Timstuff

I agree that the EU needs a reboot. I mean, think about it-- in the 100 years following ROTJ, there are more catastrophic wars and bloodshed than the entire movie saga combined. Talk about an epic fail--- for 1000 years the Republic existed peacefully, and yet the New Republic / Galactic Alliance somehow managed to eff things up badly enough that we got the Yuzonn Vong War, the Second Galactic Civil War, the Palpatine clones, Darth Caedus and Kevin J Anderson (amongst many other writers of BS) all within 40 years ABY. The EU has turned into a soap opera of galactic proportions.

However, the silver lining to all this is that I have thought of a perfect escape clause from all this nonsense: Star Trek was able to successfully reboot by using time travel, so Star Wars could do the same thing, except in reverse. In Star Trek, the rebooted continuity is the result of Romulans traveling to the past and creating the new time line. In the Star Wars EU, the explanation could be that sith from the future have been using the force to travel through time and have been mucking things up in the post ROTJ period, causing war and destruction. A good Jedi Knight could travel back from the new Jedi Order from some time around 130 ABY during the second Sith war, and with the help of Luke Skywalker manages to create a new timeline and prevent all the dumb crap from the EU from ever happening.

The big question though, is what multi-media project would warrent such a large-scale house cleaning in the Star Wars EU? It can't be to just create new novels, or else it's only a matter of time before we end up in the same rut we were in in the first place. Personally, I would say a reboot would be ideal for a Star Wars TV series (or even a new trilogy of movies) that takes place after Return of the Jedi. Even if in this new work they just ignore the old post ROTJ continuity's crappiness, but they could make an expanded universe story that chronicles the time travel muckery that caused the original post-Trilogy fiction to be rebooted.

So if Adywan is making small corrections with the 1080p SE's like Han shooting first, Boba Fett's voice and Shaw at the end of ROTJ, what about that irritating Gungan shouting "Weesa free!" at the end of ROTJ? That's an annoyance that should be pretty simple to fix, methinks.

Jaitea said:

savmagoett said:

ut I have to take care of the Falcon first, which is happening to be a huuuuge task as you can imagine!

Heres one of the images I used to wrap the Falcon model, its of the Finemolds Falcon kit (you can see the inaccuracy of the angles on the mandibles), the second is the bare 3d model (downloaded from Sci-Fi 3D) and the last is the Finemolds image modified to fit on the 3D model.

Anyway heres the model in motion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FoyJBOQ5ko

 

J

Jaitea said:

Heres a quick composite (not colour corrected!!)

 

J

It shows promise, however I'd like to see a little more detail on the side of the "fender," since currently it looks a bit flat. With the "hero" models used in the movie, the side of the fender was usually more sunken in and had more pipes and stuff sticking out, rather than being a straight wall. Think of it kind of like a sandwich where the bun is slightly bigger than the meat (interesting, considering the Falcon's design was inspired by a burger next to an olive).

I'd like to see that clip. It sounds interesting!

BTW, in case anyone is confused by my earlier comments, I wasn't implying that Biggs' presence near the end of ANH is unnecessary. I think that it was a good addition to the film and was glad that Lucas reintroduced it, and I loved how Ady took it a step further by adding in Luke's "Biggs? BIGGS!" line from the audio drama when he dies. I do agree with Lucas's decision to leave out the longer scene from earlier in the movie though. Like the Jabba scene it's an enjoyable bonus, but not necessary for the actual movie.

One thing about Ady's edit that still bugs me is when Obi-Wan ignites his saber during his duel with Vader. For me it wasn't really an improvement over the original since it still looks fake, so maybe there's a better way to go about it. I was thinking that ideally, you could create some transitional frames using a morph from when he's holding the bladeless saber to the bladed one to eliminate the "jump". Also, in the bladeless saber shot it's possible that you could matte him onto the background from the bladed saber shot, since that would help eliminate the perception of there being a jump.

Simply put: it's way too much work, and the end results would probably look sloppy and unprofessional. Personally, my preference is to just leave the scene out. Even if on a technical level it could be perfected, as Adywan and others have said the scene slows things down quite a bit, it doesn't really give us any information that wasn't already covered in the Greedo scene, and it spoils the intro of the Millennium Falcon. In addition to that, in retrospect the scene seems a bit out of character for Jabba, probably because Lucas's vision for the character changed over time. In ROTJ and TPM he is depicted as being of very considerable wealth and power to the point where he controls probably the majority of the planet. Someone with that kind of power probably has better things to do than to go and harass one of his former employees in person, considering that he is fat, lazy, and has people who are paid to do it for him (like Greedo). It was a fun scene for the Special Edition since it was one of those legendary things that fans like us always dreamed about (along with Biggs and the original opening), but once the novelty wears off it becomes pretty clear that they are not necessary, and the movie works a lot better without them.

