Anyone else think the blu-ray looks a little blue? It’s nowhere near as off as the official OT discs, but it’s definitely noticeable in a good amount of scenes. I’d compare it to the way the Mad Max: Fury Road BD skewed a bit red. Other than that, I’m pretty pleased with the quality.
Luke and Leia need to live. I was fine with Han’s death in and of itself, but if this trilogy ends up having our original trio getting knocked off one by one, I’m going to be really upset.
I agree with everyone who’s said they want to see the Resistance getting their hands dirty. When we first got wind of rumors that TFA would have a superweapon, I hoped it would be in the hands of the ostensible good guys. I want to see some tough ends-justifying-means quandaries. Maybe Leia pursues some aim obsessively and becomes more and more ethically compromised and Poe needs to bring her back from the edge.
Right now, only knowing Rey from TFA, I don’t buy her turning to the dark side. There’s plenty of time for that to change, though, so I’m not closed to the idea if it’s earned.
My biggest desire right now is for more information about what happened to the Imperial remnant in the Unknown Regions. A couple of nuEU sources have them retreating to there after the Battle of Jakku, the LFL story group brain trust has hinted that that’s where Snoke originates from, and on a tangentially related note Rebels has linked Kylo’s crossguard lightsaber (which I have a pet theory about involving Snoke) to some Old Republic-era deep history stuff. I don’t think I want everything spelled out, especially if it weighs down the story, but there’s a lot of really tantalizing mythology stuff being hinted at and I’d like at least a little more focus on it.
Also, with all this talk about potential new lightsaber colors for Rey, am I the only one who’s just assumed she’d be keeping the Skywalker saber? Is the idea that Luke’s going to take it back? I know we didn’t see it in the film, but Luke’s still got his green one at the end of ROTJ and in a lot of the concept art for TFA, so I figured he’d keep using that one (I also hope he does, because that’s my favorite saber in the entire saga).
And you don’t even really need to watch “The Clone Wars” (well, at least 10/15 episodes to understand it better). I have finished my “Rebels” season 1 run, it’s very good, even the weak episodes deliver something to the characters or the universe. It’s a ANH reboot, but a clever one (not a lazy “JJ Galaxy” thing I couldn’t care less about, with once great characters now old and useless, so old and so useless…), that links PT and OT naturally.
We’re going to have to agree to disagree on TFA, but as far as Rebels and The Clone Wars go, I definitely think SWR is the better show, but its connections with TCW are a necessary part of why I think it does such a good job of unifying everything. I never felt like there was any disconnect at all between the PT and TCW; those always blended well to my mind. So now when SWR - a show that looks and feels more like the OT than the PT - lifts stuff from TCW, that creates a bridge across the huge tonal and aesthetic gap between the live action trilogies. Having Rex and Ahsoka and Hondo coming in and out of the story in a believable way while people like Lando and Leia are doing the same does wonders to make it feel like one big timeline rather than two separate eras. Bringing Matt Lanter in as Anakin alongside James Earl Jones as Vader did a lot for me to legitimize the idea that OT Vader and PT Anakin are the same character, as well. Until that finale, that was something that I accepted intellectually but that never actually felt true on a gut level.
I watched the PT about a month ago and the OT this week (I just finished ROTJ twenty minutes ago, which is why I’m inspired to post this at this particular moment), with the second half of Rebels season 2 spread out in between as my lead-up for tomorrow’s TFA blu-ray release, and I’m really struck by how well this show works as connective tissue. The two trilogies have never felt more like they exist in the same universe for me than they did going into Star Wars straight from that last Ahsoka arc with the prequels still in recent memory.
I’ve been assuming we’ll get a teaser with Captain America: Civil War next month, but I’m not really basing that on any actual information.
Three days ago, it was 70 degrees outside. Right now, it’s snowing. Make up your damn mind, weather.
I seem to remember Abrams, Kasdan, Serkis, and Pablo Hidalgo all referring to Snoke as being “very old” or “ancient” in various interviews. That language makes it sound to me like he’s probably not the same age as Luke and Leia, whom I’d classify as “kind of old”.
Right, but ghost Hayden and the updated Palpatine hologram aren’t in the 1997 version. I’m honestly not sure about the ANH stormtroopers.
Now that we have Ep7 (and soon Ep8 and Ep9) to continue the story, I have lost all reservations about recommending plain ol’ release order. Doesn’t even matter whether you’re a newcomer or veteran.
I’ll agree for new initiates, but for myself and the old hands I usually watch Star Wars with, I’ve got a different perspective. TFA has officially pushed the running time of the saga past the threshold of my same-day marathon endurance, so since I inevitably will need to split it up anyway, I think I’ll be starting with the PT in the future. Fire it up on its own day, make some drinks, reach for something greener if that’s your thing, and MST3K your way through the trilogy, then break for the night and watch the stuff everyone actually wants to see without interruption.
