As I recall it, the '79 release did not have the new subtitle ... but word was out before Empire that it would be there on all future Star Wars releases ... and so it was in '81.
It doesn't help that "A New Hope" is a retarded title if ever there was one, but it could be the kewlest title on earth and still be completely WRONG. Does it matter not one bit to you, Go-Mer, that John Williams scored the film to the timing of the original crawl? Perhaps you're familiar with that theme that all the Star Wars movies open with. Well, back then it was a music cue just like any other, and it was scored to the movie quite precisely. Changing the movie subsequently puts the musical score out of sync.
Plus, lemme see, that's the way it was when the world fell to Star Wars mania. That's one of the most famous movie openings in all cinematic history.
No Go-Mer, it counts for nothing. It's not original if it was added later. Do you have a problem with the English language as well as your internet social skills?
There are plenty of different "original" versions released nearly simultaneously in 1977. Beru's real voice and Beru's dubbed voice are each original. Close the Blast Doors -or not- are both original. Try to make the precise location appear on the monitor -or not- are both original.
"Episode IV: A New Hope" - added two years later, is NOT ORIGINAL.
Let me know if there's any other words you'd like defined.
My personal take on a separate Anakin and Vader playing out in the prequels would go down what I would have assumed the obvious route of a clone Anakin being involved and becoming Darth Vader. I always assumed The Clone Wars would be over the issue of cloning, not a reference to the composition of the armed forces that fought the war. Since when has any war been named for the soldiers rather than the nature of the conflict?
In any event, a clone Anakin would make everything said in Star Wars true. He would at once be both Darth Vader and the good friend of Ben Kenobi who was betrayed and murdered by Darth Vader. None of this mamby-pamby stuff about being destroyed by Vader simply by becoming Vader. Lot of interesting plot points could result, with the audience in the dark about identities when best for the story, and aware of who-is-who when that suits the story. Which one comes under the thumb of the Emperor? Which one duels with Ben Kenobi? Which one sleeps with Padme Amidala and sires twins?
It would itself be in the classic sci-fi mold of the evil twin (employed to great effect by Star Trek, Farscape, dozens of others). Best of all, there could be a mirror twist ending to the prequels where the audience finds out Darth Vader is NOT Luke's father.
Of course, then the series could never be watched 1 through 6 (thank goodness), but it would be nice to have a big a kick in the guts surprise in the prequel trilogy as there was in the first, and the handy gimmick of the Clone Wars provides the obvious way to have the second surprise be a neat reverse of the first.
And, heheh, Ben Kenobi would go back to being the truthteller he was always meant to be.
And, with all due respect, what you grew up with hardly makes something the O-O.T. or not. My daughter grew up when the Special Editions were released. Does that make it the O-O.T. as far as she's concerned? Will children born tomorrow consider George's 2008 update the O-O.T?
Your perspective, while valid for yourself, does not make external reality conform to your wishes.
The original version has never been released for home video, and the Special Edition as well as the Directors Cut feature plenty of effects created after 1977.
So .... I'm sorry if I messed up your point, but you were incorrect about CE3K. Thanks for bringing it up though. It's a much more pointed analogy to Lucas than Tolkien was.
I just got a flyer in the mail for some one-woman show that Carrie Fisher is doing. The graphics feature a large martini-glass, with the bun-head of Princess Leia where the olive would be - with a toothpick through it.
It's a very cute graphic, and I was taken with the fact that Ms. Fisher is - at this point at least - doing nothing to deny the obvious that, to the world, she is and always will be Princess Leia.
Ah, I wish I had a bootleg!!!! I've been looking for those scenes for a quarter-century. Nope, it's just that my memory is good ... easy enough for a movie I'd seen dozens of times.
Heheh, in fact ... in November and December of 1978, there was a multiplex on Long Island playing both Star Wars and Close Encounters and I'd sit through a (stolen) double feature of both, like 3 or 4 nights a week. It was 18-year-old fanboy heaven.
