What Special Edition changes (if any) did people like? — Page 15

the extended matte paintings. some are better than the original.

i kind of like some of the expanded shots

i also like the new emperor head in esb

Recomposited bluescreen shots are kind of a given, and stuff like the hallway extension or the CGI stand-ins in the ceremony at the end of A New Hope are perfectly fine changes. Just fixing up a few immersion-breaking Special Effects Failures? Sure, go ahead. Also the CGI spaceship shots still blend in pretty nicely with the old footage and I can’t say I really mind those. New establishing shots of Ben’s hut or Mos Eisley (by which I mean the shot of Luke and Ben looking down on the port from a distance, all the added establishing shots IN the spaceport can go die in a fire) are also perfectly fine with me.

Empire I honestly feel is mostly devoid of particularly offensive changes. The worst I can think of is the pointless added dialogue in the Emperor scene indicating that Vader had no idea that Luke SKYWALKER was his son…

For Jedi… I much prefer the 97 version of the ending scene. Other than the previously mentioned recomposited shots, I honestly can’t think of anything else that was made better in this one. It is by far the one that’s suffered the most from unnecessary and detrimental revisions.

IsanRido said:

But he looks nothing like the Return version. Its inclusion implies he looked for 20 years like he did in Revenge then changed completely in 3 years.

This is true… but then the original Emperor in that shot was an old woman with the eyes of a chimpanzee, dubbed over by someone who didn’t sound even remotely like Ian McDiarmid. The change could certainly have been executed better, but I think I prefer the new version to the old here (minus the afforementioned stupid dialogue change).

Lord Starfish said:
This is true… but then the original Emperor in that shot was an old woman with the eyes of a chimpanzee, dubbed over by someone who didn’t sound even remotely like Ian McDiarmid. The change could certainly have been executed better, but I think I prefer the new version to the old here (minus the afforementioned stupid dialogue change).

Yeah. I mean, come on, defending the original Emperor hologram is just dumb. It makes you look like a fanatical purist and it almost undermines our entire argument for the originals being better as it gives Lucas apologists plenty of ammo to say we’re blinded by nostalgia goggles and would literally say anything different is worse, even if it is clearly better. OK, the changed hologram could maybe have been done a little better, but Lucas worked with what he had; he already had Ian on set in Emperor makeup for ROTS. But for any flaws the new scene may have, they pale in comparison to, as you said, literally an old woman with chimp eyes and a strange voice. It’s laughably out of sync with every other appearance of Palpatine’s character and just takes you out of the movie unless you’re watching ESB as a standalone for some reason. And if it’s your first time watching it before seeing ROTJ or the prequels then, well, OK, maybe it won’t take you out of the movie, but it will set you up to be taken out of ROTJ when you watch it and it will probably still seem “off” to you because the whole scene is just wrong.

And to be clear, I certainly believe that the original cut of ESB should be preserved and given an official release with all the works, chimp eyes and all. But I’m also fair enough to recognize what is clearly an improvement when I see it.

Yeah, well, I actually prefer Revill’s Palpatine over McDiarmid’s, so …

DuracellEnergizer said:

Yeah, well, I actually prefer Revill’s Palpatine over McDiarmid’s, so …

Dude has like 3 lines and the delivery sounds like some kind of Japanese saturday morning cartoon overdub. Come on. Ian McDiarmid is a world class actor of the stage and his performance carried the best parts of both ROTJ and the prequels. Now granted, McDiarmid in this scene kind of phoned his lines in, so if you’re only talking about that in particular, well, OK, I guess. Still think he’s far better, but whatever. But better than his entire performance? Give me a break. Your nostalgia goggles are so enormous I can see them from here.

I mean can you honestly imagine if McDiarmid had been there from the beginning and then for the Special Edition Lucas replaced him with an old woman in a chimpanzee mask voiced by a completely different guy? It would top Greedo shooting, CGI Jabba, Jedi Rocks, and Hayden ghost as the most ridiculous, bizarre, widely mocked and hated change of all. Let’s not kid ourselves here.

I prefer the original ESB emperor too

Density said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

Yeah, well, I actually prefer Revill’s Palpatine over McDiarmid’s, so …

Dude has like 3 lines and the delivery sounds like some kind of Japanese saturday morning cartoon overdub.

To me, Revill’s deliver has a nice, rich timbre to it – regal, imposing, yet almost fatherly. A rather fitting perfomance, I have to say, for a galactic emperor with a Sith Lord in his thrall.

Come on. Ian McDiarmid is a world class actor of the stage and his performance carried the best parts of both ROTJ and the prequels. Now granted, McDiarmid in this scene kind of phoned his lines in, so if you’re only talking about that in particular, well, OK, I guess. Still think he’s far better, but whatever. But better than his entire performance? Give me a break.

I never said Revill’s performance is better than McDiarmid’s, I said that I preferred Revill’s over McDiarmid’s. Significant difference.

Your nostalgia goggles are so enormous I can see them from here.

You presume too much.

Just FYI, I, too, used to prefer McDiarmid’s Palpatine, but as with almost all things, my tastes have changed over the years.

