When/Why did you become an OT purist? — Page 9

adywan said:

For the first showing i took my portable tape recorder and use to listen to the film every night so knew the film off by heart by the time i saw it the second time.

And, you no longer have this tape? (preparing an "argh!")

I should add that I probably would have removed the Biggs scene too.  Although it adds nicely to the story arc, it is rather poorly acted.

But the way it is inserted into the SE, with a crucial line removed, makes it doubly atrocious because now the dialog makes no sense.

Bingowings said:

I see tables, but I refuse to believe mere facts without bar graphs, pie charts and Venn diagrams.

You're starting to sound like a SePurist!

timdiggerm said:

Just remember, if you listen to the music, as Williams and the LSO recorded it, there's no room in the scene for a miss. That means, if such a moment was ever even filmed, it never made it to any cut that had music.

Not necessarily- they could have 1. Added it after scoring and tracked music over it (this was done in other places), or 2. The grappling hook footage could have meant they cut out some of the shots beforehand where they are just shooting back and forth or standing around. 

I'm just saying, considering that we have proof that not only were there at least 3 sound mixes but there were at least 2 different versions of this in 1977 (based on the end credits alone!)- who is to say there were not 12 different versions of this that year?  Maybe not that many, but...

And the thing with Darth Vader flying away; I can easily see how that might have been added when it was clear the movie was a monster hit and there would be sequels.  Look at Episode 1- there is one version ending with Darth Maul falling down the shaft in one piece.  The one where he falls down in two pieces has different timing on the DVD.  It is not like changing the demise of the villain at the end of the movie would be out of character for GL- at ALL. 

OK, I didn't read the whole thread yet, though I'm going to as I find this topic very interesting, but I couldn't resist simply posting an answer to the original question. It's gonna be small novel, sorry about that...

It is hard to define whether I'm a purist because within the confines of this site, the word purist has a little different meaning. There are some real purists here; people who out of principle would rather watch a crappy LD transfer or an old VHS then an HD version with a few minor changes and I have a great respect for that but obviously I'm not one of those people, so I'm not a purist that sense or in the sense that I'd think the original should be the only version; there are plenty of other films where I actually prefer the altered versions/director's cuts (eg. LOTR TTT or Aliens) but I'm very happy that I can watch the originals in the same or comparable quality.

I am however a purist in that I think that any official release of an unaltered version should be really absolutely unaltered beyond some basic cleanup. I actually hate the idea of a version that wouldn't have all the most obvious changes but have the "invisible" fixes such as recompositing or removing wires etc. An official release like that to me would be more offensive than an obvious Special Edition, unless again it would have the original original alongside it.

This goes for other films as well; it bothers me that in the BD of Aliens they removed the hole in the ground where Bishop's real body is hiding or that they removed the cobra reflection from the Raiders Blu Ray. It doesn't bother me to a point where it would taint my enjoyment of the movie because they are small changes but it does bother me.

So I guess I do consider myself a SW purist in the sense that I very much wish the original version was released officially in an absolutely unaltered form.

And now when and why I became such: I first saw the original SW film on TV when I was very little in the early 90s and I loved it but remembered very little of it. Then later I got the original on a copy of a copy VHS and had that for years even after the SE came out. I later got the 97SE trilogy on VHS, so I only saw the SEs of ESB and ROTJ. The original versions of all 3 films were nearly impossible to find in the Czech Republic (though they did come out but they weren't for sale anywhere anymore and none of the VHS rental places in my town had them).

Then one day, when I was like 12 we went to visit my aunt and uncle in Germany and my uncle had the originals in German (the 1995 THX release). So that was the first time I saw the original versions of ESB and ROTJ and he let me borrow the tapes and I would play the SE and the original on two VCRs at once switching between them and comparing the two versions. And I was horror struck when I found out that some of those beautiful cool special effects shots in ESB that I'd admired so much and watched frame by frame, because I was amazed that they were able to do that back in the early 80s without computer graphics, had in fact been altered - I vividly remember that moment - it was Falcon's cloud city approach and all the matte lines and harsh edges were gone in the SE and I felt cheated, the effects in  the version I had been watching until then weren't cool anymore because they actually did use computer graphics, so to me as a child of the 90s, there wasn't anything special about them. I guess that was the moment I became a purist; when I was 12 or 13. And I became interested in the subject and read a lot about it and in time I realized that the originals were superior in every way, not only the effects.

But at the time, I was a content purist, because I went to high school to a bigger town, where I managed to find the Czech VHS release of the originals, so since the SEs were also only on VHS, I had them in the same quality.

It wasn't really until HD came around that I became a discontent purist. My country was always a bit behind the times with technology, so we got our first DVD player around the time SW came out on DVD in 2004 and that was also the year I first went to England and I bought the SW DVDs there but along with them I also bought a used 1995 THX widescreen VHS set, and because we only had a CRT TV, I was perfectly happy with that for the time and then when I went to England again two years later I bought the GOUT and was pretty happy with that too.

But then in 2008 we got a new 19" monitor with HD resolution and I first downloaded the HDTV rips of SW and then finally there was no version of the OOT that could come close to that quality in my eyes and that's when I became very unhappy with the situation.

I think we just learned that Frink is a fellow Marylander.

timdiggerm said:

I think we just learned that Frink is a fellow Marylander.

I wonder if he really is...

timdiggerm said:

I think we just learned that Frink is a fellow Marylander.

Screw that.  I think we just learned I might be older than Frink.

