You could also try increasing the contrast of the base clips and perhaps blur the backgrounds, so that the characters are accentuated and the background is muted.
Fascinating. The color is improved in most shots, but there is now a pinkish tint to some scenes instead. Two steps forward, one step back.
I think there was the possibility in 1999 of crafting a trilogy in the Clone Wars era without relying on many of the previously named characters, a story which would expand the Star Wars universe and people’s imaginations. Unfortunately Lucas went in the opposite direction and made a story which was over-reliant on name recognition and under-reliant on story. Remember that the ONLY thing that the prequels needed to be was to be designated as 1, 2, and 3 and come before the OT in chronology(and they didn’t even need to be that). There was no requirement that the prequels be connected via character or theme.
Unfortunately after Lucas made it clear that the entire saga (1-6) were going to be about the fall and redemption of Anakin Skywalker, people then assumed that Skywalkers must be involved with every numbered episode. Now if someone proposes remaking the prequels without Anakin or Obi-wan, the story feels incomplete or misguided. This is the power of framing. Lucas was allowed to frame the discussion in terms of Anakin, and the only way that most casual viewers could see past the framing is if they were given a trilogy which was as imaginative as the OT without including these well-known characters.
Furthermore, if any alternate trilogy was made, it would be incredibly jarring to the general audiences unless the alternate prequels were made in continuity with the Lucas Prequels, since those are the films people are aware of from that time period. You would ironically be REQUIRED to make an alternate prequel focusing on Anakin and Obi-wan just to ‘set the record straight’ on their relationship before venturing into uncharted character territory.
We’ve already seen a bit of Rey’s flaws and failures. Her reluctance to admit she’s been waiting in vain for family that’s never coming back, makes her pass on Han’s offer to join him and Chewie. Running away from her destiny is what gets her captured, and almost costs Finn his life. I imagine she may carry some residual guilt over Han’s death going forward as well.
I was referring more to her physical competency more than her emotional weaknesses. I have no complaints about her emotional issues, and to your list I would add that she may have anger/darkside temptations going forward, which is perfectly understandable. It’s just that she is a mechanical wizard, a fighter who can hold her own against several opponents, an ace pilot and a crack shot. She herself seems surprised at how adept she is at these last two things, which gives me hope that her abilities will be explained in the sequel, but as it is now her abilities strain my credulity. I don’t want to give the impression that I am against ANY female character having such competence, for example I fully buy the character of Imperator Furiosa. I just don’t buy Rey’s abilities thus far.
I’m very happy that they’ve gone in the direction of strong female leads (though having a young female scavenger main character rather takes the steam out of my own prequel rewrite). However, I feel like Rey is a bit too competent to act as an audience avatar, and may even do some harm if seen as a role model. Keep in mind that Luke was always a flawed character who failed as much as he succeeded in the OT, so people seeing him as a role model recognized that failure is a necessary element of success. Rey on the other hand succeeds to an uncanny degree in TFA. I hope that Episode 8 delves into her character flaws to a greater extent. Of course, we haven’t seen enough of Jyn Erso to make a determination about this, but from the trailer it seems like she will be a more obviously jaded and damaged character with a balance of strengths and weaknesses.
Is there any official official statement from the crew about the reshoots? What are the reshoots going to do?
Hopefully they will embiggen the cromulence of the film.
I think it’s pretty cool to imagine how the humans from Earth came from or became the humans in Star Wars, but again, it’s unnecessary. The only Earth/Star Wars galaxy crossover that I accept as canon is E.T. as a Jedi.
It would be interesting to see Owen as Anakin’s brother and a soldier fighting alongside him in the Clone Wars. We get a hint of military know-how when Biggs says: “Your uncle could hold off a whole colony of sand people with one blaster.” In one of my prequel ideas Owen and Beru served in the war but left for the Outer Rim when the Republic began to transition to the Empire. They had no stomach for a war that they didn’t believe in, and tried to get Anakin to come with them but Anakin would have none of it, deciding instead to follow Obi-wan. They end up going to the Outer Rim with a fleet of deserters and refugees, so Anakin couldn’t have found out where they ended up if he tried. Eventually Obi-wan and Anakin part ways, and Obi-wan takes the newborn Luke in search of Owen. He finally finds them on Tatooine after months or years of searching.
