NeverarGreat

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.

Anchorhead said:

NeverarGreat said:
As to Ben being on the same planet, the reasons for him being there are given both in the Radio Drama, and as subtext within the actual movie. Obi-wan was the teacher to Luke’s father, and was tasked with giving Luke the lightsaber when he came of age. I don’t see how anyone could chalk Ben’s presence up to mere coincidence.

In the 1977 film, it’s an unexplained coincidence. Ben just happens to have known his dad, just happens to live near him, just happens to have his saber, the droids just happen to free-fall near him on the planet, and they just happen to be sold to Luke.

I am genuinely confused as to why you would think that Ben’s presence near Luke is coincidence. BECAUSE Ben knew Luke’s dad, he has his lightsaber. BECAUSE Luke’s father wanted Luke to have it at a certain time, Ben lives near Luke to watch over him. As for the droids/Finn, I’ve already said that this is a convenience for both films.

Anchorhead said:

NeverarGreat
Tekka on the other hand has only a tenuous association with Luke due to his possession of the map, and gives no indication that he is aware of Rey’s existence.

At what point does being the only person in the galaxy who knows the whereabouts of Luke become only tenuous? There appears to be a very important reason why Tekka knows where Luke lives and why he himself lives near Rey.

See above. Also, you seem very willing to accept that there is a reason that Tekka lives near Rey, despite there being far less to go on in this film than in Star Wars, yet you don’t accept that there was a reason Ben lived near Luke? My bafflement increases.

Frank your Majesty said:

NeverarGreat said:

Tekka on the other hand has only a tenuous association with Luke due to his possession of the map, and gives no indication that he is aware of Rey’s existence at all.

We see him for about five minutes and there is no reason for him to tell Poe (or Kylo) about Rey, so I really don’t see the problem. And saying that having a crucial part of the map to Luke is “only a tenuous association” is an understatement.

Yeah, it is an understatement. It’s pretty clear that Luke trusted Tekka enough to give him the map.

You don’t see a problem with Tekka’s relationship with Rey? Should we make the assumption that Tekka was sent by Luke to watch over Rey? I would guess that this is JJ’s intent, since it yet again mirrors ANH, but the situation is quite different here. Rey is struggling to survive, eking out a meager existence in near slavery in a literal dump. At least Obi-wan was respecting the wishes of Luke’s uncle when he kept his distance. Here it seems like Tekka is either completely unaware of Rey, in which case this is another coincidental part of the film, or he is being a horribly neglectful guardian.

Frank your Majesty said:

It’s not a coincidence that Han goes to Maz.

True enough. I’m not saying that it’s complete coincidence that Han went to Maz. I’m just saying that it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that Han would go there, since there would theoretically be other trustworthy captains in other ports. But yes, I’ll concede that point.

What is certainly true however is that Han didn’t know that Maz had the lightsaber. He’s as surprised as anyone that she has it, and that’s my point.

I should back up a bit and explain why this whole tenuous connection between Rey and the lightsaber is bothersome. With Obi-wan as the keeper of Luke’s lightsaber, Luke receiving it wasn’t coincidental at all. It presumably would have happened sooner or later, when Obi-wan deemed it necessary.
With Rey, she only comes in contact with the lightsaber because the Resistance droid happened to bump into her house in the desert, which led her taking the Falcon (as her second choice, mind) to escape the First Order, which led her to Han, who led her to Maz, who just so happened to have the lightsaber. That’s five leaps of coincidence, or four if you consider it a foregone conclusion that Han would send Rey to Maz. Although none of these alone are enough to take me out of the movie, when I realized that all of them had to happen in order for Rey to get the lightsaber, the compounded effect of them was enormous.

The takeaway here is that JJ clearly predicted that everyone would argue endlessly about this stuff, which is why he gave everyone 3 or 4 letter names.

Anchorhead said:

NeverarGreat said:
There were indeed coincidences in the OT, especially Star Wars, but they seem to be of another kind. There was a reason for Ben and Luke to be in the same area on a desert planet, since Ben was watching over Luke. There are potentially good reasons why the Droids land near Luke and Ben, since they could have Ben’s coordinates and were piloting the pod in that direction (as the Radio Drama suggests).

The explanations you point weren’t explained until many years Later. In the case of the pod landing near Luke, it was a fix by a writer other than Lucas. In the story presented in 1977, that pod is in an obvious free fall. The NPR drama came out four years later and Ben’s reason for being on the same planet wasn’t explained until decades later. If the first film gets a pass because things are assumed, or left unexplained for decades, or there are “potentially good reasons”, then the new film should be given the same pass.

Your point about the pod is well made. However it brings to mind another possible convenience from TFA that I hadn’t even considered, that of the damaged TIE landing within walking distance of Niima outpost. To me, it is just as unlikely that Poe would have any control over the TIE (since it was in ‘obvious free fall’) as R2 would have over the escape pod. So I’m willing to call it even on that count. Both conveniences stand or fall together.

