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surprise surprise... the movie. still. rocks.
i'm gonna edit in the gritty details after the four of us venture to a certain east village restaurant to confer. bottom line is that a few of the cuts are heartbreaking (from a certain point of view), but basically, the wince-worthy stuff is gone, and everything you ever wanted to see on a bazillion-story screen is still there. only big. really, really big.
edit #1, 6.20am:
it took a couple hours and involved me choking on my coffee, but The List has arrived. keep in mind that while the four of us are pretty freakin' obsessive about the star wars, everything i'm about to post may not be 100% accurate. but, even when we're wrong, we're thorough about it, and that's more than can be said for previous IMAX edit lists.
anyhoo... i'm going in the scene order of the IMAX edit, not the theatrical (or DVD) release. yes, it does make a difference. thankfully. and on that note...
- the naboo cruiser landing on coruscant and explosion are intact. and big. and loud. and pretty. (hello, recurring theme.)
- the meeting in palpatine's office is completely gone, and with it, the discussion of how dooku isn't a murderer, the designation of jimmy smits as more than an extra, and the scary hands of ki-adi mundi and kit fisto.
- the elevator conversation between obi-wan and anakin is (we think) intact, at least mostly so. there may be a few minor cuts; honestly, the palpy meeting deletion jarred us enough that we weren't paying attention. anyway, basically the same.
- my condolences to asax and all who've adopted the jar jar cheering, because the jar jar greeting when obi-wan and anakin arrive in padme's apartment is totally gone. in fact, that meeting cuts straight to typho's line "the situation is more serious than the senator will admit."
- after that, though, there are no cuts in the meeting, the zam and jango ledge, or the anakin/obi-wan security/political philosophizing scenes.
- when obi-wan and anakin run into padme's bedroom, there are two shots missing: the one of the kouhuns hitting the wall and falling in pieces, and dorme's "you alright, m'lady?"
- happy, happy news: eye candy remains. the coruscant chase, nightclub, council meeting, and palpy's office (with palpy and anakin) scenes are completely untouched. it is worth noting, though, that the x-wing and TIE fighters at the edge of the panned shot of zam's nosedive are cropped out. (trust me, they were there.)
- the floating chair scene in the temple with yoda, mace, and obi-wan is completely gone.
- in the packing in padme's apartment scene... well, we weren't sure. the whole floating ornament thing miiiiight be gone (none of us remembers seeing it, but none remembers specifically not seeing it either). there is a definite cut from anakin's "he's overly critical" to padme's "mentors have a way..."
- the beginning of padme and anakin's departure in the senate transport is missing. the scene begins with obi-wan's "i'll get to the bottom of this plot quickly, m'lady." pretty sure it's unchanged after that.
- dex's diner is intact (complete with annoying extras, twenty-foot facial hair, and kaadu polo shirt insignia). the jedi archives scene is gone (night night, jocasta nu), and anakin and padme's conversation on the refugee ship is unchanged.
- in the younglings scene, yoda's line "truly wonderful the mind of a child is" is gone.
- the millennium falcons in the theed landing scene are pan & scanned out (meaning they got cropped ). the theed walk scene is the same, although the second gungan is also cropped.
- glory be, jamillia gorilla is history. ::cue singing angels::
- the kamino landing sequence is funky. there are no dialogue cuts, but the long shots of lama su, obi-wan, and taun we inside the office have been broken into shots of either lama su or obi-wan and taun we. and, as kfr said, it's pretty ugly - bad edge enhancement and just general grossness.
- the lakeside scene on naboo is another one that sorta puzzled us. there's definitely a cut somewhere there; we think it's from anakin's "soft and smooth" bit directly into the kiss, thereby excising the back fondling action, but we're not 100% sure. (to be honest, the cut in the soundtrack grabbed my attention moreso than the dialogue cut, but that's just how i listen. ::shrug:: ) at any rate, anakin and padme just sorta start going at it out of nowhere.
- the tour of the cloning facility starts with lama su's "we're very proud of our combat training..." line. everything before that went byebye.
- as already reported and celebrated, the meadow/"sound of music" scene is totally gone. as pleasant as that might be, it presents the problem of scene order for the next twenty minutes or so; everything got switched around and given new transitions and it's, generally, really disorienting. instead, the previous scene goes straight into the dinner scene with the flying pear. it's unchanged, including the glaring mistake in the placement of the cut in the pear.
