I hate it, but I admit that I do enjoy watching reaction videos of it because it’s really funny seeing people who’ve never seen it before slowly realize how terrible it is and seeing their shocked and confused expressions.
10 years ago? Jesus. Well I did rewatch Force Awakens about a week ago since it was almost the anniversary and I was curious if my thoughts on it had changed.
When I saw it in the theater, I really enjoyed it, although looking back I think it was just the hype of seeing a new Star Wars movie and in the theater. At that point I hadn’t seen one in theaters before, just on DVD.
When we rented it and watched it again, I started noticing problems with it. And basically my opinion of it the past few times I’ve watched it is that it’s an enjoyable movie for about the first half, but once Starkiller Base shows up, it falls apart for me. But of the sequel trilogy, it’s the one I feel warmest towards. Unfortunately now when I watch it, all I see is missed opportunities due to where the next two movies went and because Force Awakens played things too safe.
The first Star Wars thing I ever saw was a Lego walker (I think it was an AT-ST) with a clone trooper that someone in my kindergarten class was playing with. I thought it looked cool and I wanted to know what it was from. Went home and asked my parents what Star Wars was. The first Star Wars movie I saw was The Empire Strikes Back when I was five or six. This was when Revenge of the Sith was about to come out, so there was a lot of hype and merchandise for Star Wars. The cereal boxes had spoons that lit up like lightsabers, stuff like that. So I ended up becoming pretty obsessed with Star Wars, had a lot of the toys and stuff. I wanted to be a Jedi and I got in trouble at school a few times for fighting with rulers and sticks pretending that they were lightsabers.
There were a few bumps in the road over the years. I learned about the special edition nonsense and grew pretty pessimistic about the prequels and the sequel trilogy, although I’m a lot softer to the prequels now than I used to be. It’s been a long journey, would take too long to explain. There were a few times when I was a teenager where I thought I had “grown out of it.” But I’ve always appreciated the original trilogy, they’re still three of my favorite movies.
The Twilight Zone popped up on Tubi, so I’ve been watching that recently. Hadn’t realized how many episodes I hadn’t seen.
I have the 2006 DVDs of the original trilogy. I have a DVD of Revenge of the Sith and DVDs of Rogue One and Solo. I don’t own physical copies of any of the other ones.
Obviously the timing of this announcement has to be damage control considering the last few years of content, but I am glad that they finally caved. Not only did I never think I’d see a physical release of it, I never thought I’d see the original cut in theaters. And also just crazy to think that it’s almost a 50 year old movie now.
Maybe they’ll finally put it out on its 50th anniversary? Fingers crossed.
When I said this months ago, I thought it was wishful thinking, but now it might actually happen. Crazy.
I forgot The Lion in Winter counts as a Christmas movie, that’s a great one.
Some of the ones that I usually watch around Christmas:
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Die Hard (sometimes I throw in Lethal Weapon as well)
Black Christmas (1974 one, the remakes were awful)
Gremlins
It’s a Wonderful Life
Ernest Saves Christmas
Scrooged
Home Alone
Silent Night, Deadly Night 1 and 2
Elf
Anna and the Apocalypse (saw it for the first time a few years ago and it stuck with me)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
There have been a few other adaptations of Heir to the Empire by fans on YouTube.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj-EPjrFZxQ
And:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W6MDgq_OvWE
Nice to see fans putting in the work and adding their own flavor.
I haven’t seen that first link, but with that second one it was interesting that they switched out Joruus C’Baoth with a clone of Mace motherfucking Windu. Wasn’t expecting that twist.
I listened to the ones for the original trilogy a few years ago. They were well produced, it was nice to have the John Williams music and the same sound effects. I thought the one for Star Wars was better than the other two. The audio dramas for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi felt rushed, especially the one for Return of the Jedi since it was only six episodes. The first one added a lot of scenes that had more character development, so that was interesting. If you want more of Biggs or Luke on Tatooine you definitely get that. The part where Leia gets tortured and sees Alderaan explode are even more intense than in the actual movie.
The different voice actors took a bit of time to get used to. Especially Vader since James Earl Jones is one of those voices that is irreplaceable, although Brock Peters (Tom Robinson from To Kill a Mockingbird) did a good job. Perry King as Han Solo felt a lot sleazier than Harrison Ford’s portrayal, which set him apart. He kind of reminded me of Dennis Reynolds from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. And then for some reason they had John Lithgow as Yoda and Ed Asner as Jabba the Hutt. I was glad they at least had Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, and Billy Dee Williams, but it just didn’t feel the same having so many of the parts recast, although most of them did a good job. And then the one for Return of the Jedi didn’t even have Mark Hamill in it, which was disappointing.
