I took another look at the SSE, and I’m pretty sure that it was supposed to be there and accidentally deleted. 😃
I hadn’t considered that. They may have been deleted, since they are single frames. It seems odd that they would be though, I haven’t detected any other errors of this nature so far.
Here’s a weird one. Top is Silver Screen, bottom is GOUT:
There are a few laser bolts in this shot that aren’t in the Silver Screen, and presumably weren’t in the theatrical release. They appear to be in the '97 edition and they are definitely in the Blu-ray.
The description mentions a vinegar smell, so someone needs to get this scanned ASAP.
Buckaroo Banzai certainly isn’t so bad it’s good it’s just something that should be fun and is quirky and full of ideas but just doesn’t work for reasons which aren’t really easy to define.
It’s almost like the product of an alien culture where the points of reference are unknown so nothing it attempts to do really clicks.
If you sat down and tried to describe it to someone the film in their head particularly with that cast would be much better than the actual film.
I liked the movie for exactly the reason you seem to dislike it. I think it is intended as a huge inside joke. It’s not meant for you or me, or anyone in particular for that matter. It’s a middle finger to people who demand that entertainment be instantly relatable or even understood at all.
Nothing exemplifies this more than the watermelon scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpVXpCNFOSg
There is no in-movie payoff for this exchange, only weirdness. You have to do some outside research to figure out the backstory of this strain of high velocity fruit, but when you do, it’s oddly gratifying. There IS a logic to parts of the movie, even if much of it defies easy characterization.
If nothing else, the shot of the star destroyer has sold me on the look. It is miles better than the one in TFA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaYv3Y8tyoQ
It’s coming.
I always interpreted the ‘First Order’ to be a reference to a religious order such as the Jedi Order. However, I recently invented a more amusing reason for the name: The Imperial officers who did not desert when the Empire was routed took to calling themselves ‘officers of the first order’. The praise stuck and became the official name of the new movement.
My thoughts on the trilogy:
Rey should just be Luke’s daughter. This should not be a big deal like Vader’s revelation in Empire. People don’t allow their parents to define them like they used to, Rey is her own person first and foremost.
Include some spiritual messages/words of wisdom. TFA was lacking on this front, whereas even the Lucas prequels had some sort of message. The closest TFA got to a message was that good and evil will always exist. It’s not particularly deep or interesting, so the sequels need to hit this out of the park. Why is this time period worth three movies? Will the Jedi way finally die? Will it be reborn? Will it finally become meaningful to the galaxy at large, or remain in the hands of a small group of religious warrior monks? I don’t hold out much hope of any sort of interesting answer on this front, but one can always dream.
On this note, move the story from the perspective of Jedi vs Darksiders to one of honest investigation of the Force itself. What abilities will be born from such an investigation? Cool ones, I hope.
Reveal the politics of the galaxy. Again, something that TFA should have included to a greater extent. Where is the political power in the galaxy, now that the Hosnian system is no more? If there is no centralized power, does the galaxy fracture into warring states? Do the Resistance and the First Order form two superpowers? I would find such exposition acceptable, but it would be even better if the sequel trilogy concerned itself with governance more than previous trilogies, since Luke and Leia are now de facto the most powerful people in the galaxy, save the First Order baddies.
Recruit a voice of the people. I want to know what normal people think about recent events in the galaxy. We had the viewpoint from the upper class in the prequels, and our best indication of the state of the galaxy in the OT was Luke’s deleted scene with Biggs on Tatooine, far from the economic hub of the galaxy. The ST needs to provide the perspective of the everyman (or woman).
Incorporate an Asian Force user. A swordfight between an aggressive Force user and a calm master is on my top ten list of things I want to see in Star Wars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ESfN3lUNRM
A fighter chase near the surface of a star. Just do this already.
‘Snoke is the key to all of this, if we can get him working.’ In all seriousness, a character this powerful had better have a very compelling reason to play his hand at this point, and a convincing argument for why he should rule the galaxy rather than democratically elected officials. I wouldn’t mind if he and Kylo attempted to convince Rey like Vader and the Emperor in ROTJ, but it has to be more than familial bonds, the promise of power, or seduction via anger. It would be cool if Snoke was the last of the race of Celestials, beings which predated galactic history. If Luke was searching for the first Jedi temple because he suspects that it contains information relating to the Celestials, so much the better. The Celestials could even have been the ones to ‘invent’ the Dark Side, as an unnatural offshoot of the spiritual power of the Force. If the Sith were merely the most recent users of this Dark energy, the entire ST would be justified as it reveals that the greatest game in the history of the galaxy is approaching its climactic end.
Yes, he’s immature. That makes him a bad character?
I didn’t suggest that. I quite like his character.
A lightsaber duel with a severely wounded, mentally unstable, overconfident and under trained Dark Side warrior
The physical toughness of these characters is not in question, it is their emotional maturity.
Everything can use more Hitchhiker’s references.
I also just finished watching this, and it’s a great edit. The opening of each film is a bit rushed to me, but each film flows well from that point and at no point did I miss the nixed side plots. I also agree that Azog would be better if saved for the end, and there are some more scenes such as Bard’s dragonslaying scene and the lighting of the forges that could use more cutting, but very serviceable indeed.
