Info & Ideas: ESB and ROTJ Wishlist — Page 125

Well, that kind of was what they were about, after all. Nazis in space, the lot of 'em!

Just the other day at work, some little twerp whose name I won't mention (Harry) popped his head into the conversation and asked "Well, what was so bad about the Empire?" and followed it up a few minutes later with "Well, if the Rebels just did what they were told, like everybody else, then..." 

The human mind, it's a terrifying thing.

...

EyeShotFirst said:

vaderios said:

Cheers :)

Now ontopic.

I started a new superlaser interior that looks incomplete and more "organic"

Its still wip and the gunners section is temp. I was wondering if someone with better English than me can tell me when i can find panels with lights like we see it in ANH and nuclear factories

 

-Angel

Wow angel. It is all cyberpunky.

 

It might be nice to carry some of that iron red girder motif down from the surface so it looks like they are firing the thing without all the nice glossy panels installed yet.

I'd love to see you have a go at the lift shaft thing Palpatine takes a tumble down.

It doesn't match the dizzy depths of the first Death Star or Bespin.

Oh_riginal:

I support this idea to an extent. Yes, the Death Star is still under construction, but the laser is supposed to basically be 100% finished already (unbeknownst to the Rebellion at first). The mock-up does a great job of showing how it might look in the firing chamber as being 99% finished (just missing the fancy "shine" of the panels, as mentioned).

But the red iron stuff seems to be more like the construction of gun towers and such. I would imagine that yes, there may be some of that stuff used in the construction of the laser, but if the laser is completed enough to the point of being operational, it would need to have its interior be strong and durable... and in this case, only missing panels, nothing more.

But why does everything have to be shiny to be finished? Given the immense destructive capability of the weapon, I'm not sure a few metal panels would make any difference.

If I were to make any change, it would be to make the firing chambers immensely bigger (is immensely a word?) because I don't really feel the true power of lasers that are only as thick as the officers standing beside them.

I'd shrink down the size of the guards and their station to me very small next to the weapon, that's the only real way to give it true scale.

I'm sure someone has said this before, but I didn't see it on my readings.

Can we take the gunner in the Star Destroyer from "Star Wars" who doesnt shoot the droids ("It doesn't have any life signs") and put him in the Battle of Endor shooting up some X-Wings or something?

oh_riginal said:

Bingowings said:

EyeShotFirst said:

vaderios said:

 

 

-Angel

 

But the red iron stuff seems to be more like the construction of gun towers and such. I would imagine that yes, there may be some of that stuff used in the construction of the laser, but if the laser is completed enough to the point of being operational, it would need to have its interior be strong and durable... and in this case, only missing panels, nothing more.

 I agree. I totally did Angerio's mockup, but I think adding the red girders might make the whole thing look ramshackle, not just unfinished.

Can anyone possibly send me a hi-res screen cap (or scan) of the Emperor's shaft from Jedi? Thanks.

EDIT:

Sorry, that sounded positively sordid. Can anyone send me a hi-res screen cap or scan of the shaft the Emperor goes down in Jedi? Thanks.

Oh_riginal:

I think you may have misunderstood my post. What I mean to say is, the mock-up makes the laser chamber look incomplete BUT STILL safely operational, with the 1% leftover for construction being the panels, which are not needed to fire the weapon. One could assume those would be put on last anyway.

Adding anything more to the mock-up, such as the red iron, would be overkill. The mock-up works very well just as it is. It gets the point across that the laser is not 100% finished, but can still safely fire a laser. Sorry if I wasn't clear the first time.

As for the scale, I can agree with that. Though I've often wondered if the laser shown is one of the smaller lasers that shoots out to connect to the other lasers, before shooting the huge laser.

Haha yes I did misunderstand slightly.

About the scale, though,  even if it is one of the smaller lasers, there is no way those laser could be that small when you see them next to the Death Star. And seeing as they're supposed to be able to destroy a planet, I really think they need to be more substantial. So, if we can't make the laser and shaft bigger, we can definitely make the people smaller. I think that really would help sell the scale of the Death Star better, too.

Thank you! I got the very matte painting of the shaft that I wanted. Not all the pics are great quality but that one is HD, awesome!

By the way, when I posted my original Alderaan destruction sequence, a few people told me that the Death Star was in the wrong position to fire. But I thought it was fine, as it can fire directionally, and doesn't have to be pointing the firing dish straight at its target. Like this shot from Jedi:

http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/7/75/HO_toast.jpg

Perhaps that was down to the usual lazy effects work in much of the film.

