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General Star Wars Random Thoughts Thread — Page 452

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A case could be made is that perhaps downsizing the main crew would had helped certain characters have more character moments. Nix Bodhi and Baze. Chirrut indeed was one of the better ones in that movie and I would had liked him to expand on his views about the Force/supposed Church of the Force. Baze, I assume, was meant to be representative of a refugee due to Imperial invasion of his home planet (based off the trailer). Instead he’s more of a tag along friend of Chirrut. Bodhi serves more like a plot device than a character.
Ideally, Rogue One could had shined with this angle:
Jyn is unmoved about the tales of Jedi/the Force, perhaps a skeptic initially.
Cassian does believe in those tales, and fights for the hope of making those old tales a reality.
Chirrut embodies that the Force is indeed real for Jyn and inspires her to realize it’s no longer just about helping her father but the vital importance of the Rebellion’s resilience. Also gives Cassian peace, even in sacrifice, that the Jedi may overthrow the Empire.

It gives clash to Jyn and Cassian in the beginning because their end goal is the same, but motivations may be off, which may cause misunderstandings/disagreements and then eventual acceptance/understanding towards the end.

K-2SO would remain unchanged.

The Rise of Failures

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TavorX said:

ray_afraid said:

TavorX said:

Kinda weird to think in-universe that the bad guys explicitly call their side the “dark-side.” Paradoxically they don’t believe they are evil but they’re also conceding that they are evil.

The dark half of the yin-yang isn’t evil.

Well… when the dark side of the Moon destroys an entire planet, Taoism tends to go beyond Star War’s pay-grade.

I’m just saying that that’s where it’s coming from.
When Vader says “Dark side” he isn’t saying “Evil side”.

Ray’s Lounge
Biggs in ANH edit idea
ROTJ opening edit idea

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ray_afraid said:

TavorX said:

ray_afraid said:

TavorX said:

Kinda weird to think in-universe that the bad guys explicitly call their side the “dark-side.” Paradoxically they don’t believe they are evil but they’re also conceding that they are evil.

The dark half of the yin-yang isn’t evil.

Well… when the dark side of the Moon destroys an entire planet, Taoism tends to go beyond Star War’s pay-grade.

I’m just saying that that’s where it’s coming from.
When Vader says “Dark side” he isn’t saying “Evil side”.

Oh I see where you’re coming from now. Fair point.

The Rise of Failures

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fmalover said:

There’s this one storyline in TCW about this gargantuan creature that had indestructible skin, so much so that even lightsabers bounced off it. After killing it Palpatine commissions a secret cloning of the creature to research its skin impregnable properties.

What bothers me is that this story is never brought up again. Don’t know if there was a Legends continuity comic or something that wrapped up the story, but under the Disney canon the story remains unresolved.

OK, the creature is called the Zillo Beast. Any thoughts on this unresolved storyline?

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fmalover said:

fmalover said:

There’s this one storyline in TCW about this gargantuan creature that had indestructible skin, so much so that even lightsabers bounced off it. After killing it Palpatine commissions a secret cloning of the creature to research its skin impregnable properties.

What bothers me is that this story is never brought up again. Don’t know if there was a Legends continuity comic or something that wrapped up the story, but under the Disney canon the story remains unresolved.

OK, the creature is called the Zillo Beast. Any thoughts on this unresolved storyline?

It’s clones and Barriss Offee are having various & sundry adventures together in the Land of Limbo.

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TavorX said:

A case could be made is that perhaps downsizing the main crew would had helped certain characters have more character moments. Nix Bodhi and Baze. Chirrut indeed was one of the better ones in that movie and I would had liked him to expand on his views about the Force/supposed Church of the Force. Baze, I assume, was meant to be representative of a refugee due to Imperial invasion of his home planet (based off the trailer). Instead he’s more of a tag along friend of Chirrut. Bodhi serves more like a plot device than a character.
Ideally, Rogue One could had shined with this angle:
Jyn is unmoved about the tales of Jedi/the Force, perhaps a skeptic initially.
Cassian does believe in those tales, and fights for the hope of making those old tales a reality.
Chirrut embodies that the Force is indeed real for Jyn and inspires her to realize it’s no longer just about helping her father but the vital importance of the Rebellion’s resilience. Also gives Cassian peace, even in sacrifice, that the Jedi may overthrow the Empire.

It gives clash to Jyn and Cassian in the beginning because their end goal is the same, but motivations may be off, which may cause misunderstandings/disagreements and then eventual acceptance/understanding towards the end.

K-2SO would remain unchanged.

