Your Favorite And Least Favorite Special Edition Changes

Well, it seems that everybody here has mixed feelings about the Special Editions But nobody really says what changes they like and dislike. So what are they?

My favorite change is the addition of the Imperial scenes in Empire, the ones where Vader walks to his shuttle, going into space, arriving on the Star Destroyer. I have a mixed opinion on the "Bring my shuttle" and "Alert my Star Destroyer..." lines. I also like the Battle Of Yavin fight changes, all those cool shots look cool.

My least favorite changes are Vader "No. Nooooo!" Blu-ray line, The animated Sy Noodles (although I like her "Uh oh" line) and some of the creatures that walk in front of the screen in the Mos Eisley scene. Oh, and Greedo shooting first, I can't forget that.

Credit for James Earl Jones was good.

Everything else was crap.

penguinofgreatness said:

The only change that was for the better was the new music at the end of ROTJ. I think it ties up the film more satisfyingly. And I still like the original music. Everything else is pointless or utter crap.

I agree that the victory celebration music was better, but not so much that it warranted a change.

In Star Wars, The new shot of the sandcrawler approaching the camera was a definite improvement from the original, and the cell block extension fix. The swooping motion of the Falcon after Han blasts at Vader in the battle of Yavin was much better, as well as the cleaned up optical effects shots. There were a lot of little improvements that I enjoy, but completely destroying this effect were the pointless cgi additions.

In Empire, I can't think of anything that was better in the special edition.

In Jedi, apart from the victory celebration song, there was nothing that I remember that was improved.

Well, what about that shot of entering Mos Eisley? I don't mean the extended intro, but the shot that shows them on the speeder.

The original looks very cheap. R2 looks like he could fall of at any moment.

http://i.imgur.com/0QffC9l.jpg

The 1997 looks better, but C-3PO's arms are is awfully straight.

http://i.imgur.com/3DJD01x.jpg

The 2004/2011 version is the best. Apart from C-3PO's left arm looking straight.

http://i.imgur.com/FR3KccQ.jpg

Most people think that Episode V is the best Special Edition. The new Tampa scenes, and the new Imperial scenes are well needed. The CGI Dianoga in ANH was a good one. The clunk sound added when the Stormtrooper hits his head was just great. I never noticed that a trooper hit his head before (with or without the sound). My old piano teacher pointed it out to me.

The Nerd said:

Well, what about that shot of entering Mos Eisley? I don't mean the extended intro, but the shot that shows them on the speeder.

The original looks very cheap. R2 looks like he could fall of at any moment.

http://i.imgur.com/0QffC9l.jpg

The 1997 looks better, but C-3PO's arms are is awfully straight.

http://i.imgur.com/3DJD01x.jpg

The 2004/2011 version is the best. Apart from C-3PO's left arm looking straight.

http://i.imgur.com/FR3KccQ.jpg

You're not getting agreement here.  Ultimately it's subjective, but the original, while cheap looking, serves its purpose as a quick establishing shot.  The revised versions are far too distracting from that purpose with their unnecessary and silly animations.  While the speeder itself looks better as a still image, the shot is worse as part of the film.  And that's really what's wrong with much of the changes--even when they do manage to improve the look of a particular part of the shot, they often screw up other aspects of the shot, or mess with the pacing so badly that the whole thing falls apart.  Unfortunately, aside from the credit for JEJ, I truly believe the best case scenario for SE changes is when they failed to make the film worse.  Making it better isn't really in the cards.  It's the editing that made the originals great, and it's the editing in particular where the SE's always fall apart.

Most people think that Episode V is the best Special Edition. The new Tampa scenes, and the new Imperial scenes are well needed.

Disagree again.  ESB is the best SE, because it has the fewest noticeable changes.  All of the changes you do notice are for the worse, however, IMO.

The clunk sound added when the Stormtrooper hits his head was just great. I never noticed that a trooper hit his head before (with or without the sound). My old piano teacher pointed it out to me.

