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3D STAR WARS for the masses...has ARRIVED! — Page 29

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Thanks for the explanation, xhonzi. :)

 

I am not ready to write 3D's obit on account of some lousy conversions. I hope the studios will wake up and notice all the 50's 3D films sitting in their vaults. Release House of Wax, or Creature From The Black Lagoon around Halloween time, and people will pay to see them.

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Where were you in '77?

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Finally someone defending TPM: http://movies.ign.com/articles/121/1218394p1.html

I actually agree with most of the article. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't love TPM, and I still think it's the worst of the saga. But I feel like it get's a lot more hate than it should, especially from this website.

Also, truth be told, I was a kid when I first saw TPM so... 

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Oh man you have no idea how bummed I was when I missed a big anniversary screening of Creature From the Black Lagoon a few years ago. Julie Adams was there and it was the original non-anaglyph 3D as well.

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DominicCobb said:

Finally someone defending TPM: http://movies.ign.com/articles/121/1218394p1.html

I actually agree with most of the article. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't love TPM, and I still think it's the worst of the saga. But I feel like it get's a lot more hate than it should, especially from this website.

Also, truth be told, I was a kid when I first saw TPM so... 

The article's mostly okay except leaning a little hard on a few strawmen for counterarguments.  Our favorite hyperbolic child-crime claim makes a showing, of course, and  then there's this disingenuous bit: "I don't understand the rationale that something existing separately tarnishes the impact or greatness of the original."  They must not have had enough room to include the text "except for when the original is taken away and hidden in a dusty vault for eternity, never to be seen again."

That said, it's better than most editorials along these lines.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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The article comes off kind of feeble and desperate but I agree with the basic sentiment, that Phantom isn't nearly shitty enough to warrant the amount of bad press it has gotten (just purely as a movie, not as a symptom of the larger Lucasfilm truth/history-revising).

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Again, another sad attempt rationalization. "I saw the TPM in 3D so that we can get the UOT in 3D."

You've fallen for Lucasfilm's marketing ploy. "We converted one movie. If it makes enough money we'll do the rest." Translation: give us enough money or we won't put out the OT Special Edition in 3D.

??????? Are people this stupid?

I honestly do believe that if TPM 3D is a flop, that the idea could be scratched. 

However, I wasn't saying UOT in 3D... I was suggesting the a 2D bluray could be included in the set... would be a great marketing strategy...

Preferred Saga:
1/2: Hal9000
3: L8wrtr
4/5: Adywan
6-9: Hal9000

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review was terrible. it says that a positive is that 'we get to see the jedi for the first time' !  wtf!?  it ends it by saying, it 'goes back to a galaxy that we thought we would never revisit again'. again, wtf!?!?

and it uses the old 'the OT had bad stuff too' argument.

save for the production values (which were apparently ripped-off from dinotopia), TPM is the worst movie ive ever seen (correction: a case can be made for transformers 3).  as a kid, I still wouldn't have liked it because the movie is so damn boring, unless you really find jar jar funny. and 30 seconds of obi-wan vs darth maul.

and for all the talk about how it sets up the saga, I think thats the biggest failure of TPM.  it hardly setup anything.  maybe i shouldn't hold it against TPM for introducing crap like anakin making 3po, virgin birth and midicholorians - because thats more of a "PT-at-large" defect. but the toothpaste was out of the tube in that movie and irrevocably damaged sw.

and maybe thats the only reason TPM shouldn't be singled out for contempt because the entire PT was a failure in almost every aspect.  Its just TPM came first.

maybe judging the PT movies need to come in 4 categories:

-filmmaking craft

-story

-storytelling

-character depth and relationships in its respective stage of the trilogy

example - ROTS probably has best story, but because of the awkward handling of anakins betrayl and stupid padme losing the will to live, the storytelling is not as good.

or AOTC has worst story cuz obi-wans detective story was lame, jango fett making clones was lame and anakin/padme romance was lame.  But the filmmaking craft was the best.

or is the love story bad, or is the storytelling of love story bad because of stupid dialog and completely implausible character behaviors? 

aw fuck it.

click here if lack of OOT got you down

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walking_carpet said:

TPM is the worst movie ive ever seen.

This is not necessarily hyperbole.  I know there are a lot worse movies out there than TPM in my book, tons of them--heck, I can barely even remember what happened in TPM except me playing with the light on my watch during the racing scene, and I know it gets way worse than that.  Tedious is easy, it takes some measure of talent to make something truly grindingly awful, and none of the PT has that.

