John Doom

Tobar said:

John Doom said:

DominicCobb said:

You do not have to stay true to the source. There's no rule that says that. There are plenty of films that have succeeded by not staying true to the source.

 That's true: Tim Burton's Batman movies come to mind, in a way.

 Burton's films were heavily inspired by the darker toned '80s Batman comics of the time.

I know: you can definitely see Miller's insipration down to the minutiae (Frankie must be a Corto Maltese fan, it seems :D)

But still, you get things like Bruce being portrayed as a psychopath, and Joker as the the one who murdered Bruce's parents. It was all done for a reason, though: to make a strong parallel between the protagonist and the antagonist, and it worked!

DominicCobb said:

You do not have to stay true to the source. There's no rule that says that. There are plenty of films that have succeeded by not staying true to the source.

 That's true: Tim Burton's Batman movies come to mind, in a way.

DominicCobb said:

The producers of Star Trek 09 decided that it would be a reboot, so, by nature, only staying true to the source in some ways. Not Abrams's decision.

According to Wikipedia, the producers were Damon Lindelof and J. J. Abrams, though :D

DominicCobb said:

Also, I would encourage all the people decrying Abrams's proclivity for camera shake and lens flare to watch the trailers for TFA again.

I didn't say they're going to be in TFA, just that I dislike his directing-style so far. I studied the teasers a lot (I also did this), and if you look closely, you can see camera shakings in there too, just toned down (which is good), and no lens flares. Doesn't mean it's necessarily going to be a good directing: you still have lifeless shots like this and this, but no camera shaking to revive them this time :D

danny_boy said:

Lucas could have shot the Phantom Menace with lens flares,shaky cams and rapid fire editing(ala Michal Bay) in 1998 but chose to preserve the static compositions and conservative editing(by 1990's standards)of the OT.    

:D If Abrams turns TFA into another "michael bay", it may require careful fan-editing to slow down the scenes, but how to fix shaky cameras and lens flares?

danny_boy said:

But one factor that affected the prequels which hardly anyone notices is that the audience already new where the plot and the characters were headed(they just did not know how) across all 3 episodes(I,II and III).

What was the main attraction of the OT whilst it was unfolding?......the idea that you had no idea where it was heading and who would survive and who would not.

Big difference.    

If you think about it, the only character we knew would survive were Anakin, the Emperor, Obi-wan, the droids and Yoda. Vader's motives were at the core of the prequels and kept the audience's interest high, but in the end they didn't carefully handled them :\

About Abrams, yesterday I (tried) to watch again Mission Impossible 3 to study his directing and, screenplay aside (which, I HOPE, he had nothing to do with), here's my opinion:

-the way he put faces VERY CLOSE to the frame is painful to watch, making the resulting screen look cropped. I think he said they look more "intimate", but they just look bad compositions to me;

-I understand quickly switching between shots is useful to give a sense of tension, but during gunfights he completely abused of this "trick", making half of the time hard to tell what is really going on;

-to this, add "lens flares": they're so strong (especially in the helicopter scene), that basically cover almost half the screen, making hard to se what's going on (though Abrams recently said he is aware of this issue and he's going to use them less);

-camera shaking: common "trick" to make the scene look live and add tension. He shaked it half the times so much (even when unnecessary) that it kind of gives you headache (again, helicopter scene).

So, so far I dislike his directing. Later on, I turned up TV and watched "Killer Joe" which was directed by William Friedkin, and his work looks WAY more professional than Abrams's.

Don't worry about your project: health goes first, take your time :)

Bingowings said:

So much of Vader is the body language just watch the last reel of ROTS for further evidence.

I agree: I always thought ROTS's Vader lacked of... "presence" on the set. Not sure if it was Hayden's performance or his armor (which looks pretty slim compared to the OT ones). Funny that Prowse doesn't need to speak (much) to make a good performance, which is true for his work in the OT, but also for A Clockwork Orange :D

Astroboi2 said:

Damn. I just typed an epic post and it somehow got deleted before I could put it up.

That's what happen when you surf the net using a Commodore64 :D

DominicCobb said:

Mike said it in the Undressing Underground podcast he did. I respect the hell out of him and all, but he seems to hate everything that's not the original film by default. So I'm taking his inside info with a grain of salt.

Well, I understand your opinion on Mr. Verta's take on the new movies, but there's no reason to doubt of what he said about his insiders: he just told us what he heard by himself.