The additional shots really do add to the scene. It’s a shame this wasn’t in the Blu-ray cut.
I like Rose because she’s a talented actress, if underappreciated, whom manages to do well in most films she’s in (even if that isn’t enough to save them).
My thoughts as well. I loved her as Cassie in Sunshine, but it was just recently that I even realized that she was in Clones. After seeing the actors in the blooper reel act like normal fun people, it’s abundantly clear that the problem was in the directing, not in the acting.
Viewing this again, it looks to me like the ships arrive from the other side of the forest, which is why they’re skimming the trees where Rey is hiding. I’d suggest giving some more movement to the Star Destroyer, as it is entering the frame from right to left. There’s no need to show the individual fighters and landing craft, since they are all shown later to be traveling fairly horizontally over the forest to the castle, presumably to be a surprise. If everyone saw TIEs and landing craft approaching the castle, there would be immediate pandemonium, but with just the distant Star Destroyer, it’s a bit more believable that there would be a few moments of relative calm beforehand.
In my opinion, the continuity is this: The Star Destroyer enters the system and launches attack crafts before it becomes visible to the castle, and only appears overhead moments before the attack group as a safeguard against escape.
JEDIT: In my ideal version, Finn looks up to see an escaping ship destroyed with lasers, but the source of the lasers is hidden behind the clouds. Then we just start to see the ship come out of the haze and cloud (and possibly the smoke of the explosion) as Finn says that ‘It’s the First Order, they’ve done it!’
Celebration Europe poster:
Hmm, why does all the conventions get all the cool classic-style posters while the theatres end up with those generic photoshops?
Research says people are more likely to buy a movie or a videogame if it has Photoshopped or CGI cover, rather than drawn cover
[citation needed]
Ditto.
I’m not saying your wrong, but I think that most fans would either prefer or don’t mind a painted poster, and quite frankly with something as popular (and I would also argue “retro”) as SW I don’t really image that too many people would really have cared, or perhaps even noticed (I can’t recall anyone making a fuss ver the PT posters). I think that as long as it says “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” people would go see the movie int he theatres and buy the DVD/Blu-ray regardless. Heck some of the DVD/Blu-ray covers are basically just the title anyway and the Teaser poster was literally just the title.
I have a feeling that this is one of those thing that marketers just assume about it’s audience. It’s kind of like how action movie posters always has the hero with his back turned to the camera or how certain actors look the same on every poster they’re on. I can’t really think of any good reasons for these cliches, it’s just one of those things that nobody bothers to change.Fans? Yes. Dumb masses? No.
Well, that’s kind of my point, would the “dumb” masses really care? It’s Star Wars after all, and the “dumb” masses didn’t complain about the PT posters, which were Struzan paintings.
(Also some posters these days doesn’t even have people on them, so why would a painted person(s) bother them?)
I’m just quoting this to continue the sensation that the image is slowly retreating.
Yeah, but if you keep making ‘improvements’, soon there’s nothing left to watch. 😉
Well I found the theme I was searching for…on the original soundtrack no less. Silly me.
No worries, I have heard it somewhere, so I’ll eventually run across it again. 😃
I was listening to some ‘complete’ episode 2 and 3 soundtracks on youtube last night and heard a leitmotif of Across the Stars that I hadn’t heard before, which I quite like. It’s a bit more complicated than the usual version, but I’m not quite sure whether it was in Episode 2 or 3.
It’s rather awkward to admit this because I’ve listened to much of the soundtrack again as well as some others, but I can’t seem to find it again. It’s driving me a bit batty. I’ll keep listening, but does anyone here know what leitmotif I’m talking about? I think it was to mark a scene change, though I could be wrong.
He’s a silent guardian; a watchful protector; a Darth Knight.
The real Palpatine is safely on Coruscant this whole time drinking thousand-year-old wine and chuckling quietly to himself.
Would that even be safe to drink? Is it even possible to age a wine to be that old?
“Micro-biologically it is probably not spoiled, but it would not bring joy to the palate.”
No wonder he’s so hateful, what with that swill flowing through him.
