joefavs

Hey folks, this has been on my mind for the past few weeks and I was wondering if any of you could clear it up. I’ve been re-watching Star Trek (TOS) for the first time in a couple years, and while I’m enjoying it immensely for the most part, I’m a little bugged by the HD versions that are available on Netflix and Amazon Prime streaming. As anyone with the knowledge to answer this question probably already knows, some years back the original Trek was given the Lucas treatment, and all the external space shots that were originally done with models were replaced with CGI. The result is much less obnoxious than the Star Wars SEs, but it’s still kind of incongruous and distracting. Anyway, this is the only version on Netflix, and Amazon only has the unaltered ones in SD, so I was wondering: does an HD version of the unaltered original Star Trek series even officially exist? If so, where can I find it? If not, has anyone at this site or a similar one done some sort of reconstruction? I don’t care about authentic audio, and in fact would prefer the 5.1 mixes of the remastered versions because they’re actually very good, but I’d love to see the original effects shots without having to watch the old SD transfers.

Yeah, “grappling hook” was my immediate reaction too. I’ve seen it four times and haven’t noticed anything, but it’s been the 2D every time and two viewings were at the same theater. I’d honestly be completely surprised if anything other than the shifting aspect ratio for IMAX was different from version to version, though.

Harmy said:

And you think the colors in this screenshot look good? I personally think they are super ugly. And it looks very much like the 2004 master, only with even more screwed up color and without the clouds over the lower sun - maybe it comes from the scan before they added the clouds?

I think the orange instead of the usual pink and purple is interesting enough that I’d like to see more. It would be insane to say “yes, this is the version I like” based on one frame from one shot, all I meant was I wouldn’t hate it if they got adventurous rather than strictly adhering to an existing reference. After all, it’s not like everyone and their mother won’t be doing regrades of whatever we eventually get anyway.

moviefreakedmind said:

The official website used a frame from the unaltered version of Star Wars. It’s cropped and weird looking, but it’s not from the GOUT or the Special Edition.

There are at least a dozen “ifs” between this frame showing up on the SW site and confirmation of an upcoming official release of the OOT, but the color in that doesn’t look like the SE or any of the approximations of the “authentic” theatrical colors it the preservations. If this is indicative of anything at all, I wonder if it’s indicative of brand new color timing. I think this opinion puts me in a minority here, but I’d like an OOT blu-ray to look like a really good blu-ray rather than a slavish recreation of a late 70s theater experience, so the idea excites me. I dislike the current blu-ray colors because they’re ugly, not because they’re inaccurate.

Also, I saw TFA for the fourth time tonight and my enthusiasm just refuses to be deflated. I love this movie, and I’m thinking I might need to embark on a voluntary exile from these boards until passions aren’t running so high, because a lot of you are bumming me the hell out. I’ll be on an island with a bunch of neat stairs and huts and shit lookin’ at the water if anyone needs me. Or the AV Club. Probably more likely the AV Club.

That’s just the worst Sith name in the long, sad, dumb history of bad Sith names.

Lord Haseo said:

Darth Venamis

No. That can’t be real. Someone tell me that isn’t real.

Now that TFA is out of the bag, I wonder when we’ll start getting comics set in the ST era.

Side note: I’m still finding the fact that “ST” is now an actual concrete thing to be pretty trippy.

woofermazing said:

He’s just upset that TFA is going to blow Avatar out of the water for highest grossing film. He was obsessed with beating Avatar in the prequel extra features.

Wait, what? Avatar came out four years after Revenge of the Sith. Do you mean Titanic?

Copy and paste of something I posted RE: kylo’s lightsaber skills in the spoiler thread last night, because that thread seems to be fizzling out:

joefavs said:

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Kylo Ren was able to murder the rest of the Jedi students so effectively because he was the only one who had a lightsaber. I’m thinking Luke didn’t want to pass on that knowledge right away, but Snoke showed Ben/Kylo as a seduction tactic. The companion books refer to both Snoke and the design of the cross guard saber as “ancient”, so it wouldn’t be out of place for those instructions to come from him. I figure if Kylo learned from Luke, he’d have built a more conventional saber, and if Kylo didn’t learn from Luke, there’s no reason to think anyone else did. It would also justify his unimpressive performance against Rey, since in this scenario he wouldn’t need to have been a particularly skilled duelist to wipe out Luke’s academy or whatever he called it (Praxeum? 😉).

