ChainsawAsh

Cut him out completely.  He serves no purpose in ROTJ.

Janskeet said:

The Golden Idol said:

Why do you want that? That is unnecessary in every sense of the word!

Like I said before, makes more sense since the sets look like they belong to the Empire.

I have to agree with Golden Idol here.  Just because you think a set looks like an Imperial design doesn't mean changing the entire story of the last act of the film is justified.  It's a chamber made for freezing Tibanna gas for distribution, which is what Cloud City is for - it's a Tibanna gas mining colony.  Lando even says it might kill Han, and that creates tension when he's frozen - moving it to the Executor would imply that its sole purpose is freezing people in suspended animation, which leaves no tension whatsoever.

Not to mention that it would mean Luke is hanging on the bottom of the Executor at the end of the film, and he lands on Cloud City then somehow ends up on the Executor ... it just doesn't make any sense at all.

Plus I don't think it looks even remotely like Imperial design - what about it makes you think that way?

I forgot, one more change in my version:

I'd rather it be excised completely, but if there were to be a forest-moon or forest-planet setting, make it Kashyyyk with Wookiees, and no Ewoks at all.

Well, the biggest thing to remember is this: NEVER, under ANY circumstances, try to load the entire scene into Photoshop.  Do it shot by shot, or as you've already experienced, it'll be too big a file to handle and Photoshop will crash.

As far as getting a sequence of images into a moving video again using VirtualDubMod, I have no idea.

Only in the 2004 DVDs.

The basic thrust of ROTJ is good - rebels gain intel on a way to deal a death blow to the Empire, but it's really a trap to draw the rebellion out in the open and destroy them for good.

Here's the specific things I would have changed:

- We don't see the Emperor until the final act, when Luke does
- NO FRIGGIN' DEATH STARS!
- The final battle involves an epic space battle above Coruscant, intercut with an epic ground battle where rebels of all alien species (diversity is important here) are fighting to gain control of the capital
- The Emperor isn't actually on Coruscant, he's on another planet
- Luke is forcibly captured by Vader rather than giving himself in
- Vader is a badass who wipes out huge quantities of troops on his own
- When Vader captures Luke, it's very clear what his plan is - he wants Luke to join him and overthrow the Emperor so they can rule together
- Leia is NOT Luke's sister
- Han dies, and Luke & Leia are together at the end (possibly at Han's funeral)

There are other changes, but this is the overall gist.  I'd really like to write a completely alternate ROTJ, honestly.

Exactly.

The only way I can see this being done is by isolating the dialogue (fairly simple, as it's generally the center channel of any 5.1 sound mix), then recreating the sound mix as well as the person doing so can.  Unfortunately, this would require access to a lot of sound effects, and not just Star Wars sound effects - simple things like footsteps, clothing rustles, presence (that is, ambient sound), etc.  Not to mention it would need to be mixed properly, and would probably never sound quite "right."

I wish you luck on this endeavor, but I have my doubts about the feasability of the project.

JarHead413 said:

EVERYONE!.....is a Packers fan. :)

Speaking as a Chicagoan ... 

... fuck the Packers.

:-)

Wrath of Khan was released and looks great.

The others have too much DNR applied, as is the case with many modern Blu-Rays.

My prediction is that this will be the only Blu-Ray release of the theatrical versions of The Motion Picture, Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country and any future releases that improve on the quality issues raised with the transfers of I and VI will be the extended/director's cut versions instead of the theatricals.

If it's not possible to do it 100% practically, you should aim for part practical and part CGI.  All-CGI is a last resort.

For example, the space battle in ROTJ would look fantastic if it had been shot the exact same way, but the compositing had been done with modern computers.  The space battle in ROTS looks like a video game.

For a non-Star Wars example: Instead of Jar Jar-ing it, Guillermo del Toro used a man in a suit with CG alterations for Pan's Labyrinth, and that looks 100% seamless.

Look, physical models will always look more real than CG, because they *are* real.  They're physically tangible.  CG is, by its very nature, not.  CG should be used to enhance things, not to create them from sratch.  The exception is if what you want to do is completely and utterly impossible any other way.

I know someone brought up I Am Legend as a negative example, but look at the opening scenes of a devastated New York City.  Except for the CG animals roaming around, which look awful, showing New York City like that would have been impossible without the use of CGI - and it looks pretty damn good to me.  That's something that was necessary for the story that couldn't have been done any other way.  The "vampires," on the other hand, look like shit and should never have been done using CGI - they just dont look real.

