ChainsawAsh

Wow.  I just wrote a long review, then accidentally highlighted the whole thing while typing the word "had," and was left with a "d" in the box and nothing else, and I was unable to undo it.  Fucking hell.

So here's the short version of my The Search for Spock review:

It sucked.  The only purpose of the film is to retcon the changes The Wrath of Khan made (Kirk's son, the Genesis planet/device, Spock's death), the most offensive of which is resurrecting Spock.  That action cheapens his sacrifice in WoK immensely - the producers should've had the balls to kill him and keep him dead.  It also doesn't work even remotely as a standalone film - it's all about bringing Spock back to life, the only conflict being Christopher freakin' Lloyd's Klingon commander trying to steal the "Genesis secret" (which he apparently thinks can, what, be told to him?  How does that work?) ... ugh.

Then there's the out-of-place humor.  Tribbles?  Again?  Really?  And they're on a table at a bar with two patrons petting them?  Plus McCoy/Spock's conversation with the backwards-talking alien that's even worse than Prequel Yoda, and the Uhura/transporter room ensign scene ("Get in the closet").

One thing I'm surprised wasn't brought up later was the potential for Spock's child - it's pretty clear that Saavik mated with Spock on Genesis to get him through pon farr, and when Spock sees her at the end she gives a very embarrased look.  The film was released before TNG, so I'm surprised that Spock's child wasn't a character on that show.  Or maybe the producers changed their minds.  I dunno.  Whatever.

Finally, there isn't one real Star Trek idea in this film.  TMP had V'Ger, and a very clear theme of exploration and discovery.  WOK had the return of Khan from TOS, and the Genesis device.  Voyage Home, if I recall, had its environmental themes and a very Star Trek idea of time travel.  TFF had exploration and discovery, as well as a God-like entity.  TUC focuses on peace and learning to live together despite differences.

The Search for Spock has none of that.  And it suffers for it.

Updated list:

- The Undiscovered Country
- The Wrath of Khan
- The Final Frontier
- The Motion Picture
- The Search for Spock

Now I guess I need to watch The Voyage Home again so my list will be complete.

I finished watching The Final Frontier a couple nights ago, and it was actually pretty good.  Definitely nowhere near unwatchable.  My biggest gripes are the unnecessary cheesy humor ("I know this ship like the back of my hand!"), the somewhat dull climax, and the fact that the entire movie seems to directly contradict the TAS episode The Magicks of Megas-Tu (where the Enterprise goes to the center of the galaxy, there's no Galactic Barrier, and they witness matter being created and get sucked into a parallel universe), but then again, much of the time the original episodes contradicted others anyway.

I do, however, wish Sybock's "Let me feel your pain" or whatever thing was explained, you know, at all.

My revised list, best to worst:

- The Undiscovered Country
- The Wrath of Khan
- The Final Frontier
- The Motion Picture

Next up are The Search for Spock and The Voyage Home, which I remember so very little of that I didn't feel right in putting either one on the list with the other four.

The only difference between the 1983 and 2004 versions of the rancor fight (other than bad color timing in the 2004 DVD) would be the re-compositing and removal of matte lines in the 2004 version.

And I dunno why the prices work our that way in France, but any 2-disc release of the original trilogy contains both the 2004 DVD and the 2006 GOUT - and it's also the only way to get the 2006 GOUT.

Okay ... really?

Fine, I'll play along:  What about Obi-Wan's "smirk" is inappropriate?  He's "smirking" because Han's boasting is probably exaggerated, and he doesn't buy it.  Han's trying to put one over on a crazy old fossil, but Obi-Wan's smarter than that.

And why is Han's smile inappropriate?  He's not taking their "local trouble" seriously, but once Obi-Wan mentions the Empire he realizes that there's more to this old guy and whiny kid than he initially suspected.

The GOUT would be the only way for you to experience the pre-1997 versions.

For Star Wars:

In 1981, the words "Episode IV: A NEW HOPE" were added to the title crawl and the words were re-formatted (including the capitalization of "rebel").

In 1997, the "3D monsters on Tatooine" were added, as was the Jabba scene, the Han/Greedo scene was altered to make Greedo fire when he never should have, the end battle was "enhanced" with extra CG shots, a short scene (that was chopped up to fit with the Vader-as-Luke's-father idea) with Biggs was added on the Yavin IV base, and many other, smaller changes were made.

In 2004, additional changes were made, in addition to incredibly fucked-up colors and a horribly "remastered" sound mix that included swapping the left and right surround channels for the music, for no apparent reason.  All in the name of "deliberate creative decisions."

The GOUT uses the 1993 laserdisc audio instead of the theatrical mono or stereo audio, but other than that every change listed above is not present in the GOUT.

