philraid

It was on Internet Archive. Not sure if it still is.

Do the Slashstreet Boys count?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oliCVn7Ic68

Some make the argument that people like Yub Nub because of the nostalgia, but that’s not the case for me. As a kid I saw the special editions first and I prefer Yub Nub. Granted, I didn’t like it the first time I heard it. It felt cheesy and out of place. It did grow on me the more times I watched the unaltered Return of the Jedi. I guess I’m just used to it now.

The reason I prefer it over Victory Celebration is for a few reasons. Victory Celebration sounds too melancholy. I prefer having a happier song to end things. I also really dislike the addition of the late 90’s CGI planets in the special edition. The crowds of people in them make the planets look really fake. It looks far too dated now and feels completely out of place in a movie from the early 80’s. It’s part of why the special editions don’t work, the changes do not feel consistent with the rest of the movies. I also am not a fan of changing Anakin’s ghost to Hayden Christensen. Nothing against Christensen, but it feels weird seeing him in the original trilogy and his facial expression is creepy.

Then again, I could see someone making the argument that Victory Celebration fits better with the prequels, but it doesn’t fit the original movies in my opinion.

The first six movies
Clone Wars (the Tartakovsky one)
Rogue One
Solo
The Mandalorian
Andor
Some of the EU stuff (at least before the Legacy of the Force books)

The rest I either don’t consider part of my head canon or I’m just indifferent to it or unfamiliar with it (I haven’t read all of the EU for example).

R.I.P. He was one of my favorites. The world is a much lesser place without that magnificent voice of his. Obviously I love his work as the voice of Darth Vader, one of my favorite characters in fiction let alone Star Wars, but there’s plenty of other movies I’ll remember him for. The Lion King, Coming to America, Conan the Barbarian, Field of Dreams, The Sandlot, The Hunt for Red October, Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey. He made his film debut in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, that’s already an impressive thing to have on your resume. He had a very long and prosperous career in film and onstage and I’ll never forget him.

Is it just me or was this supposed to be about the dialogue?

Then again, my problem here is that a lot of the dialogue just isn’t that memorable to me. Granted, it’s been awhile since I watched this one and I don’t like thinking about it. Most of the bad lines that I remember from the sequel trilogy were from Rise of Skywalker. I mean, say what you want about the prequels, there’s a lot of memorable lines (albeit sometimes for the wrong reasons).

There are some clunkers. Just about any line from Hux makes me cringe. That whole exchange between Hux and Poe at the beginning is just awful. A lot of bad out of place humor. The “saving what we love, not destroying what we hate” line gets made fun of a lot, so I won’t get into that one.

One that I remember reading that I couldn’t believe was actually in the movie (I had to double check to make sure) was this one: “Master Skywalker, we need you to bring the Jedi back because Kylo Ren is strong with the dark side of the Force.”
Christ, somebody needed to proofread that one. I wonder if he was in the Amazon with her mom when she was researching spiders right before she died?

Superweapon VII said:

The worst fanfiction is written by the biggest fans. In 1997, I wrote sequels where the Rebels had to fight a Darth Vader imposter – really Luke & Leia’s hitherto unknown younger brother – who commanded four Death Stars. Sometimes these fans grow up to realize how bad their fanfics were. But hacks like Jar Jar Abrams never grow up.

As a kid my vision of an Episode VII was Anakin getting resurrected and living with Luke in a castle where they occasionally fight off stormtroopers, so you’re not the only one with awful ideas, lol.

Granted, both of these probably still would have been better than Rise of Skywalker.

Okay, here’s a compromise: Christopher Lee in full Darth Maul makeup. 😆

Don’t know whether that would be hilarious or terrifying, but it would harken back to his Dracula days.

Oh, I just thought of another one. When Mace Windu finds out that Palpatine is a Sith Lord from Anakin, and he says “we must move quickly if the Jedi Order is to survive” as he walks SLOWLY across the landing platform. That one always makes me laugh.

Haven’t seen it mentioned yet, but that scene where Padme is packing her luggage and talking to Anakin always makes me cringe.

“It’s worse. He’s overly critical. He never listens. He doesn’t understand. It’s not fair!”

“Please don’t look at me like that.”
“Why not?”
“It makes me uncomfortable.”
“Sorry, my lady.”