There are a number of issues with TPE that keep it from being a true "replacement disc" for Episode I in the way that ANH:R is, most of them technically related. While the cuts made were very well chosen, in addition to the picture quality problems, the transitions between cuts are not always as fluid as with the original release, and there's the whole issue of the prank opening crawl which tends to take us out of the experience a bit.

His Episode 2 cut is the same story-- excellent choices for cuts (except Jango Fett vs. Obi-Wan-- I thought that scene was fine the way it was originally), but minor technical problems hold it back from being a true replacement disc, and there's the opening crawl.

I burned it with all other programs closed and at the minimum speed setting (2x) and it worked like a charm! Thank you Ziz!

BTW, the picture quality on this disc is great, Adywan! I think I've gotten so accustomed to The Phantom Edit though that I'd almost forgotten just how nails-on-chalkboard annoying Jar Jar is, lol. Deciding which version of Episode I to watch is going to be tough now, because while The Phantom Edit is a much more enjoyable movie, the picture quality is pretty much crap in comparison to Ady's AVCHD version.

I have no virus scan since it's a mac. However, I will try shutting down all the extra processes and then burning at a slow speed. Hopefully that does the trick, or else I'll have depleted half of my DVD+R DL for naught. :(

Also, the program I've been using is burn, but I also tried Toast Titanium 9 once and got the same results.

For some reason The Phantom Menace is refusing to burn correctly. It will get pretty far, but then at the end it always effs up and gives me an error message. I used to get problems like this every time I tried burning a 2-layer disc, but after switching to Verbatim ones I was able to burn the ANH Revisited DVD9 with no problems, so I assumed it'd be the same way with TPM. Six rather expensive coasters later though, I'm ready to give up until I can find out what's wrong and how to fix it. I'm using a Macbook Pro, and they have a long unfortunate history of being stupid when it comes to DVD+R DLs, and apparently even when using the correct brand it can still be a problem...

w00t! I finally got my hands on some Verbatim DVD+R DLs and burned myself a copy of the DVD9 ANH:R! Jolly times are ahead! :)

So, anyone have a good Feeny impression? :D

(for the record, I could probably pull one off if called on, though ^_~)

TV's Frink said:

Timstuff said:

If you were to dub over JEJ in War of the Stars with his "soundalike" from the radio drama, I think that the effect would seem a lot more believable.

I'm not sure the effect is supposed to be believeable.  It's supposed to be poorly done.

At least, I think that was the intent...it works better if you think of it that way, at any rate.

I mean believable as in, I could believe they would release a movie that sounded like that. In the current version a lot of Vader's dialogue is incoherent and comes across as non-sequesters, and even in a badly made schlock movie I don't think that would be expected. Picking some dialogue from the radio drama, especially ones that sound cheesy when combined with an actual visual would make WOTS feel a lot more convincing as a real bad movie. Like when Vader force chokes that guy, we can hear him narrate what with visuals is obvious, like "Are you finding it hard to breathe? Does it feel like your throat is closing up?" It would be a lot funnier and would make Vader come across as overly theatrical, rather than schizophrenic.

Bingowings said:

The Leia interrogation scene is very nasty in the radio drama too but how that could be integrated into the filmed footage I'm not sure. not unless Vader was slowed down to almost Lynchian time scales.

I think he could do the scene by just having close ups on the faces of Vader's accompanying guards while we hear Leia reeling in pain, and maybe a long shot of the closed door from outside while we hear the torture going on within. Although, Leia's voice might have to be modulated slightly to sound more like Leia's tone (in the radio drama the actress was a bit more high pitched than Carrie Fisher). We don't even need the whole scene, just enough to show that this version goes way farther than the original.

Oh, and here's another wild idea: what about the possibility of giving R2D2 an actual voice? That has some major potential for hilarity.

I was listening to the Star Wars Radio Drama last night, and it was good stuff. However, the one thing that stuck out to me was that Darth Vader's voice was not nearly as intimidating, and often came across as somewhat cheesy. If you were to dub over JEJ in War of the Stars with his "soundalike" from the radio drama, I think that the effect would seem a lot more believable.

The best option of all would be to use David Prowse's on-set dialogue, but unfortunately I think that Lucas is the only one who has access to the whole movie's worth of them so I don't think that would be too plausible.

