Fang Zei

TFN is the darkside of being a Star Wars fan first and a movie fan second. I stopped posting there the moment everyone lept to Lucasfilm's defense after they announced they were putting 1993-quality transfers on frickin' dvd. Only a few months later, and just a few weeks after said transfers-on-dvd streeted, I stopped lurking here and started posting.

Also, they're not really competing with each other since Bond is hitting a whole month before ep7.

The real head-scratcher is the Bad Robot-produced M:I-5 hitting within only a week or so of Star Wars. Some people are theorizing it's because Paramount expects Disney to push it back to May of '16. I've even heard the wild theory that the studio bosses know something the rest of us don't and that a December '15 date for Star Wars is only there to keep the shareholders happy until the time is right to announce a new date.

I've ranted about this before, but the blu-rays of Aliens and Evil Dead are not those films' theatrical versions as far as I'm concerned. The directors just couldn't help themselves and had to digitally erase things that were visible in the original release.

CO said:

I have always said if Lucas would have just changed a few special effects in the OT movies, fans like me would still be on his side. 

I only got mad when he started tampering with scenes:  Greedo shooting first, deleting Sebastian Shaw from the force ghost, and Jedi Rocks.

Even though I still prefer the OOT versions, I wouldn't have complained as much as I do now, and probably would have just lived with the SE if he just updated effects.

 

Didn't realize I posted in this thread in October 2005.  Oh well, atleast I have been consistent:

CO said:

Kinda agree with everyone, if it was just effects, I don't have a problem with it. But when it comes to additional scenes, or change/editing a scene, it is insulting, and makes me want O-OT even more. Lucas could have just really updated the effects in the original Star Wars, and slightly touched ESB & ROTJ and we all would have 'lived' with these SE Editions. But again, Lucas has miscalculated his original fanbase.

 

 

This kinda/sorta is how I feel, although what you described would still - for the most part - be the SE we actually got, simply minus the story changes like Greedo shooting first, etc.

If the '97 release had been nothing more than a true restoration of the films, we wouldn't have complained. Unfortunately, as KilroyMcFadden pointed out, George's SE kinda went hand in hand with his plans for the prequels. I should clarify that it's not the story of the movies that bothers me so much as the fact that George wrote the screenplay all by himself (okay, some help in that department on aotc) and directed the movies instead of hiring three new directors.

I've always thought it would be an interesting expirement to watch the theatrical cuts of all six films and see how well the PT blends with the OOT.

AntcuFaalb said:

Laserschwert said:

bkev said:

They were pretty prevalent in Super8 and didn't detract from how much I love that film

Granted, with "Super 8" he mimicked "Close Encounters" both in style and tone, and CE was FULL of lens flares, so that was pretty spot on (no pun intended). Generally Spielberg used them a LOT in his most iconic movies, and they never bothered me a bit.

Isn't the difference that JJ had to digitally add them in for Super8 whereas CE had them because that's the way that real-film Panavision cameras worked back then?

Hmmm? It was shot in the exact same format (anamorphic panavision). I would think the flares in Super8 are all in-camera.

Anyway, to be fair, there are some subtle (and probably unintentional) lensflares in the OT. The shootout in the detention block of the Death Star comes to mind.

Wasn't JJ's lensflare obsession pretty much limited to his Star Trek movies? I remember a line on the audio commentary about his idea being "the future is so bright you can't contain it." I don't remember there being much lensflare in M:I-3.

The big difference is that today's record-breakers seem almost manufactured to be record-breakers. They're the most expensive movies usually, whereas Star Wars was (relatively) low-budget. The Dark Knight and Avatar, while both risky and innovative, still had the full financial support of Hollywood behind them. If you adjust for inflation, Star Wars would cost around $50 million today. If you adjust to 2005 dollars, it would be just a little more than Serenity's $40 million. Has anything in the last eight years with that low of a budget really burned up the box office to Dark Knight / Avengers / Avatar levels??? That first Hunger Games movie comes to mind, but even that had a built-in fanbase from the books.

While that's a valid concern, I think Super 8 showed Abrams isn't all shaky cam and lens flares. He mimicked 70's Spielberg pretty well in that movie, and these rumors about how he's trying to get the look of the film grain just right for Ep7 say to me that he's trying to make a movie that feels of a piece with the OT.

I see Abrams going back to the original 1977 film just as he went back to CE3K era Spielberg with Super 8. That means exploring the potential of a story set in that galaxy far, far away. We didn't see a lightsaber until a good half hour into ANH, and we only saw them used twice more in that movie. Han Solo's role as surrogate for the skeptics in the audience provided a great dynamic for the other characters to play off of. Plinkett really hit the nail on the head when he pointed out how hard it is to describe the PT characters without simply stating their profession.

There's a great 15-part documentary, made just a couple years ago, that TCM has been showing another installment of every Monday called The Story of Film: An Odyssey. Mark Cousins wrote, directed and narrated this amazing history of - what else - motion pictures, going all the way back to Edison and the Lumiere Brothers.

