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NeverarGreat

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Join date
11-Sep-2012
Last activity
5-Jul-2025
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Post
#1077554
Topic
Last movie seen
Time

Prometheus.

I watched it in preparation for seeing Alien: Covenant tomorrow, and I’m still unsure what to rate this. On the plus side, the visuals are polished and impressive. There was also a religious component that was somewhat interesting. I didn’t hate any of the characters, though the two guys who got killed in the alien ship richly deserved their fates.

I still have no idea what the Engineers want or what the Xenomorphs have to do with any of this. I don’t know why the Engineers created humans or why they’re different than them despite being genetically identical.

Fassbender was intriguing, the penultimate scene (which should have been the final scene) was interesting, and did I mention the set design?

Overall, it feels like a prelude to a diabolical religious service - it sets the mood while providing almost nothing in the way of plot or even worldbuilding. If Alien: Covenant leans into this I’ll be more likely to consider this movie a success, but it doesn’t hold up on its own.

Post
#1077511
Topic
Star Wars: The Anakin Saga
Time

Okay, just got a chance to watch this.

First of all, I like the aspect of Episode 1 that you’ve chosen to focus on. The Anakin podrace plot in TPM was the best part of the movie IMO, and I’m glad to see (almost) no Coruscant scenes and very little Gungan action.

Interspersing these scenes into ANH has promise; since there are obvious parallels between Luke and Anakin, it feels appropriate to see Anakin’s time on Tatooine. However, I don’t think their placement quite works yet. For example, the first inclusion after the Tantive scene carries with it a feeling of narrative whiplash, as we are suddenly introduced to a bevy of new characters from 3 decades prior. They are talking about Tatooine, sure, but we are never told that Tatooine is Luke’s planet in ANH, so it’s a bit strange to be focusing on this. The same odd whiplash holds true for most of the other flashbacks. The fade outs after the Droid Auction and after the Binary Sunset seem like good places for flashback scenes, but the content of these flashbacks has little to do with the previous scenes and so they still feel out of place.

Going forward, I would ask: what is the goal here? You say it is to tell Anakin’s story, and indeed it focuses on this aspect above all others, but there’s still a great deal of extraneous plot for TPM. I’d argue that the story should be told from Anakin’s point of view, so it should not begin with Obi-wan and Qui-gon. In fact, the Naboo plot should have no place here, as Anakin has practically no understanding of this conflict, and in any case the plot for TPM makes little sense.

Watching this edit, I had an idea of how you could make this more about Anakin, and tie it together with ANH. It could start with the Tantive attack as normal, but after R2 and 3PO escape in the pod, it cuts to the deleted scene of Luke watching the battle and his discussion with Biggs. This establishes Luke as a hotshot pilot risking his life early in the film. Then the first we see of TPM footage is right after the dinner scene where Luke’s parents talk about Anakin:
“He has too much of his father in him”
"That’s what I’m afraid of"
32 Years Earlier
Cut to the middle of the podrace. We see Anakin neck and neck with Sebulba, and then one of Anakin’s engines catches fire, costing him his position. The next scene is Jar Jar and Sebulba, and this is where Anakin meets Qui-gon and company. Anakin notices Qui-gon’s lightsaber, Anakin invites them to his home, and they discuss their predicament over dinner. Edit out the fact that Watto doesn’t know about the pod - in this version Anakin has used this pod in several races.
Then there is the binary sunset and R2’s disappearance.
Later that night, Anakin and Qui-gon sit outside discussing Anakin’s future. There is the scene with Watto, where the dialogue has been massively cut down to only include the bit about the ship being the entry fee. Then Anakin fixes his pod and it ends with his ‘It’s working’ line.
Then Luke and the Sand People and his talk with Obi-wan. After this scene, as the music rises, cut to the beginning of the podrace. The race happens sans the parts used in the previous race, and there is no discussion of Qui-gon winning Anakin in a bet. The scene after the podrace is Anakin being informed that he has been freed and his emotional leave-taking. This mirrors Luke’s inner turmoil over leaving, and gives us more room between his refusal of the call and his sudden decision to leave.
Cut to the Imperial officers and the film continues as is.