P.S.: should it be "heard by himself" or "heard himself"? Tricky grammar :\

Tallguy said:

What are the Verta rumors?

Basically, Mr. Verta said that his insiders working on TFA's effects department think it's not a good movie (and that they said the same of the prequels): after working on it for 3 months, they showed up "depressed", called it ILM (Incredibly Low Morale) and that it's not Star Wars, just another picture. Of course, as Mr. Verta said, they worked on the special effects, so maybe they didn't get the whole picture, who knows. Good to know their opinion too, though.

Jar Jar's parody and otto in JonTron's new episode :D

Sevb32 said:

what if barbie had a hand grenade?

Well... close enough?

Anyway about TFA, the story should be fine (as long as Kasdan is involved), the actors' performances won't let down being who they are.

My only concerns are all about its genre: if it's your usual Marvel-style blockbuster, I'm not interested, being to me basically the same movie over and over again since the first X-Men movie. Also Abrams: I admit I haven't seen any of his Star Trek movies, but his Mission Impossible 3 was bad enough to me that I'm just a little concerned that TFA will be another action-packed-special-full-of-special-effects-with-ridiculous-plot-twists movie, and... Mr. Verta's rumors about TFA make my concerns actually legit by now.

Guess I'll have to wait and see for myself :D

They won't release a new version now, probably because they still need to complete this new restoration. I guess we'll probably have to wait a few years.

The digital release was just easy money to kill time before TFA, so it makes sense that they used the most recent master available, the one for the 2011 rerelease.

What about ROTJ in 3d?

I think the "hype" for 3d is almost gone by now: some years ago it was all about 3d, now it's about 4k (or 8k, or whatever). 3d also got unpopular because glasses were needed until now.

This may be on of the reasons why Disney is holding 3d rereleases back. Sure, TFA will be on 3d too, but it was mostly shot that way, so it costs them nothing to show it in that format, after all.

I'm not sure: we would possibly get better composited special effects (which would stand better with the new incoming trilogy), but then would we be ever able to see the originals ever again? :\

I wouldn't say Sion and Nihilus are pointless: from the in-game dialogues, I'd say they are a remainder to the Exile/player of what he/she can become in the worst case scenario, and they did it pretty well: I was legitimately afraid that my "wound" and my influence over people could've turned me into a Nihilus in the end (even if it's sadly impossible in the game).

You're right that I don't understand much of compositing and recompositing :D

What I meant is that if...

In special effects work, you shoot your individual elements (a TIE fighter is one element, a millenium falcon another, laser blasts another, star fields etc etc) on normal negative film.

...and...

For the SE, they took the individual elements and put them back together on a computer using more modern techniques (no matte lines, garbage mattes etc)

..., it means that most of the original negatives do exist. But if Disney want to use them for the restoration and...

The problem with Star Wars is that they used a highly unstable filmstock to do the original photochemical compositing and these shots are pretty much gone now.

..., they'll probably have to composite the elements again, but digitally, thus it may not look exactly the same, right?

It would be better and cheaper to them to make a restoration using original prints, unless they specifically want to redo the special effects, I guess.

I always thought of Malak as a bad attempt at doing a Vader character, with his silly ways and dialogues (not to mantion his ridicolous over-the-top apprentice!). I look at KOTOR2's characters as fresh and new, with their own motivations (unlike in KOTOR1), with Kreia probably being the best one in the cast. In the end, I know KOTOR2's darksiders are "overpowered" compared to the OT's, but I say that the balance is kept if you consider that their power is the reason behind their own sudden death, and you could say that Force-users learned from their mistakes since then.

I thought composites were done on a dupe? That's probably why they were able to re-composite the effects for the SE in the first place.

KOTOR II, especially because of the setting, which somehow feels more "real".

Also, poor KOTOR got a "muppet Yoda" (even weirder than in TPM!), while KOTOR II got old-school OT-ish costumes:

It may be awful, but that's exactly what Disney did with the Lion King for its so-called "theatrical version".

mverta said:

Sorry, boys.  Legacy is not whatever is being rumored about here.  

Too bad for Disney...! Thank you for the reply, Mr. Verta.

ok, prove it :D

Is Legacy, a true masterwork itself, going to be used for the rumored new OUT release?

The average Star Wars fan is pretty uninformed, it seems: one of them just wrote that this restoration may be useful only to collectors, especially because the theatricals look "vintage" quality-wise. I had to recommend him Verta's previews to understand what can be actually done with a PROPER restoration :D