Anakin Starkiller said:

I’m more bothered by how he kneecapped every other Prequel villain. Darth Maul could’ve been the next Darth Vader but he gets killed in the first movie.

Unless you watch the Clone Wars or Solo.

But yeah, I would agree with that. Darth Maul should have been around for the whole prequel trilogy. Then an idea would be to have Obi Wan try to seek revenge on him for killing Qui Gon, which distracts him from training Anakin or something like that.

Or if you aren’t gonna do that, introduce Dooku in The Phantom Menace as a member of the Jedi Council and show him defecting after Qui Gon dies. It seems weird just introducing him out of nowhere in the next one.

I don’t have high apple pie in the sky hopes. My only expectation at this point is that it will be better than The Acolyte, or more fun at least.
I do find the Captain EO references interesting. Maybe they’ll make a Disney ride out of this or something.

One huge difference that I can remember in early drafts of The Phantom Menace was that Obi Wan goes to Tatooine and finds Anakin. Qui Gon doesn’t show up until they go to Coruscant.
I found a Reddit post with some stuff on there that might also help: https://www.reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/comments/18f3ueu/star_wars_prequels_based_on_the_old_drafts_of/

Some cast members also overlap with the Hammer movies because Peter Cushing played Dr. Frankenstein and Professor Van Helsing, David Prowse played Frankenstein’s monster, and Christopher Lee played Count Dracula (why else is he named COUNT Dooku?)

I heard that Sebastian Shaw was cast as a favor for Alec Guinness because they were friends and he was out of work. As for why he cast Hayden Christensen later, he either didn’t care about the age discrepancy or he changed his mind. Either one’s possible considering what we know about George Lucas.

I watched it after reading the books again recently. The animation starts off a bit rough, but gets better as it goes. Same with the voice acting. Makes me wish they’d do an animated show that adapts other EU books. An animated Shadows of the Empire would be interesting.

Dune: Part Two- Blu-ray

cap said:

(Hi, everybody! Remember me?)

philraid said:
We haven’t had a movie or show go this far back in the timeline before, so that’s intriguing.

Actually, we have: Young Jedi Adventures.

Forgot about that one. Then again I haven’t seen it. I just knew that the High Republic was a bunch of books and comics. Does that show take place before this one?

JadedSkywalker said:

I mean Vanilla Ice in Cool as Ice is on Blu-Ray, but not Star Wars doesn’t that seem absurd.

That’s what we’re missing. George Lucas’ special edition of Cool as Ice.

Do I even want to step into this minefield?

I was open-minded because I thought the concept had some potential. We haven’t had a movie or show go this far back in the timeline before, so that’s intriguing. Although I was also cautious due to the quality of the some of these shows. Unfortunately this show ended up being worse than I expected. I was expecting it to be okay or mediocre and it went below that. You can stop reading here if you don’t want to wade through my rambling mess.

Of the three episodes, I liked the first one the most. It wasn’t great, but I liked some of the fight scenes. Seeing martial arts in a Star Wars show was fun. That was probably the one thing that kept me watching. I was disappointed that they killed Trinity in the first scene. Seeing the Trade Federation was unexpected. I didn’t realize they’d been around that long. They were definitely trying to give it that Phantom Menace feel. Some complained about the fire in space, but I don’t give a shit. The last thing I’m concerned about in Star Wars is physics. I started to lose interest once I realized what the twist was. A good twin and a bad twin. Well that’s boring. Oh, and one of them is named Osha apparently. My reaction when I heard that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6M1OF_E0IA

The second episode was the one where I really started to lose interest. Way too much boring exposition. It started reminding me of The Phantom Menace again and not in a good way. And then it only got worse from there. The third episode I thought was abysmal. I was confused and stunned after sitting through it. The acting in the first two episodes I thought was mediocre (with the exception of Lee Jung-jae, he was good), but the acting in this episode was just atrocious and the dialogue wasn’t any better. The only part I found interesting was when the Jedi showed up, but even then it kind of just felt like they were doing the blood test stuff from Phantom Menace again. Space witches? Don’t care. I didn’t like the Night Sisters and they seem even less interesting than them. There was also little to no action in this episode, so on top of being confusing it was very boring.

