Very cool, can't wait for the full movies to be available -- this is looking to be the version I'll be watching every time I re-watch the series, once it's out.
Wow, now this thread has made me sad. Mostly because it made me realize that what I thought was one of the themes that Disney could use, which would mesh really well with the Lucasfilm cue (though not as well as the Fox fanfare) was actually the Dreamworks logo theme.
Just trade out that last little Guitar bit for the same notes in horns (which I'm pretty sure one version of the logo does), and you'd be in business.
imperialscum said:
Harmy said:
I really hope there won't be any old characters coming back as force ghosts. That was one of the things I really liked about Zahn's books - he recognized the stupidity of the scene in ROTJ, where Obi-Wan, instead of being a disembodied voice or a flickering apparition, appeared as a ghost to rest his but on a stone and have a whole expository conversation with Luke and so Zahn had Obi-Wan appear to Luke one last time telling Luke that he's moving on and Luke will have to deal with what's coming on his own.
It really cheapens the death of a character, when you can just bring them back whenever it's convenient - it kinda worked in ESB, because it was handled pretty tastefully but I think that on the whole, it's a pretty cheap plot device and it would be even worse to use it just to give the dead characters some kind of a cameo. Plus, imagine the horror if they brought Hayden back as Anakin's ghost... Urgh!
Well I just don't see how it worked in ESB and not in ROTJ. I think it worked well overall.
It was only ruined by the Hayden, which is by far the worst change to OT.
Besides, according to the annotated edition, Zahn did it because he wanted Luke to be totally on his own as a Jedi -- and not the last of the old, but the first of the new. It also set up the whole Joruus C'baoth thing, by making Luke absolutely desperate for guidance from another Jedi.
Krycek87 said:
Judge said:
Star Wars Purist said:
Keep in mind that the special editions still had the "Greedo shoots" change, all the terrible and pointless "Episode 1" flavored CGI added to Mos Eisley, and Jar Jar's voice at the end of ROTJ....Plus, there's the terrible scream from Luke in the SE version of TESB.
However, I will agree that they're "better" than the 2004 versions, but the 2004 versions of each film are "better" than the Blu Ray versions, and the Blu Ray versions of each film will be better than the 3D versions coming out in a few years.
You know what's better than them all though?
The ORIGINAL versions.
Jar Jar's voice isn't at the end of the 1997 version of RoTJ, is it?
Nope, hell Naboo wasn't even in the 97 SE. I love the SE's as much as the originals. It's a shame we never got these on DVD.
I know this is a necro, but this gets at one of my biggest problems with the 2004 edit: the extended ending. In the '97 cut, it's a wonderful alternate ending with great music and pacing. In the 2004 cut, all the additional scenes make it drag on /way/ the heck too long. I'm not going to say '97 is better than the original (it's kind of a six of one, half a dozen of the other situation), but I will say '04 is worse. Much, much, much worse.
Cool.
I wound up putting it up on Pastebin, because I can upload without an account and they theoretically won't ever delete it. When you download it, just re-name the .txt to a .srt.
The link is here:http://pastebin.com/RsJSBCPL
If anyone thinks they can improve the timings, feel free. The way I have it is functional, but the timing doesn't always line up exactly with the timing of the Japanese subs. It tends to line up pretty well with the spoken dialog, though.
Edit: In case that came off wrong, I'm not saying "this needs editing, finish it for me pl0x." I'm saying it's done by my standards, but it's easy enough to edit if you're not happy with it. I've already got it burned to a DVD, so I have no investment in it past this point. The DVD looks great, by the way -- I do most of my movie watching on a late model CRT, and this rip looks better on it than it did on my monitor by a long shot. Gives you an idea of how much of the weird artifacts you see on these laserdisc rips you wouldn't have seen on a period TV and player, and reinforces why the format was so amazing at the time.
I'm done editing the subtitles, I'm just not sure how or where to upload them, or if anyone but me even wants them. I did it mainly for myself, but I figured I'd release it, since I'm probably not the only one who wants to watch this preservation but doesn't have the alien lines memorized.
Does anyone want it or have suggestions for what I should do with it?