JEDIT: Thinking back on the fanedit this morning, it came as a literal shock that Radagast, Sauruman, and Galadriel were eliminated from the film with almost zero issues. I had completely forgotten that they were in the Jackson versions.
There is one small issue that arises because of their deletion, which is simply that no reason is given for Gandalf leaving the party when they leave Rivendell. In the goblin tunnels, he then magically reappears. But it’s a small thing that doesn’t take me out of the experience too much.
All of the Dubrovnik photos I’ve seen so far look nothing like they should be in star wars, they remind me a lot of Naboo except higher class and everybody wears Earth fashion clothing.
Agreed. I don’t mind the architecture, but the chrome speeder and tuxedo-ed aliens really bother me. The speeder feels like it’s out of a futuristic sports car magazine rather than a lived-in, retro sci-fi world. And the aliens look like a visual spoof, almost like it’s from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Oh and before people point out that these things will mesh in the finished film: when the first photos leaked of R2 in Episode 7 it was clear that parts of his design were just incorrect. People told me to stop nitpicking, since it was just a production picture. Well I’m pleased(?) to report that R2 looked just as wrong in the finished film. It is perfectly legitimate to criticize an aesthetic from production photos in my opinion.
I assume then that the queen is captured and held captive on the Viceroy’s ship, and the Jedi have to rescue her? How do the Jedi get on the ship, and does it just cut away as they are slicing through the bulkhead to the bridge? I’m not sure how you’d pull that one off.
After reading your thread, it seems that Bingowings beat me to the punch in describing the Coruscant, Tatooine, Naboo sequence of events. Ah well, great minds and all that.
I really like the idea of opening the film with the escape from Naboo, as you illustrate with your video, but I feel like it cuts too much action from the film. For example, with your version of events there is no place for the Jedi attempting to cut through the Federation Ship, which is one of my favorite uses of the lightsaber and a good introduction to the Jedi as warriors.
Furthermore, I’m still left with the problem of Anakin being included on Coruscant, which requires showing the Jedi Council. I believe that showing the Jedi (including Yoda) to be boring and ineffectual is one of the worst problems of the prequels universe. And if Anakin never goes to Coruscant, I don’t have to explain why they didn’t leave him there instead of dragging him into a war zone later on.
This is just an idea for a fanedit, but I realized today that in many ways, it makes more sense for The Phantom Menace to be structured so that Coruscant comprises Act 1 of the film, Tatooine comprises Act 2, and Naboo comprises Act 3. The reasoning is that after the Jedi learn of the invasion army, it makes more sense for them to escape to Coruscant than for them to go to Naboo, where they will simply have to escape again, this time with more luggage. In this version, Amidala and Jar Jar are already on Coruscant, deep in negotiations related to the blockade.
Here is a more detailed breakdown of how it could work with existing footage:
The Galactic Republic is dying.
a greedy Trade Federation,
in league with Republic officials,
is tightening its grip on the galaxy.
Feigning innocence, the Trade
Federation has surrounded the
peaceful planet of Naboo with
a blockade of deadly starships.
The noble chancellor Valorum,
in an effort to expose the Trade
Federation, has sent two Jedi
Knights to discover the truth…
Part 1
A red-painted Republic ship lands in the docking bay of a Trade Federation cruiser orbiting Naboo. The Nemoidians assure the ambassadors that the contents of their ship are perfectly legal, and would be happy to admit them. The Jedi disembark and are taken to a council room, where they drink tea. While there, the ship is destroyed and the Jedi fight their way to the bridge, where they are rebuked by powerful battle droids. Escaping into a ventilation shaft, the Jedi soon make their way into a secret hangar where they find an invasion army. They decide they must contact chancellor Valorum. They then notice a sleek silver spaceship apparently just waiting for them to commandeer, and in the final shot of the scene this sleek silver ship escapes the docking bay, piloted by the Jedi. On the bridge of the Federation ship, the Nemoidians receive a transmission of Queen Amidala transmitting from Coruscant, and relays the information that the Chancellor’s ambassadors are with them and must reach settlement. The Nemoidians deny the existence of the ambassadors, and the transmission ends.
On Coruscant, Senator Palpatine paces back and forth in front of Amidala (who has presumably just finished her discussion with the Nemoidians), bemoaning the state of the galaxy. He suggests that the only possible action would be to call for a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorum. As this is happening, the silver ship lands on the landing platform on Coruscant, where only Valorum and his guards are waiting. The Jedi mention the complication of things with the Chancellor. They then say that they must speak to the Jedi council immediately. Later that day in the senate chamber, The blockade of Naboo is brought up, and the vote of no confidence in Valorum is called. The sun begins to set, and two Jedi walk along a parapet towards the sunset, having completed their business in the Jedi Council. Later, Palpatine returns victorious from the Senate, as he has been nominated to become the next Chancellor. However, Amidala decides to go back to Naboo in order to be with her people. The Jedi arrive at the starship, and inform the Queen that it is their pleasure to protect her. They leave the planet and go to light speed.
