Timstuff

The hologram from a droid is actually a great idea, but even with the technical issues solved the scene still has no place in the movie.

The problem is, a lot of people seem to almost be against development in the story. The rpequels are about the fall of Anakin, but many people, rather than see Anakin go from a confused but good soul to a bad one, they want him to bad before he even becomes a Sith (hence, things like removing his hesitation at killing Dooku, amongst other proposed changes). Rather than see the benevolent Republic become the corrupt and despotic Empire, they want the republic to be corrupt and broken well before Palpatine crowns himself emperor.

What I think the prequels ought to be is the story of good falling to evil, and making room for the return of good. Thematically, I think that the prequels would be pretty dull if we spend two movies looking at stuff that has already been corrupted, and then in the third one we finally call the duck a duck.

The scene was a fun extra treat for the '77 rerelease, but it was not necessary for the story, and it does not make sense when taken in context of the larger story. As PCITSCH said, it doesn't make sense for Han to be talking with Jabba if he's trying to get out in a hurry. He says to Luke and Obi Wan, "We're a little rushed, so if you'll just strap yourselves in we'll get out of here." Why would Han say this if he just finished buying himself time with Jabba. Also, if Jabba is the most wealthy and powerful person on all of Tattoine, why is he hiking all the way out to Mos Eisley to shake down one of his former employees for money? Doesn't he have better things to do, like feeding Twi'lek strippers to his rancor while getting baked on spice? I thought that he had bounty hunters to take care of debt collection?

The scene is totally useless and should not be integrated into the actual film. Not on a permanent basis, at least. Like I said, it was fun to see it in theaters, but long-term it should stay as an extra on the side.

Akwat Kbrana said:

Timstuff said:

The prequels are a good versus evil story, where evil wins through deception. In some ways it was a deconstruction of the original, but ultimately the Jedi were still fighting for right, and the seperatists were bad guys.

I respectfully disagree. I'll grant that, as things presently stand, the separatists come across as bad guys. But the Republic & the Jedi come across, IMO, as corrupt and ineffective at best, despotic and morally compromised at worst. That's one of the big problems I have with the PT: there's no one to root for! Every single character is in some way repugnant and unsupportable.

Well, therein lies the problem I was concerned about. Will the prequel redux fix the problem of us having no-one to root for, or just make it worse by even further blurring the line between good and bad? Will making Count Dooku a sympathetic idealist, Grievous a humanitarian, and all this other stuff bring us any closer to the solid black and white divide between good and evil from the original trilogy, or move us even further away from it?

After evaluating the special edition of your post, I was very unhappy with it. Conceptually I was not opposed to making enhancements, but I felt that you went too far in your re-imagining of key events in the sentence structure, and was very dissatisfied with the image quality. I decided to alter the post myself, and while I started out with just the intention of correcting the image problems and reverting some of the changes I was unhappy with, the project ended up growing vastly, to the point where I added additional TIE Fighters to make it feel more epic, rotoscoped new lasers, and even added a mesh to your Palpatine avatar to make it more expressive. I'm calling it "The Original Vision Post Trilogy: Revisited." This version is what I felt the special edition should have been, and I hope other fans will enjoy it. For the more oldschool fans I may also release a "purist" version with just the color correction, with the other enhancements removed.

Also, since the Imperial March is not in any official version of your post, I decided to add it via the link below, because thematically and for consistency it should be a part of the post if we're going to be mucking around with it anyway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bzWSJG93P8

You work your whole life slaving away for the man, only to wake up one day and realize you've become him.

One thing I'm a bit worried about is that with all these re-imagining of the Republic and Confederation, is that the prequels could turn into a giant de-construction of the Star Wars concept. The original trilogy was a good versus evil story, where good wins. The prequels are a good versus evil story, where evil wins through deception. In some ways it was a deconstruction of the original, but ultimately the Jedi were still fighting for right, and the seperatists were bad guys.

