Omni

How is that a Star Wars headcanon?

At the same time, it’s by far the most important battle in the context of their stories, so it’s no wonder it’s the most effective. It’s the only SW movie where a space battle is the only climax, and where the main character is. Qui-Gon is the main character of TPM and he’s not in the space battle. The space battle in AOTC is not the climax. The space battle in ROTS is not the climax. The Battle of Hoth is not the climax of TESB. Luke is not in the space battle of ROTJ. Rey and Finn aren’t in the space battle in TFA. The space battle is not the climax of TLJ. And, finally, Rey isn’t in the space battle in TROS. So the Battle of Yavin is unique in that regard.

But it’s also the best for other reasons you mentioned above. I’m just saying, none of the others were designed to be this impactful.

Really like most of the changes Ady, looks very rad. If anything, maybe make Vader’s lightsaber flicker a tiny little bit less?

Good to hear from you, AlaskanSandman. Your work is a real gem. Stay safe.

Another note: a good scene/episode/etc. is used to move the plot and character along at the same time. This last episode did neither. I still liked it, mind you, but it’s straight up skippable, and it’s made clear that 3 is as well. We could go straight from the escape at the end of 2 to wherever we end up in 5, and we wouldn’t miss a thing.

Rewatched the episode last night. And yes, Wade’s death was to show how it affected others but, again, like I said, even Wade and the rest of the crew being a symbol doesn’t help them. We don’t care about them helping the Path, or that guy’s wife, or how their lives are impacted by it, or about Wade.

Conversely, we care about Porkins’ death, or Red Leader’s death, or Dak’s death because they clearly care something about Luke cares. We’re in it with them, they’re our group now, and their deaths are impactful in that sense. Another good example is Paige in TLJ. We care about her even if we just met her. Wade and new crew was one of the worst attempts I’ve ever seen at this, and unfortunately the Wade mourning moments had me cringing. Imagine if we had ten seconds of random characters we just met crying over Dak’s death? All we have is a couple seconds from Luke which is way more effective. Heck, the Rancor keeper crying in ROTJ was more effective. Really bad stuff.

Great example. Every death in the Death Star is effective in the exact way I’m talking about Wade’s death was not.

jedi_bendu said:

Omni said:

the first few minutes of this episode were the low point of the series IMO.

I’m surprised you say that as the opening bacta tank scene was my favourite scene in the episode.

Personally I thought it was a weak way to have them connect, but I’m mostly talking about the new gang we meet. Severely underdeveloped characters, that one guy at first hesitates to help only to have an inexplicable change of heart… then there’s Wade who dies at the end and… we’re supposed to feel for him, I guess? Like, the issue isn’t that they’re there, it’s that we’re supposed to care. They’re obviously representing the fight against oppression and the cost of the mission to the point that it shouldn’t matter who they are, but not even the symbolic nature of the role helps that brief storyline to succeed, like it does for me in Rogue One, and it really drags the whole thing. Doesn’t help that the rest of the episode was mostly boring…

Saw it, thought it was a bit underwhelming but I still liked it quite a bit. Vader’s been hit or miss and here more than ever, and the first few minutes of this episode were the low point of the series IMO. 3 and 4 have really made it obvious this is a movie stretched into miniseries which while it means they’re worse episodes overall, it gets my hopes up that 5 and 6 are going to be amazing again (like the impeccable 1 and 2), especially with Andrew Stanton as one of the writers. Overall, I’m very pleased.

RogueLeader said:

Agreed. Honestly the only thing I didn’t like was the combat. I thought the way he moved in the Rogue One hallway scene felt more like Vader than his duel with Obi. Though the UNRELENTING shaky cam may have played a role in that.

Agreed, but I don’t think that was Hayden?

adywan said:

Omni said:

Personally I thought Hayden nailed the way Prowse used to move this time around. Felt very Vader-y, much more than Rogue One. Pair that up with the new voice and damn, it really is him.

Hate to tell you, but it’s BS about Hayden being Vader throughout Kenobi. There are three people in the suit on this show. Hayden only when unmasked, General acting scenes is Dmitrious Bistrevsky and for stunts and fight sequences it is Tom O’Connell

I know it’s not just him but I’m pretty sure it’s him like at least 90% of the time.

Personally I thought Hayden nailed the way Prowse used to move this time around. Felt very Vader-y, much more than Rogue One. Pair that up with the new voice and damn, it really is him.