I mean can you honestly imagine if McDiarmid had been there from the beginning and then for the Special Edition Lucas replaced him with an old woman in a chimpanzee mask voiced by a completely different guy? It would top Greedo shooting, CGI Jabba, Jedi Rocks, and Hayden ghost as the most ridiculous, bizarre, widely mocked and hated change of all. Let’s not kid ourselves here.

Well, that’s a perfectly ludicrous scenario.

How about this sceario instead: What if McDiarmid had never played Palpatine in ROTJ? What if Revill had been the one and only actor to play the character in the OT? What if Revill was replaced in the SE only after McDiarmid was cast to play Palpatine in the PT? Would you then welcome the revision?

SilverWook said:

Oh yeah, and Revill is a world class actor too.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0720890/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

Exactly!

darthrush said:

I preferred the newer emperor for awhile until I thought about a couple key points:

-The original voice isn’t actually all that terrible. It somewhat does resemble the emperors voice but more monotone and direct.
-The look is actually better. It keeps the emperors looks more of a mystery because his face is much more hidden.
-and of course nostalgia. I cannot deny it feeds my passion a bit but it’s the two points above that actually made me prefer this over the SE.

So yes, Ian redoing it in 1983 with superior makeup would have been ideal but between the butchered Halloween makeup style SE and the mysterious Orignal, I prefer the latter.

EDIT: and not to mention, the SE emperors new dialogue is shitty. Makes Vader look like an absolute idiot. He’s looking for Luke the entire movie (stated in crawl) because he’s his son obviously yet he doesn’t know who he is? When I first saw the new dialogue, I’m thinking “Dafuq is this shit?!?”

Is this all your subjective opinion?

Density said:

Lord Starfish said:
This is true… but then the original Emperor in that shot was an old woman with the eyes of a chimpanzee, dubbed over by someone who didn’t sound even remotely like Ian McDiarmid. The change could certainly have been executed better, but I think I prefer the new version to the old here (minus the afforementioned stupid dialogue change).

Yeah. I mean, come on, defending the original Emperor hologram is just dumb. It makes you look like a fanatical purist and it almost undermines our entire argument for the originals being better as it gives Lucas apologists plenty of ammo to say we’re blinded by nostalgia goggles and would literally say anything different is worse, even if it is clearly better.

Or maybe you have an extremely negative response to someone’s opinion because you’re biased and have already decided which one you prefer? I get what you’re trying to say in principle, but there’s no strong objective defense about this change.

The original does indeed break the continuity with RoTJ to such a degree that a properly re-done Emperor could have been the most difficult SE change to argue against. I would eat my OOT-loving words if they nailed the hologram update. It ends up not being something we need to worry about, because every single aspect of the update was botched.

Seeing fat, rubber-face Ian instead of layer of white makeup Ian is nearly (but not quite) as reminiscent of the prequels as “Weesa free”, “NOOOO”, the dug thing, and creepy ghost Anakin. The performance and dialogue changes are also crap. It’s frustrating enough that they got the look and sound of the Emperor so wrong in RoTS. But oh well, it’s not as if it’s the main flaw of the film or would have saved it. But why would we want to be reminded of that in, arguably, the strongest Star Wars film ever produced?

As there are two rather imperfect choices, I’ll take the one that was a product of its time, not and not revisionist. It carries OOT era flaws, yes, but in exchange for just as many prequel era flaws.

McDiarmid will always be Palpatine in all our minds but as far as the scene in ESB I prefer the original. Maybe Im speaking out of nostalgia but yeah I agree with some of the above. The new version seems to be a bit half-assed. I understand the continuity factor but I think it lags here. McDiarmid delivers his dialogue too slow I think and looks and speaks as if, and probably was, he was reading his lines as they filmed him. Also the retooled dialogue is unnecessary but thats not McDiarmid’s fault. This is a scene I thought was done pretty nice in Adywan’s cut. So its difficult to say. As an OUT supporter I’ll say the original.

darthrush said:

TV’s Frink said:

darthrush said:

I preferred the newer emperor for awhile until I thought about a couple key points:

-The original voice isn’t actually all that terrible. It somewhat does resemble the emperors voice but more monotone and direct.
-The look is actually better. It keeps the emperors looks more of a mystery because his face is much more hidden.
-and of course nostalgia. I cannot deny it feeds my passion a bit but it’s the two points above that actually made me prefer this over the SE.

So yes, Ian redoing it in 1983 with superior makeup would have been ideal but between the butchered Halloween makeup style SE and the mysterious Orignal, I prefer the latter.

EDIT: and not to mention, the SE emperors new dialogue is shitty. Makes Vader look like an absolute idiot. He’s looking for Luke the entire movie (stated in crawl) because he’s his son obviously yet he doesn’t know who he is? When I first saw the new dialogue, I’m thinking “Dafuq is this shit?!?”

Is this all your subjective opinion?

Yes it is. Did you think I thought my opinion was objectively correct and everyone else was wrong?

No, I’m just making fun of you for getting so worked up over the whole objective art thing.

darthrush said:

Frank your Majesty said:

“Your” is objectively the wrong word to use here.

Great. A perfect example of something objective. Unlike movies and art in general.

Now who’s still posting about it?

bleu r2d2