I’m not much of a fan of the ROTJ Emperor either. It is very clear that he was set up to be far more of a threat than he ended up becoming, what with condensing the sequel trilogy plot into the third act of the OT. That’s why in my version of ROTJ, the Emperor is just an insane clone of Palpatine who’s been led to believe that he’s the real deal and sent to that Death Star to lure the Rebels into a trap. The real Palpatine is safely on Coruscant this whole time drinking thousand-year-old wine and chuckling quietly to himself.
Remarkable.
This has to be the most well structured, interesting, and dramatically satisfyimg idea I’ve ever read on this topic.The theme is excellent and coherent.
Perhaps too intelligent for Hollywood. Really compelling.
Wow, thanks!
I really should check these forums more often.
Oh good. I’ve noticed some more laser deletions since then, but they’ve been much more minor, on the scale of only a few pixels, so it’s not something to worry about. 😃
IF I EVER BREAK I DONT WANT TO FIND OUT MY FAMILY HAD A BACKUP
YOU CANT REPLACE ME FAMILY
This would be much more funny if it wasn’t in service to your computer shtick.
^That reminds me of the deleted scene where Qui-gon slices the probe apart. It could fire on them first, so that Qui-gon isn’t seen as a cold-blooded droid murderer 😉 In all seriousness, your idea would make the podrace both more and less interesting from a plot standpoint. It seems silly to have the crew hang around just to free a slave while there’s an invasion in progress. On the other hand, making the podrace the epicenter of a Sith attack does make it more interesting.
I had an idea yesterday which would also need some effects work, about the giant reactor room in which the Jedi fight, which was originally supposed to be the planetary shield. It occurs to me that the room feels like the Death Star, with beams in it that look like a massive version of the Gungan shields, so what if Palpatine had stolen the shield tech from the Gungans and developed an enormously powerful ion cannon in secret?
There are several problems with the movie which could be fixed with this single idea. Why do the Nemoidians want to invade Naboo? Sidious gives them info about this ion cannon, which aside from being hugely valuable from a R&D standpoint is also what will protect them on Naboo from any external threat. When Sidious sends Maul to Naboo, it is to use the ion cannon to take out the Nemoidians after he has no need of the invasion. He is, after all, the Senator from Naboo.
That is why Maul is hanging out near the generator room at the time. During the lightsaber fight, he mentally flips a switch on the control panel beside him, and a closeup shows the ion cannon targeting the droid control ship. The Jedi don’t notice this of course. As they fight towards the bottomless shaft, the shield grid closes as a precaution as the ion beam fires out of the bottomless pit and strikes near the Control ship. Anakin is knocked off course and spins toward the landing bay, which is momentarily unshielded as the ion beam wreaks havoc with the battle. Then Anakin nukes the landing bay, it begins to blow up, and as the shield grid closes for a second time the second ion beam lances out and takes out the control ship’s power again, allowing Anakin to escape.
The glowing ball at the end of the film signifies the return of this technology to the Gungans, healing their feud. Of course, Palpatine continues scheming of even more powerful superweapons…
Yeah, I could see that there was a patch of lighter sky around the place where the laser should have been.
Clone brush operations are used to pull detail from one place in one print to the same place in another, in order to find the best information among all of his prints. Rotoscoping is used to isolate elements in a shot which exhibit a different channel misalignment than other elements in a shot, in order to bring all of the elements into alignment. These techniques could be considered manipulation, and it would be true to say that this isn’t a preservation of his 35mm prints. It could be seen as a restoration of a mythical Original Negative. Since we don’t know what channel misalignments occurred on the negative itself, he’s using this as an opportunity to fix all of these problems in his project. It could very well be that he’s surpassing the quality of the original negative in some places by doing this, but whether you consider this good restoration work or evidence of simply another Special Edition is open to interpretation. As for myself, I think that as long as you don’t change something which was intended to be that way by the original artists, and your changes aren’t anachronistic, it isn’t a special edition. So for example, I can’t imagine any effects artist wanting a channel misalignment in their work, and it was possible to make an effect with no misalignment in the 70’s, so fixing that wouldn’t be a change to the intent. However, altering a composite to remove its matte lines, although probably within the intent of the artists, would be anachronistic. Therefore matte lines should stay.
