When/Why did you become an OT purist? — Page 6

The old Sluggo is back!

Sorry if I take this further off topic but they also effectively recycled parts in the cantina for the bounty hunter IG-88. See his head.

Tyrphanax said:

This was originally part of my second reply to the George Lucas thread, but I decided it was too long-winded and off-topic and would fit better here:

 

I can't speak for anyone else (though I have a suspicion that many will agree with me) but I care because his stance on film preservation applies to all films but his; that he was actively suppressing and attempting to destroy the originals (covering up or removing hard work done on the originals by other people, et cetera), through neglect really peeved me and many others. The fact that Star Wars is such a huge piece of cultural and cinematic history made it all the more egregious.

And I know many other people care so much because the original versions of the films were a huge part of their childhood, and now they don't have access to that part of their childhood anymore.

I can't claim that, because I grew up watching the Special Editions, but when I finally found the Original Unaltered Trilogy through fan preservations, I realized how much better the films were before the changes. I went into my first fan preservation without the "taint" of anti-Lucas, anti-Special Edition, anti-Prequelism, thinking "Well how much different can it be? I like the CGI stuff from the Special Editions!" and I came out a changed man. They're just better in their original format.

 

 

This is basically what I wanted to say, and when I came to the part where you said that you grew up with the Special Editions it was actually close to tears in my eyes, because this proves it's not about a sentimental bunch of old nerds who grew up with the originals. You see it as clear as we do. Thank you!

msycamore said:

Bingowings said:

I still have this nagging suspicion that the Prune Faces actually came form an attempt to depict the Emperor with a one piece mask.

If you look at some of the depictions of him in storyboards for ROTJ he looks less skeletal and old and more simian and alien.

Interesting, there's definitely a likeness between them. Where does this Prune Face show up in ROTJ? I only recall the action figures...

Oh there's not just one pruneface! There are three. And here is a gallery documenting what, as far as I know, are their only appearances: http://imgur.com/a/h4zdJ

Incidentally, checkout this wideshot of the briefing room, a slightly different frame than the one in the pruneface gallery. There are red, orange, green and possibly even blue (center, right in front of Madine) flight uniforms visible. And who are those aliens in the upper left?

SilverWook said:

There's a behind the scenes photo of the original Emperor hologram being shot, but I can't recall where I saw it recently.

Yeah, I think the pictures you refer to is the ones that leaked out to the net before Rinzler's making of came out, they are all in that book. Buy it Silver! it's fantastic even if you own the old journal, I truly recommend it.

SilverWook said:

Some of the spacesuits seen in the cantina are somewhat recycled too. ;)

Indeed. ;)

SilverWook said:

msycamore said:

The old Sluggo is back!

Sorry if I take this further off topic but they also effectively recycled parts in the cantina for the bounty hunter IG-88. See his head.

Some of the spacesuits seen in the cantina are somewhat recycled too. ;)

What movie is that?

msycamore said:

Tyrphanax said:

This was originally part of my second reply to the George Lucas thread, but I decided it was too long-winded and off-topic and would fit better here:

 

I can't speak for anyone else (though I have a suspicion that many will agree with me) but I care because his stance on film preservation applies to all films but his; that he was actively suppressing and attempting to destroy the originals (covering up or removing hard work done on the originals by other people, et cetera), through neglect really peeved me and many others. The fact that Star Wars is such a huge piece of cultural and cinematic history made it all the more egregious.

And I know many other people care so much because the original versions of the films were a huge part of their childhood, and now they don't have access to that part of their childhood anymore.

I can't claim that, because I grew up watching the Special Editions, but when I finally found the Original Unaltered Trilogy through fan preservations, I realized how much better the films were before the changes. I went into my first fan preservation without the "taint" of anti-Lucas, anti-Special Edition, anti-Prequelism, thinking "Well how much different can it be? I like the CGI stuff from the Special Editions!" and I came out a changed man. They're just better in their original format.