But most people have some sort of mental filter that says "that sounds terrible! why would i even want to see that?" and that prevents them from seeing truly bad films.  Which means the worst ones they have ever seen are not the worst in existence, they are just ones that managed to fool the mental filter into seeing it anyway.

I thought it would be fun to drink a lot of beer and watch Battlefield Earth.  I failed to take into account that there is not enough beer in the world.  TPM just makes you wish you were doing something else.  Battlefield Earth makes you wish you were dead.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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good point.  I have no intention of seeing battlefield earth, batman & robin or Gigli.

i've seen bad movies that i've enjoyed more:

death wish 4

friday the 13th part II and III

godzilla

superman IV

Independence Day

but those were intentional camp/explotation movies (well, maybe not superman IV)

TPM is unique because almost every aspect of filmmaking was extremely poor.  combined with what was required of TPM to support the next 2 movies and the saga at large. It was the wrong movie at the wrong place at the wrong time.

  hmm...now that I think about it, transformers 3 truly was a POS.  I hated the first one, but saw the third one in the theatres cuz they said the 3d was like avatar, it was filmed in chicago and...well, I guess cuz im a dumbass.

maybe I need to re-edit my comment.  at least for TPM, i was willing to see more than once. 

click here if lack of OOT got you down

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walking_carpet said:

friday the 13th part II and III

Part 3 was bad, but part 2 was awesome!

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ray_afraid said:

eiyosus said:

walking_carpet said:

friday the 13th part II and III

Part 3 was bad, but part 2 was awesome!

YES! Part 2 is my favorite of the series!

 nah..the original has a grittiness and moodiness none of the others had.  no question, it ripped off halloween, but it also dripped with atmosphere and dread.  part 2 tried to do that, but it was too well-lit, the chi-chi-chi-ma-ma-ma sounded to synthesized and the music was lame and the POV was out of control.  you just like part 2 cuz of ginney, terry and vicki :P

and mrs.voorhees was 10 times scarier than jason.

click here if lack of OOT got you down

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nightstalkerpoet said:

I would say that this conversion was nearly on par with Hugo. I also loved Hugo :)

 

There's no way I can believe that this conversion was anything close to the 3D in Hugo.

Even if the conversion itself is competently done, Hugo was filmed by a talented crew that had an eye for 3D. Scorsese  knew how to film to make proper use of the 3D technique. TPM was not intended to be shown in 3D so even if the conversion is descent, it wasn't shot with 3D in mind like Hugo, so most scenes will just appear flat and dull. In Hugo, every scene was framed with the thought that it would be shown in 3D, and it shows.

 

SilverWook, you nailed it when you mentioned the 50's 3D films. I am a fan of 3D when done well, and I own a 3D tv. I have been saying this since the start of this current 3D craze - there are tons of old 50's and 80's 3D films that should be out on 3D Blu-Ray by now. In fact, there are many foreign 3D films as well from the 80's - including quite a few from Russia. I saw a 3D Russian film a while ago and the use of 3D was just awesome, though the film was rather strange in general. Most of those old films were shot in true stereoscopic 3D and displayed in the theatre as polarized 3D, much like realD now. Many of the 50's films in particular would look fantastic on Blu-Ray, though of course most are black and white.

The studios need to get on the ball. There's money to make off these old 3D films.

 

 

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Beyond the Trailer - TPM 3D

I really trust Grace and this has me wondering if the theater I went to see this in was just really crappy. I'm almost tempted to go see it at one of the local AMC theaters but their prices are ridiculous and I really don't want to pay to see this again.

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walking_carpet said:

ray_afraid said:

eiyosus said:

walking_carpet said:

friday the 13th part II and III

Part 3 was bad, but part 2 was awesome!

YES! Part 2 is my favorite of the series!

 nah..the original has a grittiness and moodiness none of the others had.  no question, it ripped off halloween, but it also dripped with atmosphere and dread.  part 2 tried to do that, but it was too well-lit, the chi-chi-chi-ma-ma-ma sounded to synthesized and the music was lame and the POV was out of control.  you just like part 2 cuz of ginney, terry and vicki :P

and mrs.voorhees was 10 times scarier than jason.

Oh, I guess I'm fucking wrong then. I guess I do prefer the original to Part 2. Thanks for clarifying that. I'm glad your here to to tell us these things.