Sith do love gray areas, though. Palpatine was able to lure Anakin to the dark side by first bringing him to a gray area of morality. Claiming that to understand the force you need to understand both the light and dark is about as gray as it gets. The Jedi way is "Light side = good, dark side = bad," whereas Sith claim that morality is relative and that it's up to the individual to determine what is right and wrong. The reason the line is so controversial is because it's the straight up opposite of how the Jedi and Sith actually are, and thus has no place in the story. If anything, it should have been Anakin telling Obi-Wan that "only Jedi deal in absolutes. I'm finally free of their single-minded dogma!"

If you imply that Irina is abducted then you can kill two birds with one stone. She gets swept up in a swirling vortex of energy, and the next thing we know the ship is taking off for another dimension with her presumably still in it. We never see the alien, and we're left to presume that Irina is now their prisoner.

Are you going to cut us seeing the alien at the end, and maybe make Irena's death seem more satisfying somehow? Maybe you could imply that she was abducted by the aliens and taken onto their ship instead of showing her explode. I never liked the fact that we saw a living alien at the end, because as someone once said, it was like if we saw God in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Shiva in Temple of Doom, or if Jesus in The Last Crusade. They should have left in some mystery.

Jair Crawford said:

I like a lot of the ideas here. But I will say one thing, and that's, imho, the story of the PT does not need to be changed all that drastically. 

The main things that need to be done is, re-editing scenes, cutting some dialogue (like, the balcony scene in EP III *shudders*), cutting Jar-Jar's screentime, re-inserting deleted scenes, stuff like that. lol But taking out the entire Yoda v Dooku duel in EP II and taking out the entire gungan battle in EP I would be too much, imo.

Also, I REALLY like the color edits on here. Just one thing, be very careful that you don't take out ALL the color in the process. Some desaturation is necessary, but people do tend to get carried away sometimes.

This is exciting! :D

I agree with you. I know some people absolutely loath the prequels with a passion and see them only as raw footage that can hopefully be edited into something watchable, but for me, I like them and accept them as being part of the Star Wars canon. I feel like there are a lot of weak spots that need to have the knife taken to them, and I think that The Phantom Edits were a pretty good example of what kind of cuts should be made. I also would like to see Jar Jar and some of the other more annoying characters completely dubbed over, since theyare downright grating to listen to.

Overall though, I think that the films do a good enough job at telling the story before the OT and I would not alter it that drastically aside from dubbing over a few characters and trimming out the fat. Changing Dooku from a Sith to a rogue Jedi is a major retcon I could seem myself toying around with the concept of since it could potentially make the story more interesting, but I would not go much further than that. The prequels are what they are, and just because I dislike some of the choices Lucas has made in his handling of the franchise does not compel me to disown anything he signs off on, which unfortunately seems to be the mindset of a lot of people.

BTW, I know this is the "Prequel Radical Redux Ideas Thread," but last I checked we didn't have a "Prequel Conservative Redux Ideas Thread," so I take this conversation as being fair game. ;)

That line is incorrect on so many levels, because the statement itself IS an absolute. George Lucas must have been hitting the spice pipe pretty hard when he came up with that one...

I really dig that darker set! It does worlds for making the set feel bigger.

As for Palpy's eyes, I say leave 'em the way they were. That was one of the things I always thought was freaky about Palpatine when I saw ROTJ as a kid, so I'd prefer to see it stay. They weren't quite as unsetting as the chimpanzee eyes from the OOT ESB, but they had an effect in the same ballpark, just to a lesser degree.

But then we miss out on the geonosis rings scene, which was one of the more memorable action scenes of the PT. :(

rcb said:

on the videos, ady said he wouldn't do any flashbacks, still its a neat idea. I wish there was a way to extend the range of planets at the end. i would've thought george would put kashyke in there.

George Lucas never used flashbacks in any of the SW movies anyway, so to have one in Return of the Jedi would feel incredibly out of place. The Star Wars movies have always had a linear storyline, and it's been that way in all six movies.

I don't know if the Obi-Wan / Anakin / Dooku duel is satisfying enough to be the movie's climax. I guess I'd have to watch the last 15 minutes or so of the movie without the Yoda duel to know whether or not I'd miss it. From a story point of view it's an unnecessary scene, but in terms of pacing, buildup and satisfaction I'm not sure how easily it can be done away with.

TheBoost said:

If I'm an evil Sith Lord, motivated by Greed, Hatred, Selfishness, and all that, and I'm awesome and really dig being a Sith Lord... why do I train an apprentice and instruct them to SOMEDAY KILL ME.

People will do a lot of strange things in the name of religion. In that sense, the sith are not entirely selfish, since their selfishness is actually a means to the survival of their order. Of course with Sidious it kind of ended up all blowing up in their faces, because he was constantly plotting to find more powerful apprentices to replace his current one. In that sense, he was the most selfish of all Sith since he'd plot the demise of his own apprentices instead of the other way around.