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Info Wanted: Can anything possibly be improved in ESB? — Page 2

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Of all the star wars films this was the one that needed the special edition treatment the most but Lucus was probably too afraid to add the deleted materials or was more concerned with pushing the cgi of Lucusfilm. It was not about the film and restorimg material from the cutting room floor so much but they did restore some of the cues but nowhere near as many as they should have.

Really? It’s clear in my mind that the one that most needed the restoring of deleted scenes was ANH, specifically Biggs Darklighter’s story. The worst part is that they did actually re-insert it…but only half. This is just worse because whereas we weren’t made to care about Biggs in the original cut, here we have the emotional reunion without the emotional parting, so we’re just confused as to who he is and why Luke cares about him. We don’t need the whole Tosche Station scene. Just the parts with Biggs.

TESB isn’t even second in the OT in this regard, as I find RotJ’s deleted scenes far more interesting, notably Jerjerrod’s Conflict.

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I sincerely doubt that you will find any feedback here that will actually address your basic question. Changing an effect here or there will not make you appreciate the movie more. Alternate musical cues will not result in a sudden epiphany. Blood and nudity will certainly not do it.

I don’t know your particular age or background but I find that many people who did not see ESB when it came out do not put it on the same pedestal as do many of us. IMHO it’s because Star Wars ushered in a new era of kid fantasy movies. Prior to that we had… well, not much - Superman the Movie and Star Wars. Star Wars also revolutionized the toy industry so we also invested ourselves in a way like never before as we created our own new adventures with our heroes (ironically toys ultimately became the downfall of good filmmaking in Star Wars for decades to come). We had never seen anything like it… I imagine it was something like witnessing the emergence of rock music from the crooners of 1940s.

And of course ultimately it comes down to what you value in a film. Of all the films ESB arguably has the least “spectacle” going on, but also has the best character development and dialogue. Other elements of what made it so great have been watered down over time. When ESB came out it solidified Darth Vader as the ultimate screen villain, a menace that would kill any officer who disappointed, and who would beat our hero from one side of Cloud City to the other before chopping off his hand and telling him that “I f*cked your mom”. Today that reveal has become a punchline, but back then even James Earl Jones thought that Vader must have been lying.

Ultimately some movies become “great” because of the times is which they were born. Nowadays Elvis isn’t cutting edge music, he’s “oldies”. I think ESB is like that, and maybe because you didn’t experience it within that context that you don’t view it the same. Nowadays there are MANY great sequels. Back then there was only Godfather II, and that wasn’t meant for us kids.

Sorry if I’ve incorrectly profiled you… I feel that my point is still valid based on my experience with others.

Just my humble $0.02.

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Well technically, The Phantom Menace is a few months older than I am, so I definitely wasn’t around when TESB first came out. That said, I don’t think people who were are the only ones who love it. If that were the case, I’d have dismissed them as nostalgia blind ages ago. It seems to me that most people older than 10 think it’s the best, or at least second best. I may not like it that much, but I certainly don’t hate it, and I have very different tastes than mainstream audiences.

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I grew up with star wars trilogy I only saw ROTJ in the cinema though was too young for the others…

I agree Empire for the characters is the best. That really is what sells it. But it is Edited in hap hazzrd fashion in a way neither star wars was or ROTJ was.

Empire ran out of money and they had to cut corners to get the film out but it was far more ambitious than star wars and was an amazing technical achievement really. It’s just got audio fade downs cut music fade back up. Hard cut music in to another piece of music all of a sudden. Let’s put shots in a bit of a strange order.

I really like it… But I would rather it was in the right order and the music was handled better. But to do this you also have to trcreate some special effects shots and re-edit it or add missing elements. That is what I am saying.

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Anakin Starkiller said:

Though I struggle to understand what everyone finds so great about ESB (not even close to being my favorite), I will give them credit for the fact that it’s the one SW movie for which I can’t think of anything to improve upon. That probably stems from not knowing what exactly it’s lacking.

Out of curiosity, what is your ranking from favourite to least? Having a sense of what you value in a Star Wars film might help illuminate what you feel is lacking in ESB.

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Hal 9000 said:

Wow, I remember being a cringey youngster around here, and now there’s people younger than TPM making intelligent points!

EDIT: I joined as a 13-year-old in 2003.

I’m one year older than you, but your account is one year older than mine. Huh.

(Not sure why I thought that was interesting or worth mentioning. Slow night at work I guess.)

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Hal 9000 said:

Wow, I remember being a cringey youngster around here, and now there’s people younger than TPM making intelligent points!

EDIT: I joined as a 13-year-old in 2003.

You can probably guess that I’m older based on my choice of Kirks.

Though Chris Pine is also fantastic.

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Yes a person’s avatar is what I always use to guess someone’s age.

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Out of curiosity, what is your ranking from favourite to least? Having a sense of what you value in a Star Wars film might help illuminate what you feel is lacking in ESB.

MY top 2 are RotS and ANH, that I both love for different reasons (one’s emotional, the other’s lighthearted fun). After that it’s kind of ambiguous. While RotJ is by no means the worst, it’s the one movie whose mistakes actively offend me (second Death Star, Leia Skywalker). By comparison, my least favorite is AotC, which is bad simply by virtue of being boring. But hey, at least the worldbuilding’s good. I never cared for Han and Leia’s relationship. I can see how that would hamper my enjoyment of ESB.

Maybe I should just explain my tastes in general, outside of SW. I tend to gravitate towards more “kiddy” stuff a lot of the time, favoring shows like Code Lyoko and Mystery Incorporated to mainstream stuff like Breaking Bad or The Walking Dead. I’m a huge fan of Doctor Who (currently on classic season 3). I think the Harry Potter movies got progressively worse, with the Columbus ones being amazing and the Yates ones being practically unwatchable. I usually only watch fantasy (and by that I mean anything contain non-realistic elements not presented scientifically). I like trains.

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RotS’ mistakes offend me far greater than any other SW movie.

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Greater than AOTC? To be fair I haven’t seen either of them unedited in close to 10 years and I was pretty young at the time so I’m one of the lucky ones that fanedits can actually make the movie sit better in my mind because I truly don’t remember how bad the theatricals are. I just knew even as a teenager upon accidentally discovering fanedits looking for a way to watch the oot in DVD quality (I was a rare breed as a teenager that actually cared about a\v quality to the point I can actually remember being excited at the age of about 9 or 10 because our family had finally gotten a tv that had two speakers and even at that age I understood what mono and stereo was and I was excited to get stereo when playing my Nintendo 64… I was a very technically minded child which had helped me hugely with some of the hobbies I do now) that I would enjoy the prequels more with alot of the silly humor removed and so fanedits are basically how I remember them by this point.

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Yeah, AOTC is a worse movie in isolation, but ROTS had a greater responsibility as the end of the trilogy and lead-in to the OT, and thus its failure was more offensive.

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Makes sense. I think it got the “tone” right. I mean it definitely feels tense and tragic when it needs to, but beyond general tone it gets a lot of the specific things wrong from what I remember. And it gets distracted from itself sometimes.

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TV’s Frink said:

Yeah, AOTC is a worse movie in isolation, but ROTS had a greater responsibility as the end of the trilogy and lead-in to the OT, and thus its failure was more offensive.

Personally, I think it did a fine job. What major mistakes did it make?

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All of them.

But if I had to pick one, I’d pick Anakin’s turn to the dark side. It was the single most important job ROTS had to do and it did it wretchedly.