Darth Lars

nightstalkerpoet said:

The only official film sequel to The Wizard of Oz is an animated film. There have been quite a few remakes and different takes on the story, but nothing that touches on the direct continuity of Star Wars.

From what I have read, Return to Oz (1985), starring Fairuza Balk was supposed to be a direct sequel to The Wizard of Oz. It may not be complete, but it is taking elements from book 2 and 3.

By the way, while looking up the movie on IMDB, I came across the following:

"Director Walter Murch invited friend George Lucas to visit the set one day. During that visit Lucas wandered to different sound stages where he came across producer RickMcCallum working on a small film. The two became friends and later collaborated on the "Star Wars" prequels."

Many fans of J.R.R. Tolkien were disappointed when Peter Jackson announced that his adaptation of the single book "The Hobbit" was going to be released as three movies, with the story stretched out into all three movies and with a lot of cruft inserted into them that is not part of Tolkien's book. The first movie will be released in December 2012, but the third movie is not scheduled for release until mid-2014.

I believe that there is a strong desire among fans to have an edit Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy that is condensed as one movie, as well as there being a desire among fan-editors to make separate edits of each movie. The purpose of this thread is both to collect ideas and to list resources that could be used for such fan-edits. I have not done any fan-edit but I would like to help how I can, and also to speed things along so that I can see them sooner...

Although there can not be a fan-edit of the complete story until after a Blu-Ray release of the 2014 movie, I think that the community is able to collect ideas from the original book and resources that consist of other adaptations that have already been made. For instance, the text in the book is sometimes in verse and in a narrative style, and some think that the movie(s) should have a narrator. It also contains several songs, that we yet do not know whether they will be in Peter Jackson's movie or not, and most of them will probably be sung with different music.

Films:

The Hobbit (1977)
Narrator at the beginning.
Soundtrack reckord
Songs: Blunt the knives. Misty Mountains (Thorin + dwarves)

Movie Soundtrack:

The Hobbit (1977)
Several songs, both original and new for the movie.

The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey (2012)
Songs: Blunt the Knives,  Misty Mountains Cold (Thorin + dwarves)

Audio books:

One type of resources are all the audio books/radio dramatizations that exist.
each has a narrative voice that could be used. 

The radio books are quite easy to find on the net, if you know what to look for. Samples can be heard on the web without having to download.

BBC Radio Drama (1968)
Full cast.
Duration 3h, 25min.

Audio book, Harper Collins  
Narrator: Rob Inglis
Duration: 11 hours (Unabridged version)

Audio Book, Argo, (1974)
Narrator: Nicol Williamsson
Duration 3h, 42min  (Abridged version)

zombie84 said:

Carrie Fisher went though, even though she had no scenes. She just wanted to hang out.

Carrie Fisher visited some friends in Sweden before she went to Norway, so she had a reason to be in that part of the world besides shooting Star Wars.

I also think that it is possible that they had planned to shoot scenes with Carrie Fisher but had to cancel. After she had arrived in Finse, she soon fell ill and spent most of her time in her hotel room ... They also experienced a heavy storm that severely influenced the shooting schedule. They shot the scene with Luke in the storm escaping from the Wampa's cave then because it was the only scene that they could shoot at the time.

 

skyjedi2005 said:

So the picture with him visiting the set with Mark and Carrie in winter gear must be at elstree then.

Must be nice to wear winter jackets under those hot lights.

Only the exterior shots were shot in Finse, except for the shot of Mark Hamill sitting in his X-wing about to take off, which was shot at Elstree with only sky as the background.

Are you thinking of the crew jackets? The crew jackets were worn everywhere, including indoors at Elstree, etc.

LexX said:

The films are subtitled. 3D prices are from 8 euros to 13 euros depending on the time, day and place.

That was Finland. I think that I should mention how it is in Sweden, one of Finland's closest neighbours.

The ticket price was 130 SEK. That is close to 15 Euros, or 20 USD.

All foreign movies in Sweden are subtitled, except childrens movies that get dubbed in Swedish ... TPM-3D is the first Star Wars movie ever to get dubbed in Swedish! This means that for the first time, the theatre company viewed the movie as a movie for children. The dub was made last year, with different actors than the animated Clone Wars. A subtitled version with the original language was also shown.