Bingowings said:

My only problem with Leia’s scenes is the editing and position of the resistance base in relation to the stakes of the film.

In the original film (that this one is so clearly stealing from) Leia has by necessity led the Empire to the Rebels, who at that point are the only obstacle to Empire having secured dominance over the galaxy. If the Death Star blows that up it’s won.

The set up in these movies is there are two power blocks. The former Empire now First Order and the New Republic. They seem to be in a cold war situation. In this film the place to get that sense of peril would have been on the Republic capital which might as well been Coruscant in the same way that Rey might as well have been raised on Tatooine. So what we should have seen is a Resistance base insurgent within First Order territory be the test target and Leia on the Republic world having already failed to get the bureaucrats to launch a retaliatory strike risk open war with the First Order by taking her followers in the fleet to attack the base.

That way when the capital is destroyed there is a sense of connection to the place. I barely understood what the place was. In my after viewing report I thought it was Coruscant because it looked like the whole planet was one big city but I needed someone there to tell me.

Also done that way a small section of the Republic fleet survived and became the new resistance to the rise of the First Order.

There was a scene that was cut in which Leia sends an envoy to the senate on Hosnian Prime that likely would have A.) clarified that it wasn’t Coruscant, and B.) made the planet’s destruction resonate more. It looks like it was shot because there are some stills from it floating around in some of the companion books. I hope it’s included on the Blu-ray, I’d like to see it in a fan edit down the road. Personally, I think striking out at the seat of government immediately rather than testing Starkiller on another target first is useful for characterizing the First Order. These aren’t the banal pencil-pushers of the old Empire, they’re unhinged ideologues trying to make the biggest splash possible. That’s not to say I don’t like your suggestion, I think that would’ve worked well too. I just think the version in the film succeeds at illustrating a certain dynamic.

As for Leia’s face. Honestly the level of overlapping sexism and ageism in nerd circles is a bloody disgrace. It makes me feel ashamed to own small plastic dolls in the shape of aliens and robots it really does.

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Kylo Ren was able to murder the rest of the Jedi students so effectively because he was the only one who had a lightsaber. I’m thinking Luke didn’t want to pass on that knowledge right away, but Snoke showed Ben/Kylo as a seduction tactic. The companion books refer to both Snoke and the design of the cross guard saber as “ancient”, so it wouldn’t be out of place for those instructions to come from him. I figure if Kylo learned from Luke, he’d have built a more conventional saber, and if Kylo didn’t learn from Luke, there’s no reason to think anyone else did. It would also justify his unimpressive performance against Rey, since in this scenario he wouldn’t need to have been a particularly skilled duelist to wipe out Luke’s academy or whatever he called it (Praxeum? 😉).

Of course, speaking of the Praxeum, wasn’t this basically what played out with Kyp Durron and Exar Kun?

Do we know that water is prohibitively scarce on Jakku? Maybe their moisture farming game is on point. It seemed to me that food was the bigger problem, since Rey traded her salvage for rations which she then prepared with her own water. Maybe the green stuff in her ration pack was happabore jerky, and raising these things is the only way anyone on the planet gets any protein.

Haha, I’m a recovering film student myself.

I always thought the music in the Plagueis scene was diagetic, coming from whatever the hell that Cirque du Soleil thing Anakin and Palpatine are watching. I guess it could still be a reference, but I’ve never read that as being “Plagueis’s Theme” or anything like that.

timdiggerm said:

Also, her absence would have been conspicuous. Less so, now that we know what she does in the Galaxy and we may not need to see her again.