The production also looked unimpressive, which is ridiculous for a show that cost almost as much to make as Dune: Part Two. Hell, apparently the first season of House of the Dragon cost less and from what I’ve seen it looks way better than this. This looks inexcusably cheap. The only thing that stood out to me as kind of interesting were some of the droid and alien designs, but they weren’t present much. The costumes, lighting, sets, and camera work were all subpar. Where the fuck did all the money go? Why do all these Disney Plus shows cost so much, yet look so lifeless?

But I’d probably be able to forgive those if the story or characters were interesting or fun, but they’re not. It’s very dull. I was liking the action, but not caring for the mystery. I just did not care about what was happening. The characters were not compelling to me either, they were bland to me. Lee Jung-jae was again the only saving grace as far as the cast went, and he’s good, but I’m not sure what all there is to do with his character.

Another thing I think that’s worth bringing up is that these shows are missing a very key element of Star Wars… John Williams’ music. That’s part (not all) of why a lot of these shows feel off. The music in most of these has been very forgettable.

I would say that this show is unfortunately more in the same category of quality as Book of Boba Fett or the Kenobi series. Hell, after that third episode, I was starting to think it might be worse. I was hoping after Andor the quality of these things would pick up, but I guess I was too optimistic.

Will I watch more of it? Maybe, but I don’t have “high apple pie in the sky hopes” to quote a Frank Sinatra song.

If George had just stuck to adding a few things to just the original movie and then made both versions of it available, I would have been fine with that. He wants to do a director’s cut, whatever. Let him do it. Watching that movie, it does look a little rough around the edges in some parts. So I can see why he would want to go back and mess around with it. But then he got carried away with the changes, adding things that didn’t need to be there and adding things to movies he didn’t direct, especially since Richard Marquand was dead by that point and couldn’t consent to it.

What he should have done is taken a cue from Ridley Scott with Blade Runner where he was very careful to make sure the new stuff integrated with the older footage, and only made necessary changes, like fixing up actual mistakes, not making new ones. Instead of making a cut that felt consistent with the original versions, it felt like you were jumping forward and backward in time. And the fact he couldn’t stop tinkering with it makes it even more frustrating. I refused to buy the 2011 Blu-ray set when I found out they added Vader saying “No” in Return of the Jedi. What a joke.

Obviously the worst part of these changes is we can’t even watch the original versions unless you have it on an outdated format or through fan restorations that are a bit difficult to find and not well known to some fans. And I’m not even saying this because of nostalgia either. The first versions I saw of these movies were the 2004 DVDs. I remember being really disappointed when I found out that I didn’t grow up with the theatrical versions. People watched those movies for 20 years before the re-edits. Whether Lucas liked it or not, people loved those versions and they’re the movies that made him rich and famous. It seems weird to just suppress it like it’s a bad memory.

It’s just common sense, people should be allowed to watch the version they want. Again, Blade Runner you can buy all versions of the movie on Blu-ray, even the workprint of it. Hell, Manos: The Hands of Fate and Plan 9 from Outer Space are available on Blu-ray, I don’t see why the theatrical cuts of Star Wars shouldn’t be.

I’ll fully admit, I’m a bit new to the EU. I only just started reading them a few years ago.

The Thrawn Trilogy is an obvious pick for a reason. Part of why I didn’t get into the EU until later is that a lot of it didn’t feel like Star Wars. These books did. There’s a reason people say this is the actual sequel trilogy. Timothy Zahn did a good job getting the main three right and making a logical continuation of the original trilogy. And it was nice reading Star Wars books that had good plots and didn’t just feel like some bizarre fan-fiction or exposition. It felt fresh too. Thrawn was a good change of pace from the usual Star Wars villains we got. After reading these, I kind of got obsessed with Mara Jade. She’s my favorite character that wasn’t in any of the films. Has a great character arc. I could probably just spend this whole thing talking about how much I like Mara Jade and the Thrawn trilogy.

I like some of the comics. The Marvel adaptations of the original films are really good. Legacy had some good stuff. I enjoyed Dawn of the Jedi (the comics, not the book Into the Void).