In the re-imagined prequels that are coming out of these discussions, it's a story entirely of grays. The good guys aren't really good, and the badguys aren't really bad. They're just a bunch of thugs trying to manipulate and subvert each other, and at the end of the day no-one wins. It might be a more mature, consistent story, but is it too far removed from the original trilogy, where it was the righteous rebels fighting against oppression and tyranny? Thematically, does it make sense to go from such a complex story with such a muddled sense of morality, to the simpler, black-and-white themes of the original trilogy? Granted, it's already that way to a degree, but are these proposed changes an improvement, or are they only further distancing the PT from the OT?

adywan said:

It's Shatner's cup. lol

It does make it look like the one stormie is wearing some strange looking shorts. I wonder why they had just the one stormtrooper have a different attachment to his belt?

It's a thermal detonator, but it's verticle instead of sideways like on the others. Just pointing that out before someone attempts to "correct it" without first knowing what they're looking at. ;)

If Movie!Anakin had been the same character as TV!Anakin, people would not complain about him. He's conceptually the same as in the movies, but actually executed properly and consistently. He's got brashness and arrogance, but he's also very heroic and has a brand of wisdom that he applies to life. He's actually a good man who I want to root for, instead of a perpetual whiner.

As of today I am officially caught up on Clone Wars (except for the pilot movie, which I am still putting off for a while), and the show has continually exceeded my expectations. The show delves into a lot of dark and complicated territory that not even the original Trilogy did that's handled quite maturely, and on it's got some very nice animation that is probably the best I've seen in a CG TV show. On top of that, it's peppered with references and plots that relate to the EU, like the Death Watch Mandalorians and the Emperor's Hands (read: Mara Jade). Looking back, I wish that I had not written the series off just because of how negatively the pilot was recieved.

I still expect the pilot to suck because they essentially took 4 TV episodes and cobbled them into a movie (and on top of that the first season got progressively better as it went on, which means the movie was probably the four worst episodes), but the show itself has managed to find a special place in my Star Wars geek heart.

vaderios said:

How about this, im not sure..

If we relocate Piet's position to be in the correct location/spot based on ESB topology, then he should have a backdrop like this right?

-Angel

Pretty cool as far as the de-bluing and backdrop go, but again, I advise exercising restraint when it comes to edge enhancement, and to a degree the color desaturation. Piette's fleshtone looks more than a little sickly here, and the edge enhancement kind of expounds it. He kind of looks like he's a dying old man.

Cool, I found what I was looking for there. Thanks! :)

The TIE bombers were not the only blue-looking TIEs in ESB. The regular TIE Fighters looked blue in some parts too. I do not think it was intentional, and I think that the original intention was that they were going to be gray. However, due to some errors in lighting the blue screen, it's possible that the blue ended up reflecting off of the gray TIE models and they ended up looking blue, and since color correction was limited back in 1980 they left them that way.

Whatever the cause, for consistency's sake the TIE Fighters should not be blue, and if you're going to make all of the TIE Fighters gray then you might as well assume the TIE Bombers should be gray, too. Blue is out of place for the otherwise colorless imperials, anyway.

In the video games they're all gray.

Even the Sarlaac in The Force Unleashed didn't have a beak. I would not miss it if it was gone entirely. Also, I love the idea of the teeth rows contracting a bit, like a bit nasty sphincter.

Baronlando said:

http://filmsound.org/starwars/starwars-AQ.htm

Burtt says it's from 77. I don't think they say "star destoyer" in the final cut of the movie but there is pre-Empire material like comics and publicity stuff that use the name.

Han Solo said "Two Imperial Star Destroyers, I'm gonna try and outrun 'em" when they were escaping Tatooine.

It looks like a hillbilly muppet! XD

LOL, well, knowing is half the battle. :P

One of my biggest long-term disappointments with the prequels is that they killed off Darth Maul too soon. I would much rather have had him last at least into Attack of the Clones. :(

BTW, what's this I hear about Rogue Squadron in TPM:R? I'm a little confused, because I thought that Rogue Squadron was founded sometime between ANH and ESB (and "Rogue" is a term related to "Rebel," thus it makes sense as an extension of the Rebel Alliance)?