So, I went ahead and made English soft subs for the alien dialog, editing the time code on a DVD or Blu-Ray timed .srt I grabbed from subscene.com. I'd like to spend some time tweaking it before I actually release it, but I was wondering what the best way to go about releasing it would be, or if there's even any interest. I've got a lot of stuff going on at home right now, so I can't guarantee I'll have it tweaked and out promptly, but worst case scenario I can put out what I've already got done, which is all 28 (according to the way my source file was split up) Huttese lines, just maybe off by a few hundred milliseconds here and there.
If anyone didn't know and was curious, the file format is just a .txt renamed to a .srt, with typed time codes showing when and how long a line of text should be on screen, which VLC and other video playback programs know what to do with. I edited it with Notepad ++, and at least in VLC, it's all clearly visible despite the Japanese hard subs without having to move it around or anything. Some of the Japanese may be rendered illegible though, if you speak the language and are reading along, but if you could do that, you wouldn't need these.
Also, I'm still interested in Adywan's reconstruction, if anyone can give me a tip :P
P.S.: In the process of doing this, I wound up watching the Tatooine scenes over and over again, and something struck me about the CGI -- specifically, how much more believable it is in this copy than in more modern versions. Not sure if it's the color timing or just the grainier video masking some of the weirdness, but there's something intangibly different about this version than the official DVD and Blu-Ray.
Troyig88 said:
I really hope he doesn't die in SW 7. I can't see them doing that with a Han Solo standalone movie coming out the following year.
As long as it doesn't star the character pre-Star Wars. I can just imagine it, "The Adventures of Han Solo, starring Chris Pine!"
Edit: Of course, they already made that one, it was called Star Trek and it came out in 2009.
DuracellEnergizer said:
Owyn_Merrilin said:
It's more one of those other big budget sci fi movies, like Stargate or The Fifth Element, that were good but didn't really stay in the public consciousness.
Comparing Stargate to Bizarro Trek, are we? Well, I know how to cope with disingenous statements like that ...
To be fair, Stargate has stayed in the public eye pretty well... but a lot of that has to do with the 10+ years of TV shows it spawned. The movie itself is kind of a footnote to the series at this point, and it's not something you're likely to hear a random person gushing about. Heck, I see more people talking about The Fifth Element online, even though I'd say Stargate is much better as a serious movie (although TFE is an incredibly fun, lighthearted sci-fi film. They're tough to compare directly.) It wasn't necessarily a direct quality comparison, just about the way the movies were received and their legacy.
So I just downloaded this laserdisc preservation, and I'm liking what I've seen so far. The colors alone make it worth it. Whether they're accurate to the theater or not, they're what I remember from my VHS tape as a kid, but with more detail. Unfortunately, the lack of alien subtitles is making me hold off from burning it to a DVD just yet. Has anybody made a subtitle file to go with this, or does anybody know what changes to the time code would need to be made to get subtitles meant for a DVD rip to line up with the right parts of this one? It's pretty obvious that an .srt or .ass file meant for the DVD wouldn't work without tweaking, since the Pioneer logo and everything is part of the file. Not to mention changes like the extended pod race scene further screwing up the timing -- if it were just adding the time for the logos, I'd have done it already and probably linked an upload here for anyone in my shoes.
Alternatively, is Adywan's reconstruction still floating around out there? I've looked, but for the life of me I can't find it. Not the DVD ready version, anyway. I found the AVCHD version on a torrent site, but there aren't any seeders and I'd have to convert it, anyway, potentially mucking up the audio if it's at a higher bitrate than 448k. Myspleen is missing pretty much all of his edits, for some reason. I'm kind of interested in that disc anyway because it has some nice special features and because DVD encoding and authoring is a major PITA on a dual core machine.
Jaitea said:
Just had a thought, I can't remember the plot of Star Trek Into Darkness, I enjoyed it at the time, but now I'm starting to think that the film wasn't that great at all, fantastic effects, but really stupid film, who's fault was that, the writer obviously, but it was JJ's movie
I've got a bad feeling about this, I hope it passes
J
I haven't seen Into Darkness, but I have seen the original, which was similarly awesome when you watch it but forgettable afterwards, and it's for a simple reason: Abrams wanted to make a Star Wars movie, not a Star Trek movie, so the plot was nothing but an excuse to get a lot of action going in the Star Trek universe. I hadn't really thought of it before, but he did kind of miss the mark for it to be a great Star Wars movie, too. It's more one of those other big budget sci fi movies, like Stargate or The Fifth Element, that were good but didn't really stay in the public consciousness.
