skyjedi2005

I just saw a interview where by way of comparison Lucas compares season 1 of clone wars to star wars '77 what some call episode IV a new hope, and he compares season two to the empire strikes back.

Either this is just a way to use these as very broad examples or he is clearly delusional, there is nothing about either season that recalls the real star wars, they are more like the prequels re-imagined and destroyed star wars universe.

Lucas still has direct control over the show, so i will not be tuning in.  It will be shit.  Just like the prequels and indiana jones IV, and indy V will be shit.

Lucas might have given suggestions to the genddy clone wars series but he was not directly in charge of the show or the story plotting.

I just hope he keeps his hands free of the Old Republic game and lets bioware do their best, his hallmarks are all over the force unleashed.

I also thought the cgi graphic of the death star in the background deserved a failing grade, compare that against the model shots and mattes used in return of the jedi.  It is just plain laughable this is an advancement in technology, what backwards to make things look worse.

Hayden is not tall enough, and physically imposing enough to be Vader.  What did Vader somehow get taller between episode III and IV,lol.  How hard would it have been to have gotten dave prowse or someone of equal height,rofl.

I'm looking forward to a dvd release just to get the entirety of Gary Kurtz, and Dale Pollock's interviews.  The fanboy gushing and the he raped my childhood ranting not so much.

I mean is this really going to change the fact that the originals will never be restored and all we can ever hope for is the slap in the face that was the gout?

The opening of the novelization sheds a lot of light on the original concept of the empire, the powers the moffs had and what the emperor originally was.

This is from the prologue:

Another Galaxy, Another Time.

The old republic was the republic of legend, greater than distance or time.

No need to note where it was or whence it came, only to know that ... it was the Republic

Once, under the wise rule of the senate and the protection of the jedi knights, the Republic throve and grew.

But as often happens when wealth and power pass beyond the admirable and attain the awesome, then appear those evil ones who have greed to match.

So it was with the Republic at it's height.  Like the greatest of trees, able to withstand any external attack,

The Republic rotted from within though the danger was not visible from the outside.

Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs

of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic.

He Promised to reunite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic.

Once secure in office he declared himself emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers he had appointed to high office, and the cries from the people for justice did not reach his ears.

Having exterminated through treachery and deception the jedi knights, the guardians of justice in the galaxy, the Imperial governors and bureaucrats prepared to institute a reign of terror among the disheartened worlds of the galaxy.

Many used the Imperial forces and the name of the increasingly isolated Emperor to further their own personal ambitions.

This is all but the entirety of the prlogue except the final 2 paragraphs about the rebellion.

Copywrite Lucasfilm 1976, and del rey 1976.

The Emperor here does not recall the emperor in the empire strikes back from 1980 or 1983 return of the jedi.  in fact this reflects the original wizard of oz type nixonian character Lucas originally envisoned and no sidious the sith lord who is also chancellor/emperor palpatine.

In fact he almost sounds a bit like the emperor from the novel dune.

So originally the regional governors also known as the moffs would have been more powerful than the emperor himself which is why tarkin is more powerful than vader.

Vaderisnothayden said:

rcb said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

TheBoost said:

Vaderisnothayden said:

 

 

What's your proof that I'd be saying the same thing about any other actor who took the Anakin role? You have no proof of that. Whatsoever. The situation with Hayden is not merely the situation of an actor other than Shaw taking the role. It's a situation in which an especially inappropriate actor was given the role. There are many actors I would have been happier with. So no I wouldn't necessarily have been complaining. You'd do well not to make careless statements about me that are not based on any proof.

 

 But the part was still written and directed to be a whiny teenager in AOTC, and then a moody young man prone to crying in ROTS. Do you suppose any actor could have pulled that off in a way you would call "Vader-worthy?" Is it even possible, in ur opion?

Another actor could have done it better than Hayden. And anyway, it didn't have to be written that way. The way it was written was not consistent with the Anakin we were given in the OT.

 we don't learn much about him in the OT anyways. all we hear about him is from Obi-wan.