BTW, I find subtitles in 3D movies to be a bit strange. The subtitles are in front of the movie screen pretty close to you.

From http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/magazine/george-lucas-red-tails.html?pagewanted=3&_r=4&hpw

“On the Internet, all those same guys that are complaining I made a change are completely changing the movie,” Lucas says, referring to fans who, like the dreaded studios, have done their own forcible re-edits. “I’m saying: ‘Fine. But my movie, with my name on it, that says I did it, needs to be the way I want it.’ ”

Does this mean that GL does not want his name in Adywan's fan edit?

I propose that his name in the credits be changed into "Alan Smithee" to make GL happy ...

“Why would I make any more,” Lucas says of the “Star Wars” movies, “when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?"

I laughed so hard when I read this ...

TMBTM said:

3 - If you want to make a fanedit of his work, then "fine", but be sure to remove his name from the credits. (big news!)

So... George wants Adyway to replace his name in the credits with "Alan Smithee"?

adywan said:

Here is this years Revisited clip for Christmas. This scene is mostly complete apart from the overhead gantry matte shots( just after Luke gets his hand cut off), where i will be replacing the background matte and one close-up shot of Vader. This scene uses the Blu-rays as a source.

Thanks! I like that you fixed the wobbling helmet and made the tubes glow where they were cut.

I had not noticed before that there was an echo to Luke's voice. I think that an echo feels unnatural in that environment. I checked that scene on a laserdisc-rip (OOT) a few times. Apparently, it has been there all the time. Too bad..

However, I also noticed the colours of the windows in the chasm.  The elongated windows ("dotted line") are not red in all shots, but sometimes much more orange. In that way, the BluRay is actually closer to the original.

I would like to propose that you make all elongated windows that are now red changed into a more consistent hue of reddish orange. That change would provide a richer image and be more true to the original, I think. I also think that the hue does not need to be so saturated. Saturated colours attract the eye, and the lights are supposed to be in the background.

I also think that you could add some haze to your new matte paintings of the chasm. That would improve the sense of scale.

Ian McDiarmid is awesome as Palpatine. It is as if he is the only actor who takes his role seriously. Some memorable quotes:

"I will make it legal"

"Wipe them out. All of them."

"I love democracy. I love the republic."

"The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural"

Other than that, I would say the lightsaber battle at the end of The Phantom Menace is one of the best scenes, even though it was cut up to be interspersed with other battle scenes. I think that it was better than any of the other duels in the prequels. It was also influential in the fan community ... countless fan-films were made that had duels in them where at least one of the opponents wielded a dual-bladed lightsaber like Darth Maul's.

If I had kids, I would never try to raise them as Star Wars fans. I would make available the original Star Wars trilogy (probably "despecialized" editions), Indiana Jones 1 and 3 (the two movies in the trilogy), The Terminator and Terminator 2, etc. and so on, and allow them to watch them if they want to. That's it.

If they bring home anything that is labeled "Star Wars", then I would take it away from them ... unless it is vintage, of course. hmm.. on second though, I would take it away from them especially if it is vintage -- but only to put it into a glass case.

Tyrphanax said:

I honestly felt like the bunker scenes were bad takes and they just didn't "flow" or "move" correctly. They seemed clunky and claustrophobic and squeezed-in.

I think that they could be made to flow much better if the cuts were trimmed a little bit here and there.

One thing I don't like is that Han is appearing too stressed and impatient and not as cool and in control as in the film, but that could be remedied by just silencing his lines. For instance, the line "Charges, come one, come one" could be changed into just "Charges".

All PAL releases have been sped up from 24 fps to 25 fps because PAL is 25 fps. Maybe that is what the chart is referring to... I dunno.

BTW, have the Stormtroopers' lines been changed back to the original on the Blurays? Someone told me, but I have not seen that written anywhere.

toho-scope said:

absolute hatred of Marcia and anything associated to Marcia (star wars/thx1138 /etc)

I almost wrote that, but I think that it applies only to the "Special Edition" of 1997, not to any of the more recent changes. There has to be something more.

