NeverarGreat

poita said:

I’m interested in how the colour looks in these shots on the bluray.

It’s dark. The color is dark.

I was thinking some more about the critizisms of Restructured, and how it seems like Leia is reacting to only the Hosnian destruction instead of Han’s death. Maybe cutting her slow-motion reaction into two shots would be effective - the first shot being right after Han falls down the shaft, then the destruction of Hos like before, ending with Leia closing her eyes in grief.

On a related note, Hux says that without the Republic the Resistance will be vulnerable, implying that they will suffer some immediate setback that will allow the First Order to win the race to Luke. Yet if the Republic is only providing financial assistance to the Resistance, it wouldn’t immediately be placed at a disadvantage with the destruction of the Senate. That got me to thinking about what sort of thing the Republic could provide which would be immediately ended with its destruction, and the only real answer is communication. Perhaps if the Republic was allowing the Resistance privileged backdoor access to the Holo-net at all times, which allowed them to have a vast web of spies throughout the galaxy able to communicate in real-time with the Resistance. I imagine this is how the Resistance was able to respond so quickly at Maz’s castle.

But how to suggest such a thing? I could change the subtitles of the lady at the castle, to imply that she’s using the holo-net to speak with parties unknown. And during the attack on the Republic, I could have the Resistance listening to all the frenzied communications of the Hosnian system, which are cut short in Leia’s final shot. I’m thinking of something like this:

https://youtu.be/HRkXbTTYfSU?t=2m9s

I’ve had issues where a line of text and then an image forces the text below the image, but a line between the text and the image solves the problem.

When writing my alternate prequel trilogy, it took a long time (several years) to stop writing imitations of the OT in the prequel era. The thing is, I had to get my mind into a ‘Star Wars’ place in order to write something that feels like the OT, and it was only on re-reading it that the imitation of the plot and theme became obvious. TFA and TLJ suffer from this problem a lot. TFA is the more obvious since it’s a love letter to the trilogy, but even TLJ’s deconstruction requires the situations of the originals.

Creating a good Star Wars sequel requires understanding the essence of the originals and not just their surface trappings - what the films are really about - and then taking the next thematically resonant step in the story. When I was thinking about a theoretical sequel trilogy before TFA came out, the story in my mind was to be about how to teach, and how to lead. This was the obvious next step after our heroes overthrew the Empire and became leaders and teachers in the New Republic. The reason that these sequels feel superfluous in my opinion is that TFA avoids this almost entirely, and TLJ approaches it sideways with Luke’s failure. However, if JJ recognizes the opportunity of Episode 9 to deal head on with this issue, especially through Rey and Kylo, then it could be the first really essential Star Wars sequel after ROTJ.

I quite like that one.

Though it looks a bit like a poster for an epic Scooby-Doo movie.

We will have peace - a peace brought about by NK being recognized as a nuclear power on the world stage.

Yeah. There’s a part of me that thinks JJ originally had a version of the movie closer to Restructured, but realized in editing that he needed to pull the First Order stuff earlier to keep them more active in the story.

Maz’s castle and the interrogation(s) will be the most important changes in this edit.

Jay said:

And the reactions would be reversed if James Woods had stood up at the Oscars and said, “Fuck Obama!”

It lacks class regardless who does it or who the target is.

How dare an entertainer speak as classlessly as our president.

ForceGhostRecon said:

He’s almost better off using various different jedi quotes from the past (Obiwan… Yoda… Qui Gon) over the training montage. I think if done properly, it could really give a sense of Rey’s power being a culmination of all the greatest jedi’s teachings.

That’s a really creative idea!

I’m considering a change to Sir Ridley’s excellent version of the Maz Castle attack.

In that version Rey runs into the woods, then we see the First Order arrive, then Rey talks to BB-8 and sees the incoming ships, then Maz hands off the lightsaber and the attack starts, then Rey sees the destruction.

The trouble is that it’s a chaotic and somewhat disjointed collection of scenes, with a lot of character decisions that are made quickly or must be inferred. Rey decides to run away, then almost instantly chooses to return. Same with Finn.

