NeverarGreat

Wexter said:
I am very sceptical this could be pulled out convincingly. The audience would be left with the notion, that Anakin probably perished, but they wouldn’t know for certain and the uncertainty would probably tip them off, that something is not as the filmmaker wants them to believe. I propose ending the story long before Anakin’s transformation. Anakin could be noble and powerful, but also a bit reckless and hot headed. His character could be a mix of sorts between Luke and Han. He could be shown to be a mild supporter of Palpatine, while Obi-Wan would be more suspicious of the chancellor. If this was written well, once Vader reveals himself to be Anakin, the audience would be in shock to realize the tragic fall of the prequel hero, while at the same time kind of seeing this turn of events as plausible.

I agree that it would be tricky to pull off. Perhaps ending the fight with Anakin being backed into a corner, clearly bested, and the apparition slashing towards the camera as it is from Anakin’s point of view. Hell, we could even see the apparition stab Anakin through the chest, since it’s incorporeal. Then we can see Obi-wan react in pain in a different location like Leia in TFA. I feel like the fall should be stated as clearly as possible from this ‘certain point of view’, because in this way Obi-wan is taking the side of the audience when he lies to Luke, for indeed, it should FEEL like the death of a hero.

Of course, I would have gladly taken an ‘adventures of Anakin Skywalker’ prequel trilogy as you say over what we got.

Wexter said:

Mithrandir said:

The prequels sucked, yes. But not because they ruined ESB’s reveal.

I think we can all agree on that.

Raises hand

Um, I disagree on that. The fact that some are even saying that an alternate prequel trilogy should keep that reveal is proof of its power. The worst thing about the prequels as they stand now is that they actively undermine the OT, for a myriad of reasons, one of which is the ruining of the reveal. However, the biggest fault in them is Anakin himself.

“There is still good in him” is the fact on which Luke’s spiritual quest ultimately hangs, and it is the proof of this goodness which vindicates Luke’s entire journey through the trilogy. To reveal in the prequels that Anakin was apparently never a good and noble Jedi Knight stabs the OT in the heart.

Getting back to the ESB reveal, what makes it so traumatizing to Luke (and, by extension, to the audience) is the impossible idea that the great Anakin Skywalker could fall to the Dark Side. The current prequels dispel this impossible notion, saying in the strongest possible terms that Anakin was a bad apple from even before he became a Jedi, totally different in character than Luke. This is emotional death for Luke’s character arc, since ESB takes pains to explain that Luke is similar to Anakin at this stage of his training, eg, a good intentioned, yet impatient and reckless young man. However, in AOTC, Anakin is the galaxy’s biggest creep, not only impatient and reckless but downright ungrateful and even hateful. After he murders a tribe of Sand People, there is no mystery about who Anakin will become. Luke, on the other hand, is driven by the bonds of friendship and compassion above all else.

Going into the final confrontation with the Emperor, many people on these forums have stated that there was no doubt in their minds that Luke would not turn to the dark side because of his inherent goodness. However, this could be seen as a weakness of ROTJ because the stakes then don’t include a Dark Side Luke. He will either turn his father to the good side or die trying. So what change to the prequels could have made the stakes as high as this? What change could not only retain the ESB reveal, but make it more powerful?

Anakin.

Change the story so that we see his character make the same decisions as Luke. Make him motivated by friendship and compassion, as Luke is, not the lust for power. Make him a good person, and then DON’T show his fall to the Dark Side. As I have written elsewhere, simply show him fighting a final battle with a hooded figure whom he is told is Obi-wan’s other apprentice, a battle that for once, Anakin cannot win. The final scene set some time later reveals a hooded figure, implying that Anakin lost his life in a noble battle against a real flesh and blood adversary and secret student of Obi-wan, when really he lost to an apparition of his own fears, like Luke did in the cave. The inescapable conclusion is that ANYONE could become twisted and evil, since everyone has that darkness within themselves. Then the prequels would add to the mythology of the OT, rather than detract from it.

Here’s a preview of Reel 4, as compared to the Blu-ray:

https://mega.nz/#!vdN13KIT

Key:

!CmlbIHSbq53_eUly6DNJBKA7gEBxYjIZFwZErmt_KEQ

Some comparison images from Reel 4:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/160696/picture:0

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/160697/picture:0

Interesting to see that nobody in this thread has cited TPM as the decisive moment. I was 13 when I saw TPM, and it was still Star Wars in my mind. Like many here have said, it was AOTC which broke the Star Wars universe. Suddenly it wasn’t real anymore, it aligned with nothing that I thought the Star Wars prequels should have been. After that there was George’s Star Wars and my Star Wars.

Mike O said:

DuracellEnergizer said:

I learned to avoid most on-line religious debates a long time ago. Sometimes you get respectful dialogues between the different parties, but most of the time it’s just a bunch of uncouth jackasses tossing insults and strawman arguments back-and-forth.