 

 

This is basically what I wanted to say, and when I came to the part where you said that you grew up with the Special Editions it was actually close to tears in my eyes, because this proves it's not about a sentimental bunch of old nerds who grew up with the originals. You see it as clear as we do. Thank you!

Wow, I don't think I've ever done that before.

Tyrphanax said:

Wow, I don't think I've ever done that before.

Yeah, it may sound pathetic and I wasn't completely sober but yes your nice little story made me happy and a little misty-eyed. :) It's a little hard to imagine what the feeling must be for those who watch the originals for the first time after being accustomed to watching the altered versions for as long as they can remember, must be a weird experience for some.

It was weird. I was so used to seeing stuff like the Jabba scene and the extended Mos Eisley intro, that my first viewing of the OOT was admittedly a little jarring; I couldn't have told you where those additions were normally, but they were so baked in to my brain that when they weren't there, my brain had to reset and catch up.

As I thought more about it, though, and watched it a few more times, it really sunk in that the film was so much more streamlined without the additions. It was hard to explain how it worked, but it did; the additions were like taking big square chunks of lead and welding them onto a bullet train - they weighed it down and made it drag more - even the windows on Cloud City, which are a very minor change, distracted you from what was happening in the scene.

I haven't wanted to see the special editions since I came to that realization.

I watched a little bit of ANH SE on spikeTV not too long ago.  Could only make it to the cantina scene before I changed the channel.  Still cant believe how much mos eisley was changed.  Its more digital refuckery now, twisted and evil.  Its super saturated with recycled jurassic park dinos walking around, absurd jawa hijinx, silly little cgi rodents hopin around, severely outdated cgi stormtroopers dismounting cgi dewbacks.  It reeks of Luca$ and his ass-kissing ILM computer nerdbots trying to make the scene "cute".   Sheer cgi mayhem.  In the OOT, mos eisley was JUST fine.  There was plenty activity going on with various pilots and otherworldly characters going about their business.  The environmental nature was true to obiwans description.  It has an air of grittiness, mystery and danger.  It gives me the feeling of wanting to be "cautious" and to "watch my step".  Then there's the greedo shooting 1st change, which has always been a steaming pile of bantha shit and IMO the worst change ever(the hayden over shaw jedi spirit tragedy is a close 2nd).  It takes away from the original impressions of han solo, and should've been left alone.  In ANH, the character of han solo is that of a gun slinging, cocky, greedy,slick smuggler and an amazing pilot, who is used to fighting his way out of cliffhangers while looking to make money ANY way he can get it.  ANH examples that stand out in my mind the most are:

Inside the DS he's more concerned about preserving his own livelyhood and  has to be TALKED into saving Leia's life, only after Luke mentions a huge payday.

Luke: They're gonna execute her!

Han:  Better her than me!

And then while en route to the rebel base:

Han:  Im not in this for your revolution princess and Im not in it for you.  I expect to be well paid!  Im only in it for the money!

And as he's loading his money into the falcon before the DS assault to Luke

Han:  Ive got some old debts to pay off.  Attacking the battlestation is not my idea of heroics, more like a suicide.

Han even tries to recruit Luke into joining chewy and him in the smugglers life, even though Luke is focused on helping the rebels!  None of these post mos-eisley scenes lets on that Han is trying to redeem himself, or whatever BS excuse Luca$ gave for making greedo shoot 1st.

Throughout the trilogy we see a dynamic change in han as he turned from a brash self-centered, greedy scoundrel of a smuggler to finding purpose in his life with the rebellion and falling in love with leia, while becoming close friends with Luke.  I LOVE the way Han Solo is written in the OT.  This is a huge example of why I became an OT purist.

I love all your posts, Hoth-Nudist. Seriously. Sometimes I think you're in my head.