It was near the end of the runs for both those films. Star Wars had been in release for a year-and-a-half, and Close Encounters for over a year. Try to picture that happening with any film nowadays. Of course, there was no DVD release coming up, or even a VHS one. But all films did not remain in theaters for over a year. Close Encounters was a huge hit movie, and it was seen in its original form by millions of people.
Originally posted by: Guy Caballero What was different on the criterion laser? I've read conflicting things.
The Criterion laserdisc has an effects shot that was added in for the special edition (the shadow of a UFO passing over Neary's truck), and the special edition versions of the first encounter on "Crescendo Summit" and the escape from the military helicopter at the Army Base on Devil's Tower. In addition to these minor gaffes, two entire (though small) scenes are missing.
The first is a scene at the Neary house just before Roy and Ronnie go to the Air Force press conference. The scene reveals that Roy has turned his hobby room into a UFO shrine ... with cut-out articles hung all over the place. He's also built a rather prominent model mountain in the middle of his miniature train layout.
The other scene is the lead-in to the famous Mashed Potatos scene. Roy is at his model train layout, furiously carving grooves into his model mountain. In the prior scene, the audience has seen a topographical map of Devil's Tower ... and the suspense is great as Roy is on to the fact that ridges must be carved, but is oblivous to the main solution .... the flat top that has not been featured in any of his prior mountain visions.
The Studio insisted that Roy's obsession with the mountain visions be practically excised from the film. So these two scenes were cut, as well as an ending of an earlier scene where he sees the shape in a pillow.
But, as the film exists now in all incarnations ... we never know that Roy is building a miniature mountain in his train layout until AFTER we see him sculpting the mashed potatoes at the dinner table. It's still a funny moment, because it's a silly thing to do. But the real joke is completely lost. The actual joke is that Roy can't stop himself from sculpting that mountain. He's compelled, he's obsessed, he's lost it. But if you don't see him do any mountain-sculpting until that point, one of the best jokes in Spielberg's film is lost ... along with two scenes that are very important to Roy's obsession ... the main feature of the film's middle third, that the Studio simply didn't like.
Apparently, they didn't want any humor in the film, as the other hysterical sequence of Roy tearing up the yard for building materials was also cut out of the Special Edition.
Wiser heads subsquently prevailed, and that scene was restored (along with the pillow and many other cuts) ... but the two scenes of Roy sculting his miniature mountain have never been seen again.
P.S. - there's also a Jabba analogy to Spielberg's CE3K revisionism: There still remains in all cuts of Close Encounters the scene of the ship stranded in the desert ... which conveys EXACTLY the same information to the audience that the film's opening did, i.e., airplanes stranded in the desert. If that's not the analog of the Jabba and Greedo scenes in Star Wars, I don't know what is.
Oh, hahaha, yeah that's why I just edited out the double-post part.
But, um, it was there, and Gaffer Tape is not a raving lunatic.
(Oh, and I'll cut Spielberg some slack for releasing the original version of E.T. along with his director's cut, but he is on the top of my despised revisionist list for not doing the same with Close Encounters. It boggles my mind. He wrote the film as well as directed it; you'd think he'd treat it with a little more respect. Bah.)
Edited to add: I cannot let the remark pass that Close Encounters was not seen by that many people on its intial release. It may not have been as huge a hit as Star Wars, but it was one of 1977's biggest hit movies - seen by millions.
Ugh - Go-Mer - you've gone too far ... even for you.
Presented with direct evidence that Lucas is lying about the title for Star Wars (yes, the fact that "A New Hope" NEVER appeared on ANYTHING prior to the release of the movie is very good evidence) ... you just come out with even more ridiculous bullshit about your hero-god.
I have tried my best to defend your right to offer up contrary opinions, even when you do so in the most annoying, every-other-post manner.
But now I must join the growing chorus who can only chant "Fuck Off" and "Go Away."
