Free "farewell" Screening of 1977 Star Wars collector's print (British I.B. Technicolor) — Page 7

The grappling hook thing is ridiculous.  All you have to do to confirm that it is Apocryphal of the worst kind is listen to the music cue for this scene.  The way it is composed fits the film perfectly--there is no break or edit anywhere that would indicate it had been trimmed to fit a shortened version of the scene.  There are other places in the film where the music is edited to accommodate picture changes, and listening to them as compared to the score alone the cuts can be spotted easily enough, but the chasm scene never needed to be subjected to this.

Given that the stereo and 70mm mixes are said to have been completed with little time to spare, I find it highly unlikely that there would have been time to rescore it.  I can only surmise that 'memories' of this come from reading the novelisation and confusing the two.  It is telling that people also 'remember' seeing fighters crash into the Death Star shield in Return of the Jedi, which only occurs in the novelisation also.

And the 70mm version never had 'close the blast doors'.  This was only dubbed in for the mono version, made after the first two mixes were already playing in theatres.  Aside from much greater dynamics and the addition of powerful bass, the only differences in content between the 70mm and the stereo mix are some explosive sounds added to the battle at the end.  Personally I prefer 'close the blast doors' to be absent, because it makes the stormtroopers appear to be incompetent buffoons, not to mention it is dubbed in a voice entirely different than the one that says to open the doors a few seconds later, which I find jarringly discordant.

For what it's worth, my dad says he never saw any garbage boxes when the film played in theatres originally.  Given the lovely and deep contrast evident on the Technicolor print, I'm inclined to believe that even if they were visible, they would be very hard to spot.  The home video transfers were often very washed out, making them stand out a lot more than they should when projected properly.

adywan said:

hairy_hen said:

The grappling hook thing is ridiculous.  All you have to do to confirm that it is Apocryphal of the worst kind is listen to the music cue for this scene.  The way it is composed fits the film perfectly--there is no break or edit anywhere that would indicate it had been trimmed to fit a shortened version of the scene.  There are other places in the film where the music is edited to accommodate picture changes, and listening to them as compared to the score alone the cuts can be spotted easily enough, but the chasm scene never needed to be subjected to this.

One of the most intelligent answers that quashes the "grappling hook" myth once and for all. There is no place it would fit. John Williams writes the score to fit the emotions and pacing that is on the screen. There is no section prior to the grappling hook that would match a complete miss by luke. It never happened, it's just a false memory, same with people swearing they saw the anchorhead scenes in the movie at its release.

I don't believe that quashes anything once and for all.

Trying to dig up my copy of the novelization. It would be nice if it turned out I hadn't gotten it until perhaps some second reprinting with a date from the following year or something. I have no idea (if they even did that for one).

I thought Lucas once said something about to not want to go with a missed toss in the end because he wanted it to not potentially appear to have been random luck the second time. I'm very fuzzy on this part though.

I'm going to see if I can at least eventually dig up computer files I wrote about SW stuff from the late 80's and see exactly what I wrote about the whole grappling hook thing back then, which would at least be a lot fresher than now.

My vague recollection is that years ago the second toss didn't seem to be too controversial but the Biggs stuff always had been looked at with doubt.

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Free-farewell-Screening-of-1977-Star-Wars-collectors-print-British-IB-Technicolor/post/430412/#TopicPost430412

btw, nice to see you pop in, Anchor.

I started checking into the Star Wars blogosphere/commentariat again after the Blu-ray announcement, just to join the plaintive chorus.  I had no interest in SWBlu beyond jaded disgust.

But then I read about this screening, and...you know what?  I was suddenly excited about Star Wars again.

Sure I'm disappointed that I didn't get to attend, but nonetheless the whole little episode has ressurected my hope.

This makes me suspect that maybe Lucas' imposed, artificial scarcity program with respect to the OOT is simply the most brilliant, drawn-out meta-marketing campaign of all time.  Without the constant divisive drama of the SE/prequel/revisionism/backlash, Star Wars would have ceased to be in the least relevant long ago.  But Lucasfilm has instead managed to make it not only relevant, but controversial?  Who would have thought SW could ever qualify for that adjective?  Something that had been resigned to the bland-nostalgic bin of overexposed '80s juvenalia has become the Holy Grail of cinematic rarities! 

Because of this treatment of the franchise, it would have been a treasured moment to see a screening of a 35-year-old film.  To own it in that condition would be priceless...

In any event, I expect a 40th anniversary original, theatrical SW blu-ray/digital-HD in 2017.  (You heard it first here!)  I only hope it looks as good as this technicolor print.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

hairy_hen said:

The grappling hook thing is ridiculous.

I believe that people "remember" the missed grappling hook because every other motion picture with a similar scene includes a miss or two. The brain fills in what we expected to see.  It's a common movie scene. I was sure I saw it too (I was 17 at the time and saw SW four or five times in 1977, in two different theaters), but now I'm convinced that my brain simply filled in what it expected - since I hadn't read the book it couldn't have come from there.

Well I still stand by that it was there on premiere day (70mm Paramus, NJ, before they sent out the later version when they expanded 70mm showings). If it wasn't though, I don't think the above would explain it. How many movies had I even seen then? I was pretty young, had only just learned to read not even really a year earlier. And if some zorro on tv or whatnot had had such a thing, it just doesn't fit anyway, at least not in my case. It just wasn't that sort of a memory. The only possibility would've been reading it in the book some months later and then not seeing it in the 35mm regular mono release and then somehow dreaming that night that the extended scene had been in the 70mm showing that had matched the book and then having a very realistic, full detail dream of the entire scene and then dreamed I was watching the 35mm showing and seeing the whole scene again in detail without it and being shocked that it was not there and then somehow a few weeks later forgetting it had all been some very elaborate and realistic dream. I doubt it though.

I'm having trouble finding my original copy of the novel. If it were to have say a 1978 republication date or something then that would prove that there would've been no way for me to have read it in time for that to have even been a possibility. I know I didn't read it right away after having seen the 70mm. I can't quite remember when I did though. I wonder if I go through old audio tapes recorded when I was a kid if there would be any hints about any of this....

I need to try to track down the earliest record of when I wrote down what I though the differences were.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

SilverWook said:

Are you sure you didn't see the Biggs scene in the 1978 documentary?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-6dgYidsaY

I don't think so, because in the documentary you hear and see very little of it. My memory includes the entire scene and all of the dialogue.  If it really was never in any theatrical version, I must have seen it in an out-take somewhere else.  But honestly I can't imagine where.

You people won't like what I'm gonna write, but ...

The Biggs scene was for me always a part of the movie. And I mean ALWAYS. I had a 100th generation bootleg copy with Polish (?) voiceover, a copy recorded from German TV, and a copy recorded from Czech TV, and I'm 100% sure the scene was in at least one of these copies. (I also remember a short handshaking scene between Luke and Wedge/Johny D / Red 2 after the "that's impossible even for a computer" conversation.)

I never understood why various websites claimed that the Biggs sequence was new in the special edition , I always thought that they only edited it (I remember it being longer). Since I have thrown away my VHS bootlegs after I bought the SE VHS tapes (yes, I was a fool) I couldn't check it, but you can't imagine how shocked I've been after I downloaded the EditDroid bootleg DVDs and noticed that the scene is missing !

And I have NEVER read ANY SW-comics in my whole life, and I have heard the radio drama just once, many years AFTER I have seen the SE