I guess there could be some new crap in there but what more is there to add? I mean, I'm beyond hoping for anyone to fix the various garbage mattes and whatnot but it seems like the 2004 versions are pretty much maxxed out in terms of adding in more of George's trademark cheapo CG additions.
zombie84 said:
I duno. MJ was definitely a recluse. He pretty much never gave an interview until the early 1990s, and then it was only to clear his reputaion. Lucas is definitely NOT a recluse, though he was in the 70s and 80s. He seems unable to escape that reputation. GL and MJ have a lot more in common than people realize:
-Despite being regarded as reclusive, both are public figures
-Both are ridiculously wealthy
-MJ built Neverland Ranch, GL built Skywalker Ranch
-Both had their heyday in the 1980s
-Both are protective of their private life, and have a mysterious aura to them
-Both are among the most influential and successful artists in their fields, and both got famous at a young age, with scandal following them in the 1990s
-MJ in his recluse went a bit crazy and re-constructed his face. GL in his recluse went a bit crazy and re-constructed his films.
-Both have fans that either hate or have mixed feelings about them for their personal decisions, despite admiration for their early artistic efforts
-Both see themselves as, and to some degree actually are, misunderstood by the media
-Both of them had/have their contributions overshadowed by their failures at the end of their lifetimes
Of course, there are many huge differences. But while GL does indeed have a lot to be proud of in his life, ever since 1999, his reputation definitely has been mixed, much like Jackson since the early 1990s.
Key differences though. George's "scandals" don't revolve around criminal charges and his "failures" are strictly artistic in nature (and that only in the eye of the beholder) as the Special Editions, the 2004 DVD's, the prequels and everything else were all commercially successful and, whether we like it or not, there's a limit to how much of that financial success can be attributed to the Star Wars association.
By contrast, I don't know that Jacko had a platinum CD after his problems in the early 90's (even though the early 90's marked his commercial peak).
I've not read every single post in this thread so forgive me if I'm repeating what someone else has said.
Content-wise, I've got nothing to add or to criticize. Quite the opposite, it seems like the http://savestarwars.com page is a nice little summation of a lot of things people have been saying (and are right about) here for years. So my hat is off in terms of content.
However, in terms of presentation, it seems that the editorials are the site's main attraction. A good move might be to have some kind of brief intro text at the top of the homepage that very quickly summarizes what your page is all about and then, from there, lists of the various editorials. Off to the side, you can have that FAQ and the other sections as well.
Also, you may want to think about linking the text title of each editorial to the editorial's URL. For example, you would make the "How the Grinch Stole Star Wars" text into hyperlink text pointing to http://savestarwars.com/howthegrinchstolestarwars.html. And so on.
I'm not an expert by any means but don't masters (or some intermediate step; I don't know the nomenclature) based upon the original negatives from the OT-period exist that could be used as the basis of at least a remastered DVD release? I could see the resolution not being up to snuff for a Blu-Ray release but I'd be satisfied with anamorphically encoded DVD's.
Lacking that, wasn't the negative for each film scanned during/prior to 1997 so that all the SE work could commence?
Even if the negatives really have been altered, I find it hard to believe that the originals don't exist on a hard drive or as dupe or master or whatever the terms are.
True, that viewing experience will be forever altered when watching the films in numerical order. However, I don't care how the number goes, the prequels aren't meant to come first. The OT explains what the Force is and gives other exposition that the PT lacks. The OT was meant to be watched first.
Here's the way a newbie should watch, if you ask me: 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 6. Each movie brings out something new in that sequencing. Plus, you could see a little more easily and clearly the mirroring of structure and other things from the OT in the PT that way.
Yes, I realize the forum I'm on, a lot of you will probably say the best way to watch the saga is 4, 5, 6 and nothing else. That's cool too, just wanted to toss this out there.
