They look really professional. Just one thing stands out to me, and that is the lack of a break in the Star Wars opening crawl. Is there a reason that the first two paragraphs are together?
darth_ender said:
I'm reading the ROTJ novel, and I have to say that I find the whole slave Leia bit pretty disturbing. I mean, the film and book really don't say much about it, and I know it's a kids movie, and furthermore I understand that GL was probably looking for an excuse to please his adolescent male fans by getting Carrie Fisher in a bikini, but...in reality she would have been horribly traumatized by this experience. If the Star Wars universe were real, I imagine that Leia would have been horribly sexually assaulted, probably numerous times, prior to her escape. These are evil, horrible monsters that clearly have little respect for the rights of others, and the only females you see in the group are slave dancers. In the book Jabba actually kisses/licks Leia and later forces her to drink out of his goblet ("Soon you will learn to appreciate me."). I know it's a kid's movie, but as an adult this part actually strikes me as pretty dark.
Sorry, not trying to be gross. It's just a random thought that entered my head.
This is why I find Kevin Smith's opinion on this matter so skeevy.
On a related note, I wonder if George had a reason for doing this other than fanservice. Could it be that he was making a subtle point about the seductive power of evil, and that the following revelation about Leia was meant to reveal to Luke (and the audience) just how twisted this kind of seduction really was? Or am I giving him too much credit?
Interpreting the obelisk symbol, 2001 was about the evolutionary educational possibilities of the cinema.
Interpreting the "payload" symbol (among many others), Sunshine was about conception.
Interpreting the trailer, Star Wars was really about a boy, a girl, and a universe.
The Special Editions and the Prequel trilogy were really a brilliant, decade-long quest to turn experiencing the true Star Wars movies into a legend, an experience unattainable by an entire generation, thus allowing for a glorious golden age of filmic ecstasy when they are finally released to thunderous fanfare, cementing their place in history and leading the world into an age of peace and prosperity that will last a thousand years.
And Gremlins was about Gremlins.
It's not the job of a fantasy movie to answer questions.
I want the sequels to mystify me, to leave me in a state of wonder at the universe of possible answers.
analog said:
NeverarGreat said:
Harmy said:
@NeverarGreat: So, I take it you did not look at the comparison gallery, containing like 350 screenshots from v2.1?
Where is that?
Page 328 - this post: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Harmys-STAR-WARS-Despecialized-Edition-HD-REMASTERED-v21-AVCHD-is-now-out/post/627643/#TopicPost627643
This link: http://uloz.to/xCAaaEE/compar-gallery-rar
Thanks!
Harmy said:
@NeverarGreat: So, I take it you did not look at the comparison gallery, containing like 350 screenshots from v2.1?
Where is that?
I was finding the 2.1 playback rather washed out, so I adjusted the video playback settings of VLC, and that made a great deal of difference. Everything is much more saturated and excellent.
Harmy, you may want to provide some screenshots with the movie or in the first post to allow people who are new to this process (such as myself) to get the most out of all of your hard work.
Harmy said:
@Neverar: Those are photos taken from a screen, I was referencing an actual professional scan of two different IB Technicolor prints and a scan of some scenes from an LPP print. It doesn't match perfectly but it's pretty darn close.
I see. Or rather, I don't see. But those photos of the 2.1 above look very different than what I see on the screen, so perhaps it just needs a saturation boost on a screen or projector for the colors to come out.
I wish we had access to those references though! ;)
I just scanned through the 2.1 movie, and many parts look very good. The sunset in particular looks better than I've ever seen it look before.
There are some color problems that I noticed. In the dinner scene, the colors look off. Compare the colors of the flowers and foliage behind Owen to the still of the Senator Technicolor print. The greens are less bright, the purple in the flowers is too gray. It may just be my screen, but the reds (especially the skin tones) look too dark or gray, and the image often has a cyan push. This is very noticeable in the Death Star council room and in some shots in the escape from Tatooine, and the searching of the Falcon on the Death Star, to name a few. The faces have a green cast, which makes them look rather sickly. It may be that the original had a lot of cyan, but in the Senator print, especially in the "the Force will be with you" image of Ben, his face has a lot of red, which is missing from 2.1.