This is all i recall:

Anakin was a great pilot, the best in the star galaxy btw. a cunning warrior and amazingly strong in the force. he was seduced by the dark side of the force and from a certain point of view, he was dead.

lastly, he new he had a child, but not a twin due to the fact that his children were hidden from him after they were born.

did i miss anything? this is all i recall.

No, we learn more about him than that. Kenobi says rather more than you mention there. And we actually MEET him. And the character Shaw played could never have been the character in AOTC and ROTS, and nor could the OT's Vader for that matter. We learn plenty about Anakin in the OT, quite enough to tell he could never be the PT character.

Except that now thanks to Lucas retcons starting in Empire Strikes Back Obi Wan is an Untrustworthy person who lies or tells his version of the truth from a certain point of view.  When Star Wars 77 was shot what obi wan told luke in his hut was the absolute truth. his father was betrayed and murdered by his other star pupil vader. 

I get the impression that Kenobi had two apprentices at the same time who were brothers of a sort and firends that had a falling out and vader killed his friend skywalker, so kenobi chased him down to a lava pit and dueled him and killed vader, or so he thought until he found out palpy had his body reconstructed.

Was it jealousy, pride over who was a better pupil, who  the master liked better.  Would be like one of those samurai or kung fu tales where the student does this.

How would the sequels come off if Vader was not the father but the man who killed lukes father and master, it is strictly a tale of revenge.  No leia as the sister or vader as the father. 

Not only that Vader brought dishonor onto his order the jedi knights by his actions. 

FanFiltration said:

 

Just found this at "Ain't It Cool" [Published on Monday, September 14, 2009]:

 

Well, rejoice. It's for real. Here's Harrison Ford talking to the French newspaper Le Figaro about the status of INDY 5:

"The story for the new Indiana Jones is in the process of taking form. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and myself are agreed on what the fifth adventure will concern, and George is actively at work. If the script is good, I'll be very happy to put the costume on again."

 

Source: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/42356

ROFL! at the words George Lucas and the script is good in the same paragraph.

I finally found the Koepp script online and read some of it, it was painfully awful the script for crystal skull, that and reading the 3 prequel star wars scripts you would wish you were a droid so you could get a memory wipe,lol.

I thought there was no way that script could be any worse than the pure cheese of the Darabount Script which best scene was cobbled from a Kasden line, "Its not the mileage honey its the years"

Maybe they should approach the story the same way they did Raiders, i just wish howard Kanzanjian could come out of retirement and douglas slocombe was still available, as well as lawrence kasdan.  And no nonsense Lucas and Spielberg who knew humor in the old days and not how to ruin a movie.

They should repeat what went right of indy 4 and try to prevent anymore flying cgi monkeys, gophers/prairie dogs and nuked fridges and triple niagara falls,lol.

Or they could just completely forgot the plot of the last film and have no marion, no mutt and no frickin aliens.

I would probably see it just to see if Harrison Ford could pull a gem performance out of a poor damn script, "George you can type this shit, but you sure as hell can't say it"

Indy IV without ford would have been an absolute disaster, imagine if they had shia carry the entire film.

The New Emperor hologram and vader dialog from the 2004 version is painfully lame it makes the scene "too talky" and ruins the plot of the original version of the film, and ruins the mysteriousness of the emperor.  And Clive Revill's voice was superior anyway, just cause 3 years later he got a cheaper option in a theater actor in Mcdiarmid does not excuse ruining a good film, and the emperor in jedi was way better than the hammy bad awful portrayal of the prequels.

The new scene makes it look like Vader is lying to the emperor and already knows about Luke and keeping it from him, laughably bad considering in 1977 darth vader was not even lukes father and not even til the end of empire in 1980, and the truth was not discovered until 1983, vader could just as have easily have been lying.

It is just as bad as adding an actor into the end of return of the jedi who was 2 years old in 1983, Hayden Christensen.  He does not belong in a film made and released of that era, neither do the painfully obvious and extremely dated 90's special defects.

captainsolo said:

Mask of the Phantasm blew my mind in theaters. (Still does.) Hopefully there will be a better DVD release along with a widescreen version of Subzero. It seems that b/c Phantasm is a "kids" movie no one will ever give it the respect it deserves. However, it still towers above the new films.