Empire is randomly referenced about 48 minutes into the very first chapter (the scene between Vader and Ozzel is given as a good example of the 180-degree rule from sixty years after it was first used) and then again, halfway through chapter five, talking about Lea Brackett's contributions to the Noir genre and how Luke finding out Vader's his father was a very noir idea in a very mainstream movie. Both instances could've been using the '04 master but I can't really tell since neither clip had changes (and my memory of the different color timings is spotty).

Chapter eleven, about pop culture exploding around the world in the 70's, covers The Exorcist, Jaws and then Star Wars in the last few minutes. The crawl is the '77 version, and the rest seems to be taken from the GOUT as well, so they must've cropped it to 16:9.

The entire 15-part series is up on Netflix, so if anyone has access they can give their opinion on where the clips are sourced from.

OneCentSky said:

I can live with a special edition that restores the image substantially but keep the original special effects (which means no CGI at all), and please give Boba Fett his original voice back for Empire and Jedi.

What you're describing isn't a "special edition" (which makes it sound like some sort of luxury), but what the vast majority of movies made since the time of Star Wars - and many from the decades preceding it - have recieved. George's "special edition" mistook alteration for improvement.

Well, that was a random spam bump, but this is something I've been wanting to comment on anyway so here goes:

Now that Disney's set a December 2015 release date for Episode 7, anyone else wanna bet they put out a remastered OOT on blu-ray that September?? It makes too much sense for them not to. At the very least, I would bet we're gonna start hearing rumblings and rumors very soon of how Disney plans to handle an OOT release. There is of course the matter of Fox still owning the distribution rights, but that can be worked out. If George signed away everything on his end, that's all that really matters.

How and when Disney chooses to release it is up to them.

My ultimate point is that it's not so much about "if" as it is about "when" and, more importantly, "how." While we all seem to have our own, individual ideas of what we'd want to see included, we can all agree that the OOT should be given the most thorough restoration possible. I've read so many stories, articles and anecdotes over the years that it's become hard for me to separate fact from fiction regarding the OT film materials.

This seemed as good a thread as any to post in, since I think our focus now should be in making sure Disney does right by the films.

I was hoping - perhaps naively - that Ep7 would be made at the same pace as the original film, which started shooting in March of '76 and was in theaters just fourteen months later.

Abrams started shooting Into Darkness just sixteen months before its release, but we keep hearing about a Spring start date for production, so maybe fourteen months was a stretch.

I think if we had it our way, Abrams and Kasdan would continue to work on the script for one more year, principal photography wouldn't start until March of '15, and Disney would release it in theaters May of 2016.

Oh, and they'd let 20th Century Fox release it in theaters purely for nostalgia ;)

Honestly, the December release is probably due more to lack of competition at the Box Office than anything else. Summer of 2015 will be a much different beast than 1999. The World of Warcraft movie is also scheduled for December 18, but Universal will probably push it back to March now that they'd be going up against Star Wars.

It's important to remember that Disney didn't just buy Lucasfilm so they could make money. They did it so they could make a whole shit-ton of money. Putting it out in a December landscape where they could clean up at the box office well into the winter months always made more sense than competing in a summer arena filled with the other studios' prized fighters. That's already gonna be a bloodbath without throwing Ep7 into the fray. 

Considering the budget on this thing will probably be big (200 million just seems to be the expected norm these days for a movie like this), and that Bob Iger has been promising a 2015 release over and over again, a summer 2016 release was probably never gonna happen.

Hey, we're looking at a roughly year-and-a-half schedule from the start of production to release. That's still a signifigantly tighter schedule than on the prequels, which filmed two whole years ahead of release since every shot was gonna have some kind of visual effect. Also, Episode VIII will probably be a summer release since I'm pretty sure the Avatar sequels are squatting December for the next three years after that.

http://badassdigest.com/2013/10/18/look-at-all-my-sith-darth-vader-tv-specials

Adywan started a thread about this already, but I thought it was worth posting here also.

According to this, it appears Disney is still planning a Memorial Day release for Ep7. They're yet to say anything official in terms of an actual date, but I think it's worth noting that none of the other studios have set anything big for that weekend either.

Ah, so the Darth Vader specials would be all the stuff we wanted to see in Ep3? I hadn't considered that. Something about the word "specials" just made me scratch my head and I never would've considered they might've actually meant "made-for-tv movies." I guess we'll find out soon enough.

DuracellEnergizer said:

 

imperialscum said:

Well I don't mind seeing some stuff introduced in the prequels (planets, double-bladed lightsabre etc.)

This is a tangent, but I'd just like to clarify that the double-bladed lightsaber is an EU invention, not a PT one. Lucas just lifted it for his own purposes.

 

One of my friends told me about how pissed he was in the theater when Maul turned out to have a double-bladed lightsaber. Even after I told him that Terry Brooks' novelization makes it clear Maul got the idea from reading about Exar Kun, my friend only took it as Lucas saying to the fans "Oh, yeah, I've got your expanded universe right here" (motions towards crotch). He was also disappointed not to have any mention of spaarti cylinders or Jorus C'Boath in the PT.