Agreed.  I'm 100% convinced that the X0 Project, if completed, will turn out a product far superior to the GOUT.

skyjedi2005 said:

Temple of Doom and the Yound Indy series were Lucas first prequels.

He should have learned his lesson.

But he did not he went and made 3 star wars prequels films.  4 if you count the clone wars animated movie.

 

Still Doom was made with Spielberg.  Young Indy was not.  Young indy also did not have John Williams.  Probably 2 very big mistakes. and also no ford in young indy except for 1 episode.

As VaderisnotHayden said he prefers a bad film with the real indy harrison ford with being Directed by Spielberg and music by John Williams than young indy.  Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had all involved.   Except the most important people Douglas Slocombe who is like 90 years old or somthing the cinematographer, and no Lawrence Kasden or Jeffrey Boam as screenwriters.  Spielberg accepted the script by Darabount and was a go to shoot it.  But Lucas rejected it.

I remember the Ford in the Young Indy inserts the dialogue was pretty bad and the end scene was pretty laughable.  Also Ford looked like Richard Kimble and not indiana jones in that beard.

I still to this day wonder had river phoenix not died would they have made a Young Indy series of movies.  I know ford was happy with Phoenix playing him in last crusade.  Ford knew him from working together on the film mesquito coast.  We all know that they had to recast the younger indy with Sean Patrick Flannery.  And that it was made as a tv series.  Though shot on film and the series shot around the world and had a very film like production unit. The young indy crew is mostly who Lucas used to make the star wars prequels.  Rick McCallum being the most noted person.

Actually, TOD being a prequel was Speiberg's idea.  He wanted a more James Bond-ish introduction to Indy.  That's the only reason why it's set before.  After all, the idea for Indy came about when Spielberg confessed to Lucas that he'd always wanted to direct a James Bond movie, and Lucas countered with something "better than James Bond" - Indiana Jones.

And of course Harrison looked like Richard Kimble - he shot the inserts in between shooting days on The Fugitive.

C3PX said:

Wow, am I the only one who finds Shia LeBouf annoying and obnoxious in everything he is in?

Normally, I'd agree with you, but I honestly didn't mind him a bit in KOTCS.  But nearly everything else I've seen him in, it's like nails on a chalkboard.

Alright, it might be too late for this, but I just had a thought and felt I should suggest it, just in case.  Hell, maybe this is how you did it to begin with.

Anyway, I recently downloaded, through Pirate Bay, a very nice-looking 720p Blu-Ray rip of TMP.  I started watching it, but stopped for several reasons - one, all subtitles, including Klingon and Vulcan, are included in the English subtitle channel, requiring it to be turned on and off as needed, which irritates me; second, the primary audio track is Russian stereo, though the secondary is English 5.1 (it's just slightly annoying); and third, I'm encoding video and downloading torrents all at once, so VLC started stuttering hard not 10 minutes into the movie.

So I decided to pop in my Director's Edition DVD instead, which I assume you used as a starting point for this project.

My God what an awful transfer.

Now, since there's been a lot of Director's Edition effects that were noted as accidentally being left in Version 1 of your preservation, FF, and the DE transfer is terrible to begin with.  My suggestion is, basically (don't shoot me, please!) - start over, using the very good Blu-Ray transfer as the backbone (this would, unfortunately, require subtitles to be added manually), and adding in the additional shots as needed.  This would make the transfer much better throughout, and would eliminate (hopefully) all of the Director's Edition effects, including ones that may have been missed.  It also uses the original, no-star-background credits, and the blank-screen overture instead of the Director's Edition credits.

There's a controversy over DNR being applied to the Blu-Ray release, but it isn't noticeable at all upon conversion to standard def (since most Blu-Ray DNR controversies stem from the studios using the exact same DNR levels they did for DVD, it's just that the higher resolution makes it noticeable).

I honestly don't expect you to do this, since it would require starting over from scratch, but I think the overall benefits outweigh the hassle.  Then again, you've already gone through so much hassle with this project that I wouldn't blame you in the slightest if your response was "Fuck off, I'm not doing that."  Just a thought I had, and I would have regretted not bringing it up.