As I said before they had a really nice model and hardly filmed it so maybe when the came to compose that shot they changed the way it fired to make it work with the few painting and model elements they bothered to put out.

We may never know because asking for a straight answer (even if we could) from the guys at the ranch is a hit and miss affair.

I don't envy the work of anyone who wants to rework the sequence so it matches the firing in ANH as it would mean either lots of new paintings or a scratch model build.

So it's a matter of take your pick.

That is either a really bad kludge of a shot or that IS the way the weapon works (which allows anyone reworking ANH to make it fire anyway they want).

Personally I never liked the way the weapon fired in the first place.

There is a big dish with a nipple in the middle so it just makes more sense to me that the smaller beams focused on the nipple thing (technincal term) and the large ray fired out of it and was focused by the dish.

Having everything fire out into space and meet there looks suitably science fantasy but doesn't really make much sense visually.

I'm sure someone has written a umpty thrumpty paged manual which explains how the superlaser works but I don't buy it myself.

That's my soapbox moment over ;-)

Bingowings:

That is either a really bad kludge of a shot or that IS the way the weapon works (which allows anyone reworking ANH to make it fire anyway they want).

Well, there you go. So I'll have my Death Star firing the same way. And besides, seeing the Death Star off-axis to fire at Alderaan looks stupid. Yes, in space there is no real up or down, but on film, seeing the Death Star off axis next to Alderaan just doesn't work. So for me, it can fire at an angle.

I'm not sure we should assume it's a bad FX shot just because we'd like to think it works a different way. The movies are canon, our personal taste isn't.

And not wanting to start an argument, but calling the FX work in much of the film lazy is sweeping away a massive amount of work done by very talented artists. Pre-digital, there was so much more work involved and the space battles seen in Jedi were VERY ambitious for that time.

I didn't say it was all lazy some of the work in ROTJ is still gobsmackingly good  to this day, especially considering the limitations of the time but compared to the work done on the first two (and there were a few hiccups there) ROTJ has so much that doesn't hold up to repeat viewing (and this was a film made just at the point when repeat viewing was more a done thing with VCR's becoming commonplace).

It seems to be the moment when George started saying "It'll do" instead of "How the hell are we going to get that to work?".

When it comes to doing special editions surely the canon goes out of the window.

You could if you wanted to make the top of the Death Star spin around and the dish tilt (and you can make it look satisfying) go ahead, it's the story that counts.

Bingowings:

When it comes to doing special editions surely the canon goes out of the window.

Sorry, I disagree with that 100%.

Canon truth is not immune to its own evolution. And anyway, my point was that the films are fundamentally superior to our own tastes when it comes to determining what is or is not canon within that universe. If Lucas issues Special Editions and decrees that they succeed previous versions, then so be it. Besides, it's not as if the Special Editions really change very much. I think people's reactions to the SEs on almost every level is disproportionate. No, I don't like some of the changes - some of them are dreadful - but are there any actual changes of events? Save for the SE2 of Empire including the rotten dialogue changes, there are no fundamental changes to the SW Universe. So canon is intact, either way you look at it.

I meant to say that as long as the story is the same it doesn't matter what you do to present that story as long as it works in a satisfying way.

In ROTJ the Emperor lures the Rebels to attack a new Death Star which they think isn't yet functional but actually is.

That gives anyone reworking that aspect of the story a free range to present that in whatever way they want to, as long as it works.

These are the important questions to ask in regard to any change that's made.

Does it work? Did it work better before it was changed? Could it work better if it was done in a different way?

The dreaded C word isn't the same thing as telling the story, all canon does is tell us what the officially sanctioned chain of events are.

With fan edits and special editions those events change even if the story stays pretty much the same.

BTW as a Doctor Who fan for most of my life I hate the dreaded C word and If I type it again anyone reading this has my permission to fire Jar-Jar action figures up my nose or worse still force me to explain the UNIT dating problem until my nerd cortex explodes.

Well, let's agree to disagree then. The Special Editions changed almost nothing besides the way we as an audience view the movie. The events within the Universe are almost exactly the same, and they are canon.

A fan edit it not the same as a Special Edition. A fan edit has no canonical merit whatsoever, the Special Editions do.

And you're right, let's not even go near Doctor Who with the C word!