That TPM novelization was the beginning of the EU bending over backwards to reconcile the fans' expectations with George's vision. I think it was Cloak of Deception where C'Boath shows up at the Jedi temple. One of the clone wars comics (from '02-'05) explained that it was a crashed Trade Federation ship carrying toxic chemicals that ruined Honoghr. Zahn himself even wrote a clone wars short story around that same time.

Regarding the whole "explanation of the force in the PT and the OT," I don't see how Qui-Gon's midichlorian story to Anakin in TPM contradicts Yoda's talk to Luke in ESB. Qui-Gon simply said "without the midichlorians, life could not exist and we would have no knowledge of the force," meaning they are the conduit through which the force connects with the living world

imperialscum said:

I don't care too much about EU books and some of them should most definitely be ignored (like Dark Empire for example). But on the other hand, I couldn't care less if Chewie is not in the new films.

+1

They can (and should) "ignore" what's happened in the EU over the 40 or so in-universe years since RotJ. By this I mean they don't need to bring any of it up. If they came up with a good story with original characters and make it in the spirit of the original '77 film, it's doable. In that film we were seeing this universe through the eyes of the characters, discovering it as they did (something Abrams took to heart in Trek '09). Have Chewie's kid(s) take over his role. Boom, problem solved. I, for one, wouldn't mind a passing line ala Indy looking at a photo of his dad in Crystal Skull. I really don't see why Chewbacca himself simply must be in the movie.

But what I don't want them to do is suddenly "pretend it never happened" (i.e. a hard reboot of the EU), unless they pull a TCW and sandwich the entire ST somewhere into the years before Vector Prime. I wouldn't want them to do either of these things (reboot or sandwiching), but then again I honestly don't see them doing it anyway.

In response to SilverWook's question, it was TCW (the cgi series) that threw a big huge wrench into the continuity works of the entire existing clone wars canon at the time. This was, I believe, the first time LFL's "different levels of canonicity" excuse was used so blatantly, although I could be wrong.

I could see an EU reboot seriously pissing off a lot of fans. Lucasfilm always said the books were canon, even if they were a lower level of canon. There've been serious shakeups to the continuity, but Lucasfilm has always been able to retcon it away.

If Chewie being in the movie is that damned important to everyone, the only way I see it working is by setting the movie (hell, the whole ST) prior to the events of the NJO. They could probably pull it off, with the help of some digital de-aging on the big three.

What I would much rather prefer they do is simply set the movie whenever they are now in the books.

On the subject of levels in Star Wars games so difficult you have a nervous breakdown, playing as the Imperials on the Kashyyyk - Islands map in Battlefront (for PS2, if it matters) is damn near impossible to win. The Rebels have a huge advantage, I'm guessing because of the Wookiee reinforcements. I've played it countless times in Instant Action and the best scenario is that I play as a pilot, take one of the Rebel's command posts, then jump back into the TIE, clear a path to the Rebel's main command post's entrance before landing (it's inside a Wookiee house) manage to take said command post (which takes much longer than the other posts) and distract/kill enough Rebel units who try to get inside and kill me. Then, by the time I'm inevitably killed, the Imperials hopefully still have a base with vehicles so I can fly around, pick off some Rebels from the air and keep making sure I've got a base so the Rebels can't win.

In any scenario, there's at least 40 Imperials left by the time all my dudes are killed. If there are any more it's usually impossible for me to win, since they can get enough units to all of the bases to kill me or just spawn right in as I'm in the middle of trying to take their base. I've ended the match with 50-60 kills and no deaths and still lost. I think I might've beat it one time the old-fashioned way by just having an insanely good ground game as a soldier, but air superiority seems the only real way to go.

Interesting to read such a ringing endorsement of the Corellian Trilogy. I might have to check that out at some point.

Indeed.

It reminds me of that mind-boggling story of how all those canisters of film from Blade Runner were sitting on a pallet waiting to be junked and were saved only because the actual order to junk them was never given.

I also heard Universal threw out a lot of their archived film material in the 60's just so they could make more room.

Episode VII: The Forgiveness of Blood

Episode VIII: Lucky Number Slevin

Episode IX: Gigli

Whatever they go with will need to be vague-sounding just as the first installment of the PT and the retconned title of the '77 film were. It's episodes 8 and 9 when the title can actually give something about the plot away.

Hmmmm, things just got a little more interesting on the release date front....

Disney just moved Pirates of the Caribbean 5 out of 2015 altogether. I'd completely forgotten about it. It was to have hit on July 10th, but with Ant-Man now hitting on July 31st they'd basically be competing with themselves. Also, small detail: there's no script for the movie yet.

So, where does this leave Episode 7?

Disney's Pixar movie Inside Out hits June 19th, and they've got a Marvel movie a month and a half away on either side. Things are nicely spaced out for them now, and they've got enough competition as it is. Universal just set a June 12th date for Jurassic Park IV.

Finding Dory comes out November 25th. Disney doesn't have any serious competition in December to worry about, just animated flicks and oscar bait. Putting out Episode VII December 23rd would see it going up against Kung Fu Panda 3, but that's counterprogramming anyway.

Anything could happen, and I'm not completely ruling out the traditional late-May release, but this December business is looking more and more likely.