One thing that’s interesting for EU fans is that Mara Jade appears in the one for Return of the Jedi, disguised as a dancer at Jabba’s palace named Arica.
I probably won’t listen to the Empire and Jedi ones again, but I might listen to the first one again sometime. It kind of reminded me of listening to some of those Doctor Who Big Finish audio dramas. I would say listen to them if you’re a huge fan of the Original Trilogy and want more of the story.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King
They better call it Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money. Otherwise what’s the point?
Aquaman- bluray
Conan the Barbarian/Conan the Destroyer- bluray
Conan the Barbarian (2011)- DVD
Galaxy Quest- DVD
Game of Thrones Season 5- DVD
Gladiator- bluray
King Kong 60th anniversary- VHS
Mel Brooks collection- bluray
Planet of the Apes collection- DVD
Recording The Producers- DVD
I found it on Internet Archive again. If you go there, you might find it. It doesn’t have the subtitles, though.
I think George is out of his mind and the quote from American Cinematographer illustrates how self centered he is and how much he is blinded to reality. He expected the theatrical cuts to fade away. But then relented and released the theatrical cuts on DVD with the GOUT. Therefore the theatrical cuts are NEVER going to disappear because releasing the GOUT was an act that brought the theatrical cuts into digital format to live forever on the net and to be used as a source for fan edits to cut with the special editions, at least until 4K77 came along. My point is that George really thought “no one” would ever see the theatrical cuts again and it would “fade away” but at the same time, he is the reason why they won’t fade away! He’s nuts. And contradicts himself. The theatrical cuts will NEVER be forgotten both because he refuses to release it in HD AND because he released the GOUT which paved the way for Harmy, which in turn paved the way for 4K77. I really think George lost his marbles back in 97.
I agree with you on most of that, but I’d argue George lost his marbles before 1997. Howard the Duck, anyone?
But yeah, I’m glad Harmy and 4K77 exist. I don’t understand why George is so stubborn about it. I get that sometimes a project doesn’t go your way and you look back on it and see all the problems (I know that I cringe sometimes when I watch some of my old videos), but that doesn’t mean you should just try to delete it from existence and redo it. Especially when it’s something as groundbreaking as Star Wars. You’d think he’d be more appreciative that people loved them so much in spite of what he sees as their perceived “flaws.”
There’s tons of Star Wars ripoffs that have blu-ray releases like Starcrash and Battle Beyond the Stars. Hell, even Turkish Star Wars got a limited release blu-ray. They’re fun to watch and laugh at. And yet, no “Han shot first” in HD. Maybe they’ll finally put it out on its 50th anniversary? Fingers crossed.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
800 Leagues on the Amazon by Jules Verne
He just recently finished the rest of it off. Don’t know when he’ll do Dark Force Rising.
Can someone explain why everyone thinks Mace is this badass lightsaber duelist?
Because he’s Samuel L. Motherfucking Jackson and he has a purple lightsaber.
The first two episodes were… fine. I wasn’t expecting anything amazing and I didn’t get anything amazing. The production values were fine. The lighting could have been better, parts of it were hard to see. At the least I thought it was better than what I watched of The Acolyte (unless it just plummets downhill in the third episode like that show did.)
I was shocked that there was a reference to the Star Wars Holiday Special. That was weird.
They did cast Nick Frost as a pirate droid. That was kind of fun. Steve Urkel was in it as well for some reason. Those expecting Jude Law don’t really get to see him until the end of the second episode.
If you want a kid’s show about space pirates, then you’ll get that here. Don’t know what I think of the story or characters. All I can say is that I’m indifferent so far.
Rebel Moon is like if you took Battle Beyond the Stars and Dune, put them in a blender, and then made it pretentious and boring.
As for Denis Villeneuve’s (huge fan of his movies by the way) comments, I can sort of see where he’s coming from, even though I love that movie (in fact, it’s my second favorite of the series and I’m even wearing a Return of the Jedi shirt as I type this, lol). It did fall back on formula a bit (another Death Star for example). I don’t mind the Ewoks, but he said he was 15 when he saw the movie and at that age I didn’t really care for them. I mainly love the movie because I love Jabba the Hutt, The Emperor, and the stuff with Luke and Vader. And it’s optimistic, which is nice. It ends on a good note.
Anyway, maybe he’d have liked Return of the Jedi more if David Lynch had directed it.
“The power of one! The power of two! The power of many!”
That scene and episode was so bad, it made me give up on The Acolyte. I haven’t watched any of the episodes that came after that one.
Replaced on the schedule by Ice Age 6. Wow.
While we’re at it, I’m announcing my own Star Wars movie. Why not? It has just as much a chance of being made as these.