There was always a noise when the stormtrooper hit his head, more of a crack than a clunk.  Maybe they made it louder.

CatBus said:

You're not getting agreement here.  Ultimately it's subjective, but the original, while cheap looking, serves its purpose as a quick establishing shot.  The revised versions are far too distracting from that purpose with their unnecessary and silly animations. 

Just to make sure, I mean the shot that show the speeder going from front to back screen. Up to the part with the the SE droid dropping the pipe. The pipe dropping droid and one is a big no-no, but the improved speeder shot is an improvement.

CatBus said:

The Nerd said:

Well, what about that shot of entering Mos Eisley? I don't mean the extended intro, but the shot that shows them on the speeder.

The original looks very cheap. R2 looks like he could fall of at any moment.

http://i.imgur.com/0QffC9l.jpg

The 1997 looks better, but C-3PO's arms are is awfully straight.

http://i.imgur.com/3DJD01x.jpg

The 2004/2011 version is the best. Apart from C-3PO's left arm looking straight.

http://i.imgur.com/FR3KccQ.jpg

You're not getting agreement here.  Ultimately it's subjective, but the original, while cheap looking, serves its purpose as a quick establishing shot.  The revised versions are far too distracting from that purpose with their unnecessary and silly animations.  While the speeder itself looks better as a still image, the shot is worse as part of the film.  And that's really what's wrong with much of the changes--even when they do manage to improve the look of a particular part of the shot, they often screw up other aspects of the shot, or mess with the pacing so badly that the whole thing falls apart.  Unfortunately, aside from the credit for JEJ, I truly believe the best case scenario for SE changes is when they failed to make the film worse.  Making it better isn't really in the cards.  It's the editing that made the originals great, and it's the editing in particular where the SE's always fall apart.

Well said CatBus, while I agree that the speeder shot looks cheap, (it did even back when it was made) at least the model used resembles the actual speeder in the film. I mean if you're going to bother updating this shot - twice, at least try to get the CGI model to match the speeder in the film. To me it looks like Artoo could fall of at any moment in the digital versions as well.

It's not one of the proudest fx-shots in the film but it served its purpose, at least the original had its reasons for looking cheap, lack of money and time, the plate was actually originally meant for Toshi Station, that's why it's so sparse.

The Nerd said:

CatBus said:

You're not getting agreement here.  Ultimately it's subjective, but the original, while cheap looking, serves its purpose as a quick establishing shot.  The revised versions are far too distracting from that purpose with their unnecessary and silly animations. 

Just to make sure, I mean the shot that show the speeder going from front to back screen. Up to the part with the the SE droid dropping the pipe. The pipe dropping droid and one is a big no-no, but the improved speeder shot is an improvement.

Yeah, I know the shot you mean.  The screenshots you provide actually have the silly little scurring animals etc in them--but they are not as distracting in your screenshot because they are not moving.  In motion, the revised shot is definitely worse IMO.  Parts of the shot are improved, I agree (I don't necessarily like all of the speeder changes either, but I'll throw a bone here), but taken as a whole, the shot was better in '77.  Again, this is all a matter of opinion, but I truly and strongly prefer the original version of this shot.

Ben Burt added a noise in the '93 laserdisc mix. All the SE mixes also have an added noise. As far as I know there was no sound before that, as most scenes with stormtrooper armor had all their sound done in post because the armor made too much noise.

There's definitely a sound that coincides with the trooper hitting his head on the 77 stereo/surround mix, as those are the only ones I really listen to.  The sound isn't really that different from the footstep noises though, so it may well be a well-timed footstep I'm hearing instead of a head bonk.  Either way, I don't see the need to add a different sound there.  Why should an armored head hitting a hard door sound much different than an armored foot hitting a hard floor?