I learned this a long, long, long time ago. I stuck to it for many years (though it was largely pre YouTube, which has made even more chaos). For some fucking reason, I broke my own rule and now I’m in this mess. I wish I knew why this shit was lingering and bothering me so much. I hear these kinds of things (frequently more well-written) on House, True Detective, and Bones, among countless others, literally hundreds of times. I wish I could figure it why this was happening to my brain. The SSRIs worked for 15+ years. I keep thinking that I’ve chosen an impossible question related to the meaning of life and impossible questions precisely because my demented OCD brain knows that’s a perfect way to trap itself.

If I may be so bold, what is the impossible question you have chosen?

I ask because I grappled with depression and the impossible question: ‘why is there something rather than nothing’ for years before understanding that the question was wrong. The question should be ‘IS there something rather than nothing’, and this can be meaningfully answered. The ramifications of this answer now form the basis of my life philosophy.

I’m sorry that you’re dealing with this right now. PM if you’d like to talk about it.

Props to Anchorhead for finding this clip of Mark Hamill:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiOg0-PCZfA&feature=youtu.be

When Leia says ‘Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper’, just insert Hamill’s line of ‘You’re a beautiful person…even if you do have an ugly mouth’

Another good line:
'Boy I’m really blowing it…I need braces on my head"

Episode 7 is out, and that means we see how accurate these posters were at depicting events in the film. I’d say all 3 of these are pretty spot on as to what happens in the intervening time. My poster was really just a Sunshine ('07) and Star Wars mashup idea, but it turns out there’s an actual closeup of the surface of a sun! In recognition of this I give you an updated image:

I’d say that would be giving the creators too much credit, but it would certainly be a nice departure from the OT. The PT already did the whole ‘good Republic goes bad’ thing, so that probably won’t happen again.

I just realized that Rey has a very different relationship to the Resistance than Luke or Anakin in their respective times. Anakin is loyal to the Republic, Luke joins the Rebels out of idealism, but Rey doesn’t have an ideological dog in this fight. She’s a fighter, but doesn’t strike me as soldier material. I’m guessing that she’s going to act more like the driven, compassionate ROTJ Luke in Episode 8 than anyone else.

Lord Haseo said:

I actually think the opposite. Seems like it would be Disney World’s attempt at making an imposing theme for out baddies.

My point is that the Resistance isn’t supposed to be ‘baddies’

Does anyone else think that the March of the Resistance sounds somewhat sinister? I could easily see it accompanying some dictator’s propaganda.

DominicCobb said:

Honestly I’m not happy with either. I can enjoy Yub Nub through nostalgia goggles and can recognize Victory Celebration as a passable piece of music, but neither really seems to fit.

Totally agree. However it may be that neither seems to fit because the ending itself doesn’t fit. Images of random rebel pilots and Ewoks dancing in the trees feels as strange to me as the worst of the Ewok scenes. It’s rather…undignified. Yub Nub fits the visuals, but reminds the audience of how silly they are. Victory Celebration strives for something more, but disconnects with the campy scene.

http://imgur.com/gallery/DYTys

This is probably my favorite.

Perhaps there’s a happy medium between the two.

Yours looks pretty spot on to me. I’ll be going back over the first two reels before I’m done, so I don’t have a final image yet, but it may have a touch more blue in the uniforms.

Your insight serves you well. I’m about 5/6 finished with the first pass of the film on a shot by shot basis. However, since the recent release of superior color sources, and since my methods have improved, I will be re-examining some of my earlier work. I intend for this to be the definitive color correction of the Blu-ray.

Thank you all for your near infinite patience! The end is in sight 😃

cyclista said:

-the editing was wrong all over. I don’t mean the fades and transitions, as in they were awkward or jumpy, but the assembly of all the scenes as a whole. It felt like the team had created a whole lot of great individual components/parts, but then put them together in a way wherein the whole wasn’t balanced right. I can’t break it down scene by scene and say where each should rightly have gone to balance out better, I just have a really strong impression of this. The film felt kind of lumpy. Like, almost right, but then you look closer and the building has a door on the 5th floor exiting into open air with no balcony. Or you realize that person you’ve been talking to for ten minutes has no left ear.

Dialogue, costumes, characters, scenery, architecture, everything was accurate and great - in both form and spirit - just put together without a sense of cohesion. An alternative (and more generous) criticism might be to say that it was edited with a sense of composition that was abstract and unconventional, but even that wouldn’t serve, the scene ordering/structure just deviates from the wavelength of the OT. I think this is the real and only significant flaw in this entry in the series.

Does this assessment make sense for anyone else out there? I’m really struggling to articulate something that is elusive and subtle to me.

I believe that this is pertinent to the discussion: http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/12/28/star-wars-storytelling-and-fixing-it-in-post

It feels a bit sacreligious to even consider it, but after watching the Silver Screen version of Star Wars I think that the film would benefit from a few more cuts. Specifically, I’d cut some of the final dogfight and all of the Falcon gun turret battle (or work it in somewhere else).