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

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dang, i just checked something - Lion King 3D made $94 million ?!?! wtf!?

i thought it was like $55-60 million or something. I guess I was so surprised it reached that far, I stopped keeping track ;P

Yesterday, i figured my estimates of $35 million for TPM were short, but I was also using BATB and Lion King as a model - one of which i was dead wrong about the gross.  maybe it'll reach $50 million.  hopefully not.

Im suprised there wasn;t more media coverage for lion king 3d for making that kind of money.

[sob] Hugo still has made only $60 million.  aw shit, it'll really suck if tpm makes even 3/4 of this.  want titanic 3d to bomb too; teach cameron a lesson for focusing on that instead of abyss blu ray.

click here if lack of OOT got you down

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I think even Disney was surprised how much TLK made. A lot of people probably wanted to take their kids to see it twenty years on. The 3D Blu Ray wasn't out yet either.

I miss the classics being reissued in theaters. Disney pretty much stopped doing that by the end of the 90's.

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Where were you in '77?

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$8.65 million on Friday.

America, you disappoint me.

“Grow up. These are my Disney's movies, not yours.”

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well you cant be too surprised by that.  this was not going to be Gigli or Mars Needs Moms.  Lucas has a sycophantic fan base - and now they have kids.  So thats one percentage of the audience that is absolute automatic. 

 just based on comments of posters from this forum and elsewhere, there are people who dislike this film but will still see it anyway - maybe thats another 5%.  combine that with the fact that this is almost strictly 3d, with $12-15.00 a ticket.  and it appears Fox and LFL's own internal models were forecasting $20 million minimum.

if its any consolation, nobody is gonna mistake this re-release with 1997 (even then, ROTJ made just a quarter of SW, but is funny that this week had all 3 of the OT in the top ten - how cool is that)

come to think of it - looks like several movies had a good opening haul. kinda unusual for mid-february. 

click here if lack of OOT got you down

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thinking about all this, its kinda surprising that the 20th release of ET wasnt a big hit.  yeah, a lot of us were mad at the walkie-talkies but those did not have near the notoriety of the SE changes.

I don't recall if it had near the promotion of SW, but im sure it was equal to Lion King. The economy in 2002 was crap, but so is this economy.

[shrug]

maybe a lot of people were still bitter about the crap atari game. BWAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA

click here if lack of OOT got you down

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The opening numbers don't surprise me, but they simply remind me that the majority of SW fans are still self-loathing such that despite how much they dislike the prequels or the OT changes they will still give Lucas money.

He could put the SW logo on anything and people will buy it.

“Grow up. These are my Disney's movies, not yours.”

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Exactly. This is why our whole endeavor is pointless. The ONLY think that might make Lucas interested in releasing the OOT is lost revenue and if people continue to pay for anything related to Star Wars that'll obviously never happen, and so far Star Wars as a franchise shows no signs of slowing down.

“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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Well I saw TPM in 3D, and I will admit that I enjoyed it.

The 3D was well dun, considering that it was a conversion from 2D 35mm. Some may say that this is like converting a B&W movie to color, but some times if dun well that can look rather good. Other times if dun poorly it looks rely bad.

This 3D converting was dun well and looks rather good.

And if you thought that TPM characters did not have any depth, well they still don’t but the 3D glasses give you the elusion that they do. LOL!

PS

I Know I am feeding the GL monster, but hay I did not buy the blu rays!

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If it did $8.6 million on Friday (which includes midnight sales) I would expect it to do about that on Saturday and then finish with a Sunday total of about $25 million. Which is kind of unremarkable, but okay. I think maybe they were hoping it would do something closer to $35 million to really make it a success.

If we expect the typical 50% dropoff per week that would give it $13 million in week two, and $6 million in week three. And then it will basically be gone. That would probably make it's domestic grand total at about $50 million. Which is okay; enough to turn a small profit. But certainly not the huge success of 1997. In fact, it's the same as what Beauty and the Beast did last month without a strong ad campaign or as popular a franchise as Star Wars or as many screens, and close to half of what Lion King did.

It will be interesting to see what Titanic's numbers will be.

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They certainly spent a lot of on tv ads for this. I don't think I saw any commercials for BATB. The Clone Wars show is also free advertising of a sort.

Titanic has it's own cult thing going, so is bound to have a good opening weekend at least. Although three hours is going to be tiring even for people who don't get 3D headaches.

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