AA's best feature: the voices: "What are you really afraid of Bats? Not saving precious Gotham? Not saving Gordon in time? Me in a thong?"

Is DC vs Mortal Kombat worth $15? Haven't played any MK since MKIII and Trilogy.

That would have been really funny if it was not saving Rachel Dawes in time instead of Harvey Dent, Not saving precious Gotham was his fear in batman begins when he fought Ras in the form of Liam Neeson,lol.

I wonder though is that line any chance by the joker in AA, and if it is, is it a jokey reference to the dark knight?

Would have been even funnier to make fun of Bale's batman voice form DK and have batman grunting and sounding indistinct,lol.

I would be interested in the HD version that has the theatrical colors of raiders of the lost ark and does not have that added cgi shot,  or any of lowrys color correction and dvnr.

The one that oddly had no cuts but the tv audio that was censored that would have to be replaced, had print scratches and lots of grain but really look liked a film.

Wonder if it was taken from a 35mm release print.

Well if you can find someone with a dvdr copy that has not succumbed to rot of the dye layer, how many years ago was that Rikter project?

None of the oot ever had 5.1 audio.

Sure Lucasfilm could have made a 5.1 mix for the bonus dvd and had the originals restored in anamorphic instead they just dumped them to disc and called it a day after reencoding the 2 channel lossless PCM to crappy dolby low bitrate 2.0.

The closest thing ever to a 5.1 was the original magnetic six track mixes on the 70mm presentations of the trilogy.  The first 5.1 mix was done for the 1997 theatrical special edition, sure someone could use this as a base and edit it for the oot but who wants to do that?

It was on the special editions laserdisc as an ac3 but you needed to decode the analog channel it was stored on through the ac3 rf out of a compatible player and run it through a compatible receiver or a decoder.

Stored at a much lower bitrate than the 2 channel digital PCM track, depends on what you think sounds better.

Ocp's dvds had a home brew audio for star wars, empire and jedi.  Not sure too much what he did on empire and jedi, i know he added stuff from the mono mix to star wars from an unrestored audio source probably the ac3 1 channel from the editdroid prototype disc.  I think he used audacity a freeware program for the audio.

The thx demo on the star wars disc is fan made and not official, still pretty cool if low res.

These were made before the gout was released, i think he used moth3r's pal transfers, and the 2004 ntsc boxset of dvd's.  Mixing Pal and NTSC sources, not sure if he even properly rencoded the pal to ntsc, as i have heard some complaints from people who have seen this set. The Laserdisc transfers with the 2004 or gout with 2004 are not a good match, the colors are all over the place between the versions as is the stark difference in grain and the generation the source was scanned from.

They have to be color corrected frame by frame something mr gilchrist obviously did not do as it would be even more tedious than his digitally painting out the 1997 or 2004 cgi.

From what i have seen this is almost a remake of star wars in the star trek universe, no wonder trekkies are so livid as they hate star wars and how it has had influence over star trek since 1977.

The only show free of wars influence was the original series and that borrowed heavily in the pilot the cage from a certain movie called forbidden planet which was a sci fi remake of Shakespeare's the tempest.

Ilm did effects on how many of the 11 features?, i know they worked on the pilot encounter at farpoint built the first models and developed the new warp effect on the next generation tv show.

Abrams is  a tv guy this was his first chance to shoot an epic scale blockbuster instead everything from the music and the movie seems like an extended tv episode with like 200 hundred times the budget.

That has always been the problem with star trek film, they really have not been spectacular enough to break their tv origins, star trek at its best was a serialized television show where the characters were developed over time while the plots were recycled and alien menaces too,lol.

The only ones that seemed to me to be more than an extended tv episode were the motion picture and first contact.  Those were epic in scope, the 11th film was visually epic in scope but recalls all jj's previous failed attempts at film, and reminds you of what he has done, alias, lost and fringe.  MI:III was like a tv episode where the second film was a bloated action and cgi spectacle from john woo, the shaky cam thing was annoying on that godzilla ripoff he produced Clovershit, i mean cloverfield.