Yes, I've been following the Rebuild project for a while. I've seen the first one, and it was decent but a bit predictable (although the animation was a big improvement over the show). I'll probably buy it on Blu-Ray next month when it is released here. The second one is supposedly better and is more willing to depart from the source material than the first, and I've had a subbed camrip of it for a while but I haven't watched it yet.

Even with the new movies though, I'm still interested in the possibility of fan-cutting End of Evangelion. The new movies are a new continuity, and I'd like to see if I can improve the original continuity's sendoff, or at least make it more enjoyable to watch.

I am a big fan of Evangelion, but not such a big fan of the late episodes in the series or the ending, and the movie, End of Evangelion, IMO was not the massive improvement over the original that I felt it perhaps should have been. I know that some of my fellow Evangelion fans would view the possibility of editing End of Evangelion to make it a more enjoyable film as being akin to taking a pair of scissors to a bible, but I do not view it with the same reverence.

If I was going to make an edit out of EoE, here’s what my mission statement would probably resemble:

1. Make the film better paced

2. Cut the mind f***ery down to a more tolerable level

3. Make Shinji less of a pussy (if that’s possible)

4. Correct some of the retarded sound effects from the Manga dub

5. Make the film be closer to the length of a two-part TV episode (since there’s a ton of stuff I’d probably end up cutting out

6. Possibly integrate some footage from the TV ending to make the ending feel more upbeat

Overall, this would be a less philosophical/psychiatric cut of the film, and more of an action based one. I know that some fans would probably call it a butchering of the source material, but it’s not for them since they probably like the current version just fine. This cut would be meant as a more enjoyable, light-viewing alternative, so that you can watch it without feeling like you need Prozac afterwards.

Another change I’d like to make is to use a better image source, since the Manga DVD looks like garbage. Part of whether or not I make this cut will be if I can find a rip of a high quality Japanese disc of the movie. As I recall they do exist, and it should not be difficult to replace the Japanese audio track with the American one. The reason why I’m not going to keep it in its original Japanese is because it would not be practical for a variety of reasons. I do not speak Japanese so I would not know what dialogue I was actually cutting out, and syncing up the subtitles would be a nightmare. Basically, trying to edit a foreign language film seems like it’s flying blindfolded. Also, I’d like for the focus to be on the animation since that’s the best part of the movie, and I feel that subtitles distract from that.

If this is going to get labeled as a cannibalization or “sanitized version” of the original, then I figure I may as well go all out. If the end result is more entertaining and enjoyable for me to watch than the original, then I will have succeeded.

I just finished burning a copy of ESB! Can't wait to watch it! :D

Sluggo said:

Sadly, I think a lot of us have given up on the idea that new stuff can also be good. 

IMO, Clone Wars (the series, not the pilot film) and The Force Unleashed say differently. There is still cool new Star Wars stuff coming out, which is why I put up with stuff like Jar Jar Binks and Midichlorians. Lucas doesn't always get it right, but if there's gold to be found under all the chaff then I feel like it's worth it. There are plenty of things I hate about the prequels, but there's more stuff about them that I love, so I am willing to close my eyes and pinch my nose on occasion that I might savor the good stuff that Lucas brings to the table. As I've often said, just because George Lucas puts his name on something does not mean it's automatically bad, despite some people's passionate feelings about it.

That's actually a pretty cool idea, and would probably compliment the changes in Dooku's character well. I'm not sure how well it'd work with my own cut though, since I intend to portray the Niemodians as pro-slavery so as to make Episode I's plot more compelling. Still, a cool idea.

BTW, what do you guys think about adding music to the pod race in Episode I? I myself have mixed opinions about it. On the one hand, having no music really makes the scene an audio showpiece which I really dig, because your attention is on the thunderous roar of the Pod engines, and it's not unprecidented to have a SW action scene with no music (the duels in A New Hope, and more successfully in Empire Strikes Back). However, I really love Joel McNeely's Beggar's Canyon Chase theme, and I think the song compliments the pod race well (although like I said, it takes a bit of a focus off of the sound effects).