He lives!
Classes are the important bit. This sub-forum can wait.
(As in it hasn't been updated in a month)
Happy studying!
msycamore said:
zombie84 said:
Irvin Kershner turned down directing Empire Strikes Back. Lucas had to twist his arm to get him to do it; they had to have a second meeting where Lucas basically begged him to make the film. It turned out...pretty good, to put it lightly. To make things worse, the film he did right before Empire, Eyes of Laura Mars, sucked. Even Kershner apologized for it. And the rest of his films up until then were fairly obscure. I've seen "Hoodlum Priest," but have you? If the internet was around in 1978 we'd all be crucifying him.
A lot of people are looking for things to nail Abrams on but honestly none of us has any idea how well he will work out. I give him the benefit of the doubt until I see the movie, as he is not a bad director by any means.
I think it's quite amusing that after all these years, people are still waiting for that new "The Empire Strikes Back" but it's never going to happen, without lens flares or not ( "The Phantom Menace" had quite a good portion of artificial lens flares IIRC, so JJ will fit nicely)
To draw parallels with how things went down when the legendary sequel was made in the past to how things are proceeding now is quite pointless. The differences are quite big, not in the MO and not what you Zombie tried to say, the times and in what climate this new film is made in, is a very different scenario from Empire 30 years ago.
Is this a movie, that really needs to be made? Is this a story, that really needs to be told? Why are these new movies made? Is there someone with the passion behind this? Dollars of course!! Of course it's dollars, back when Empire was made it was all about money as well and more importantly the building of a new movie facility and planned franchise, it just happened to be a genuine interest on all fronts to make a great follow-up to one of the biggest surprise hits in movie history behind it. The last gasps of the golden 70's US independent era behind this kind of a blockbuster, it will never happen again.
I know that I sound bitter, but it's because I am bitter, Star Wars have been reduced to a fuzzy old little DVNR'ed LD transfer, that's all we have left today of this little legendary film. THANK YOU LUCASFILM!!! :)
Never say never. After all, there are more projects now than ever before to bring the original Star Wars back to life, and I think that many of the people that will work on the new movies were probably inspired by the originals. It's not their fault that Lucas drove the prequels into the ground.
At the end of the day, movies will be made and remade, and the great ones will be remembered. With so many people now contributing to the brand of Star Wars, a lot of dross will be added, true, but it's up to you to accept it or not. There was a quote from the end of Myst 3 Exile that I think is quite pertinent.
http://youtu.be/JAkfbqVszXk?t=1m34s
"I know now that we can't erase the past. Nor can we rewrite it, hoping to lessen our pain. The best we can hope for is to continue to learn. Take from the past only that which is good, and move on. Perhaps in the process, we will build a brighter future."
Greetings all! I didn't see a thread dedicated to Episode 7 posters in this section, so share them here!
Here's one that I created using a new image from our very own sun.
Edit: Reworked because I wanted to.
Find both versions here: http://s649.beta.photobucket.com/user/NeverarGreat/media/Star%20Wars%207%20Poster/SurfaceoftheSunAsStarWars73CroppedandShrunk_edited-1_zpsb037216e.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0
Bingowings said:
The Endor campaign is even more bonkers.
The Emperor claims that there is an entire legion (about 5000) of his best troops there but we only see the sort of troop numbers we would expect to see guarding an instillation of such importance.
The Empire sends in AT-STs when speeders, wheeled vehicles and ground troops would be better suited for forest combat.
No carpet bombing (which would make even better sense than sending in troops).
No gun emplacements or aircraft cover for the shield dish.
The Rebels are just as bad.
They have a large ship and never consider landing it on the platform or near the dish and blowing it up.
When the battle kicks off no fighter or bomber craft enter the atmosphere to shoot the dish off it's tower.
With a ship that size why aren't they carrying more guns or even some suicide droids strapped with explosives?
To be fair, the Empire may have had advanced anti-aircraft gun emplacements guarding the dish that we are never shown, which could be why the rebels ruled out an aerial bombardment.
Overall though, I agree wholeheartedly. I've said it before, but this is the main reason why I think it could be so cool to make the entire 2nd Death Star a diversion, incomplete except in terms of its weapons systems, and with only the most paltry and expendable troops guarding the shield generator (which should have been built on the Death Star itself if it were to actually be effective). The Emperor on the Death Star 2 is a clone, and Vader is sent to the Death Star because the real Emperor suspects he is plotting against him (which he is). The Imperial fleet retreats after the destruction of the Death Star, so the Empire only loses a couple of Star Destroyers and a Command Ship (perhaps because the real Emperor expected Vader and/or his failed Admiral Piett to be on it, and had the bridge shields sabotaged), and the result is that all of the deeply planted pockets of rebel resistance on many worlds reveal themselves to begin a full scale revolt with the death of the Emperor.
Then the Emperor reveals himself to be very much alive, and crushes the rebellion with an altogether more powerful and impenetrable battle fortress, and the Rebellion is all but destroyed throughout the galaxy.