Wolfman said:

 

Oh there's not just one pruneface! There are three. And here is a gallery documenting what, as far as I know, are their only appearances:  http://imgur.com/a/h4zdJ 

 

A Prune Face appears at the Rebel celebration, dancing in front of an Ewok hut.

http://imgur.com/B6oPU

Gasp! You're right!

CatBus said:

Father Skywalker said:

What's is the main problme/issue here, exactly???

For 20 years, the original films were available for average people to see in better than Blu-ray quality.  All you had to do was go to a theatre showing them, buy a ticket, and watch.  Today, if a theatre is caught showing the original films, they are quickly confiscated.

Back in '97, most didn't immediately see the impact of this policy change.  Like you said, the public still had VHS tapes and Laserdiscs, which, while certainly not as good as 35mm film, were good enough for most people's televisions at the time.  And since going to the theatre was falling out of fashion even then, people might not have considered exactly how much better the films looked before they were reduced to VHS and Laserdisc.

Now, not only are those obsolete formats becoming increasingly difficult to play, but two new formats (DVD and Blu-ray) have come along to remind audiences about that quality gap between 35mm film and VHS tape.

The GOUT release (the out-of-print bonus disc DVD release) was a Laserdisc-quality release on the DVD format (not to mention that Star Wars got the wrong soundtrack in this release), so it didn't really do much for fans other than provide a really distorted view of what the originals looked like to the uninitiated.  Even today, you'll hear people say that the originals looked all low-res and dirty like the GOUT, that the Special Editions fixed all of that, and that the originals simply aren't worth an HD release!

In summary, the purists remember the period from 1977-1997 when it was possible to watch the OT in super-high-definition, compare it against today when your best officially sanctioned option is a crappy Laserdisc transfer from the early nineties with the wrong soundtrack, and we feel shafted.  Especially those of us with children.

Or, to put it even more succinctly, when Beverly Hills Chihuahua 3 beats the hell out of Star Wars in the visuals department, there's a problem.

Got to strongly disagree with you here.

35mm 4th generation positive release prints shown in theaters(as Star Wars would have been from 1977-1991) resolved the equivalent of 1K or even less of "screen information"----- i.e less  than Blu ray or Digital Cinema 2K.(but probably a little higher than standard def DVD and obviously better than the GOUT)

Peer reviewed International studies conducted in theaters across the globe concluded that the average release print has roughly 500-800 lines per picture height.

People keep conflating information captured on the camera negative with positive release prints(shown in theaters).

It is the same as confusing the 5k of information captured on the digital panavision/genesis camera(used for superman returns)----this 5k is then down converted to 1080p/2k  for release

The camera negative of film has the capacity to store upto 2400 lpph of info(or 3-4K).But you don't watch the camera negative in a theater!

But Star Wars's "original negative-o-neg" was compromised by the fact that large portions of it were composed of opticals and dupes(for wipes/dissolves ect ect)----In a sense  parts of the o-neg were not really original!

Sure----the model work was captured on Vista Vision cameras ----but even that is subject to degradation through the photochemical process of duplication.

They even  did comparisons in 1999 with  the release of the Phantom menace using a pristine 35mm print and projecting it side by side with a 1st generation digital projector with the digital version coming out on top.

I am up for seeing a release of the 1977 edit on blu ray as the next man but I dont subcribe to the misinformation/disinformation that 35mm release prints in the 70's and 80's were "ultra-high def" (which by the way  equates to 4K)

If you were to strike a 4th generation release print from the 1977 oneg of star wars in 2012 you maybe surprised to see how grainy some of those original optical composites were/are.

That is why Lucas decided to replace them.

The irony is that the duplication process used in the fotochemical workflow  tended to "even out" the discrepancy between the parts of the o-neg that were 1st generation and the other parts that were optical duplicates.

So by the time you got to that 4th generation release print the film looked relatively seemless.

But if you strike a positive digital "print" from a 4K scan the difference in granularity between all the constituent parts that make up Star wars will be jarring.