I like Star Trek 11 but i see it as half a failure, half a success because instead of being a true reboot it was only done half assed, and wanted to be a continuation at the same time or Nimoy would not have been in the film, and they would not have tried doing caricatures of the acting of the old stars, the only person i noticed who avoided this was Chris Pine.

If i was a director i would have made a complete break with the old continuity and made it very plain that this was a separate trek universe from what roddenberry created, then the fans could not complain of raped childhoods unless they thought they could claim ownership to the characters names. 

Then you would have had to create a whole new crew and formula and start from scratch with a new ship, and probably set it way later than nemesis.  They chose the easy and lazy path and the one that could make the quick money like lucas doing the prequels and crystal skull instead of creating anything new.

The same star trek with a tune up and a new paint job, talk about being creatively bankrupt i would just as soon the franchise died, They should have done a real start from scratch like Batman Begins or The Galactica remake, instead they chose to go the superman returns, casino royale route.

http://www.bigmoviezone.com/filmsearch/clips/clip.html?uniq=159

The Millenium Falcon escaping the death star  clip is nowhere to be found sadly.

The whole documentary which is 40 minutes has never been released on vhs, or dvd and never broadcast in its entirety on tv.  They had a tv show called nova that showed just the Kong segment and you can get that on vhs.

These 2 shots redone from star wars are more authentic than the stuff done with the stupid special edition cgi because they shot the models on 70mm, you know real models and not a fake computer graphic, though the enhancements in the shot scream cgi.

They also showed clips of the making of the special edition sadly,lol. 

Star Wars 77 to be a true imax experience would have had to have the live action footage blown up, and the effects all completely redone.  Talk about expensive.

newt said:

hi,

i just saw that angrysvn did a preservation of this. has anybody seen that? i'm wondering what the quality is like and whether it's worth me duplicating that work.

I have it and the quality is shit, with aplologies to Rikter, but i am being honest.  I don't think these were his transfers but he was the first person i believe to archive them all in a single disc.  Single layer i think, though i don't have the disc in front of me but for an entire season of a cartoon that is low quality, if i remember most of the episodes are either youtube quality or worse in some cases unwatchable.

At one point he was going to do a version 2 of this and do the ewoks too from pal tapes from the uk, but then afterwords said this was good enough or he lost interest.

The preservation i believe is from online showings from cartoon notwork and the sci fi channel tv re-broadcast in the 90's, and most likely old taped off of tv vhs.  None of them are even close to professional store bought vhs pre recorded tapes, were talking like low quality xvid with mp3 audio, dodgy audio and picture.

At least they have the original opening song, which i my opinion is awful as most eighties tv cartoon themes for Saturday morning were painfully cheesy.

I don't think the great heep was ever rebroadcast beyond the one time it was shown in the usa, we also never had it on tape either but the uk got it.  You know the Episode supposedly written and directed by Ben Burtt, i have heard it was awful and better off forgotten like the holiday special.

Was that not a continuity fix?  They changed a day shot into a night shot.

The cloudy overcast sky on the days of filming when it called for a perfectly blue sky and threepio in the desert they never have been able to fix you can still see the black dark cloudy sky, i think it rained and lucas still shot anyway.

Maybe the same, so i made a slight error i meant the best presentation on laserdisc because it was not time compressed like the first issue clv laserdisc which had slight speed up.

Yeah the film was so poorly directed that Lucas was nominated for an oscar for his directing.

He publicly badmouthed the academy so he got nothing.

The film was so poorly directed it was also nominated for best picture.

It was so poorly written it was nominated for best screenplay.

bkev said:

My thoughts are this: personally, I think it's great that they think Star Tours is worth updating.  I just wish they wouldn't take away the original in the process, though I can understand why.

Hopefully that was a quick pre-render just to show the expo and the ride really looks better.  That's my main concern.