One way to solve this could be to insert some version of Kylo praying to Vader between when Rey runs away and when Finn sees the destroyer. Perhaps just edit out the Vader mask (and maybe the Grandfather line), since I was planning to save that visual reveal for Rey and Kylo’s Force vision battle.

With this scene placed after Rey’s sudden decision, it gives the audience time to process her decision, as well as re-contextualizing Kylo’s thought process. Perhaps he doesn’t want to commit these atrocities, such as the destruction that he has planned for the castle, so he prays to Vader to give him this strength.

Also, it might be better to cut Maz’s ‘those beasts’ line, and replace it with the first few shots of the deleted scene where the crew is running through the tunnel and end with Han’s ‘Oh no’, accompanied by a very large crash from overhead.

Yeah, how exactly is that going to work?

He just puts the ‘before’ images after the ‘after’ images, which is about as confusing as this post.

Glad to hear that there’s progress on this! We can make as many projects as we want on this site, but nothing compares to an official release of the original film.

You can see in the Blu-ray where the gold color has bled into the panels on the left and the soldier’s pants, no doubt due to the yellow degradation in that version.

SilverWook said:

NeverarGreat said:

ZkinandBonez said:

I think we just have to get used to the fact that movie-franchises are made differently now. They are part of larger continuities, and SW in particular now has a commitment to a larger expanded universe. Lucas may not have cared (though even the PT had EU connections), now however, the EU and the movies are strongly connected. RO tried a milder version of it with Saw, and now Solo has fully committed to it. I think Lucasfilm knows that they can’t do exactly what the MCU does (e.g. making three or so movies a year), so they’ve committed to EU connections instead.

And if this whole Maul thing bugs too many people they can always “fix” it by making him a larger part of a future anthology films. Yes there’s no official plans for it right now, but they’ve opened that door now. I don’t see this becoming a huge problem, especially with younger audiences (it’s easy to forget that the post PT generation(s) actually likes Maul), but if it does they can still “salvage” it in many different ways. Like Silverwook said; Thanos wasn’t know by everyone watching the Avengers (or GOTG, etc.), yet it eventually paid off and those who hadn’t read the comics accepted it. Lucasfilm can still do a similar thing.

I was 13 when TPM was released, and liked Maul plenty. The problem is the retconned survival for the purposes of character recognition. Since Maul was killed (for real?) in Rebels yet again at the hand of Obi-wan, there was no reason to bring him back at all.

Now we are told to care about a character retconned back into existence by a children’s TV show who is destined to die in a pointless attempt at vengeance in another children’s TV show. It may come across that I’m annoyed by this decision by Disney, but that would imply some sort of emotional investment in Maul’s story.

People keep comparing this to Marvel and comics in general, when Star Wars isn’t the same sort of story. At its most pulpy it’s a serialized space adventure, but the original film has more in common with Kurosawa than with Stan Lee.

Don’t forget the Flash Gordon serials. Ming the Merciless came back from certain death more than once.

Indeed. But I think we can agree that whatever the inspiration, Star Wars is a wee bit more sophisticated than that. Well, that’s what I had assumed anyway…

I just about wore out the Lego Idea book from the 90’s:

With three of us kids, we had enough legos to make absolutely epic castles with full baileys and keeps and forests. Our inspiration mostly came from our neighbor, who was somewhat older than we were and had a custom castle that was much larger and more impressive than we could achieve. It was he who gave us the idea book. He had more of the 80’s sets as well, and a lot of space sets.

We mostly got the later stuff such as the Dragon Masters and Black Knights sets, and Space Police.
This castle was the best:

LEGO was my life.

ZkinandBonez said:

I think we just have to get used to the fact that movie-franchises are made differently now. They are part of larger continuities, and SW in particular now has a commitment to a larger expanded universe. Lucas may not have cared (though even the PT had EU connections), now however, the EU and the movies are strongly connected. RO tried a milder version of it with Saw, and now Solo has fully committed to it. I think Lucasfilm knows that they can’t do exactly what the MCU does (e.g. making three or so movies a year), so they’ve committed to EU connections instead.

