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MTV Interview and New Favorite Movie

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I love Star Wars, and right now the Original Theatrical Version is my favorite movie of all time. But what George Lucas said at his MTV interview, about people wanting the SE or the OOT and it all turning out in the end, really upset me. Even worse than the actual movies. So much, that I might have to pick a new favorite movie of all time, since Lucas is trying to keep me from watching this one.

The #1 Runner-up:
The Thief and the Cobbler

I fell in love with this movie from the start. There is NOTHING offensive in it, so that makes it a breather for me. And now I'm ready to make it my favorite movie of all time. I have and love all 5 versions of the film, but am deciding wheteher to make the Workprint or the Recobbled Cut my favorite of them all.

So should I stick with Star Wars, or move on to the Thief? Because I'd rather help a good guy get his original vision out, instead of fighting a bad guy for his unoriginal vision...
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Originally posted by: ZigFried
What George Lucas said at his MTV interview, about people wanting the SE or the OOT and it all turning out in the end...


I wonder if that statement of his means anything.

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.”

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

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Heh Heh. You're method of choosing favorites just baffles me. I'm assuming you're the same guy that chose his fav. movie based on his fav. game, but i think you used a different name then....

It seems so odd i guess, because generally people don't conciously choose their favorite things (at least, i know i don't). It just sort of happens. I didn't sit down & pick ESB as my favorite movie of all time. It just IS, b/c no other movie captivates me & entertains me to the same extent. It can almost be likend to an addiction. Having seen it, i can't not think about it regularly b/c it just stuck with me as being so good. Likewise, even if i made a concious effort to like another movie more, it would just be a farce. My innate tendancy is to always return to ESB as being the movie that i gain more enjoyment from than any other. There's nothing i can do to change that.

So, the concious decision to flit from one favorite to another just seems so completely alien! Especially when that decision is made b/c of what someone else said. What others say, do, or think has almost no* bearing on my personal favorites.

So, that being said, i say don't pick your favorite based on what Lucas or anyone else says, name your favorite based on what you personally enjoy and find the most gratifying. That is, after all, the very nature of "favorite".






*I say almost no bearing b/c there is the rare circumstance where someone's external input can affect my personal enjoyment & therefore favorite. A hypothetical example: I enjoy ESB so much b/c i think the characters are real people experiencing real events. Someone shows me that, these are in fact actors in an imaginary universe,. Lightsabers aren't real. The spaceships are models. I suddenly lose a huge amount of the entertainment value i had b/c the very reason i enjoyed it has been shown to me to be false. A far fetched example, to be sure, but i think it gets the idea across.
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Here is my take if you want to cleanse yourself of Lucas's B.S. Never ever stop loving the Original SW, but toss aside everything else, including ESB & ROTJ. Now many fans here will give me crap for this theory, but here goes:

If you just love the Original SW, you don't have to think about anything about the 'saga' per say, meaning all the crap Lucas ruined with the PT, and in some ways with ROTJ, is all gone now. SW '77 is a 2 hour movie with a beginning, a middle, and a true ending, and nothing else happens after it. Princess Leia, Luke, and Darth Vader are not related, meaning the Skywalker family drama has nothing to do with anything pertaining to the movie.

By still loving The Original SW, you don't have to buy any boxset anymore, on possibly wasting your money on movies you do and don't like, in time the Original SW will pop up for sale on its own, and you buy it just like you would buy Field of Dreams or The Untouchables as they standalone itself.

I hate what Lucas has done to SW, and the fact that you have the SE, OOT, PT, and all the other bullshit that has made this series mediocre, you can always fall back on that movie in 1977, and watch it in THAT context, and that movie will always be #1 in my book.
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All right, I'll stay with Star Wars.

After all, DOOM walked the same path. It recieved a Special Edition with a fourth episode that was much more difficult than the entire game and tied it in with DOOM 2's storyline, when the original game was standalone. And you can't get the Original version officially anymore, except for the release on XBOX Live, you must download a fan-made patch for it. So I like the Original DOOM and like to think of it as standalone, nothing else after it.