Exactly i am hoping this is just a animatic or early render, because even the cgi was better in 1993's jurassic park. and even now 1999's phantom menace effects are laughably outdated, even the stuff on Revenge of the Sith has already been surpassed.  Every couple of years cgi makes giant leaps and bounds, this footage looks worse than the cutscenes on that podracer game.

I will not be watching as i don't care for that Boba Fett clone Cad Bane with that bad accent, and i could give a shit less about bounty hunters, and they are making the entire premise of the second season about them, lame

I don't care about the clone troopers really either, stormtroopers have always been cannon fodder in the movies and non essential to the plot.  I do like the Jedi stuff, and i like Matt Lanters Anakin Character and his master student relationship with Ahsoka because it shows anakin as a more than 1 dimensional character we got in star wars episodes II and III.

I Liked the first season enough, i approved of maybe at least half of the episodes the other half were crap or mediocre.  I will be buying the dvd season 1 set.

Boba Fett would be still a child during this so he can't be in it, that is why they created a nonsensical character like Cad Bane who will probably meet his death at the end of a lightsaber blade, whether jedi or sith.

Can they just do away with the bad palpatine machinations already or at least downplay it, i mean they had him pulling the strings in all three prequel films and force unleashed.  It makes him into an unbelievable comic book level villain.

First disney buys Marvel and now they ruin a classic ride by using badly rendered cgi that looks worse than what was in the phantom menace 10 frickin years ago.

This reminds me of some guys review for return of the jedi from 1983 i saw on youtube.  He said it was "malodrous awful"  whatever the hell that means.

But when he talked about the trilogy being only special effects and the actors walking through their roles robotically i instantly thought of the prequels.

You want to talk about poor direction episodes 1-3 are pretty damning examples.

Lucas is not alone either war of the worlds, 1941 and crystal skull were crap and were directed by the legendary director of hit films Spielberg.

Some films critics unfairly hate on like Willow and Return of the Jedi, and The Temple of Doom, The last crusade i liked all those movies.  I did not like Howard the Duck, however once i tracked down a copy of the star wars holiday special it made howard look like the best film ever made.  Seriously who wrote that garbage and what the hell were they on?

LexX said:

skyjedi2005 said:

LexX said:

ChainsawAsh said:

- 2.0 Stereo (1977, 1981 35mm Theatrical, early laserdiscs)

 

Also on rental videos before 1985. I have the first rental UK video from 83, it claims it's stereo but the sound is actually mono. (not the mono mix, but the stereo mix in mono)

The stereo mix was folded down supposedly to mono on the first issue rental betamax tape, but the vhs was in stereo.  I have also read that there was a vhs version that was rare that had the stereo folded down into mono, but have not been able to prove that claim, as i believe by this point in time most if not all vhs releases that were stereo were also mono compatible.

Like I said, I have the first rental VHS and it is in mono. Covers say stereo but it isn't.

Btw, what are the main differences with the 85 version and the original one? I think I have a video from 1994 (not a US or UK version) which I think is exactly the same as first video, with the lighter canyon shots and without added sounds to the Tantive IV door blowing scene. Sound is in stereo.

The 1985 mix was a digital mix that had less limiting applied to it and was most likely designed with home viewing in mind?  

I don't know if its just a bit louder sounding than the 35mm mix, i do know reportedly the only difference between the 77 and 85 is the added threepio tractor beam line from the mono mix.

Though you really won't notice a difference all that much with a tape with the 85 and a tape with the 77, it is were the laserdiscs and a good speaker home audio setup make all the difference apparent.

The original analog mix sound rather week in 2 channel stereo. does not have the extra frequency response of the 70mm six track or the extra loud ass kicking bass.

I'm not saying the stereo mix sucks it just suffers the same problems all pre digital analog 35mm tracks do, and the limitations with recording equipment back then, mixing equipment.  Dolby has come a long way since then.  Though people still fondly remember seeing a 70mm presentation if they were lucky of certain films people who saw superman or star wars on that consider it the definitive way to watch the film.

Like a good many soundtracks though star wars has to be played really loud to appreciate it.   Doing that for me irons out some of the problems i have with the 35mm original mix from 1977.