I wish I had a properly calibrated monitor to view these colors, but if a side by side comparison of two sources on the same screen shows different results, then I must assume that there is a very real difference between the two sources, or that VLC is not handling the video correctly.
TV's Frink said:
Also, in your first post you said you hate the menus. That's what I was responding to.
Oh I see. Well, now that you ask, I actually almost dislike the menus more than the poor handling of the movie. Almost. Menus for me are supposed to guide someone quickly to the option that they want in a DVD, and do so without using spoilerish video and still images from the movie. I understand that most people have seen the movie, but that does not excuse the fact that the menus pull from most of the movie for their images and video. Add to that that when trying to get from one group of chapters to another there is an unnecessary change in location or poorly rendered bit of CGI, and you have an irritating and in-your-face interface.
Whew. I think I'm done.
Nope, just remembered the point of the topic. The fact that there are better colors in the menus than on the DVD rubs salt in the wound.
There. Now I'm done. :)
TV's Frink said:
I fail to see what is wrong with the DVD menus.
That's my point, the problem is that they're much better than the movie. I was just wondering why.
I was searching where to find this information elsewhere on the forums before I posted this thread, but afterwards I found the info buried in the cinematography thread. So apparently this has been discussed, but it sure would be nice to have these things more easily searchable to limit repeat information. However, my question wasn't really answered in that thread either.
That would seem to imply that those who made the menus thought that their menu version would be at least close to the final version, or that the movie actually looked, at some time during the recoloring, like they were portraying it.
It's not as if they just pulled the 97 special edition coloring, as that is much more orange. It seems strange to me to use a coloring which is very different from practically every release and then release something that is again wildly different than that.
So here's something I noticed recently. On the DVD, one of the interactive menus (god how I hate them) shows the binary sunset:
This has of course been digitally chopped and manipulated, but parts of it bear strong resemblance to Mike Verta's tech scan. It is very different from the GOUT, and even from the ACTUAL DVD IT CLAIMS TO REPRESENT!
It even shows the picture of the menu on the back of the box, as if they were embarrassed to actually show what the scene looked like:
It would seem that Lucasfilm knew precisely the quality of the product they were producing. I am guessing that the menus of the other movies, and the other menus for this one contain elements that are better than in their respective movie versions.
Does anyone know why this disparity between the menus and the movie happened?
This was actually one of the more annoying changes for me as well. The biggest problem is as you said, it slows down the action, and cuts the music in an odd way. I didn't think that much about the trauma that Vader was going through, so either line worked for me, though I like the shorter one better.
gulducati is not as forgiving as I am.
I'd label it under a prequel rewrite/script adjustment, but I understand your distinction about re-editing vs scriptwriting. It's just sad to see the scriptwriting section get so little attention.
darth_ender said:
Something I have noticed, and it's just an observation and may not be correct, but I feel that more atheists tend to have a chip on their shoulders than agnostics. It seems that because 'Mom sent me to Catholic school' or 'Bible-thumpin' George W. Bush started a crusade against Islam' or 'Evangelicals won't accept homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle,' therefore 'because I disagree with what some religious individuals have done to ruin my life or poison the world, God cannot possibly exist.' One may use this as evidence in their personal quiver, but still cannot actually disprove God. They may only support their theory, but they cannot 'know' that God does not exist.
I think that many who are atheist are atheist with regards to a specific god of a specific religion. For example, Douglass Adams began his journey to atheism when he heard a street preacher and realized that the preacher was not making logical sense. This specific atheism is then often generalized to ALL religion, or else the distinction is rarely made clear.
I think that when many people claim to be atheist, they are simply saying that they have examined the evidence for a god of the religion of their parents/country and found this deity to have contradictory attributes. For example, how can the Christian God claim to be completely loving and also jealous, knowing that the Bible states that love is not jealous? In breaking strongly from such a deity, they claim atheism, as it is simply more applicable in most situations to their true feelings on the subject.
Doesn't this thread belong in the Script Writing forum?
Script Writing and Re-writing
Everything from Prequel and Original Trilogy rewrites and script adjustments to new Star Wars stories and fan films. Discuss alterations and revisions to non-Star Wars material too.
This is all well and good (in fact, the last one is quite cool) but what of the skin tones? These last three have been suspiciously free of faces. ;)
Star Wars for me is about the magic of the Force, so the Star Wars movie with the most focus in this area is the best for me. The first one was a space adventure with magical elements, whereas Empire was a magical journey with adventure elements. The third was giant conceit designed to bring the story to a close. It works. It's not great, but it works.