Going off to check out assisted living options now...

I became a purist when my friend got the shiny new silver box DVD version of the Star Wars Trilogy I grew up to love (I grew up on the '95 Faces VHS set mind you) and he told me I had to get it since DVD was so much better and clearer. etc. I got the set for Christmas 2004. The box looked so cool and I thought this was going to be the greatest movie going experience of a lifetime...higher definition Star Wars...movies I hadn't even seen in a few years...on the big screen. I watched the original film...it seemed okay, mostly, at first although I didn't really care for the Mos Eisley scene or when Han killed "that alien". It was weird...because I remembered liking these scenes as a little kid. Huh. I didn't know what to think. Maybe I was just growing up.  Later the next night, I got impatient and wanted to see "The ghost of Luke's father" at the end of Return of the Jedi (because I had forgotten what he liked like)...I watched it...and...

...He wasn't Hayden Christensen. He couldn't have been more than a little kid in 1983. And...and I remembered...the ghost was old, regal, and kindly. Not the star of the as of yet un made 3rd prequel. 

...The music wasn't the same. It wasn't so happy. And...it didn't just end with the core guys all together...it ended with all these planets some prequel stuff. 

I went on the Internet to look this up...I first thought the changes were only to ROTJ. So I avoided the DVD of that. 

Then a year later I read more about all the changes. 

I found my 95 VHS set and watched them and I loved the Mos Eisley seen again and didn't groan because of the horrible CGI Jabba or the cgi jar jar rats or the dewback obscuring the iconic mind trick scene. I forgot how much I loved it. 

And when I was done...

...I saw Sebastian Shaw smiling at me, as it should be. 

I never went back to the SEs...and I NEVER will. 

Star Wars Purist said:

it didn't just end with the core guys all together

Well that's demonstrably false.

Star Wars Purist said:

... or the dewback obscuring the iconic mind trick scene.

Good observation, I hadn't considered that aspect before.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

In June I saw 35mm/mono three times in a relatively small theater in Utah.  My memory was the movie being fantastic and the image being marvelous.

In July I saw 70mm in a large theater in California.  My memory was that the image was better, but that could have been excitement, or just a better projector.

Late in the year I saw it again - I'm not sure the format, and I don't remember any particular thought of whether it was better or worse. I believe it was probably 35mm and stereo mix.

In 1985 I saw a marathon of all three films in a small late night theater.  The image quality was atrocious and I was sad to see the film(s) in such a damaged state.

I do have two memories that don't jive with historical record - like being quite certain that in Utah I saw the Biggs hangar scene all three times, and NOT seeing Vader survive and fly off.  Before everyone assumes I'm crazy, I would also like to point out that I also remembered "close the blast doors" despite wondering where it went in every subsequent viewing.  It wasn't until joining this group that I learned that my memory was actually correct in that case, despite the lack of any intervening confirmation.  Regarding the Biggs scene, upon seeing it in the SE, my mind was able to fill-in the removed chunk of dialog from memory.  And no, I didn't see it in the documentary because I only saw that for the first time very recently.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it!!! :)

Is it possible you saw one of the many SE clips or documentaries around that time? the Biggs hangar scene is present in both the '77 MoSW-documentary but it also appeared frequently in '97 SE promo material. That these differences were in some early cut of the film would be crazy but being that this or these mono mix prints of Utah featured an early cut of the film sounds really crazy. When prints with the Academy mono mix finally arrived the film had run for almost a month, it's one thing if Vader wasn't shown regaining control of his ship, Biggs talking to Luke in the Hangar in some of the early Dolby Stereo prints.

As the anal retentive guy I am I have discovered a very subtle visual difference in the '77 film besides the two variations on the end credits roll, see here: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Print-variations-in-77-Star-Wars/topic/14705/

We now know that at one point a revision of the end credits roll and the Yavin X-wing & Y-wing takeoff took place, the latter being located on the last reel as well. Being so minor, these two revisions are actually in some ways more crazy to me than taking out/adding the Biggs hangar scene and taking out/adding a glimpse of Vader at the end, both of these would conveniently be located on the last reel as well. I cannot change your memories and I don't say you are wrong but I do find it very hard to believe that several of these revisions at different stages took place and especially being screened as late in its run... an early cut with the late mono mix and even some UK prints showing this early cut.

msycamore said:

Is it possible you saw one of the many SE clips or documentaries around that time.

Yes I saw the SE promo materials... and the first time I saw the Biggs scene as related to the SE, I immediately recognized it as the scene I had seen before.

I cannot change your memories and I don't say you are wrong but I do find it very hard to believe that several of these revisions at different stages took place and especially being screened as late in its run... an early cut with the late mono mix and even some UK prints showing this early cut.

I don't expect anyone to believe it, since there isn't any actual evidence.  I wouldn't believe it either, and I recognize that my memory could be faulty, and that perhaps I had seen it elsewhere (although I don't remember that).

According to my diary, the first day I saw it was June 26.  I should clarify that I don't know for certain that it was the mono mix -- but I do know without question that the "close the blast doors" line was present.  Now, I know that the only mix that contains that line is the mono mix, so it is highly likely that is what I saw.  But the reason that I say I don't know for absolutely certain that it was the mono mix, is that if I allow for the possibility of also seeing the Biggs scene and Vader not flying away, then that also opens the door to other differences, such as a mix that hasn't materialized since then either.

I wish I had smuggled a tape recorder into the theater.  It would have been easy.