pretty much the same. My 80’s tape of Empire had the Showtime logo pop on screen a couple of times. And my 80’s copy of Return of the Jedi was completely worn out and missing the last ten minutes of the movie.

Faces much better. Still have them to this day although I have not watched them in 10 years.

You understand that characters doing things is part of the sequence of events in the story, right? Too many characters doing too many things is an indictment of a poorly constructed plot.

I know I’ve been critical of Rogue One and The Force Awakens lately, but you know what new Star Wars thing I really do like? That Duracell / Children’s Miracle Network Star Wars commercial.

So well made and touching and great for the kids.

These podcasts and fake podcasts are hilarious, I never get tired of them.

RLM vs. Colliders (edited by Film Gob)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odj6NHsWe00&t=17s

RLM fake podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sExTt4j69zI

RLM vs. Colliders again (edited by Film Gob)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzTNdgjvlr0

Rogue One isn’t a good movie but it’s not so awful either. The love and hate is probably overblown on both sides if you ask me, but these review videos and parodies are just so dang funny.

Frank your Majesty said:

Should it be called a prequel? Maybe. Is it possible to call it a prequel in the context of the Star Wars franchise? No.
Also, I think spin-off is a much better descriptor for it than stand-alone. Has either of these terms been used officially?

Spinoff or Anthology seem reasonable enough to me. But I do remember it being referred to as a stand-alone film quite a bit, and when I took my gf who had never seen anything Star Wars, she had no clue what was going on.

Frank, it’s a prequel. Disney just doesn’t want to call it a prequel for obvious reasons.

It’s definitely not a stand-alone film just because they didn’t stamp an episode number on it. It could have been a stand-alone film; arguably, it should have been.

The Rogue One battle was put together much better than the last battle in TFA, I will give it that. But dramatically it still doesn’t compare to any of the originals in my opinion. I think it’s a tone and approach thing. Just watch the Battle of Yavin or the Battle of Hoth. They are acted and shot and edited like they are real military battles. Rogue One and TFA feel much more like they are battles that happen in a Marvel Superhero universe. They seem more like comic book fights to me.

Aesthetic upgrades of visual effects are the only Special Edition changes I like. Some of the speeder shots on Hoth look bad and dated in Despecialized, so while I believe strongly in preserving the original, I also think there is value in modernizing the vfx so they look realistic and don’t take you out of the movie experience.

On the other hand, there are CGI upgrades in Star Wars and Empire that look like they were made in a different era and are out of place in the film. I cringe whenever I see the obvious computer graphics like when the Falcon is flying around Cloud City. It looks straight out of a video game cutscene and doesn’t belong in the movie.

The speeder bike chases on Endor still look great on Despecialized 2.5. I was very surprised, I thought they would have aged much more but they still look realistic to me.

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

What’s with all this love for the redone explosions? What’s that blast ring even supposed to be?

It’s called the Praxis Effect. According to Wikipedia, astronomer Phillip Plait says that the Special Edition version of the Death Star explosion in Star Wars is physically the most realistic, although the orientation of the shock wave and the trench are not at the correct angle. In Return of the Jedi Special Edition, the angles are correctly aligned.

Apparently the shock wave from the Alderaan explosion would radiate outward in a more spherical manner, but either way I think the new explosion effects look aesthetically better than the old ones.

Jay said:

I could go as far as smug and even conceited, but I’d be interested to know what actions of his demonstrate his craziness and hatefulness to you.

I agree with Jay here. Obama does seem smug, condescending, and arrogant, but he’s certainly not crazy and I can’t imagine who he could be construed as being hateful towards. He’s certainly done a lot of bad or neglectful things during his presidency, but these seem like unfair accusations to me.

Trump on the other hand is pretty much all of the bad things people say about him. While he will unfortunately have the ability to screw all of us over in so many ways (some people much more than others), thankfully his powers are limited.

Frank your Majesty said:

Stand-alone = not part of the episodic saga.

Why, because they didn’t put an episode number in the title?