As to Ben being on the same planet, the reasons for him being there are given both in the Radio Drama, and as subtext within the actual movie. Obi-wan was the teacher to Luke’s father, and was tasked with giving Luke the lightsaber when he came of age. I don’t see how anyone could chalk Ben’s presence up to mere coincidence. Tekka on the other hand has only a tenuous association with Luke due to his possession of the map, and gives no indication that he is aware of Rey’s existence at all. So until there is even an inkling of a reason why they should both be on the same planet together, I feel justified in chalking it up to coincidence.

Frank your Majesty said:

NeverarGreat said:

For example, Lor San Tekka could have it, presumably to give to Rey when she is ready

And where would he have gotten it from?

Also Han wasn’t taking Rey to some spaceport, he was taking her to Maz. She is Han’s connection to the Resistance. I don’t remember Han even thinking about any other place to go.

Well where did he get the map fragment? I assume that Luke had given it to him, so it wouldn’t faze me at all if Luke had also given him his old lightsaber. It’s a lot more reasonable than Maz having it.

To your other point: I don’t recall if Maz knew where the Resistance was located. If she knew, why were there agents from both sides among the regulars? It makes me think that Maz had a reputation for being a neutral party. Also, I don’t think Han wanted anything to do with the Resistance before the Hosnian catastrophe. Finn and Rey knew where the Resistance was. They were just there for a ship, they didn’t need Maz’s help.

TV’s Frink said:

NeverarGreat said:

We briefly see food in all 3 OT films. Obviously in the dinner scene of ANH, then Luke eats some food out of a tin on Dagobah and later at Yoda’s hut, and there is some food on the table at Cloud City. After that we get Jabba eating a frog thing and the crackers Leia gives to Wikket. That’s all that I can think of.

Is this the “food in the ot” thread?

Just food for thought.

I’ll let myself out.

Oh I’m glad they didn’t explain it for sure. The thing is that when you are forced to explain something like how the heck it got there, something is wrong. And the lightsaber could have been easily integrated into the movie in other ways.

For example, Lor San Tekka could have it, presumably to give to Rey when she is ready, but when Kylo cuts him down at the beginning he could take it. Then when Ren is interrogating Rey in the forest, she gets a force vision from Ren, which alerts her to her latent ability. After she decides to free herself in Starkiller base using the Force, she finds the lightsaber alongside Vader’s burned helmet, and takes it. The forest fight could play out as before, except that she has the saber before being thrown against the tree, at which point Finn picks it up. This would also make more sense of Ren’s proclamation that the saber is his.

We briefly see food in all 3 OT films. Obviously in the dinner scene of ANH, then Luke eats some food out of a tin on Dagobah and later at Yoda’s hut, and there is some food on the table at Cloud City. After that we get Jabba eating a frog thing and the crackers Leia gives to Wikket. That’s all that I can think of.

I loved the opening shot of the film, with the black Star Destroyer obscuring the planet. On that note, I liked much of the allusion to physical light and dark in the film such as ‘As long as there’s light, there’s hope.’ It was a bit corny, but in a completely Star Wars way.

I loved the introduction of Finn. It could not have been done any better, in my opinion.

I love seeing food in Star Wars. I want that green bread now, and I don’t know why.

I love Finn’s attitude throughout the film, played as a kind of everyman out of his element but trying his best in every situation.

I loved the physicality of the Falcon lifting off from the outpost and crashing into the sand. It made the Falcon real in a way that it has never been before.

I love BB-8. Everything about him.

I love Han’s character. He’s better in this than he was in ROTJ, and considering how phoned in his performances have been recently, it’s almost miraculous to see.

I love Skellig Michael. I visited Ireland just after filming on TFA but before filming of Episode VIII, and I saw the Skelligs in the distance from the top of the Dingle peninsula. It was a breathtaking view, and now that I’ve seen TFA, I consider my trip to Ireland complete. 😃

I love Luke Skywalker. My girlfriend called him a ‘majestic unicorn’ on first viewing, and I quite agree. Just perfect in a Sean Connery Highlander kind of way.

Let me try to articulate why this contrivance bothers me.

It’s certainly possible that a lightsaber would end up in Maz’s castle, but it’s like Qui-gon picking the one place on all of Tattooine that has the part he needs to fix the ship while also being the one place where the ‘chosen one’ is hanging out. Sure, you could easily say that ‘the Force told him where to go’ but it feels too coincidental. The One Ring is able to choose who finds or loses it to some extent, but that’s because it contains much of Sauron’s very SOUL. A lightsaber is merely a weapon, not a horcrux. Could Rey sense it when it was in the basement like Luke sensed the evil emanating from the tree? Sure. Whatever. That’s not at issue.

The issue is the coincidental placement of both Rey and the lightsaber on the same planet as each other IN THE FIRST PLACE. Here are some other places that the lightsaber could have ended up, all of which are equally possible:

-Lost in the depths of Cloud City
-Lost on Bespin
-Scavenged from Bespin and secretly held by a local on the planet’s surface
-Scavenged from Cloud City and held by the Ugnaughts or incinerated by them
-Recovered by the Empire from Cloud City and held on Coruscant
-Recovered by Vader on Cloud City and held by him on his Star Destroyer, which was subsequently destroyed.
-Recovered by any number of scavengers or antiquities merchants and held by them on any number of obscure worlds.