SpilkaBilka said:
I've always wondered what this conversation between Vader and Veers meant:
Vader: The Rebels are alerted to our presence. Admiral Ozzel came out of lightspeed too close to the system.
Veers: H-he felt surprise was wiser...
Vader: He's as clumsy as he is stupid.
Are we supposed to take Veers's statement at face value, that Ozzel's plan was to surprise the Rebels? Or was he just trying to quickly mumble any made-up excuse he could think of to try to save his colleague from Vader's wrath? Because I don't understand how arriving close to the system would be a surprise.
You'd think the best "surprise" would be to come out of lightspeed with the Star Destroyer's out of the Rebels' sensor range, then launch smaller landing craft (carrying troops, AT-ATs). Presumably these smaller craft could get much closer to the base than the Star Destroyers could before triggering the Rebels' sensors. That seems like it would be more of a surprise than what Ozzel did.
And what do you think Veers was about to say? Ozzel felt surprise was wiser than... what, exactly?
I always assumed that he said "He felt surprised, was wiser..."
He is apparently saying that Ozzel felt surprised, and was saying that was a more appropriate description of his superior's reaction.
Exactly. After all, once Arthur had brought all of his knights to the round table, he then had to give them the grail quest to keep them occupied.
It would also be cool to see more spiritual connectivity in the sequels. The Ewoks mistook 3PO for a god, and that was played for comedy. But the entire idea of mechanical beings being part of the Force is something that the movies really haven't touched on. Could a droid be a Jedi? What constitutes a person? Maybe not answer these questions, but it would be nice to get the audience to think.
It would have made sense if there were no lightsaber fights or Jedi onscreen in Episodes 1-3. After all, Luke doesn't seem to know what a lightsaber is, or what the Jedi do exactly. We get to learn with Luke in the OT.
I expect that the audience knows what Jedi are by the sequels, and fully expects them to be there, lightsabers flashing. However, I think it would be a mistake to focus on the lightsaber battles as big events like they were in the OT. By this point, wielding a lightsaber would be like flying a spaceship; lots of people can do it, so we need to raise the stakes.
Have the new Jedi be united in a quest for something, something worthwhile at that. At the same time, have the story grow beyond the Jedi, so that the hero must undergo a paradigm shift to understand how to save the day.
Wow that is weird.
That "original" frame simply doesn't exist in the DVD version that I have. Notice how Jabba's eyes are slightly more open on the original, and the appearance of a "hole" on his chin that is absent on the original. At no point in the shot does this hole disappear on the DVD, so I assume that this effect was redone for the DVD along with the the rest of the digital additions in this sequence, or the end of this shot was perhaps cut off.
If the character was redone, global color correction wouldn't really work, as the colors of the separate elements may be different.
Sorry if this has been said before, I just noticed it.
I don't know if it's been mentioned yet, but Altoids - Citrus Sours.
I have about a dozen of these cans in my room holding twenty-sided dice and thumbtacks and things.
Nah, they'll just have cheaper looking CG backgrounds.
Let's explain the backstory of a character whose greatest asset is his mysterious nature! And while we're at it, we can tell the story of Han Solo that even George Lucas realized was a bad idea!
The odds that those will be good are exhaust port level.
Every new movie that comes out focusing on established characters is a movie that shrinks the Star Wars galaxy.
This is a good idea. Let's have no negativity about how the media will spin this, it's a valid and worthy goal.
I would be willing to contribute to this, but you'd need plenty of help. The cost seems to be in the 16,000 dollar range now:
http://www.gaebler.com/Variety-magazine-advertising-costs++39329
I know this idea has been thought of before, so I'll just ask how quickly it was shot down.
What if the Emperor on the Second Death Star was a clone?
This disregards the prequels, as Anakin/Vader would have known the difference, but if Vader of the OT had only ever seen the Emperor in holograms, how would he know if he was talking to the real Emperor on the Death Star? Also, the Emperor changes dramatically in appearance in both the original trilogy and the special edition, so it could very well be a rapidly aging decoy placed on the Death Star to test Luke and the rebels, as well as Vader's loyalty, without ever exposing himself or even risking a completed battle station. The Emperor's "Best Troops" seem inferior to even generic stormtroopers, perhaps implying that the clone Emperor wasn't aware of the real condition of his troops. The Imperial fleet flees after the battle, even after it still seemed to outnumber the rebel fleet. Was it an unexpected retreat, or a calculated move to make the rebels think that they won and lower their guard?
It's just that if the EU is going to be thrown out, why not go crazy? Everyone agrees that cloning the Emperor is a bad idea, but that's because the real McCoy was already killed off, leading to cheap imitations. But if Luke was overpowered and Vader killed by a cheap imitation of the Emperor, how powerful would the real deal be?
Bump.
This is a good question. Where can you find these trailers?
I wonder what could be causing that shift if it isn't Fraps. What software did you use to play the DVD? I used KMPlayer to play the DVD from the hard drive, that may be the problem. This lightening may also cause the white levels to be crushed in bright scenes, such as the burning homestead scene. I guess I should experiment some more with some better software.