TV’s Frink said:

Lord Haseo said:

imperialscum said:

Well it was not “something similar” because the difference is that R1 plot is in fact about stealing the plans, while TFA plot is in fact about blowing up death star.

Regardless of how you rationalize it you still accused the film of having a different plot than the one that are actually in the film just like Alderaan.

Alderaan thinks the plot of RO is “there’s a bunch of characters, including some villains.”

A “plot” is the entire sequence of events in a story. It is not a one sentence summary that describes the protagonist’s goal.

You’re welcome for the free tip.

Jeebus said:

I must’ve missed the Ewoks in TFA and R1.

It’s not the Ewoks. I don’t mind them too much and I actually like most of their scenes, just not the ones during the battle. Movies can be fun and even cute sometimes and still be good, but the Ewoks really should have had blasters or something and made the battle more realistic and less of a farce.

For me, it’s the lighthearted “don’t take any of this seriously” tone that happens in too many scenes that bothers me. Once a film starts being too ridiculous and not taking itself even remotely serious, I personally find it off-putting. In TFA, the parts I hated the most were ones like the unrealistic Rathtar scene. Han could care less, he acts like a fly got inside his house, not much more, and the other main characters are getting their heads thrown into hard metal walls and then getting up like there’s nothing wrong with them. Meanwhile when Luke was nearly drowned in the trash compactor, he surfaces soaking wet, covered in garbage particles, and gasping for air. See the difference?

Then there are the battles. In TFA, the rebels just fly in and go pew-pew yippee we did it. Wasn’t that fun? There’s nothing real about it at all. There’s a moment in the battle at Maz’s Castle where an X-wing swoops in and fires at some bad guys on the ground to save Finn or someone at the last second, and the camera cuts to the pilot smiling like it’s another day at the Disney office. The exact same shot was recreated in Rogue One, where the Rebel pilot they kept showing was smiling and enjoying himself during a battle where all the good guys die. What is wrong with that picture? Anyone remember what Wedge and the other pilots looked like when the camera was on them during the OT?

And don’t even get me started on the idea of watching multiple star systems get blown up in real time across the galaxy with nothing but your naked eyes looking up at the sky.

Ok thanks Depheros. It was like that for a few seconds in that scene. Very strange!

I just watched ROTJ for the first time in years, and the worst over-the-top-ridiculous parts remind me of the worst over-the-top ridiculous parts in TFA and R1.

I think it’s the ridiculousness level that turns me off these films. Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back just felt so much more real. Sure, there are moments in both films where certain concepts or situations are silly (the protagonists sneaking around the Death Star and the Asteroid Field, for instance) but the actors and filmmakers approached each of those scenes with a very real, lifelike mentality. The films were able to be fun without stopping to blatantly acknowledge the silliness of the situation.

In ROTJ, however, there are scenes where you can kind of see Kingdom of the Crystal Skull stuff going on. The Ewok stealing the bike speeder, for instance, and leading the stormtroopers on a chase into the woods. Chewie doing a Tarzan impression during the Battle of Endor. You would just never ever see these things in Star Wars or The Empire Strikes Back, but they started showing up in Return of the Jedi (mixed in between very powerful scenes) and then they became ubiquitous in all of the rest of the Star Wars movies.

delete

The only other thing I noticed on ROTJ was the saturation was inconsistent on Luke’s lightsaber especially during the Death Star scenes. Vader’s saber looked great and in some shots Luke’s did too, but in other shots it looked like a blurry green glob and was highly distracting.

Otherwise 2.5 looks terrific! The only visual deficiencies are from Lucas cutting corners on production. Great work guys!

SilverWook said:
Rogue One kind of requires you’ve seen the original film more so than TFA.

You mean the stand-alone film?

I don’t know the answer to your question though.

ROTJ V2.5 MKV
Approximately 1:53:10

After Luke defeats Vader, he looks at his hand. His lightsaber goes through the railing on the left side of the frame.

Should go over it or was that messed up in the original?