I think they wanted to go for a “team” feel, but this would’ve definitely allowed for the audience to get to know the characters that were kept better than we did. I also could picture some fun interactions between K2-SO and Chirrut. You could’ve cut Bodhi and just have it where Saw’s Partisans intercepted some kind of important message/data before the Alliance could, so they need Jyn to help them find the Partisans and negotiate with Saw in order to learn the contents of that message, something they believe may be important to stopping the Empire.

Instead of getting captured on Jeddha, Chirrut could be the one that takes them to Saw, maybe after Jyn does something that proves her good intentions to Chirrut. Hell, you could even have Saw survive and replace Baze as the “heavy” of the mission, if you didn’t want Forrest Whittaker to just be a cameo.

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Meh, I like the ensemble cast as is. I agree Chirrut and K2 are my favorites, but I thoroughly enjoy Baze and his brotherhood with Chirrut (plus the little dynamic of the still deeply faithful and the guy who lost his religion still being such tightly knit friends). I also really like Cassian (can’t wait for that D+ show!) and Jyn has grown on me a lot. I’ve had the opposite reaction to whoever said their rating has dropped; I love this movie more each time I watch it.

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I like the movie as-is, too, but it is fun to think about the what if’s sometimes! I also am excited about the Cassian show. I hope we hear something about it at next year’s celebration.

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Star Wars (A New Hope) - man, I haven’t seen the episode IV subtitle since the 2006 GOUT discs came out. The main title recedes ridiculously fast, it almost made me laugh!

Even at lowly 1080p the new Disney+ version looks really nice. A MASSIVE improvement over the clips I’ve seen from the dvd or BD versions.

As I said, I’ve not watched any of the SEs since the days of VHS, and I’ve never watched any SE iteration beyond the 1997 cuts. For the most part, I dislike the changes and find them obtrusive and distracting. I will admit I actually like the Biggs scene in the hangar and the new fix to Obi-wans lightsaber. Everything else sucks.

Of all things, the change I actually dislike the most is the changes to the battle of Yavin. I’m a huge fan of models and miniatures, both in film effects and as a hobby in real life. Seeing all the beautiful artistry replaced with crummy 90’s cgi was just painful.

But despite the hindrance of being the SE, it’s still such a great film. It’s been very fun watching this from an “in-universe” historical perspective seeing the old republic fall, the rise of the empire, and all the little details in the films about such things. I think Solo and Rogue One do a fantastic job bridging the gap between the PT and the OT.

It’s also been fun seeing how the little details in the PT and those two Disney films line up with the backstory given through the dialogue of ANH.

It has also put something into perspective that’s always been there but didn’t really register before. The empire has been in control for about two decades, give or take. Which is long enough to feel like “forever” to many people but it’s still relatively new in terms of massive empires and there’s lots of little details pointing out how they don’t have complete and total control yet and they are still struggling to get it.

I dunno, it’s just been interesting watching the galaxy go from long peace to this huge civil war to a totalitarian dictatorship and how even under the empire the turmoil is still bitter and ongoing. Anakin never achieved his goal of ending the conflict, which I think will give even more impact to his plea for Luke to join him and rule the galaxy as father and son when I watch ESB in a few days…

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What do you guys think of The Empire Strikes Back’s Special Edition?

SuperEmory

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It’s bad and they should feel bad.

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The VP of my dept at work decorates his office every year with Yoda Christmas lights. He’s a huge Star Wars nerd and collects all sorts of nice memorabilia and artwork. I’ve mentioned him and the Yoda Christmas lights before but I don’t remember ever taking a picture of them. This is from earlier today. One of the managers in our dept has a Lego Star Wars Christmas advent calendar. (No pics)

Forum Moderator
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The Empire Strikes Back - Unnecessary changes were unnecessary.

Once again the new color timing and 4K master (even at 1080p) looked flipping amazing. I cannot stress enough how pleased I am that people watching the SE now have a decent looking version of it!

It’s still one of my favorite movies ever made (probably THE favorite) so enough said about that.

It’s been interesting watching Vader with the mindset of the PT and how he turned to the dark side to gain power and control to bring order to the galaxy but has completely failed at it. Gave a little extra weight to his plea to Luke.

This may be the least offensive of the SE’s but it is still offensive. Some of the new cloud city stuff is kinda cool, but then a lot of it is very sloppily done. Case in point, in leia’s apartment on cloud city the shadows from the roof window very clearly indicate the center circle is NOT a window, yet we see a cloud car fly through it! That’s bugged me since 1997!

The worst offenses are the extra wampa scenes and the Vader going to his star destroyer additions. The wampa scenes are gratuitous and completely erode the dread we feel from the fear of the unknown. The Vader stuff totally destroys the tension built by the marvelous editing of the escape from Bespin. Like TOTALLY ruins it! It kinda pissed me off honestly.