- the fireplace scene still follows immediately, but a lot of the groan-worthy dialogue has been hacked out. for starters, the early dialogue from the first closeup shot is underlaid into the previous master shot; among the missing lines are "the closer i get, the worse it gets," "if you are suffering...", "...can't breathe," and "it wouldn't have to be that way." there may well be more that's gone - those are just the ones we could recall several hours later.
- this then leads (via a new iris transition) into the same old jango/obi-wan meeting. after we hear jango tell boba to "pack his things (we're leaving)," the film skips taun we and obi-wan's goodbye and the shots of obi-wan setting up to chitchat with the old folks' home. instead, it cuts to obi-wan's hologram saying, "they're using a bounty hunter..." to yoda and mace in yoda's meditation chamber.
- then straight to the rain fight. it's almost entirely intact, except for a small cut... somewhere. not sure where. it's a matter of a few seconds, and it's accounted for in the soundtrack by a couple really short, really annoying cuts.
- remember the scene where anakin has a nightmare (or whatever it was you thought was going on)? it's completely gone. instead, the first shot of the sunrise is shortened a bit, and the rest of that scene is unchanged. this leads straight into the tatooine landing and the conversation with watto (both of which are the same). interestingly, the subtitle placement has changed - they're higher up. it's a bit disconcerting at first, but it's a pretty quick adjustment.
- the asteroid belt chase is totally unchanged. not only that - it rocks. the seismic charges literally make your body vibrate when they explode, and the shots are cropped to pretty much include just the explosion. total awesomeness.
- when padme and anakin arrive at the lars homestead, their conversation with threepio is the same. however, the entire introduction to the larses is gone (leaving the question of who these three people are, but it ain't like we don't already know), and the movie picks back up with beru (aka the chick with the wannabe leia hair) pouring juice.
- the shadow hug between anakin and padme is uncut, but it's cropped so that it does indeed look different. same thing for anakin's zooming about and his conversation with the jawas. in other words, when tf.n said that shot was remastered, they were wrong. it happens. ::shrug::
- the separatist committee meeting, death scene/tusken ambush, anakin's return to the homestead and obi-wan sending another message are all unchanged, but they're heavily cropped. the triple moons on tatooine are gone, and you've really gotta be watching to see that wat tambor rolls (not walks).
- the garage scene sorta got hacked up a bit. it cuts from padme's "i brought you something" to her later "sometimes there are things no one can fix," skipping over anakin's bit about being good at fixing things. (i guess the girl is psychic or something.) pretty sure the rest of the scene is intact, but the beginning is nonsensical.
- the funeral is uncut, and the scene where anakin and padme receive obi-wan's transmission almost is - there's a little bit of pre-message static that's gone, but nothing else. but! there's then no debate in palpatine's office - absolutely no lines for bail organa and no jar jar manipulation.
- the beginning of the dooku/obi-wan interrogation is different, too - there's a new establishing shot of the exterior of a geonosian tower, and the first line in the new scene is dooku's "may i ask what a jedi knight..." his last line, "it may be difficult...", is gone too.
- jar jar's speech to the senate is unchanged. (well, one of his hands is cropped out. but who needs jar jar's hand when certain board members would be only too happy to mimic the movements themselves?)
- anakin and padme's landing on geonosis is, we think, about the same. however, a lot of the dialogue between threepio and artoo is gone - the entire first banter session (immediately after anakin and padme leave the ship), and all that remains of the second session is threepio's warnings to artoo.
- a few shortenings in the factory sequence: the second stomper that padme runs under is deleted; when threepio falls, he isn't caught by rob but instead falls directly onto the conveyor belt; the filling-vat fakeout is gone, and cuts straight to artoo shutting down the machinery; and a shot or two of anakin's struggles with the chopper machine may be gone too.
- but after anakin and padme enter the arena, virtually everything's the same. i personally think the entrance into the arena was cut at some point, as the soundtrack seems to sync differently to the visuals (i *think* - not sure yet). the first two shots of the death star plans are so heavily cropped that the plans aren't even visible, thereby making their first appearance (at almost full screen) really pretty sweet. and, interestingly, the last two DVD edits were incorporated into this release - padme's "uh huh" (instead of "yes") when waking up from her fall, and the real shot of anakin and padme holding hands during their wedding (the same one from the digital projection).
- oh, and the credits are full screen and really tiny. we knew that.
so there we have it. IMAX edits, and lots of them. consider yourselves quasi-spoiled.
(end edit #1)
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