Darth Lucas

Imagine the story of the prequels told from the point of view of Luke Skywalker.  Let me explain:

The story would begin after ROTJ where we find luke by means of the force traveling back in time to prevent his father from turning to the dark side and stopping the empire from ever being formed. 

Do you think this idea would have worked as an effective way to tell the story?

Good. Can we start talking about despeciallzed again?

Harmy said:

Wow! One of your best videos to date IMHO :-)

 Agreed 100%

What if we took the idea of expanding Maul's character even further?  In The Phantom Menace we find him on the mission with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon.  He is not either of their apprentices, rather is portrayed as an ambitious jedi who received an opportunity to shadow and study under the two great students of Yoda.  It is implied they've been on many adventures together.  I feel this could be accomplished by inserting an actor as stated before and having him say a line every so often in between Obi and Qui-Gon's making him seem to be a part of the conversations.  The Galactic Federation (a separate government to the Republic) is looking to take over the Republic, being controlled by a mysterious Sith Lord called Darth Vader, who we never see.  There is a mystery as to who or what Vader is.  On the mission at the beginning Maul gets separated or something and is presumed dead.  Only to turn up at the end, revealing himself to be the mysterious Darth Vader, having turned to the dark side in search of greater power not found with the jedi.  This leads into the duel and adds a ton of extra meaning and weight when he kills Qui-Gon.  This also deals with the part of ANH that makes is painfully obvious Anakin is vader which is when Obi-Wan says to Luke "who was a pupil of mine until he turned evil." without making Obi-Wan technically have another apprentice, as Maul wouldn't be a full on student trained by Obi-Wan, simply a lower-class Jedi shadowing him.

Cast an actor as Tarkin to replace Jar Jar's political role in AOTC and possibly have him replace Mas Amedda as Palpatine's second-hand man.

Also a plus of this idea is (with little editing) you could still have the scenes where Palps finds crusty vader by the lava and Vader is "constructed" and put in the suit.  Since the burned up body is fairly unrecognizeable, you may just assume it's Maul/Vader.  The only giveaways would be lack of horns and the close up of his face, easily edited around to be less obvious.

ben_danger said:

As much as using other people as "Vaders" to mask Darth Vader's identity - is there not the danger that the big reveal in Episode V would suggest that the dead Anakin Skywalker is not Luke's father, but actually it was the red guy?

 Absolutely there is, but I don't see that as a "danger".  There are a few possibilities going through your mind when "I am your father" comes up: 

He's lying.

Maul/Vader is Luke's father? wtf?

Anakin is actually the Vader in the suit.

Ultimately you get the same thoughts as when you originally saw ESB and heard the reveal.  Now, I never really thought preserving the reveal was as important as other people do, simply because in most edits I find that good story ends up being sacrificed to accommodate the reveal, but upon stumbling upon this idea, I feel it's a way we can create both a good story and also preserve the reveal.

How's this for radical:  Have an actor play maul to be greenscreened into AOTC and ROTS.  In AOTC Maul replaces Dooku and is the main antagonist of all 3 films but is never referred to as "Darth Maul" but always as "Darth Vader".  In ROTS, everything culminates on mustafar as before, but with Obi Wan and Anakin both going together to face off against "Vader".  The duel commences as before but ends on the thing sinking into the lava.  Obi Wan force jumps to safety, but Anakin and Vader both are too late and fall over the lava waterfall together.  We would then move the scene where Obi-Wan looks at the security hologram more toward the end of the film, after the duel, but heavily edited.  It plays out as before with Yoda "If into the security holograms you go only pain will you find" and whatnot and Obi-Wan's response saying he has to know the truth.  But we never see what Obi-Wan sees in the hologram; just him with a shocked expression saying "it can't be.  it can't be."  

What this does is make it so we aren't confused as hell later during Ben's speech in ROTJ.  It all makes sense.  When he explains everything suddenly we as an audience know what he saw in the hologram.  Anakin turning to the dark side.  They both went over, but only Anakin survived.  He BECAME Darth Vader, literally taking over the life of his predecessor.  But before the reveal we assume that Maul/Vader survived and was pimped out with the robotics and suit to keep him alive.  

I have always hated the ideas and edits that simply remove anakin turning altogether or make it seem as though he died on Mustafar.  It still makes Obi-Wan seem like a lying asshole in ANH and diminishes greatly the surprise in ESB and honestly I feel it completely fails in it's sole purpose of preserving that reveal.  My way you don't feel like Obi-Wan is a lying asshole, the reveal is preserved and actually enhanced because you are presented a mystery of what Obi-Wan saw in the security hologram, and you are given clues  and suspicion.  This mystery is only completely answered in ROTJ.  The only problem I can think of would be explaining how Obi-Wan got Anakin's lightsaber to give to Luke.

Here's the first of a set I'm working on.  I will use this on the case that holds Harmy's Despecialized and Respecialized Editions.

Quick!  Everybody send Frink a Myspleen invite!

I see a huge box set being released some day with every version of every film in it.  I mean if they restored the OOT then they would just have to add in the digital elements from the SE that they surely still have saved somewhere to recreate the other versions.

Hey Mike, I have a hypothetical question for you.  You have said that you have no interest in restoring Empire or Jedi.  However, in the hypothetical situation where the execs at Disney see what you've done, love it, and want to release it, but only under the condition that you restore the other films and let them release them as a set, would you then consider it?