--edit--

As a side-note, I'm strongly considering using this as a base to create a Theatrical Cut DVD preservation, since many don't have Blu-Ray players or the capability to watch HD MKV files on their computers.  I think a 3-disc set with that, the Director's Edition, and your Special Longer Edition preservation would be absolutely perfect!  Does anyone know if the theatrical mono/stereo mix for the film is available anywhere (I assume the Blu-Ray's 5.1 mix is new)?

Hehe ... red AT-AT window ...

Solution to disliking the direction a show takes: stop watching it.  That doesn't mean it deserves to be cancelled, especially when it's a fact that it won't be lasting longer than the next season.  Why cancel something that has a built-in end date?  House - there's a show that's run its course, and I would not care one way or the other if it gets cancelled or not since, well, I stopped watching it.  The difference is that House doesn't have a definitive end date - it can go on forever.  Lost does - the next season will be its last.

No, Raiders and Crusade take place two years apart.

From the opening titles in each film (checked on my DVDs):

Raiders: South America, 1936
Temple of Doom: Shanghai, 1935
Last Crusade: Utah, 1912; Portugese Coast, 1938

I don't know about Crystal Skull outside of the fact that it was set in the fifties, since I don't own the DVD.

And the Temple of Doom prequel/sequel debate ultimately doesn't matter - it's set a year before, yes, but it was clearly meant to be seen after Raiders and not before.  It's a sequel.  It just happens to be set earlier.

Ziz said:

ChainsawAsh said:

So, since Terminator Salvation starts off at a 6.5 for me, I have a strong feeling that once McG's supposed director's cut comes out, a fanedit of that can bump it up to about a 7 or 7.5.

Depends what, if any, deleted material there will be to work with for an edit.  Also, see this article for the good and bad of what T:S was supposed to be.

 

Wow - that's very interesting.  I like a lot of the concepts (I, for one, wouldn't have hated the John Connor-as-Marcus Wright ending that everyone got so furious about), but the whole Project ANGEL thing just sounds terrible.  Damn it, Christian Bale - you should have just taken the Marcus role and had Jonathan Nolan come in and fix things that were wrong with the script, not add unnecessary John Connor scenes!

The SE doesn't have that ending.  There's technically 3 versions:

- Theatrical
- SE
- Super-Extended SE

The "SEE" is basically just an Easter Egg on the UE DVD.  It contains the scene of the T-1000 "searching" John's room that's cut out of both of the other versions, and the "flash-forward" ending.  I've heard it's also included on the "Skynet Edition" Blu-Ray as well.  The "Extreme Edition" has the regular SE without these two scenes as the default version, and the theatrical version as an Easter Egg.

And on further reflection, I'd also keep the SE scene of the T-1000 killing Max the dog and discovering that its name was not, in fact, Wolfie.

Just got back from seeing it.  My verdict?

Nowhere near as awful as I was expecting.  I give it a 6.5 out of 10.  To compare that to the others:

The Terminator - 9.5/10
Terminator 2: Judgment Day [Theatrical Cut] - 8.5/10
Terminator 2: Judgment Day [Special Edition] - 9/10 (would graduate to 9.5/10 if the chip-resetting and the T-1000 malfunctioning were the only added scenes)
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines - 4/10
Terminator 3: The Coming Storm [Uncanny Antman fanedit] 6.5/10

So, since Terminator Salvation starts off at a 6.5 for me, I have a strong feeling that once McG's supposed director's cut comes out, a fanedit of that can bump it up to about a 7 or 7.5.

--edit-- They all work now.  Nevermind.

Wait, you're trying to open a text file in VLC?  I don't understand.

Yeah, the whole yellow/normal skin-color thing was the best thing about Vader's appearance in ESB - it actually made him look like a burn victim.  Yet another thing that was just forgotten in ROTJ when Luke took Vader's mask off.

Here's how it's done on a Mac, anyway - I can't imagine it will be too terribly different on a PC:

File - Open Disc

Then you get the options of VIDEO_TS Directory or DVD - if you choose DVD, it will read your disc drive.  If you choose VIDEO_TS directory, you can point it to said directory (the VIDEO_TS folder of the DVD files on your hard drive).

As I said in my last post, I'm pretty sure they'll do what they did with Army of Darkness and ignore the ending of the previous movie to make up an entirely new beginning of the next one.  Remember, Evil Dead II ended when Ash went back to the Middle Ages, blows the head off a flying Deadite, and is hailed as a savior by the knights, while Army of Darkness begins with Ash going back to the Middle Ages and being captured for being a spy for Henry the Red.