Part 2
After entering Hyperspace, a bomb goes off on the starship, knocking out the hyperdrive. The ship reverts out of Hyperspace only for them to realize that there is a Federation ship nearby. It begins to attack them, and only a quick repair by R2-D2 saves their lives. They flee to Tatooine to repair the ship, and there they meet Anakin. The Nemoidians report to a cloaked figure on Coruscant that the ship has escaped destruction, and this cloaked figure orders his apprentice, Maul, to find the renegade starship. Back on Tatooine, Anakin becomes integral to the story. In order to acquire the parts to their ship they bet on his pod in a local podrace, and after a BRIEF race in which he kills his primary competitor Anakin is freed. Maul fights Qui-gon and then they all escape the planet.
Part 3
The Nemoidians order the invasion of the planet to begin as the silver starship leaps out of hyperspace. In the confusion the ship is able to get through the blockade and land in the forest, whereupon the rest of the plot of the movie takes place much as it does in the Lucas version. The only major departure is that Anakin more quickly destroys the droid control ship without landing in the hangar.
I’m not convinced that this version would make the underlying plot of the film any more clear, since it was designed by Lucas to be opaque to reason, but at least the entire underwater city and fish chase scenes are excised, as well as much pointless slashing at battle droids with lightsabers in Naboo, and also any and all visual depictions of the Jedi Council. In this version, the action rises naturally from the expositional Coruscant scenes to the podrace and clash with Maul to the four final battles at the end.
So what do you think?
I’ll think about that when it’s done. Like any long project, I can’t think about much else other than the finish line right now 😉
Oh and as an aside, the final dogfight is grueling. The first few reels benefit from long takes, but this section probably has an average shot length of less than two seconds, I’m seeing a whole lot of variation between shots, and there are a tremendous amount of gradients which are simply missing. Lucasfilm clearly didn’t care about these brief shots.
Shot by shot, as Dr Dre begins his first pass on the film, I am wrapping up my first pass. Actually I’m down to the last ten minutes of non-credits shots, and I’m very happy with the last three reels. I’ll have to give the first three reels another look since my process has evolved quite a bit, but it’s nearing the end of a long road. 😃
The argument that George Lucas always intended the Jedi to be selfless and emotionless people is not true. Hell, in the first draft of TPM (found here: http://starwarsuniverse2.tripod.com/id7.html) Obi-Wan ends up falling in love with Anakin’s mother!
I can’t decide if you are trying to be funny or you genuinely believe that these ‘rough drafts’ were written by Lucas.
I’m guessing the former.
Haha!
I believe what you are referring to is the clipped highlights of the Blu-ray when played on most (all?) players. The only explanation I have is that when originally encoded, the highest value was 255 rather than broadcast safe 235, so when players ‘expand’ the values, anything above 235 is clipped. Therefore, you must import an unconverted transport stream of the Blu-ray into your editing program and bring the highlights down before making further changes. I’ve tried to convert the Transport Stream into RGB in avisynth with a contrast reduction before the RGB conversion to see if it would retain the highlights, but no dice. The only method that I’ve found to do this is bring the TS file into Premiere and use a curves adjustment, which operates in the YUV colorspace. Perhaps you have a better method of doing this.
Regardless, I’ve found that virtually all of the highlight information exists in the Blu-ray data. Now if only there was a way to recover the superblack detail.
It’s fine. 😃 Here’s my adjustment. It needed a red boost in the darker tones, and I’ve made it a little brighter. Somehow the eyes look more alive with the boosted blue tones, compared to some of the earlier attempts, but I think this is the one for me:
This looks the best in terms of skin tone that I’ve seen so far.
I think it looks quite good, I’d just make sure that Tarkin’s uniform remains green even in the shadows.
As you know my corrections have been manual in contrast to your algorithm. I think that this provides certain advantages. I was able to achieve my results with only a curves adjustment, saturation adjustment, and the channel mixer. The channel mixer is one of the most versatile tools on account of it’s ability to reduce the stressed color of the blu-ray. If the green-green channel is lowered and mixed into the red and blue channels, it reduces the green artifacts that pop up on the skin tones in these scenes, as well as give Tarkin’s skin tone a more consistent hue. Also, where the skin tones are a great deal darker than the film sources suggest, one way to fix this is to boost the red-red channel, then mix green-red and blue-red (while keeping the totals of these mixes at 100 of course). The result is reds which are substantially lighter and less saturated than the Blu-ray, and a good match to film sources. Of course you must keep an eye on the solid red, green, and blue lights in these scenes to make sure they don’t become too diluted, but often these lights are too saturated anyway. This makes me think that a channel mixer tool was used on the Blu-ray to get the colors this distorted in the first place, otherwise it wouldn’t work so well in fixing these problems.
This is my best guess as to how this scene should look. The Death Star Walls are blue and green. Tarkin’s uniform, as has been discussed on my thread, is green (although color problems in the blu-ray don’t allow many color gradients here, which is why Tarkin’s hair has gone a bit green).
The attempts to make the walls neutral just look dead to me, like the home video releases where the color has been washed out.
These are certainly in the ballpark.