I don’t know how much more of Anakin’s story needs to be told in this fashion. After Luke sells his speeder and we see the dark-hooded spy character, we could cut to Maul on Tatooine, and have the lightsaber fight where Anakin meets Obi-wan. Then in the next scene Luke and company see the Falcon and it couldn’t be more different than the queen’s starship. This would emphasize the decrepitude of the ship. However, including such a villain would draw attention away from ANH and onto the plot of TPM, and this would make the film feel very bifurcated. So I think it would be best to just end the flashback scenes with Anakin’s leave-taking.

Post
#1077336
Topic
Neverar's A New Hope Technicolor Recreation <strong>(Final Version Released!)</strong>
Time

That makes a lot of sense then. The color has often been partially eaten away.

Octorox said:

That makes a lot of sense. The jump cut is nothing to loose sleep over anyway. Out of curiosity, what source are you using for the sabers? The silver screen edition?

There’s a few sources so far, including the SSE. There will probably be more before everything’s done 😉

Post
#1077330
Topic
Religion
Time

I was a convert to Agnosticism from two religious parents, so my personal experience that there is a lot of resentment and aggression upon realizing that you’ve been fed a load of dogma your whole life. I think a lot of this has to do with the fear of Hellfire that is inculcated in every ‘Christian’ child. To combat this fear, I delved into the arguments of atheists such as Dawkins and Harris in an attempt to prove to myself that such a fear was unfounded, and I became angry that such a flawed belief system was able to inoculate itself from criticism. It’s a bit like a political ideology in that way.

Over time, fear is replaced with righteous anger and this gives way to some form of boredom with the whole affair. At least for me. I expect that Dawkins is perpetually in the anger stage.

Post
#1077250
Topic
Neverar's A New Hope Technicolor Recreation <strong>(Final Version Released!)</strong>
Time

I had made the decision to replace the sabers after seeing what happened when those shots were brightened to proper levels - they really don’t hold up in my opinion, being oversaturated and blobby due to degradation. In order to fix that, as well as the color variation between shots, I would have had to do complicated effects work anyway, and decided that I might as well have the original un-degraded elements. The same thing happened with the Star Destroyer flyover - the SE lasers and flashes were completely degraded and I replaced each one with film elements, so this is consistent with the goal of reverting degraded sources back to superior versions. I wouldn’t revert things like scene transitions because those were recomposited to be higher in quality than the original, on average, whereas the degraded lightsaber elements and blaster bolts were recomposited because the original negative had to be rebuilt and they decided that these elements were good enough. It wasn’t a creative decision to degrade these elements, and with more care they would have used an interpositive for these shots.

I’m rendering out a version of the lightsaber scenes that doesn’t have these changes, so I could make this available for everyone who wants it.

Whenever there is a difference between the 2004 and 2011 versions, I have chosen the source which is closer to the original. So for example, the 2011 version of the Greedo shootout stays, since it’s closer to Han shooting first than the 2004 version. The jump cut roll and the rocks around R2 are out, since they are changes deviating from the original.

So there is a method to this madness. Essentially, it’s merging all versions of the Special Edition (1997/2004/2011) together and showing this in the best possible light. Choices must be made.

Post
#1077126
Topic
The Saturday Morning Prequel Trilogy
Time

During Order 66, pretty much every Jedi went out like a punk to handfuls of Clone Troopers, even the masters (One by a single starfighter, one by half a dozen clones on a bridge, one by a couple clones in a forest, one by two clones on speeder bikes). In the context of the movie, it is made to seem like Anakin and the rest of the Jedi in the temple were just overrun by literally hundreds of Clone Troops, in wave after wave. Only by ANH did Ben reveal that another Jedi participated in Anakin’s death. Arguably under this idea, Anakin lasted longer than the rest of the Jedi while sustaining attacks from all sides.