For Empire:

In 1997, more footage with the Wampa was inserted, which arguably ruins the suspense of the scene.  Cloud City had CG "enhancements" added, including the addition of windows throughout the city that sometimes mysteriously disappear when ILM forgot they added some.  Darth Vader's trip to his Star Destroyer was spliced in after the duel as well, using outtakes from ROTJ, again arbuably ruining the flow of the scene (and changing Vader's "Bring my shuttle!" line to "Alert my Star Destroyer to prepare for my arrival").

In 2004, Ian McDiarmid, while shooting ROTS, re-shot the Emperor hologram scene (originally Clive Reville's voice and an old woman's mouth with monkey eyes) in his horrid ROTS makeup that doesn't look a thing like his ROTJ makeup.  Lines were added to this scene as well that - arguably - ruin it.  Also, Boba Fett's lines were (again, arguably) horribly re-dubbed by Temuera Morrison (clone troopers/Jango Fett in AOTC/ROTS).

The GOUT includes none of these changes, but again, includes the 1993 laserdisc audio.

For Jedi:

In 1997, the Jabba's palace musical number Lapti Nek was replaced with Jedi Rocks, which sounds (arguably) awful, and Sy Snootles (singer) was replaced with a CG model.  Other new CG creatures have been added to the band as well.  Then, the original actress for Oola (the green dancer) was brought in to shoot additional scenes of her actually in the Rancor pit (you still don't see the Rancor).  The Sarlacc was "enhanced" with a CG beak-looking thing coming out of it and extra CG tentacles.  In the end celebration, instead of the Ewoks singing Yub Nub, John Williams re-scored it with a new, (arguably) more appropriate, New Age-y song.

In 2004, Sebastian Shaw's head has been replaced with an outtake of Hayden Christensen from ROTS in the Force-ghost scene.  In the Vader unmasking scene, Sebastian Shaw's eyebrows have been digitally removed (this change I actually agree with).  I don't think there were any other major 04 changes for ROTJ ...

The GOUT includes none of these changes.

So, if the version you grew up with didn't have all this shit in it, then yes, that's what you want.  If you grew up with the 1997 versions, you're shit out of luck, unfortunately, as there is no official release of the original Special Editions on DVD.

The new "Star Wars Original Trilogy" DVD box that contains all 3 movies in 2-disc versions in slim cases with a blue outer box includes both the 2004 SE DVDs and the GOUT.

Zion said:

The 4-eyed stormies are a result of the rudimentary DVNR process, which I'm sure used some sort of temporal algorythm, but that's not really what I'm getting at here.

Ah, I see - I was misinformed then.  My mistake.

The ANH and ESB posters look a little iffy ... I mean, they look good, but I dunno if they quite fit the tone of the films.

But that ROTJ one looks frickin' awesome!  Great work there!

I'd suggest to keep working on them, because the concept is great.  Using a combination of photos and paintings, however, doesn't quite work.  I don't know what else to suggest, but I'm sure with a little tweaking they can look great.

Monroville said:

the actual title on the screen will be ALIEN: REDUX, since I can have the five letter REDUX slowly appear below the five letter ALIEN on the top of the screen

Please don't do this.  I absolutely hate it when the title of a fan edit makes it clear that it's a fan edit.  This has prevented me from getting a lot of fan edits that I would otherwise have liked.  For instance, does the Final Cut of Blade Runner say Blade Runner: The Final Cut in the opening credits?  No, because "The Final Cut" is simply the name of the version of the film, not the film's title itself.  Make the menus say whatever you want, i.e. Ady's use of "Revisited" in the intro to his menu and throughout the menus, but please please please leave the title within the film itself the same.

Those are some very good ideas there.  I like it a lot.

Max_Rebo said:

As Moth3r said this is just temporal softening, which is the same thing applied to the Laserdiscs which is why we are left with 4 eyed stormtroopers.

No, we're left with 4 eyed stormtroopers because of bad IVTC on the GOUT.  The LDs themselves, if I'm not mistaken, don't suffer fromt eh "4-eyed stormtrooper" problem, just the GOUT.

I find that analogy pretty funny since most Americans I know would compare American football to the guy on the Harley and soccer to the guy on the Vespa.  Here, if you like soccer but not football, you're probably gay.  Or communist.  Or something.

AxiaEuxine said:

I just want to share my joy of Star Wars with people that enjoy it and there doesnt seem to be anyone that actually does anymore. It makes me sad.

I enjoy Star Wars very much ... I enjoy Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and, to a lesser extent, Return of the Jedi.  I also enjoy the Thrawn trilogy of novels.  That's it.  To me, that's canon.  Nothing else.

And just because the original creator made it doesn't make it "canon" - canon is different for everyone.  It's entirely personal opinion.  For example, my Star Trek canon is The Original Series, The Animated Series, the first six movies, and the new one.  I don't give two shits about Next Generation even if Roddenberry created it to begin with - I don't like it.  So, to me, it's not canon.

