Star Wars Blu Ray Impressions — Page 6

Davnes007 said:

Instructions:

Darn you! I haven't had a Roy Rogers burger in over 30 years! Where the heck am I supposed to find one on the west coast at this hour? ;)

I'm still slogging through the documentaries disc.

Anatomy of a Dewback doesn't look any better than it's old CD-ROM incarnation. The part where they consider using alternate takes when they can't find the original negative of the troopers in the desert shot is unintentionally funny. If they can put a CGI lizard into the movie, surely they can darken a stormtrooper's eye lenses and use the alternate take if need be?

Conversations with the masters is nice, but really short. Probably Irvin Kershner's last interview? (No mention of his passing.) Also gives the impression there's still tons of behind the scenes footage we haven't seen yet.

Star Wars Tech is the only thing on the disc in HD.

Star Warriors is really good. I hope all the internet smart asses who were trashing this thing sight unseen feel bad now!

If there are any easter eggs on this disc, I haven't found them.

I'm about half way through Disc 8.

The "fly through" of the Lucasfilm archives is a neat introduction. Unfortunately, now every potential master criminal in the world knows what George keeps in his nondescript barn on the ranch. :P

The rotating views of props models and costumes are pretty neat. At this resolution, the models are really showing their age. Vader's TIE appears to have been dropped at some point since it was shown on the old DC Laserdisc set. A bit of the front cockpit window is missing, and one of the wings is askew!

Seeing the prototype models is also really cool. The prequel ships could have looked more like them. ;)

Tons of pre-production art here. Some of it will be very familiar if you own "The Art Of" books for each film.

You can literally see the seams and stitches in some of the costumes.

It's interesting the matte paintings are about the shape and size of our modern video displays. The comparison wipes between them and movie footage leads to one goof though. The original Cloud City apartment painting wipes to it's CGI replacement. Whoops.

I would have personally liked to see even more props and costumes from each film than are shown here. An old fashioned Laserdisc style still gallery would not have taken up much space. Nor would the inclusion of the old Laserdisc extras.

The interview segments are really short, but informative. I never knew what was the first FX shot ILM actually completed for Star Wars.  A piece in the Dagobah section with Lucas discussing the Force sidetracks into prequel footage long enough to make you wonder if somebody goofed up.

It's irksome to see some vintage behind the scenes footage presented here in better video quality than the old documentaries got.

Can't say much about the deleted scenes that hasn't been said already elsewhere. Been waiting more than half my life to see some of these, and having them in HD warts and all is probably one saving grace of the whole hullabaloo. If you can get this disc by itself on Ebay, do it!

The "play all" feature is nice if you hate button mashing the remote through sub menus all day. (Or just want to watch the deleted scenes.) Being able to start at the beginning of the Empire or Jedi sections without skipping a hundred chapters to get to them would have been nice.

Will slog through the Jedi section tomorrow.