Here are some from me:

• I don’t like the ages in canon at all. I put Anakin as a 10 year old in TPM, Padmé 14 and Obi-Wan 25. Them saying in AOTC that “haven’t seen her in 10 years” and all those references to 10 years are just a way to round it, when in fact 11 years passed between TPM and AOTC (every year counts, trust me!). That puts Anakin at 21 and Padmé at 25, Obi-Wan at 36 in AOTC.
• As a folow-up, the Clone Wars lasted for seven years. Several parts of the ROTS novelization are canon to me here, especially the ones about Obi-Wan and Anakin’s relationship - “The war made them one. There is no Obi-Wan without Anakin” and stuff like that. The war made Anakin deeply paranoid especially about his relationship to Padmé, and every time they meet is like in ROTS or the 2D Tartakovsky show - something really desperate and sort of hidden, not knowing when the next time will be.
• All of this adds up meaning that by ROTS, Anakin is 28, Padmé 32 and Obi-Wan 43.
• Anakin barely gets any sleep during ROTS, and doesn’t really eat. He’s going completely on auto-pilot, like he’s numb. Nothing feels real to him. It’s all a dream, or a nightmare.
• 23 years pass between ROTS and the original Star Wars, meaning ROTS takes place in 23 BBY. Kenobi takes place in 13 BBY, Solo takes place in 8 BBY, and Rebels doesn’t end on the same year Star Wars takes place.
• Luke and Leia are 23 in Star Wars, Ben is 66, Vader is 51, Han is 31.
• In Star Wars, the Death Star was mostly empty, and the only pilots it had available are the ones sent to fight the Rebel spaceships. That’s because the Empire desperately wanted it out there doing work, even when they really should’ve waited more months to arm it up and have its full capablities of personnel filled.
• 3 years pass between Star Wars and Empire. A lot happened in those three years.
• For Luke, he studied more and more of the Force, but was very much not a patient and calm kid. The disturbance in the Force felt by Vader and the Emperor in Empire is Luke finally being able to make the Force “obey one of his commands”, as opposed to only “controlling his actions” as it had done up to that point. That was when he managed to be calm, at peace, in focus and grab the lightsaber in the Wampa cave, which really made him go that extra step in his connection to the Force and made him atuned enough with it in order for Ben to appear before him, who sent him to Dagobah in the next step of his journey. All of that combined means there’s a new player in town.
• In those three years, Leia and Han hooked up several times but nothing ever came out of it. It’s why Han is so sure of his advances in Empire, and it really takes all of the predatory nature of the relationship out of the equation if something already happened between them.
• Time passes differently in Dagobah, but not because of any sci-fi reason, but because of the Force. Han and Leia’s adventure in Empire lasts for a couple weeks, while Luke spends months in Dagobah.
• Finally, two years pass between Empire and Jedi. Vader dies aged 56, Luke and Leia are 28, Han is 36.
• The Force is something that if you have enough outside guidance you can mostly improve at it yourself. Luke is essentially a self-taught Jedi, and he spent the two years between Empire and Jedi honing his skills and enhancing his connection to the Force, working his ways around problems he knew existed from his time with Yoda.

As for more general stuff:

• Force potential can’t be passed down by blood. The Skywalker family is strong in particular because they’re a family that “shouldn’t even exist.” It’s the result of the Force itself acting and trying to course correct the state of the Galaxy. Anakin fails and it falls upon his children, who are indeed the two “chosen ones”, if there’s such a thing.
• I like to think the PT Jedi misinterpreted the Chosen One prophecy with Anakin and it’s what caused theirs and his doom, and that the PT is more of a subversion of that trope à la Matrix than actually just the trope.
• The Force isn’t like Harry Potter magic, meaning, you can’t “use it by accident just because you have it”, like Ezra does all the time for instance. It’s my main issue with Rebels. That’s not how the Force works. Like Ben says, the Force controls your actions like it does for Luke in the first film (but even that takes effort! Neither Luke nor Anakin ever use it “by accident”), but you have to work hard and study a ton to have control over it and be one with it. It’s like mastering a martial art, or an instrument, or any skill like that. Gotta devote yourself and really be passionate.
• This is something Pablo Hidalgo actually mentioned on twitter yesterday: Darth Vader wasn’t very well known before the original film, after which Death Squadron (Vader’s fleet) is formed to personally hunt down the Alliance after there’s a person of interest (Luke) with them. The reactions from Motti/Ozzel/Jerjerrod are a good indication of Vader’s reputation within the Empire and out by the time of each film.
• The back to back hit Scarif/Yavin is what made the Rebellion really grow in size and the Empire take them seriously.