And I'll do the same with Star Wars. Thank you for clearing that up for me.
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Originally posted by: CO
SW '77 is a 2 hour movie with a beginning, a middle, and a true ending, and nothing else happens after it. Princess Leia, Luke, and Darth Vader are not related, meaning the Skywalker family drama has nothing to do with anything pertaining to the movie.

Heheh, and this is exactly what I do, and have pretty much always done. Empire Strikes Where? Return of the Who? Heheh, it all means nothing to me!


That said, and shhhh, Star Wars is not my favorite movie. Though it's hard to quantify, I generally concede my favorite as that other 1977 masterpiece, Close Encounters of the Third Kind ... the film that has, for the past 28 years, never been seen in the form I fell in love with. (Le Sigh.)



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I thought the original theatrical version was on LD.... I don't know for sure though.
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Nope. Two scenes missing. Missing since '78. Never seen since. I don't even know if there's a print or negative still existing.
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Originally posted by: Obi Jeewhyen
Nope. Two scenes missing. Missing since '78. Never seen since. I don't even know if there's a print or negative still existing.


That's what I was thinking. Maybe they were destroyed when he recompiled the new cut?

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.”

Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

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At the end of the day, isn't ownership the only thing stopping these prints and negatives from seeing the light (if they still exist at all)?

I'm assuming that for any given movie, there is only one "camera negative" copy of it that could possibly exist. Anything else would have to have been made from the original negative. Therefore, the original negatives of the Star Wars films don't exist because of the changes made to them for the SE, as long as everyone has their stories straight.

That MTV interview quote from Lucas means a lot. He said it, it's out there and we can hold him to his word. Heh, now he'll see what we want. Yes, because this website didn't exist until he gave the go ahead....
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Originally posted by: canofhumdingers
interesting. What are the scenes?

1) Just before the still-existing scene at the Airforce Press Conference, there's a missing scene in the Neary home as Roy and Ronnie are getting ready to go. This is where we (used to) first see that Roy has sculpted a miniature mountain in the midst of his miniature train layout. We also see that he's hung UFO-Sighting newspaper clippings all over his "hobby" room, and even hung a couple of Star Trek models. These items are still seen fleetingly in later scenes, but this missing scene really dwelt on the revisions Roy made to his hobby room ... most especially the sculpted mountain. In fact, the entire point of the scene is to show that Roy has gone from merely seeing the mountain (in shaving cream, pillows, mounds of dirt) to actually building it with his own hands.

2) Just before the mashed-potatos scene, there's another missing scene in Roy's hobby room. Ronnie is calling him in to dinner, but he is obsessively scoring ridges into his model mountain. This is very suspenseful for the audience - because the immediately preceding scene is where it's revealed that the "mountain" location is Devil's Tower, Wyoming ... and from the topographic map in the film, it's clear that Roy is getting closer to the actual shape of the mountain. All he needs to do is lop off the top ...

But he goes into dinner and becomes infatuated with sculpting mashed potatos into the mountain shape. In all versions of the film after 1978 (and there have been many), this is the first time we see Roy sculpting the mountain (although he did sorta play with the shaving cream). In these later versions of the film, the audience knows nothing about Roy's miniature train layout mountain before they see him sculpting the mashed potatos. The potatos gag is still funny in its own right, but the real joke is ruined. The scene is a shadow of its former comedic self.

The studio insisted Roy's obsession with the mountain shape be toned down, and these two scenes of him building the mountain at home were cut. Other scenes were also cut, but these two were never restored. I find it hard to believe that the negatives for these particular two scenes were completely destroyed, while many others deleted for the "Special Edition" survived.


My conclusion? Spielberg's a bigger dick than Lucas. A much more talented bigger dick, but a far worse revisionist. Except for a few sound tweaks and the insignificant subtitles issue, Star Wars as it existed in 1977 has now been issued in a home video format. Where is CE3K '77???? Waaaaaaa!!!






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Next year's the 30th anniversary, hopefully there'll be an ultimate set of Close Encounters. My friend SWEARS there was a beautiful dolly-in shot in one of the versions of Roy on the swingset looking up at the night sky, ending on a low-angle closeup. Is he nuts or does that sound familiar?