Best audio commentary for each Star Wars movie?

I’m partial to the Blu-ray track with the archival interviews, myself. I never get over how neat it is whenever Alec Guinness chimes in. I also tend to be more interested in broader stories about production than any sort of scene-by-scene analysis, though, so it depends which way you skew.

I’ve so far only listened to the DVD commentaries for each. ANH and ESB are the best. Lucas keeps his “I had everything planned” to a minimum and actually gives some great insight into the process of developing the story and structure of the films. Kersh is a very welcome addition to ESB. He sort of narrates a lot of the film but usually as a way to point out moments that build character.

ROTJ might be the worst of all six. For long stretches no one talks and when people do they just seem bored.

The PT ones are actually pretty great, and give some nice insight into the creation of the films (my favorite bit, from the ROTS commentary I think, Rick McCallum says something about how he still didn’t have a script weeks or so before filming started). Fascinating stuff from all involved. We give the films shit for all the CGI, but from technical perspective, all that stuff is pretty impressive. The FX guys point out FX shots and manipulations that I would have never noticed.

joefavs said:

I’m partial to the Blu-ray track with the archival interviews, myself. I never get over how neat it is whenever Alec Guinness chimes in. I also tend to be more interested in broader stories about production than any sort of scene-by-scene analysis, though, so it depends which way you skew.

Since I’ve recently had to watch through the film a bunch for some test renders, I used the commentaries to help not get sick of the movie, and the archival stuff takes the cake. You never get a lull in conversation. And the geek commentator on one of the other ones sometimes drifts way too far into obscurity.

But whenever George is on the mic it’s as dreadful as ever. Every single thing he says is some justification of how he always thought this or that. When Tarkin tells Vader to knock it off, George has to explain it away. Some of the other people discuss SE changes as well, but they simply state that it’s a CG replacement shot done many years later. George even finds time to defend his point about how colorizing cartoons is unforgivable, but CG ships are not.

One of my favorite parts, though, was the discussion (I forget who was speaking, not George) about how Vader’s survival was one of the very last changes made to the original version. And how they built those shots showing his ship straighten out, using footage that was not originally shot with that intent. I hadn’t heard of this and am actually quite surprised it didn’t get excised from the commentary.

SkyderHouseMafia said:

doubleofive said:

SkyderHouseMafia said:

Thanks for all suggestions/advice so far, the Jambe Davdar doco’s look facinating! Would watching them ruin/make listening to the OT commentaries redundant?

The interesting parts of the DVD commentaries that aren’t modern fabrications (Lucas saying he planned for Luke and Leia to be twins from the beginning, etc) are included in the the Filmumentaries.

Oh good aha! Thanks 😃

Jambe’s filmumentaries are must watches for sure. The overlap between the content on it and the DVD commentaries isn’t that much (though he uses a lot of other sources you might recognize like Empire of Dreams). Lucas will occasionally say the modern fabricated BS in the commentary, but not as much as one might suspect.