But, the duel in cloud city (my favorite scene in all of cinema) looks GREAT and the lightsabers finally look like they’re supposed to, so there’s that.

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My dad and I watched ESB last night, and we had a similar conversation about the new Wampa shots. He actually had this thought that in the new wide shot of the Wampa eating the tauntaun, it would’ve been interesting if there was an ice stalagmite between it and the camera, and we only saw a distorted or silhouetted view of the beast through the ice.

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I think the problem with the new Wampa is that it’s a guy in a suit and he’s not a very good actor. And we see it far too much!

Han: Hey Lando! You kept your promise, right? Not a scratch?
Lando: Well, what’s left of her isn’t scratched. All the scratched parts got knocked off along the way.
Han (exasperated): Knocked off?!

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Z6PO said:

I think the problem with the new Wampa is that it’s a guy in a suit and he’s not a very good actor. And we see it far too much!

That and the mask is too dissimilar to the puppet utilized in the attack scene. I know there was discontinuity between the mask/puppet in the theatrical version, too, but there it’s a “blink and you’ll miss it” moment the casual viewer won’t notice. Here, we linger on the ugly mug long enough to notice the difference.

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I seem to recall that at the time The Force Awakens was released, people were saying that they would have liked to see the old gang together. But thinking of it, in the original trilogy, Luke, Han & Leia aren’t that much together. They don’t have a lot of scenes in common: in ANH: the beginning of the Death Star Escape, the return from the Death Star battle and the Celebration; in ESB: Luke’s recovery (and that’s all?); in ROTJ: the very end of escaping from Jabba, the Mon Mothma briefing, the first part of the Endor mission and briefly in the Ewok Celebration. They’re really on an adventure together only when they escape from the Death Star and during the Endor mission.

Han: Hey Lando! You kept your promise, right? Not a scratch?
Lando: Well, what’s left of her isn’t scratched. All the scratched parts got knocked off along the way.
Han (exasperated): Knocked off?!

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Alright so are you guys excited for 4K80? But until it comes out, what’s the best way to watch The Empire Strikes Back?

SuperEmory

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So, this whole series is basically a Cardassian Repetitive Epic.

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Anchorhead said:

The VP of my dept at work decorates his office every year with Yoda Christmas lights. He’s a huge Star Wars nerd and collects all sorts of nice memorabilia and artwork. I’ve mentioned him and the Yoda Christmas lights before but I don’t remember ever taking a picture of them. This is from earlier today. One of the managers in our dept has a Lego Star Wars Christmas advent calendar. (No pics)

Brilliant 😃

I love this kind of stuff, and it still puts a smile on the face!

50 Cent is just an imposter

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SuperEmory said:

Alright so are you guys excited for 4K80? But until it comes out, what’s the best way to watch The Empire Strikes Back?

Personally I still prefer ESB Despecialized Edition 2.0 but I also like the ESB Grindhouse 35mm scan from TeamNagative1. Personally, I’m not a fan of the “Dreamastered” Grindhouse because it has way too many digital artifacts and far too much DNR (to the point it erases lots of things like laser bolts). But the Dreamastered colors are a notable improvement over the regular grindhouse. I just wish he’d have done the color correction without any DNR. But I find the DeSpecialized Edition to currently be the best compromise between picture quality, color timing, and so on for general viewing. And yeah, absolutely can’t wait for 4K80!

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canofhumdingers said:

SuperEmory said:

Alright so are you guys excited for 4K80? But until it comes out, what’s the best way to watch The Empire Strikes Back?

Personally I still prefer ESB Despecialized Edition 2.0 but I also like the ESB Grindhouse 35mm scan from TeamNagative1. Personally, I’m not a fan of the “Dreamastered” Grindhouse because it has way too many digital artifacts and far too much DNR (to the point it erases lots of things like laser bolts). But the Dreamastered colors are a notable improvement over the regular grindhouse. I just wish he’d have done the color correction without any DNR. But I find the DeSpecialized Edition to currently be the best compromise between picture quality, color timing, and so on for general viewing. And yeah, absolutely can’t wait for 4K80!

So should I watch the Despecialized Edition overall even if it’s 720p? Also, what does DNR even mean?

SuperEmory

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Resolution is not the only component that determines picture quality. If you’re looking for the best looking version of the original theatrical cut of ESB, Despecialized 2.0 is currently it, imo.

DNR stands for Digital Noise Reduction. It’s a means to clean up and smooth out a noisy image (think about a worn out VHS, all that fuzziness is called video noise). When applied to heavily it can cause lots of problems. In the case of the Dreamastered versions it erases many fast moving things like laser bolts and smears or distorts others such as people running.