I was actually thinking about the Hitchhiker's movie version, then again I haven't heard the radio version but a lowly once.
-Palpatine whips out his lightsaber and spins toward Mace, then stops in midair, still spinning faster and faster in order to charge up his attack.
-Take Anakin's dialogue to Padme from the Fireplace Scene in Episode 2 and have him pour his heart out to Palpatine.
-When we see the Millenium Falcon in the corner of the screen, zoom in on it so that it is painfully obvious, along with "What a piece of junk!"
-Yoda reminisces about break-dancing with the Clone troops. I don't care when.
-Beru walks up to Owen and falls over the edge of the homestead pit.
-One of Grievous's lightsabers activates upside down.
-When Obi-wan meets Bruce Spence on Utapau, he greets Obi-wan as the Mouth of Sauron.
-The wings that open on the fighters have smaller wings of their own.
-When Anakin and Padme are looking out at each other from across the city, have them looking at this: http://youtu.be/OhU_u4rq1Tg?t=1m30s
-In the first scene, Obi-wan's shipboard computer is Eddie: "If you don't mind, I'm going to take evasive action."
-The movie freezes whenever Anakin is about to say something particularly stupid, and several dialogue options appear. The worst option is always chosen. "No, it's because I'm so in love with you!" "I don't know what to say."
There's the reason. Found it.
Always sounded mechanical to me.
Move along, move along...
Hm. I don't feel all thyt mentilly shallengd.
Sometimes when a person sees something wrong the first time watching a movie, or doesn't pick up on it, it remains a blind spot for a long time. I had always assumed that the Dia Nogu was long gone after the compactor scene, so I never made the connection. The change could be as simple as making the garbage move, as if the creature was wriggling around underneath it, and when Han shoots it the movement stops.
One change that could have been made that would have made sense to me would be at the end of the trash compactor scene. When they have opened the door and are getting ready to leave, suddenly there is this klaxon and Chewie loses it inexplicably and runs away from the door. Then Han shoots at the garbage again for no reason.
In the script, Chewie is afraid of a tentacle from the Dia Nogu, which is worming its way through the hatch. Han then shoots the tentacle.
If a CG tentacle was added in one or two shots so that Han could actually shoot something other than garbage, I would have actually have understood what was supposed to be going on in that scene. As it stands now, Chewie is being afraid for no reason, Han is being recklessly noisy for no reason, and the scene feels a little pointless.
Though of course I'm against changes in general, I wonder why Lucas would put rocks in front of R2 and not fix a scene that makes little sense as it is presented.
Edit: Has Adywan or someone else added this in any fanedit?
OldOneAncarotaur said:
theprequelsrule said:
One of the worst inconsistencies is the changing timeline. In the original trilogy it is implied that The Empire has been around for a good while; at least 40 or 50 years. The Star Wars novelization provides an interesting "alternative" history of the fall of the Old Republic and rise of the Empire. A much better one that the that which is presented in the prequels, I might add.
How is is different in the Star Wars novelization?
When Luke leaves to save his friends, Ben tells Yoda, “That boy was our last hope.” To which Yoda replies, “No, there is another.” You eventually find out in Episode VI that Leia is the other hope to which Yoda refers. Soooo, Ben forgot that Padme gave birth to twins? He seems to remember that when telling Luke about it in Return of the Jedi, so why doesn’t he know this in Empire Strikes Back? A conundrum…….
Perhaps Obi-wan is unable to appear to Leia as a ghost, as he never really knew her, so his statement was to the effect that Luke was Obi-wan's last hope. And as it was Obi-wan who told Luke to go to Dagobah to meet Yoda, if Luke were to be killed, then Leia would have no way of meeting Yoda at all. Ergo, Luke was literally their last hope. Yoda may have been more technically minded, and stated that even without the help of the Jedi, Leia may become powerful in the Force and defeat the Empire. Because, you know, always in motion is the future.
That is a rather technical reason, so my personal non-PT explanation is that the Jedi were always male, and Leia is the beginning of a strange new expression of the Force which Yoda has become aware of. This would explain why Obi-wan never even tried to train Leia.