Pretty sure this is Grant from Mythbusters’s wife.
So that explains why each and every one of these characters has been dimensionless cypher cannon fodder?
I kind of liked the Jason Isaacs one, especially since we got that background in “Shroud of Darkness” that he was previously a temple guard. But really mostly because Jason Isaacs has a great voice. This season’s inquisitors were pretty terrible, though.
I agree I was quite happy to see each of them die, hopefully never to return?
I forget where exactly, but I saw an excerpt from an interview with Filoni the other day where he said that if those aren’t the last inquisitors we’ll see, they’re the next to last. He talked a bit about how as they get closer in the timeline to ANH, they’re trying to play more and more by the OT’s rules, and that everyone thinks there’s no place in that era for the inquisitor characters.
This all sounds like a bigger pain in the ass than continuing to use discs.
Can’t your BD player play back stuff from USB?
Nothing bigger than 4 GB.
That’s probably a fat32 issue. Fat32 can only handle file sizes up to 4GB. If your BD player supports any other filesystems for example ntfs, ext3/4 or hfs+ try formatting your devices with one of them.
Bingo. It only accepts fat32, I’ve researched it thoroughly. It’s like a five year old player.
Can’t your BD player play back stuff from USB?
Nothing bigger than 4 GB.
For literally ZERO quality loss in the comfort of my home, I just plug in external hard drive and play all my Star Wars movies from there. I burn blu Rays for the sake of mobility.
Yes, but the TV I do most of my Star Wars viewing on (the one hooked up to my 5.1 system) is old enough that it can’t handle video through the USB port, and the physical distribution of stuff in the room makes the laptop-through-HDMI thing kind of a pain in the ass. Discs are way more convenient for me, provided I’m in the possession of blank discs (which I currently am).
Be aware, the Blade Runner on Netflix is the US theatrical cut, which I think is the weakest of the ones I’ve seen (I haven’t gotten to the international cut or the work print yet). It’s still great, and I wouldn’t discourage you from watching it first since it’s sitting right there on Netflix, but I feel like I ought to mention the fact that I (and I’m sure plenty of other folks) prefer the final cut and (to a lesser extent) the director’s cut.
I can’t push Time Bandits hard enough. Brilliant film. Almost splurged on the Criterion blu-ray the other day, I think I’ll probably go back for it in the near future.
To be clear: the version that’s going up tomorrow will be '77 crawl only? Is there an '81 or '97 version in the works for the near future? I’m trying to decide whether or not to burn this. Honestly, with the last one I found that the ANH crawl was as jarring after a couple years of the '77 as the '77 was when I first found despecialized, so I’m no longer totally sure where I stand. If ANH is coming in the near future, I might hold out, but if it’s going to be a while I might just go with the standard version.
I didn’t mind the space whales. I kind of like the way they’re setting Ezra up to have beastmaster Force powers.
In the IGN interview, it seemed like he still believes he can film the final Clone Wars store of Maul vs Rex/Ahsoka that he wrote the arc for.
Is that something that would have been completely new, or was it rooted in TCW? I can’t recall any special connection between Maul and either Rex or Ahsoka, but it has been a couple of years since I’ve seen the show.
Also, I think they’re handling Ezra’s potential slide to the dark side a lot more credibly than anything we ever saw about Anakin. Very interested to see where this goes.
Anyone else catch the finale? They went significantly darker than I thought they’d be willing to.
Jesus wept is the shortest verse in the bible. It is so powerful in conveying so much meaning in just two words. For me, “Bring my shuttle” is the Jesus wept of the original trilogy. Was mad as all hell when they replaced it with the convoluted drivel of preparing the star destroyer
Looper, finally. I have no idea why it took me so long to get around to it, as I’m a big fan of Rian Johnson’s other two films and a lot of his television work. I though it was better than The Brothers Bloom but not as good as Brick. I can’t wait to see what his Episode VIII looks like; he’s got a much more sober shooting style than Abrams that I think is going to work really well.
Bleep bloops aside, hasn’t it already been determined that the end credits have been extended by a couple minutes for the home release?
That’d be harder to prove wouldn’t it? Most cams cut off the end credits after a few seconds.
Supposedly “Scherzo for X-Wings” has been inserted into the end medley between Rey and Kylo’s themes, compared to the album version. Personally, though, i can’t be sure whether the version on the soundtrack is accurate to the theatrical version because I can’t remember whether or not I stayed through the credits any of the times I saw it in theaters.