JEDIT: Among some little fixes here and there to this, I’d like to add that I’ve personally added several headcanons from this thread into mine. For instance, the one about the Death Star II really being a shell that can’t even blow up planets and simply exists for political reasons (I’d arrived at it only existing for political reasons, but the stuff about it barely being a Death Star makes so much sense it’s almost obvious, thanks!), or the one about Anakin’s final moment being seeing Padmé in Luke. There was also mention of Bail and Breha’s final moments be mourning Leia since Tarkin had signed her termination - really dark stuff that you don’t even consider watching the original film. Talk about extra material making things more important…

Fullmetaled said:

adywan said:

EvantheKidDS said:

doubleofive said:

EvantheKidDS said:

I know I shouldn’t bring this up again but, I did just realize something. Since you’re using Topaz to improve the existing 2011 Blu-Ray for ANH:R HD, why not attempt the same for ESB:R?

That is if you want to do it, as it is your choice and not mine, or anyone else’s.

(In some of the shots where Leia turns around to rescue Luke from Cloud City, the lighted buttons in the Falcon’s cockpit bleeds together.)

Didn’t you just ask this?

Yeah I know, but when I was reading back the update on ANH:R HD about how Ady was using Topaz to clean-up the 2011 Blu-Ray (when it was still on native 1080p) to improve the image quality for the same resolution, I thought about that when I was thinking that Ady used the 2004 DVD to create ESB:R, before he used Topaz to upscale from 720p to 1080p.

If i had used the 2004 DVD then it would have only been 480p, not 720p

I didn’t know a 1080p blu ray could be downscaled to 720p and question I have is why was it isn’t that a downgrade?

Ady has gone over this a bajillion times. He was working with sources not all in 1080p at the time so 720p would be - and was - an ideal compromise. But upscaling algorithms have reached a point that going back to 1080p not only made the edit match the quality of the original soure, but surpass it.

I must admit it’s starting to become annoying for me. I receive emails for thread updates in case Ady posts something, but all I’ve been getting the past week are extremely specific requests and questions that Ady has already answered for the most part.

I think I fall on a middle ground. I really enjoyed episodes 1 and 2, they’re certainly my favorite thing to have come out of SW TV, but three was… weird.

I really, really liked the first half of the episode as well. Leia is so Leia about it all, Ben is so Ben about it all, Freck is one of the best characters in Star Wars, the minimalistic setting works wonders. All was well.

But then the Vader stuff happened. Even early on, the scene where he speaks with holo-Reva looks off. Cheap. Again, like the sort of thing I’d see in the Star Wars Theory YouTube channel. And the fight, too, was very bad. It pains me to say that I think the biggest person to blame for the shortcomings of this Episode 3 is the director.

The writing is sound - minus some dialogue from Vader which sounded weird to me - the characters are all great, their interactions great, motivations great. It’s certainly not perfect - I’m not the biggest fan of the Leia plot not being over yet, at this point it does feel like they’re mostly chasing their own tail just to stretch this out to six parts as opposed to a 150min thing - but for the most part very good. Reva is great, Vader is mostly great, Ben is great, the rest of the characters are great.

But the staging, blocking, lighting, heck, even the choreography of that duel… reminded me strongly of the atrocious Sc. 38 Reimagined. That is not a good thing. As mentioned previously, tons of “cool” Vader shots end up making none of them weighty and even a bit cringy sometimes. It’s so weird that this happened all of a sudden, Chow was arguably the strongest point in the first two but doubtlessly the worst part of this one.

But even with this uneven episode, I still have high hopes for the final three - especially when the latter half of this episode felt so much like a “tease”, which, again, is certainly not a good thing and is evidence of the show starting to go in circles, which is bad, but is the promise of good things to come.

nvm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5UX1Adanis - teaser trailer.

Not gonna lie, this looks very promising. Probably because, like Rogue One, it’s so “low stakes” in the meta sense that if it sucks it won’t matter. But I think I’m gonna love it.

Ady means the Battle of Yavin will be enhanced much like the Battle of Hoth - just enhancements to shots, backgrounds, fixes, etc. - without harming the film’s original pace. No new 30 second segments.

Disgusting post.

Some of the videos from the promotional tour for Kenobi are looking really good in terms of looking-for-good-Hayden-ghost-shots. He was certainly too young for the deepfake to be very good in 2003 but I think if we deepfaked 2022 Hayden it could look right. Even aging 2022 Hayden 10 years would work better than aging 2003 Hayden 30 years. I’d love to attempt something myself but don’t really have the means to do it right now…

ATLA is one of the most beloved pieces of 21st Century pop culture there is - and while Filoni is to thank for setting the tone and mood of most of the show, it’s largely due to the showrunners and head writer.

As for an unpopular opinion… hm… JJ Abrams was the worst director to touch Star Wars until Robert Rodriguez. (Guess it counts?)

Wait, how is lightning absorption a tertiary Force ability from Empire?

I think the appropriate credit to Lucas in Empire and Jedi would be something like what Pixar has with co-director, on top of obviously co-writer.

1.1

35mm scans of the movie exist, I just checked my copy, this is false.