I think with her as Kylo’s mother she’s going to have to be around in the next two (or one if they kill her, but with Han dead already I expect Disney will ease up on killing old characters; I don’t think anyone wants “seeing your childhood heroes meet violent deaths one by one” to become a major theme of the sequel trilogy). Personally, I didn’t feel strongly one way or the other about Carrie’s performance. She was more than a little stiff, but she certainly didn’t ruin anything for me.

luckydube56 said:

Couple of random thoughts/musings:

1. Is Princess Leia the new Jar Jar Binks? Her acting was so wooden. There was nothing behind her aged face that reminded me of Princess Leia. When I saw Han Solo bound thru the door of the Falcon the first time, he seemed very much like Han Solo. I didnt see Princess Leai in this film at all. Fisher might as well have been playing a different character. Will Leia become a drag on each film gong forward?

I’m having trouble connecting this part to the rest of your point. Is everything we don’t like in Star Wars automatically the new Jar Jar Binks? Jar Jar sucks because he’s racist and shrill. That comparison should mean something more specific than “not good”.

Good stuff. I’ve been on the fence about the Revell models, both because of their scale and the fact that they’re snap-togethers, but this looks good enough that now I think I might pick up a couple.

It also goes without saying that the effects work itself is marvelous. Did you build the motion control rig from scratch?

RU.08 said:

Yoda Is Your Father said:

I agree that Snoke took me right out of the movie. And if you’re suggesting that they would have been better off going down the puppet route, I agree with that too. Yoda was so good they tried to get Frank Oz nominated for an Oscar but the academy wouldn’t have it.

I don’t care how the special effects team does it, they can use CGI or a puppet or a man in a mask or do whatever they want. My point was that you don’t want it to look fake. You don’t want people to roll their eyes and say “lifeless puppet” or “CGI” or “Halloween mask” etc!

I ask you this, though: has there been a single sci-fi/fantasy movie in the past fifteen years or so that featured a major character that wasn’t an actor in a costume that achieved this? I suppose Gollum would be the one, but my reaction to him was always more “Jesus, that’s impressive CGI” rather than “I can’t tell if that’s CGI”. He’s sort of the Yoda puppet of CGI. Effects almost always look like effects, that’s just the reality we’re in.

I will say I was disappointed in Snoke’s design, though. I’d have liked it if he was as disfigured as in the art book rather than dialed back a bit as he was.

Edit: I guess that Doug Jones in any given Guillermo del Toro movie achieves what I’m talking about, but that sort of rides the line between costume and puppet.

Nanner Split said:

pittrek said:

That guy is a horny pervert

Peter Rosenthal is one of the funniest comedy characters of the last decade.
And yes he is.

His Gravity review is amazing.

Harmy said:

Great news - these new mixes will be awesome additions to v2.5.

Wait a minute, is this to say that 2.0 will have the same DD tracks from 1.0 instead of the DTS-HD of the other 2.X releases? If so, and if indeed the new audio will be ready in a matter of weeks, I think I’d prefer to wait. Though I may be biased, since I finally got a receiver that can handle 5.1 DTS-HD for Christmas. I guess I can hold off on burning the MKV and mux in the new audio if hairy-hen makes it available on its own.

Oh man, I remember those Visual Dictionaries. As far as guides go, I believe there’s one called Ultimate Star Wars that was released this year and is therefore canonical.

He’s in line behind Rey when she’s selling her scrap to Unkar Plutt.

Comments withdrawn in the interest of restoring civility and getting back on topic.

Bosk said:

I joined thinking this forum was dedicated to fans of ‘just’ the original trilogy? It seems that I was very, very wrong. Loads of TFA blinkers on in here, must have seen a different film to me as it’s just as bad as the prequels if not worse as it’s not even had the involvement of the ORIGINAL creator. On reflection TPM is a better film as it had a better score and was paced better and that says a lot.

Considering all TFA discussion is confined to a handful of threads (one of which you started), it seems to me that if you’re so bothered by people’s reactions to that film, you can easily avoid them. I’m not pretending to be an old timer here myself, but my impression has always been that this place is about preserving and campaigning for the OOT, not relentlessly dumping on everything else. Hating everything since 1983 is not and has never been a requirement for membership.