Now include in the probability calculation how many places Han could have taken Rey to get a clean ship:

-One of dozens of inhabited worlds with a spaceport or even containing just a single bar.

So if we accept the given situation where Han was simply taking Rey to any suitable world that had a ‘clean’ ship, the probability is vanishingly small that she would have found this lightsaber. THAT is my problem with it, not the idea that it is tainted with the memories of its owners.

TV’s Frink said:

Oh no the lightsaber thing again I cant ggu btsxvhb. Bjjj: vbb

Zzzzxxxxxzxxzz

Then don’t. I get that you aren’t bothered by all the same things in this film that bother me, and that’s perfectly fine. I just like overthinking things. If you’ve had too much of that on this forum, perhaps consider taking a breather for a while? I dunno.

Something I noticed while watching the end credits - there is a bit of gate weave in the credits themselves, animated over a largely stationary star field. The stars sometimes slide behind letters in the credits, for example. Just another nice touch.

TV’s Frink said:

How do you feel about the coincidences in the OT?

There were indeed coincidences in the OT, especially Star Wars, but they seem to be of another kind. There was a reason for Ben and Luke to be in the same area on a desert planet, since Ben was watching over Luke. There are potentially good reasons why the Droids land near Luke and Ben, since they could have Ben’s coordinates and were piloting the pod in that direction (as the Radio Drama suggests). In Empire, Luke’s sensors die and his ship crash lands on Dagobah within walking distance of Yoda, which seems like a terrible coincidence. However, since it is established that Yoda can manipulate things even as large as X-wings, he could have brought Luke to his location through the Force.

However, there’s no given reason for Rey and Tekka to be in the same area on the desert planet, if Rey is indeed Luke’s daughter or has ties to the Jedi. It’s a coincidence of a different order, and then there’s the compounded problem of her working at the same outpost where the Falcon is stored. The odds of these three things all being found within walking distance of each other in a vast galaxy strains credulity to the breaking point. Then we have Rey just happening upon Luke’s old lightsaber. This shattered my immersion the first time I watched the movie. The very fact that his lightsaber was not lost on Bespin requires a explanation that Maz acknowledges, but we’re so caught up in how odd that is that we may forget that her stumbling upon the saber on one spot on one planet among millions of planets is wildly implausible in the first place. It is as if in Star Wars, Alderaan wasn’t destroyed and Obi-wan took Luke to one of his old haunts on Alderaan, and the bartender said ‘Oh by the way, here’s Anakin’s lightsaber’ and Obi-wan said ‘how did you get that?’ as if he didn’t know that Anakin was on such good terms with the bartender. I would use the cantina from Star Wars as the example, but keep in mind that Maz is on an entirely different planet that as far as we know, only Han visits among our three old heroes.

So I really like TFA, but I’m not a fan of all of the coincidences, such as the missing piece of the map being in the same county as the Falcon, which is in the same county as Rey, and all of them going to a place with Luke’s old lightsaber, etc. I’ve been thinking about it, and here’s how I would handle them if I was in charge of the backstory:

Luke is training a new crop of Jedi, and Ben is an unstable student of 17. Luke gives him his old lightsaber with which to train. However, the lightsaber causes visions of Vader, it’s first master, to appear in Ben’s head. He goes mad and kills everyone, except the 7 year old student named Rey, since he’s still fighting with the light side of the Force. He puts Rey on the Falcon, which was a gift from his dad, and abandons them on some godforsaken world. They are then found by scavengers, bought and sold multiple times like so much property, until winding up in the hands of Unkar Plutt. Ben becomes Ren and leaves for the First Order.

Luke, meanwhile, is disconsolate. Having failed utterly in his quest to train Jedi, he leaves his old lightsaber, tainted with the atrocities of the past, with Maz (who is the most trusted associate of both Luke and Han) and goes off to search for the first Jedi temple. He knows that R2 has a very rare full map of the galaxy in his files, so finding this temple is possible for him. Finding the temple, he leaves a portion of the map to the temple in the hands of his old friend and fellow Jedi teacher Lor San Tekka, deleting that portion from R2’s memory and putting him in low power mode before giving him to Leia. He has had a vision of his daughter on a desert world and feels that his daughter is still alive, so he tells Tekka to go and search for her and watch over her. Finally Tekka finds her and the Falcon on Jakku, and stays there.

The portion of the map given to Tekka has a beacon on it, which will activate R2 if brought in close proximity to him. This is a safeguard, ensuring that the map does not fall into the wrong hands, but also allowing Luke to be found if the galaxy needed him again.

In this backstory, it doesn’t really matter if Rey is Luke’s daughter or not. I just find it too coincidental that she just happens to be strong in the Force, so she must have had at least some training.

Harmy said:

I was thinking that when watching the movie - the light reflections from the sabers looked really natural.

I saw the movie again tonight and I noticed that the blades reflect red and blue in the character’s eyes. I think they really had glowing sticks on set, which is excellent.