I think that the biggest reason for the changes is to attract collectors. Collectors collect all variations of an item to get a "complete set". He has to make the new changes significant enough to make people want them for the changes.

I don't think that he cares, or even knows, about the problems with image quality. I think that it is apparent what kind of culture there is at Lucasfilm. George is the dictator, with a legion of yes-men at his disposal. The workers are concerned with the tasks and deadlines that they have been handed to them. Lucas noticed a few things that he wants fixed, but nobody is brave enough to tell him about the other faults.

The Aluminum Falcon said:

 I've always wondered why they just didn't use the original ESB and ROTJ Yoda puppet, which beat any CGI... :P

The original puppet and molds were not available. Latex rubber is a natural material and deteriorates very quickly. The few latex masks that still exist from the original trilogy are in a very fragile state and look nothing like they did back when.

My condolences, Adywan.

To think that the old version of the trailer was released precisely two years ago. I ran them side by side and spotted differences:

A tweaked Emperor.
The X-wing has been added to the day-time approach to Bespin
Different asteroid chase scene
New background behind snowspeeders. (This is precisely the view from the hotel at Finse. I recognized it right away!)
I really like the improved skies over Bespin.

I was wading through screen caps and I just noticed a goof in ROTJ. It has probable been mentioned before, but anyway ...

The grey-haired actor/extra who played the left of the two pilots of shuttle ST-321 in the opening scene, is in the very next scene standing right behind Moff Jerrjerrod in a uniform of another colour! I have (yet) not recognized the other pilot being anywhere.

I thought that "The Clone Wars" was the "damned-fool idealistic crusade" that Obi-Wan was talking of.

• It was "damned-fool". Considered pointless.
• It was "idealistic". To spread the rule of law, peace and prosperity outside the pre-Empire.
• It was a "crusade". A fight against non-believers. There was a strong enemy that did not share their ideology or religion.

MrPvlmichalek said:

this is my first post in here. I was wondering for a while since when was lightsaber supposed to have an ambient light as I haven´t seen such thing until Episode II and Jedi Outcast, both simultaneously released in 2002.

Already in Dark Forces II - Jedi Knight from 1997 you could use the lightsaber to light the environment around you.

In AOTC, Lucasfilm used flourescent tubes in a sequence of the fight between Anakin and Dooku that took place in a darker part of the hangar.

The thing with the freezing chamber in ESB was that the facilities and the freezing compound (carbonite) were not commonly used for freezing humanoids. I find it implied that cryogenic freezing did exist in the Star Wars universe, but that another technique was more common.

In the Clone Wars episode, I think that it would make sense if they were using a proper cryogenic freezing facility for the freezing process, freezing them within a proper cryogenic freezing medium... but it has been made public that carbonite is used ...

By the way, a short clip of Tarkin is available now. The American voice actor fails horribly at trying to emulate Peter Cushing's accent ...

My guess is that they are going to mess established storylines again... maybe the way Chewbacca and Han meet.

The last thing I read about the Tarkin story arc is that the Jedi are going to infiltrate a separatist stronghold by being frozen in carbonite ...

...

My head hurts ...

I use "What a wonderful smell you've discovered" much too often ...

Silly people talking about Indiana Jones movies that don't exist ...

Indiana Jones is called a "trilogy" but there are only two movies in it: Raiders of the Lost Ark. and The Last Crusade. There are no other movies. Period. I won't listen to any nonsense about it being otherwise ...

George Lucas said in an interview, April 1977:

Fox hates for me to say this, but Star Wars has always been intended as a young people's movie. While I set the audience for Graffiti at sixteen to eighteen, I set this one at fourteen and maybe even younger than that.

George Lucas in an interview in the New York Times, published on the 12th of September 1976:

It's for young people. 'Graffiti' was for 16-year-olds; this is for 14-year-olds. Young people don't have a fantasy life anymore, not the way we did. All they've got is Kojak and Dirty Harry. There's all these kids running around wanting to be killer cops.

So..

George Lucas: Fourteen

John Dykstra: Twelve