I never really liked the 45 magnum sounds and the breaking of glass heard on some of the other flavors of the soundtracks through the years, i think the one i heard the most is the 85 because thats what is on the 1992 vhs tapes.

captainsolo said:

These really do look good from the previews-was anything or can anything be done to those awful garbage mattes?

There is probably a digital solution not that i would know how.  But if they had recomposited the original opticals in 1997 as they claimed with new digital technology those should not even be there, or they could have removed them with the same computers they painted all that nonsense cgi that was not needed. I mean it is crazy to fix stuff that does not need fixing and not fix things that could not be fixed because they ran out of time and money when originally shooting the movie.

The low quality of laserdisc and the noise in the image, dirt and scratches on the print made the mattes less visble but the lowry clean up made them stick out like a someone with a black eye.

That is one of the things you can play with your sets black level i remember reading to get them to dissapear but you should not have to undo a set that is already properly calibrated to do that, it was just lazyness on their part for leaving them in.  Yes even on non anamorphic bonus discs.  Supposedly they were much less noticeable in cinemas as you had no pause feature.

Gaffer Tape said:

VINH:  Chewie made the Tarzan yell when he swung across a vine to land on top of the AT-ST during the final forest battle.

Yep long before Lucas had Shia do the Tarzan swing in kotcs with CG monleys he had chewie doing the same thing in return of the jedi.  We know of Lucas love of edgar rice burroughs, but it gets a tad ridiculous when you do it more than once.  Lucas homages are far worse than that in revenge of the sith, he has vader walk like frankenstein and yell noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!.

Yeah if only his meddling ruined the live action films only, sadly like a cancer on the whole franchise it also has ruined the EU.

I guess i could except ruined prequels, bad specail editions, ruined EU if George would just release the originals in at least dvd standard form, you know using the full resolution of the format in anamorphic no bad dvnr, remixed from the six tracks in 5.1 like the indy trilogy was, geez if only star wars got the same treatment as that release which was pretty bare bones.

Their games division pretty much shut down permanently and all games are being made by other companies and released through lucasarts, but seeing as there was no quality control for a very long time and they kept putting out tons of games that were basically shovelware, i'm not surprised.  There so called return that was delayed forever force unleashed was the biggest disappointment after they hyped it til you thought it would be they best game ever made. Also unbelievable lack of imagination was shown in all their recent games. 

Knights of the old republic does not count because it was made by bioware, neither do the lego games because they were made by Travelers tales.  Knights of the old republic II was obsidian, and i believe battlefront II was pandemic studios.  The games they made indiana jones and the staff of kings absolute shit, force unleashed mediocre hack and slash game that gets old after playing it for twenty minutes unless you spent 40 bucks on it for the cutcenes and voice acting.  It was an insult to even compare this game to god of war because the gameplay in force unleashed is basically non existent, but it is one of the distinguishing features of god of war.

The quality control at Del Rey also went straight out the window as long as they print star wars on a book cover they figure it will sell, and as long as the books are best sellers because of the sheep buying them they won't change anything.

Clone wars tv show boring and uninspired, movie was one of the very worst films in 2008 next to Crystal Skull. There is not a thing Lucas can touch that won't turn to shit like the opposite of the midus touch.  The live action tv show will suck, i would be absolutely surprised if red tails does not suck, but at this point i feel as though it would pardon the expression "take an act of god" for anything he does to be good.

What was the last movie he was attached to that was remotely good in any way?  Answer 1989's The Last Crusade,  and i would give most of that credit to Spielberg, composer j. Williams and the screenwriter Jeffrey Boam.

He should just have stayed an executive producer,and should have even given up the story telling role as he can't even do that anymore.  The last good film he directed was 1977 star wars, before that american graffiti and before that thx 1138.  When he retired after '77 he should have stayed retired, it did not hurt empire strikes back and return of the jedi that he did not direct them.  If he had to direct again at all he should have stuck with his plan of shooting episode 1 as a director and handed off II and III to other directors and writers like he did in the 70's and 80's.