Originally posted by: Fang Zei why does the OT defy comparison to any other revised work? ... Close Encounters: Columbia released a "Special Edition" not too long after the film's original 1977 release. I think this was 1980 or so. Correct me if I'm wrong
You are correct about the year. But let's look into a better analogy than Lucas vs. Tolkien ... i.e., Lucas vs. Spielberg.
Something very close to the original 1977 version of Star Wars was just released on DVD. It has audio that is not original in some respects, and it's not up to modern standards of picture quality or animorphic presentation. Lucas has a "special edition" of this film which he prefers and has released the original version in less than optimal condition.
Spielberg has NEVER released the original 1977 version of Close Encounters on any sort of home video. Not VHS, not laserdisc*, and not DVD. (*The Criterion laserdisc that claimed to be 1977 original was not). Spielberg has said he disliked the 1980 "special edition" of CE3K, which was a compromise with Columbia Studios, and that his preferred version is a "directors cut" released in the late 90's. To my knowledge, he has never said he doesn't want the original to exist ... but it simply does not exist. Two very important scenes have not been seen by the public since 1978, when the original went out of theatrical release.
I don't know if the footage has been lost or what. But how can we give Steven Spielberg a pass when we want to hang George Lucas in efigy? Lucas' quote about the original Star Wars and O.T. is repulsive, but his actions in releasing even a substandard version of the O.T. and his 1977 masterpiece are immeasurably better than ZERO release of Spielberg's 1977 masterpiece.
I trust we are comparing apples and apples now, and there will be no more red herrings about books vs. films when it comes to artistic revisionism.
So what about it? Spielberg and Lucas. How come Steven gets no flak, while George should be "hit by a car?"
Dunno 'bout that. I'm sure an original version of The Hobbit in print would be pretty difficult to find. It's not like Tolkien or his publishers went out and burned all the old books, but ceasing to publish them is pretty much the same thing as Lucas ceasing to keep the O.T. up to current technical standards.
Frankly, releasing the O.T. on DVD in its laserdisc-quality form, with the original Star Wars crawl to boot, is far more of a historical preservation mode than ever has been done with The Hobbit.
If I'm wrong, and the original version of The Hobbit has found its way to print any time since the 1950's, please let me know and I will stand humbly corrected. Otherwise, it is a blantant double standard to forgive Tolkien and revile Lucas.
Because, in the end, it doesn't matter if you have the bad taste to dislike Yub Nub (teehee) ... it's what belongs in the movie,
Interesting, though, that people seem willing to give J.R.R. a pass on revising The Hobbit to fit with the later-composed The Lord of the Rings .... yet Lucas gets no such pass for sticking Hayden in Return of the Jedi, or deleting Yub Nub.
I don't think it's valid to say the practice is alright if you happen to like the change, but the practice is immoral revisionism if you view the particulary change unfavorably.
I don't like the practice at all, and object to it on principal rather than on individual merit of case-by-caseness. I don't give Tolkien a pass ... and considering his rather clever solution of making the original version a "lie" told by Bilbo, it was completely unnecessary to change The Hobbit at all.
Still, the Tolkien precedent ... (and there are surely others) seems to give George a little bit of artistic cover for his revisionism.
And, gasp, I hate to agree with Go-Mer here, but I found it strongly implied in the original Star Wars that Luke's strength in the Force was at least partially hereditary.
Perhaps you quoted my entire post without reading it carefully. I revere the O.T. I hate the P.T. and I could type about my opinions pro and con all day long.
But I don't want EVERY thread to denegrate to the same argument.
There's a Theatricals vs. Special Editions forum ... what about setting up an O.T. vs. Prequels forum, and having the moderators move every one of Go-Mer's posts there??
I don't mind debating P.T. vs. O.T., but sometimes I want to read and write and share about Star Wars outside of this argument. Go-Mer does not allow any thread to exist without this argument being brought to bear. I'm sick and tired of it.