But I agree that changing things through opening crawls is inelegant, yet there’s really no other way to do it unless one was to fabricate a new scene.

Post
#1077075
Topic
Star Wars Despecialized Editions - Custom Bluray Set (Released)
Time

Perhaps if there was a message at the beginning and end of the films ala what Hal 9000 does on his projects stating that fan projects are not to be bought and sold. An enterprising ebay-er would remove these, but they would have to re-encode the project and some of them might think it’s not worth the hassle. Other than that I don’t see what else to do.

Post
#1077073
Topic
The Saturday Morning Prequel Trilogy
Time

Although we never see him teach anyone else, it is established that Jedi Masters do teach larger classes at the Jedi Temple, as illustrated by Yoda in Episode 2. Since Obi-wan is a master, it is logical to assume that he has such a duty as well which he could have been doing briefly right before Episode 3:

Episode III
Revenge of the Sith

As the Clone Wars ravage the galaxy, Anakin has returned home from his long campaign to Coruscant to become a Jedi Master.

Now without an apprentice, Master Obi-wan has become a teacher at the Jedi Temple, but he is eager to return to battle and end the war.

So when the Droid Leader General Grievous attacks Coruscant and captures the Chancellor, the two Jedi gladly embark on one last mission…

Since he’s teaching a large class of pupils and doesn’t care for the job, it’s somewhat understandable that we don’t see or hear anything about this in the movie proper - it’s a largely unwanted and uninteresting duty that he’s happy to ignore if he can. If he had a second apprentice on the other hand, that would need to be established in at least one scene.

In this edit Anakin is much more of a hero, since he wouldn’t slaughter Sand People or be suspicious of the Jedi. With these scenes removed, I think that he would play as a tortured yet ultimately heroic figure, and since there are no scenes of what happens to Anakin in the Jedi Temple, in the moment the overriding assumption would be that Anakin was killed through some means that is intended to be secret. Then in ANH, Obi-wan reveals that it was in fact one of his pupils in the Jedi Temple who betrayed and murdered Anakin, which makes complete sense in setting up a sequel where they need a secondary villain with a relationship to the hero. His apparent abandonment of these pupils in the beginning of Episode 3 has come back to haunt him, it seems. I think it’s as reasonable an assumption as the idea that Anakin fell to the dark side and immediately turned on the Jedi who practically raised him.

Post
#1076999
Topic
Star Wars Despecialized Editions - Custom Bluray Set (Released)
Time

Welcome to the forums!

Could you link to this individual so that we could report him as well?

JEDIT: I assume it’s this guy.

While I was at it, I went ahead and reported these douchenozzles as well:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Star-Wars-Despecialized-Trilogy-3-Disc-Blu-Ray-Set-/182551738580?hash=item2a80ee78d4:g:P6EAAOSwB-1Y2V-L
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Star-Wars-Despecialized-Trilogy-Complete-Edition-/182551739142?hash=item2a80ee7b06:g:~EcAAOSwA29Y5aFY
http://www.ebay.com/itm/STAR-WARS-TRILIOGY-DESPECIALIZED-BLU-RAY-THE-ONLY-WAY-TO-WATCH-/222499885871?hash=item33ce06d32f:g:MfAAAOSwjqVZC95A
This revblazjohn jerk has grossed 9,400 dollars on just the two auctions he has up at the moment.

Post
#1076991
Topic
The Saturday Morning Prequel Trilogy
Time

Very good! That’s one less problem to deal with. Of course, their discussion of his new apprentice would need to be cut, but that’s no big deal.

On a related note, Revenge of the Sith: Reborn claims to preserve the revelation that Anakin is Darth Vader, but as the reviewer states, it’s not exactly a dramatic twist to reveal that the guy who turned to the Dark Side in this movie is actually the masked evil guy in the next movie.