The New Jedi Order I liked. I know it’s divisive, but I again liked that they tried something different and ambitious. It felt like a big scale conflict that wasn’t just Empire vs Rebels or Jedi vs Sith again. Surprised they never adapted these books into a Clone Wars style TV show, I think that would have been good. I think it would have been a good conclusion if they had stopped after this series. The next two big scale series they tried doing after this weren’t very good.

Shadows of the Empire. Yeah, I know it was a marketing gimmick, but it had some good stuff in it. Was nice seeing Luke becoming more like his character in Return of the Jedi. More of Boba Fett. Prince Xizor and Dash Rendar were fun additions. It is a bit weird they made everything except a movie. They even had a fucking soundtrack for it. They should have made it into an animated movie or something.

The Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin I thought was very good. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the Brian Daley ones, but these ones I thought did a good job giving Han Solo some backstory. They were gritty, but fun to read. Was interesting seeing him slowly become the scoundrel we all know and love. I do find it a bit weird that they gloss over his academy days and meeting Chewbacca, though.

One of the biggest surprises to me was how good the Revenge of the Sith novelization was. It fleshed out the character motivations and improved the story and dialogue. With a lot of these I just read them and thought “these are fun”, but this one I actually thought was a very good book. Matthew Stover ended up becoming my second favorite EU author after reading this one (Zahn being number one obviously).

I’ll be honest, most of the prequel era EU books are kind of boring to me. They’re too dry and political. And a lot of them just seem like damage control to fix plot holes. They don’t really work great as standalone stories. I won’t say I hate them, I just can’t get into them. So yeah, I unfortunately don’t have as fond of an opinion on James Luceno as some do.

I also didn’t really like Darth Bane: Path of Destruction. I don’t really know why. Writing style, plot and characters didn’t do it for me, I guess.

A lot of people really like the Brian Daley Han Solo books, I just think they’re okay. I thought the A.C. Crispin Han Solo trilogy was much better.

One that I like that a lot of people don’t seem to enjoy is Truce at Bakura. For some reason I kind of liked that one. Thought it was a decent one-off. Granted maybe my expectations were low after reading shit like The Crystal Star or The Callista Trilogy.

I didn’t mind the first two books of the Jedi Academy trilogy. They were silly, but kind of fun to read. They were short at least.

I couldn’t really get into the X-wing books for whatever reason. I guess I’d just rather watch space battles than read them.

Kenobi by John Jackson Miller I didn’t really get into. Felt like the title character wasn’t in it enough. My same problem with Dark Lord.

Granted, some of these I haven’t read in awhile, and there’s some I didn’t finish, so make of that what you will.

The Callista Trilogy was really bad. Especially Children of the Jedi, that might be the worst EU book that I’ve read. I can’t believe they almost made Luke’s wife a ghost of a dead Jedi that took over the body of another dead Jedi. Thank fuck they wised up and had him marry Mara Jade instead.

I didn’t like the Legacy of the Force series. It reminds me a lot of the sequel trilogy where there were too many conflicting visions going on and it messes up the previous series. Sacrifice I especially disliked because of what happened with Mara Jade. My headcanon basically stops after the New Jedi Order books.

Champions of the Force was pretty bad. Jedi Search and Dark Apprentice were cheesy, but kind of enjoyable due to some of the ridiculousness, but Champions of the Force was just boring. They put Luke in a coma for most of it. So bad.

The Glove of Darth Vader and The Crystal Star I probably don’t have to get into. Batshit insane books those ones are.

Splinter of the Mind’s Eye I never liked. It’s only interesting as a curiosity, the actual story is crap. Never liked the depiction of Vader in it. They made him too bumbling. The Luke and Leia stuff is really hard to read in hindsight.

The Courtship of Princess Leia I thought had a really bad plot, and it introduced things into canon that I wasn’t really into like the Nightsisters and Dathomir. Thankfully it was just a weird one-off.

Dark Lord: Rise of Darth Vader was really disappointing for me. Most of it was surprisingly not about Darth Vader, despite what the title said.

The problem with a lot of EU books also is that the three main characters felt off to me in a lot of them. It’s like they wrote some other sci-fi books and then copy pasted a few Star Wars terms into them and called it good.

Godzilla vs the Smog Monster AKA Godzilla vs Hedorah- DVD
Godzilla vs Kong- Blu-ray/DVD
King Kong Two Disc Collector’s Edition- DVD