To break it down shot by shot:

Extended Escape from Tatooine

-“Looks like an Imperial cruiser, our passengers must be hotter than I thought”
-“Why don’t you outrun 'em I thought you said this thing was fast!”
-The entire sequence from then on in until “Go strap yourselves in!” Hard cut to Falcon pursued while Luke and Obi-wan retire to the game room.
-Take shot from gun turret battle “We’re coming up on their sentry ships. Try an’ hold 'em off. Angle the deflector shields while I charge up the main guns”.
-“C’mon buddy (change to ‘kid’), we’re not out of this yet”
-Luke and Han go to the gun turrets.
-Droids walk out of the game room
-2 TIEs attack, and blast the hallway by the droids
-Reaction of only Chewbacca yelling from the Copilot chair
-“Don’t worry, she’ll hold together. Hear me baby? Hold together”
-“Got him! I got him!”
-“Great, Kid. Don’t get cocky”
-Han blasts a TIE
-“That’s it we did it!”
-Shot of R2 extinguishing the fire
-Shot of Han returning to the captain’s chair: “Stay sharp there’s two more coming in, they’re gonna try and cut us off.”
-Shot of Falcon flying, cut straight to Death Star. Implication is that they go to hyperspace after fighting off the final two TIE fighters.

This scene may be an improvement over the original in terms of continuity, as this time the Falcon has literally blasted its way off planet. Also, in the subsequent scene, Han returns to the game room as if after an extended stay in the cockpit, presumably outrunning their pursuit.

JEDIT: Upon further viewing, Luke still has his Stormtrooper belt on in the gun turret scene. However, the whole scene could simply be Han picking off TIEs, since at this point Luke and Obi-wan are merely passengers, and it need never be established that there are two gun turrets.

Escape from the Death Star

Since this sequence has no gun turret battle, the cuts are straightforward. Luke is consoled by Leia, the previously cut shot of the Falcon entering hyperspace is used here, and there is the expository shot by Tarkin and Vader before cutting back to Leia and Han in the cockpit. Now the mystery of why the Empire would waste 4 TIE fighters and pilots to just let them go is solved. Also, the audience is allowed to dwell on the loss of Obi-wan and Han’s miserly attitude without a convenient bonding activity.

Final Dogfight

I don’t have much idea of what to cut here, except perhaps whittling down the first and second trench runs and making the Death Star countdown match the movie time a bit more accurately.

So those are my ideas. Thoughts?

It’s the second-to-last frame of that shot. It seems like an intentional creative choice to make it a flash, I just don’t know if it was omitted from the Blu-ray because of degradation or forgetfulness.

SilverWook said:

There are real graves and tombstones on the island, so they may used something that was already there.

Han said Luke went in search of the first Jedi temple. I’m pretty sure he found it.

On that note, it was very strange seeing a stone crucifix in one of the shots leading up to the reveal of Luke. I get that they wanted to portray the island as accurately as possible, but that was one thing that screamed ‘Earth History’ to me.

Another change I’d found a while ago, this one’s easier to see in motion:

The Blu-ray has this shot brighten from start to end, whereas the the Silver Screen version and the GOUT has no evidence of this.

The second image is my corrected version of that frame, which is a combination of the Blu-ray and -1’s release. It is a confusing comparison, apologies.

And yeah, it’s bizarre. My guess would be that whoever was working on it cut out as much of the frame as they could, then forgot about it, since the parts from the original frame don’t even have similar coloration.

Here’s another single frame issue that I’m not sure has been found yet:

This flash from the beginning of the gun turret battle is not in the Blu-ray, though remnants of it can still be seen. It is however in Silver Screen and GOUT.

Just posting this here in case it hasn’t been mentioned yet.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/158780

When Luke climbs down into the Quad Laser Turret, the first frame is a duplication of the second frame except for a very odd cutout of Luke’s hair and some highlight detail from the correct frame. Very odd.

Color correction is a two step process, as far as I understand it. The first step is to bring the color as close as possible to what was filmed on the day. This is usually shot by shot, especially for something as unevenly graded as Star Wars. After that is achieved, the second step is to globally apply the ‘look’ that you’re after, whether that be reintroducing a Technicolor look or the look of Eastman film.

Of course, you could simply go to to step 2 if you aren’t particularly concerned with (or don’t know) how things looked on the day of filming.

I think that the color correction videos that Mike posted were part of step 1, and aren’t indicative of what the final look would be, which ideally would mimic the intention of the filmmakers in '77.

timdiggerm said:

13las said:

Also, I noticed that the opening crawl seemed to jitter independently of the star field. Does anyone know if they did this on purpose? There’s no reason for that to happen if it was done digitally which I assume that it was. Right?

Yeah, I thought I saw that too. We’ll have to check the home release.

I saw a bit of jitter on the end credits as well, where letters would slide in front of the stationary stars of the starfield. I think it was intentionally done in order to evoke the nature of optical effects.