That last part is kind of how I felt about the prequels, too. I truly believe that if you dropped the Star Wars name from them, they'd be every bit as well remembered as the two movies I just mentioned, by about the same numbers of people. Especially the first one and the third one, both of which were decent to good movies with a few bad points. I'm at a loss for how to call anything but the special effects and the sound good in the second one, which fails at pretty much everything but having pretty colors on screen. Whereas (heretical comment incoming) I feel like TPM is every bit as good as Jedi, if not better, and RotS is a decent, if not great entry in the series. Not being able to live up to the hype killed those two more than the actual quality did.
Getting back to that soap up there, I wasn't there in '77, but I was in '97, and the buzz and the merchandising was /insane/ all the way up to the release of TPM. I may not have had bar soap, but I had toothpaste, a toothbrush, a toothbrush holder, bath foam....
Point is there isn't a movie on the planet that could live up to that kind of hype and advertising blitz, let alone the legacy it was up against even without it.
Edit: Since you're the one who quoted me in the other comment, I may as well edit in a reply: I always figured the same thing myself, and I was surprised the first time I heard of the idea of there being a species called the Sith, but it kind of makes sense if you think about it. I don't think there was anything prior to TPM that connected the Emperor to the Sith, just Vader. It may not be the most obvious conclusion to make, but I guess the writers were giving lucas a bit more credit than necessary, thinking he might surprise them.
Bingowings said:
Everyone assumes it will be about the children and grandchildren of the Rebel heroes of the OT facing some old style new threat.
There is at least some mystery there if you ignore the EU (which I hope they do) but it would be more fun to have it about the children/grandchildren of someone killed by the Rebels of the OT.
Have them the new heroes and our heroes the new villains (well some of them).
Shake the thing up a bit.
Interestingly enough, I was reading some articles on that Secret History of Star Wars site the other day, and this lines up surprisingly well with what Lucas was talking about back in the 70's and 80's. For a while there he apparently had the idea that the prequel trilogy would be more political in nature (kind of like Dune I think, although none of the quotes mentioned it directly), the original trilogy would be light hearted action, and the sequel trilogy would be more philosophical, asking if good and evil were really as black and white as we'd seen in the other six movies. If they went with what you're talking about, we would have nine movies that actually matched that version of the "original vision."
Edit: Also with the whole Sith thing, Timothy Zahn mentions something kind of cool in the annotated version of Heir to the Empire, which is that when he was writing the book, nobody aside from Lucas himself actually knew what a Sith was -- for all anyone knew, it could be a species or a group that Vader ruled over in his spare time. He actually wanted the Noghri to be called the Sith, and he described them to look kind of like Vader's armor, and imply that it was based on them, but Lucas nixed the name. It's also why older EU novels were so big on the phrase "dark Jedi." The writers weren't entirely sure what a Sith was, so they went with something a bit more simple and descriptive, starting with Zahn.
emanswfan said:
First 3 minutes of ROTS color corrected (no audio, unedited):
No radical color correction here, just filmic look, subtle grain, and some reduction of the yellow tint. Still tweaking it, but it certainly looks closer to what I'm trying to get.
Wow does that look good in motion. The stills were impressive enough, but there's a big difference between seeing a still frame and seeing the actual moving picture.
If at all possible, I'd like an invite as well. I love these movies, and I've been itching to see some of the fan restorations for years, especially since several of them have discrete 5.1 tracks while the GOUT is limited to Dolby Stereo, which is the one thing I really miss from the 2004 DVDs when I watch it. Thanks!
Edit: I no longer need an invite, as the guys in the thread in off topic got me sorted out. If anyone is interested, here's the link: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/MySpleen-Invite/topic/8711/
Fang Zei said:
Neverar, that's actually reminiscent of the original plan for the ST circa 1980. Wasn't Luke gonna defeat the emperor and vader in VI and then go off and find the actual real big baddie in VII or am I remembering wrong?
I could be wrong about this, but at least one version of the original plan involved the sequel trilogy being about both Luke and Vader searching for Luke's sister, who wasn't actually planned to be Leia at the time, and trying to be the first to find her. In this version it would have taken more than three movies to take down the empire, and presumably the Emperor would have stuck around longer, too. That may have had something to do with the 12 part version of the Saga that Lucas was talking about early on, though.