You_Too said:
Why does all the before-pics have a black level of 15? Makes them look very grey. Either something is wrong with the source you're using or something is wrong with the way the screenshots have been captured.
Thanks for pointing that out. I don't really have any tools for doing this sort of thing properly, so the only thing I had on hand was Fraps. That is what lightened the black levels, and from what I can see it lightened everything pretty much evenly. So the comparison isn't entirely accurate, as the brightness of the source should be about 15 points lower.
OK, round 2.
After looking at the Senator pictures a bit more, I decided to add more green and increase the saturation, though I ended up throwing out all the old settings and starting fresh:
JEDIT: See link for library, password starwars.
FunkyDays said:
mverta said:
The original photography of the Tantive sequence had a lot of blue/cyan in the image, which was graded out later. This dialing back of the cyan/blue in that sequence is why many of us remember the corridor as being sort of bright, almost yellow-ish, and the floor tan, and it's also why so many of the trooper's blue uniforms were reduced to a sort of gray.
_Mike
So the cyan cast in the SE actually better represents the original photography, than the '77 release prints? My head hurts just thinking about that :-D
Thanks for the info, Mike
I'd say there's a big difference between the SE and the original photography from what I've seen. The DVD has a bluish cast, whereas cyan is more of a yellowish blue, which makes everything rather green. The DVD is also very dark.
So the stormtrooper armor is actually blue? I always assumed that it was supposed to be white, and that the blue in the DVD was the result of the colors being off.
Edit: Oh wait, you mean the Rebel troops? That makes more sense. Ignore the former.
Yeah, the thing about Star Trek that made it different than Star Wars was that Trek was actually a utopian (or dystopian) future, a look at a possible destiny of mankind. The travel to alien worlds was often used to be a mirror for the virtues and vices of humanity, and almost every episode tried to tell us something about human nature through this lens.
Star Trek the Motion Picture did this in spades, but there is a balance to be had. The Wrath of Khan swung a little in the opposite direction to compensate for this heady cerebral installment, and ended up being the most popular entry in the franchise. The writer of Wrath of Khan didn't actually care that much for Star Trek, and so stripped out some of the utopian elements of Trek in favor of a more military aesthetic, something which remained for the rest of the original crew movies. Plot points such as the Genesis Device felt very much like TOS, however, so it was a hybrid of old Trek and a new more mainstream aesthetic.
Trek 09 went far beyond this, and stripped out almost every hint of human reflection and utopia, depriving the universe of its first best destiny: a commentary on human nature. Is it fun? Sure. Accessible? Absolutely. Thought provoking? Nope.
JJ's writers don't seem to understand Star Trek, and Abrams seems not to have cared. I only hope that he cares for both the style and the substance of Star Wars, that mythic story set in a well worn universe populated with archetypal characters.
That's an interesting observation, Funky. In my last screenshot with Leia on the Tantive, I was originally going to use a Legacy screenshot of that moment as a reference, but it turned out to be too cyan to match with the rest of the movie. If that cyan cast was what was intended for the entire move, I may have to play around with the color mixer again.
Dante and Randal work at an Ewok convenience store and an Ewok video store where they only have the Ewok Adventures and the Holiday Special in stock, and they pass the time selling cigarettes to that baby Ewok and talking about how the Rebels shouldn't destroy the second Death Star because of contractors working on it. As there is no contractor in the Ewok village to change their minds, the Ewoks decide not to side with the Rebels and instead decide to eat them.
Bunch of savages in this town.
Crygor64 said:
I'm not an OT purist and I think the idea is foolish, especially if you know the history of the production of the first three films.
I just want film history to be preserved for future generations. When people walked into to see Star Wars in 1977, they didn't watch the Special Edition. That's not the film that started it all.
I didn't care if George wanted to tweak his films. They're his movies. I just wanted him to care about preserving film history.
Would this forum even exist if George had followed Spielberg's lead and released both the original theatrical trilogy and special editions at the same time? (And I'm talking about good releases, not the GOUT.)
But alas all of this discussion is pointless and this very forum has proven that George was right when he wanted to destroy his own history. The most popular topic on this site is about a fan project that is nothing more than another "special edition." It's tampering with film history far exceeds the damage done by Lucas.
Seriously, a wise man once said, "you'll strain at a fly in you swallow a camel." So criticize the prequel films all you want, but most of you are just as bad as the guy who created those cinematic disasters.
Huh?
And Whaaaaat?
There are a million light years of difference between creating an alternate version of a well known film and creating an alternate version, then demanding that all other versions therefore don't deserve to exist.
Freedom vs Oppression. You know, the theme of Star Wars.
It's all good.
The faces are the biggest problem with this project. In the reference material, they do look much brighter and more "alive", but it's a very tricky balance to get right. When Obi-wan says "The Force will be with you", his face looks splotchy and unwell, with pinks pushing out around his scalp. I've corrected that the best I could. If the skin tones are off, the whole movie looks dead, and if the background is only slightly tinted to the green/yellow/blue/red side, it looks like the movie is seriously ill. That's what happened with the 2004 DVD.