But I don't mind defending the O.T. passionately, dissing the P.T. with all the disdain I can muster, and lambasting Lucas for his fall as an artist ... and of course, for that neck!
And what would we have without Go-Mer? Lots of "yes, I agree" and "I think so, too." It doesn't make for very interesting discussion.
On the other hand, it would be nice to exchange pleasant thoughts about Star Wars without EVERY thread become an argument about the O.T. vs. the P.T. I am pretty sick of that, but I shy away from banning someone just because they ... well, steer every thread to the same argument.
If that's trolling, then by all means ban him. But I think it falls a wee bit short, and is simply annoying as all hell.
Just to throw in a perspective outside the duet (or is it duel?) we have going .... yeah, it makes zero sense to watch the prequels first because they presuppose you already know stuff learned in Episode "Four" (e.g., what's The Force?) and - of course - they ruin the great surprise of Episode Five (and yeah, the S.E.'s ruin the great reveal of Episode Six).
So, for those and a zillion other reasons, NEVER exhibit the movies in numerical order to a Star Wars virgin. (Laying aside the fact that making someone wade through 3 bad movies to get to the first good one is a very stupid idea).
Ugh, the subtitles BUG me. I want ORIGINAL Star Wars where the subtitles are printed on the screen and - whether it was done cleverly intentionally or not - distract perfectly from the imperfections of the Greedo costume.
The GOUT has, 'natch, below the screen, black-bar resident subtitles in a different font and different color than appeared in the 1977 film. Bah.
In truth, though I don't care enough to protest outside studios, I distinctively dislike it when filmmakers "correct" mistakes that made it through to the theatrical version of their film, barely noticeable on an 80' screen, seen by millions of people. The car erasure in LotR is lame, as is the cobra-glass reflection elimination in Raiders of the Lost Ark. These were not independent art house films seen by a few hundred people; they were mega-hits seen by millions, with these mistakes deemed "good enough" for such viewing. And with dozens of similar mistakes still in the films after the directors chose to clean up a selective few. It's revisionism, and I'm not in favor of it.
Neither example, however, alters the film to any significant degree. I just think it's silly, and is closing the barn door after the horse has come home.
You freely admit that you haven't seen most of those lauded films, but insist Star Wars must be better than them. I hold Star Wars in the highest regard, and consider it among the best of the best. But I will not denegrate any of those great films (admitting I have not seen a couple of them) so that Star Wars could somehow take the place of one of them.
They are each Great in their own way, as is Star Wars, and comparing films for ranking purposes is pure folly. Still, I think the point is that neither Star Wars nor George Lucas are generally considered amont the world's best movies or filmmakers by top critics and filmmakers. Perhaps Star Wars is simply not weighty enough (I note only one other "popcorn" type flick on the lists) ... but for whatever reason, it's not the be-all and end-all of cinema that our particular affection for it would consider as its due.
But go out and see a few more of those films, Go-Mer. Oh, and if you want to reveal your limited critical abilities by dissing 2001: A Space Odyssey as "boring," you throw into perfect relief the worthlessness of your love for the godawful Star Wars prequels.
I LOVE the Emperor in RotJ. Best thing about that movie, by far!
Most people seem to forget that the original point of Star Wars was to take a bunch of Hollywood cliches, accentuated on the serial brand of cliches, and do them both way better than ever -and- a bit tongue in cheek.
The cackling, mustache-twirling Emperor was CLASSIC StarWarsness.
Perhaps the hologram Emperior of ESB was more believable, but hardly an indelible and memorable character that could carry a movie. McDiarmid's performance in Jedi was delightful, a perfect combination of menace and, yes, comedy. Every line delivered with style and charisma.
To each his own, of course, but I rather prefer my space-opera movie-serials to be a little on the goofy side, with plenty of fun and eye-twinkle. Star Wars fit that bill perfectly - and won the appreciation of the world. Its sequels and prequels have never fared as well in capturing that elusive tone.