And if this whole Maul thing bugs too many people they can always “fix” it by making him a larger part of a future anthology films. Yes there’s no official plans for it right now, but they’ve opened that door now. I don’t see this becoming a huge problem, especially with younger audiences (it’s easy to forget that the post PT generation(s) actually likes Maul), but if it does they can still “salvage” it in many different ways. Like Silverwook said; Thanos wasn’t know by everyone watching the Avengers (or GOTG, etc.), yet it eventually paid off and those who hadn’t read the comics accepted it. Lucasfilm can still do a similar thing.

I was 13 when TPM was released, and liked Maul plenty. The problem is the retconned survival for the purposes of character recognition. Since Maul was killed (for real?) in Rebels yet again at the hand of Obi-wan, there was no reason to bring him back at all.

Now we are told to care about a character retconned back into existence by a children’s TV show who is destined to die in a pointless attempt at vengeance in another children’s TV show. It may come across that I’m annoyed by this decision by Disney, but that would imply some sort of emotional investment in Maul’s story.

People keep comparing this to Marvel and comics in general, when Star Wars isn’t the same sort of story. At its most pulpy it’s a serialized space adventure, but the original film has more in common with Kurosawa than with Stan Lee.

I hope in Solo 2 we see Maul hover around with a double-bladed helicopter lightsaber.

What? It’s no more silly than bringing him back in the first place.

fmalover said:

Trolling aside, The Autistic Asexual has a point.

Why the hell is TFA held in such high regard? I’ve noticed many people have ranked in the upper half of their lists what is essentially a copy-paste of the first SW movie. The reasons commonly given are:

• It made SW enjoyable again.
• It did an excellent job setting up the ST.
• The characters are engaging and well written.

I say Bullshit! All this movie does is recycle the Empire vs Rebels setting of the OT, rebranding them as the First Order and the Resistance. When I first saw TFA I couldn’t stop asking myself how can the FO be every bit as powerful and wealthy as the Empire when it’s made up of leftovers?
The only character I really liked was Rey even if she was way too skilled at everything for someone whose daily routine consists of scavenging ship parts. Finn was an annoying buffoon an Kylo Ren came off as a whiner rather than a menacing villain.

In case anybody here missed it TFA is currently my lowest ranked SW and has earned the distinction of being the only SW movie I didn’t like at all.

One way I’ve come to look at the First Order that makes sense to me is that the war ended in a ceasefire, and much of the Empire’s strength retreated to a smaller area of space where they only ruled over hundreds of worlds instead of the thousands like before. Now just hyper-focused on a cold war military buildup, they were able to build Starkiller Base and a substantial fleet over the next thirty years.

Ptaaffe2000 said:

An edit could be made in the flashback sequences tongive kylo the skywalker lightsaber. It would explain a few things including why ren says that lightsaber belonged to me, how maz kanata has it and why luke throws it over his shoulder.

He does have the Anakin Skywalker lightsaber.

DuracellEnergizer said:

Aren’t titles/ranks/etc. supposed to be capitalized when used in conjunction with a name?

Yes, when the title is being used as a part of the name, like: ‘Lord Vader, you promised…’. However they are not capitalized when saying things like ‘My lord…’, or ‘The evil lord Darth Vader’, since the lord is not a part of the name, and only references the group to which Darth Vader belongs.

I remember that shot(among others) being very green, and in the first pass I made the Blu-ray match that green. However, after adopting the philosophy of making a consistent grade, these overly green shots stood out like a sore thumb so I corrected them so the skin tones were in line with other shots of this nature. There’s something definitely amiss with these completely green shots in the Tech.

In Empire’s crawl, ‘lord’ isn’t capitalized, making clear that it is a title, not a name. I don’t think Vader has ever been referred to as ‘the evil darth Vader’, where the ‘darth’ isn’t capitalized. That would make it clear that it was just a title. But then again, Jedi is always capitalized even when saying ‘the noble Jedi Luke Skywalker’, so a capitalized Darth may be the naming convention used for Sith lords.

But why use the ‘lord’ at all if all Darths are Sith lords? Wouldn’t using ‘Darth’ suffice? It can’t be to distinguish Sith masters from Sith apprentices, since Dooku and Vader are both the apprentices of Sidious and yet they are both referred to as Sith Lords.

It’s confusing.

I loved the use of that song in-universe.