CatBus said:

The screenshots you provide actually have the silly little scurring animals etc in them--but they are not as distracting in your screenshot because they are not moving.  In motion, the revised shot is definitely worse IMO.  Parts of the shot are improved, I agree (I don't necessarily like all of the speeder changes either, but I'll throw a bone here), but taken as a whole, the shot was better in '77.  Again, this is all a matter of opinion, but I truly and strongly prefer the original version of this shot.

Well, the creatures could be kept, but only have 1 or 2. And have them sniffing the ground. Since they'd be used to speeder and humans\aliens going to and from the place, they'd feel safe to just sit there. I agree that the new shot is not as good as the original, but an improvement it was. The one thing I dislike about the original is that R2 looks like he could fall of at any moment.

Favourite: new celebration song

Worst: Hayden in ghost scene

imperialscum said:

Favourite: new celebration song

Worst: Hayden in ghost scene

Agreed. I like the new celebration scene\song because it shows just how many people are glad that the Empire has been defeated. But the Gungan screaming "Wesa free!" is not really needed.

The Nerd said:

Most people think that Episode V is the best Special Edition. The new Tampa scenes ... are well needed.

True dat.

The new Tampa scenes really warm up an otherwise kind of frigid movie.

The Nerd said:

xhonzi said:

True dat.

The new Tampa scenes really warm up an otherwise kind of frigid movie.

Yeah. The original version left you to think of what the Wampa looked like. We had only seen a face arm shot, and a little later a shot of the face and chest covered by the arms. Only about 35% of the full thing. I don't ever remember seeing any shots of the Wampa on any poster, or books. So it was a mystery until the SE came out.

 

Joke recognition fail.

And the new wampa shots were not needed and ruined the suspense and mystery of the scene.

It's also supposed to connect to the moment in AOTC when boba fett hits his head. I think George wanted it to look like an intentional thing that was cloned into the troops. Lame.

penguinofgreatness said:

Yeah. The original version left you to think of what the Wampa looked like. We had only seen a face arm shot, and a little later a shot of the face and chest covered by the arms. Only about 35% of the full thing. I don't ever remember seeing any shots of the Wampa on any poster, or books. So it was a mystery until the SE came out.

Joke recognition fail.

And the new wampa shots were not needed and ruined the suspense and mystery of the scene.

This change is very interesting compared to the rest of the SE. First, they had originally planed to fully show the wampa in ESB, but they scraped the footage because the suit looked fake. 2nd, compared to every other SE shot, the new effects look ok and blend with the "look" of the movie. This is one of the few big changes that doesn't want to make me scream when I see it. However, ultimately the change does screw with the suspense of the shot and it works better when you can't see the wampa. Ady's edit should totally have the original editing to the scene but show the full wampa after his arm is cut off. Does anyone know what he plans to do with that shot?

I'll admit that of all the big changes, it's the one I enjoy the most... hate the least, whichever way ya wanna look at it. I do like that it was done using physical effects instead of cgi. Adywan has built a brand new wampa to fix continuity errors, but is cutting the scene back to the original edit I believe.

penguinofgreatness said:

ray_afraid said:

It's also supposed to connect to the moment in AOTC when boba fett hits his head. I think George wanted it to look like an intentional thing that was cloned into the troops. Lame.

George is full of himself.

Preachin' to the pastor, friend. "the only thing that was poetic was that I was vomiting in stanzas."

ray_afraid said:

It's also supposed to connect to the moment in AOTC when boba fett hits his head. I think George wanted it to look like an intentional thing that was cloned into the troops. Lame.

Well, by the time ANH takes place, all the clones are dead. The troopers are from people who what to join the Empire and take over the galaxy.

penguinofgreatness said:

Ady's edit should totally have the original editing to the scene but show the full wampa after his arm is cut off. Does anyone know what he plans to do with that shot?

The force is strong with Adywan. I've been following his SWR edits since it was first announced. You idea is good, for TESB Revisited. Hey Adywan, if you're reading this, hint hint. ;)

EDIT: fixed name quote error.

I didn't say that... That's your idea quoted to look like it was me.