C3PX said:

I don't care a thing for it when played by Americans though, they have a weird way of making it less entertaining IMHO

It's interesting that you bring that up, C3PX - I was watching TV a few weeksa go, flipping channels, when I stumbled across 3 soccer (er ... football) games in a row.  One was a game being played in Europe with Spanish announcers, and it was quite exciting.  The next was a game being played in my own city (Chicago), with American announcers and it was boring as all hell.

Then the third channel was the exact same Chicago Fire game, the exact same shots, from the exact same feed.  The only difference was that the announcers were Mexican.  And the game was infinitely more interesting.

I'm not sure if this was just a coincidence, and for some reason I didn't compare the American and the European games at all at the time, but I think in this instance it was down to the American announcer, who was acting like he was talking about golf (i.e. the most boring "sport" to watch on TV in the history of the world, even if I do enjoy playing it quite a bit), while the Mexican announcer was very engaged and energetic.

Yeah, the theme of exploration was sorely lacking in the films.  As I said, I enjoy The Motion Picture, but I feel many of the sequences were added just because they needed more runtime than they had story, which brings the movie down for me.

I think I'll watch The Final Frontier tonight.  See if it's as bad as I remember.

That's true, but they clearly state that it's an alternate timeline in the film itself.

Besides, it's not like Abrams came by your house and took all your Star Trek DVDs and destroyed them.  You can still watch them just as easily as you could before the new film came out.  Nothing's destroyed.

And I happened to enjoy the music in the film quite a bit, especially the main theme.  And I was quite happy that the Alexander Courage TV theme was used at the end, though my personal favorite is the Goldsmith Motion Picture theme ... how disappointed I am that it's now the "Next Generation" theme ... ugh ...

Here's the thing.

You didn't like the new Trek movie.  That's fine.  You say, "It's not Star Trek."  That's fine.

Then you say that the only reason that's okay but us saying the exact same thing about the Star Wars prequels isn't is because George Lucas made the prequels, but Roddenberry didn't make the new Trek movie.  Therefore, everything Lucas makes in relation to Star Wars must be okay because he made it, and everything not made by Roddenberry in relation to Star Trek must be shit.

But what of the tons of episodes of Trek that Roddenberry didn't write?  What of Wrath of Khan?  Roddenberry was forced out of creative control of the films after the first one because of its failures and shortcomings.  But Wrath is widely considered to be the greatest Star Trek of them all.

George Lucas didn't write or direct The Empire Strikes Back, and has gone on record saying it's his least favorite of the six films ... yet it's widely considered the best of the series.

People aren't infallible.  Just because Lucas made the prequels doesn't mean they're good.  They aren't.  Lucas started to lose what made Star Wars great after he saw Empire and decided he needed to have more control over the next ones, and overcompensated for what he saw as Empire's shortcomings.

You're being hypocritical because you give us shit for disliking the prequels, but won't hear a good word for the new Star Trek movie because you think it goes against what made Star Trek good.  How is that any different from us disliking the prequels because we think they went against what made Star Wars good?  Who made either one is irrelevant.

--addendum--

And for fuck's sake, the movie did not wipe away 40 years of Star Trek canon - it created an alternate timeline.  The original still exists.  Why is that so hard for people to understand?

I think *you're* being the hypocrite here.  Just saying.

Are you considering restoring any/all of Goldsmith's original, unused cues?  The isolated score track on the 20th (25th?) anniversary DVD contains his complete original score in its entirety, including all unused cues, exactly where they're supposed to go in the movie.

I find that interesting, since that's what a lot of people on here think about the prequels (they aren't Star Wars), while you defend those as violently as you condemn the new Star Trek, which a lot of us (myself included, and I hate pretty much any Star Trek from TNG on - it's TOS, TAS, the first 6 movies, and the new one for me) thoroughly enjoyed.

No, he means BOB-ah, as in "Bob" then "Uh", instead of "Bow" and "Buh."

fishmanlee said:

oh and with adywans edit, can the imp march for the death star reveal be replaced with this version?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP7yQcZKpe4

If you do it yourself.  Ady's done with ANH:R for good.

I've tried that mac program and I hated the results.  I personally prefer doing it all manually in After Effects - much better control over the movement and timing of everything.

Besides, Ady uses a PC.

That's certainly an interesting view.  It kinda negates the entire film, but I suppose that's the point, right?

I think Alien's theatrical cut is perfect as is, but if you feel you can improve it, more power to you.

I am, however, very interested in a "Revisit" of Dune.  There are a lot of edits out there that seem promising, but the one thing every editor seems too lazy to do is to rotoscope the Fremen's blue eyes in the reinstated deleted scenes, which really takes me out of the movie every time it happens.

And if you could get rid of the damn Weirding Modules, that'd be great as well, but I doubt it's possible.