Rox64 said:

JT 1138 said:

Rox64 said:

Oh well, I never use VLC (I'm a MPC-HC user), I only downloaded VLC to see if MPC-HC was buggy.  But nope, both freezes or give problems in the same scenarios.  I could try other media player but I guess the problem resides in the iso.

Nevertheless, it's good to know that's a usual problem with VLC.

I would try re-encoding the ISO using handbrake to either a mkv or mp4.  Probably won't solve the problem, but I'm not sure what else you can do at this point.

 But as far as I know, Handbrake's re-encoding isn't lossless, or am I wrong?

I have tried a new version of MPC-HC.  It cannot render the iso when mounted, and if you manually open the m2ts it plays the video, but there's no sound.

I don't understand anything. EDIT: I tried remuxing it with MKVmerge without using TSMuxer.  Again, no success.

Handbrake can do lossless encoding by putting the RF value at 0, but takes a century and a half to encode.

Have any of you tried your hand/have the money for Adobe Encore?  I've had great luck with it authoring dvds and blu rays in the past and it is fairly user friendly

RU.08 said:

Darth Lucas said:

I meant no disrespect, or to compare said preservation to the GOUT (what an insult that would be), only to make the point that we shouldn't look at any preservation and think 'eh.  good enough.  no need to continue'.  We should always be pushing to improve said projects as a community simply because Disney HASN'T offered to sell us the film in as good quality as it deserves to be.  Again, this isn't to say the 16mm preservation is bad.  Far from it, my friend.  It is absolutely phenomenal and far better than I thought I would see this film in my life.

Ok, but there's still plenty of other films to worry about. SOTS now has a very acceptable release, there's no rush to do it in 35mm, at least not ahead of all the other Disney movies that really need the treatment.

I absolutely agree.  No rush at all.  Was just posing an opinion as to the grand scheme of things is all. =P  

And if I were to wager my two cents I would say that just about every single Disney film "really needs the treatment".  The "restorations" done by Disney are absolutely atrocious and really get on the nerves of a guy like me who is a huge Disney fan and wants to be able to see all the films the way they were created, not the overly restored, reanimated, DNR'd messes that are being released.  It would be interesting if a team like TN1 was put together but specializing in restoring and preserving Disney films.  Prioritizing which films need it most and going to work to make it so these incredibly important films are not lost in time forever. :P  Not that I would do it, simply because I do not have the time, hardware or patience, personally.  But it's a nice "what if" situation to think about.

RU.08 said:

Darth Lucas said:

It's a bit like looking at the GOUT and saying "well compared to what was available before it, I don't see how anyone can complain".  Yeah, it's better than what we had before, but it's not the best that it can and should be.

Wow, that's your attitude towards somebody that has preserved this for you for free? It's not as if Disney sold you this release. It's not your print that you had scanned either.

 I meant no disrespect, or to compare said preservation to the GOUT (what an insult that would be), only to make the point that we shouldn't look at any preservation and think 'eh.  good enough.  no need to continue'.  We should always be pushing to improve said projects as a community simply because Disney HASN'T offered to sell us the film in as good quality as it deserves to be.  Again, this isn't to say the 16mm preservation is bad.  Far from it, my friend.  It is absolutely phenomenal and far better than I thought I would see this film in my life.

RU.08 said:

I got it, and a few others got it, I'm not sure if I should post sceenshots though. It has a purple-tint (especially in the dark areas), the colours are much more vibrant than the 16mm, and it's missing part of a shot with br'er rabbit.

The 16mm is still very good, and it's complete. Compared to what was available before it, I don't see how anyone can be disappointed in having it.

 It's a bit like looking at the GOUT and saying "well compared to what was available before it, I don't see how anyone can complain".  Yeah, it's better than what we had before, but it's not the best that it can and should be.

Now I'm just waiting for a dance re-mix of the probe droid sound fx.

what u have to unserstand is not just the rule, but WHY it is in place. The only reason lucasfilm has not shut down all of our operations is because we aren't profiting, and we aren't costing them anything. If we all were to be lenient about not having to own the source material, we would be costing them money because people would be getting fan edits and restorations instead of the official BDs.  If you want harmy to be able to continue to do what he does without any problems and if u want ot.com to continue to exist, u should really own the official release or at least not flaunt and defend the fact that u havent bought it. 

I will probably release one for sorcerer's and one for philosophers. I personally favor philosophers but if there's enough interest in a separate release for sorcerers I will ablige. It only involves swapping out a couple scenes.

Nothing like seeing a good "Holy shit!" come from Harmy.

But that is indeed awesome.

Not a clip, but something visual for eyeballs.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/108452

I certainly prefer the visual style of the earlier films, (my favorite is POA) however making all the films adhere to that style is just not possible. So my gener idea is just creating a more natural flow of visual style so that the difference between films is not so jarring. This includes maybe adding some visual concepts from earlier films into the later ones (color, etc.)  as well as adding some from later film into earlier (wand replacement, etc).  

As for the deleted scenes, I did say all unless they create continutiy errors. So if the scene does not exist in it's entirety, or requires extensive effects work beyond my skill level, it unfortunately will not make the cut. The grey lady scene would be a good example of something I would not be able to accomplish with my skill set and would create visual continuity errors as is. 

Well I don't think the idea was ever that there was only ONE invisibility cloak, rather that it was a very specific, special invisibility cloak.  That is was Death's own invisibility cloak.  My plans don't really include cutting anything out.  My plans for the Deathly Hallows is to more greatly emphasize their importance, rather than brush them even more under the rug.

I am working on some tests.  I think first test clip will be ollivander's to show wand replacement.

Ideas and feedback still welcome and appreciated.