Sorry dude but the numbers tell a different story. I think people just like Star Wars movies and don't care about SE vs. OOT. They'll buy whatever's out there. Hell, that's probably the only reason he's been able to get away with neglecting the OOT.
captainsolo said:
To put it bluntly: the freedom and energy of the first film and the darkness and development of the second are simply not present in Jedi. It is not a bad film by any means, but it is flawed and does pale in comparison overall to the two previous entries.
The story really does go nowhere.
Wait a minute, I'm getting mixed messages here. More main characters die in ROTJ than either of the previous ones combined. By your standard, I'm assuming, that would give the point to ROTJ, both in terms of number of people dying as well as "darkness and development" (whatever that means).
The story that you say goes nowhere resolves the conflict between Luke and Vader, restores freedom to the galaxy and all but guarantees that Han and Leia will live happily ever after. All that, and Anakin Skywalker is redeemed and dies as a Jedi Knight, reconciled to the good side of the Force and to Yoda and Obi-Wan.
I prefer ANH and ESB over ROTJ myself but how can you argue the story of ROTJ goes nowhere when it covers all that ground?
captainsolo said:
Every loose end is tied up
You mean subplots are actually RESOLVED?! The NERVE!
captainsolo said:
no one major dies.
Yeah, really. I mean, it's not like Yoda, Darth Vader or the Emperor were all that crucial to any of the movies or anything. Geeze, Lucas, what a hack! Everybody knows a movie is always better when a bunch of people die.
captainsolo said:
it was done simply to please everyone.
I know what you mean, it's so lame when filmmakers try to make their expensive films appeal to broad audiences. I mean, wtf do these guys want anyway, a PROFIT?!
Looking back on it, a big problem with a lot of the SE revisions is that most of them feel like they were done on the cheap, as half-assed as possible.
In ESB when Leia and the rest chase Boba to the landing platform, the music is completely jacked up and out of sync compared to how Williams originally scored it. Williams could've rescored this (and similarly messed up scenes)... but that'd cost too much.
In ANH, the restored scene with Biggs is so choppy and off-kilter that I have to wonder why Lucas even bothered. If he shot no close ups of the actors to work around the cuts he'd need to use, surely he could've modifed shots from other scenes to make it all work... but that'd cost too much.
In the '97 ANH, there's just no frickin way that CGI Jabba should've passed ANYbody's QC check. But it wasn't redone... it'd cost too much.
In ESB, yeah, we've got the "corrected" Emperor scene with McDiarmid but his make up doesn't look like a good match with ROTJ.
With ROTJ, you've got the "corrected" Anakin ghost with Hayden's head. But it's just Hayden's head. Would it have really killed Lucas to insert Hayden in there properly? Putting aside how unnecessary this change ever was, it looks like a weak Photoshop job. It could've been fixed... but that'd cost too much, I guess.
There are also mattes boxes around a lot of ships, even now. We've got some fairly impressive CGI in some shots... and garbage mattes in others?! Does that make sense to ANYONE?!
There are probably a billion other examples but you get the point.
I mean, bad enough that all this crap ever happened but when it's done so cheap, it adds insult to injury. I realize this stuff costs a lot of money but so do the DVD's. (A) LFL will make their money back and (B) there is such a thing as "the cost of doing business". Certain things cost money in life; do 'em right or get out.
If all of the changes Lucas has introduced could be done in a non-amateurish way and if the original (theatrical) cuts were respected and preserved, I'd honestly have no complaints.
EDIT- And this isn't just the OT. The prequels suffer from this to varying degrees. The theatrical cut of The Phantom Menace had awesome effects in terms of lighting/shadow, textures and so forth. But when Lucas restored parts of the podrace, you go from basically perfect effects in many shots to a couple of shots that had that "slick as snot" quality that everyone associates with CG images.
I'm a saga fan and dig on all the movies. So no, I'm glad he kept going.
Still, if Lucas had called it a day back in 1977, I think critics and people generally would look back on ANH with a LOT more fondness. It'd probably be similar to how people think of the Wizard of Oz. In general, I think Star Wars would have a lot more popular catchet. The subsequent films (all of them) diminished that.
I think Lucas mentioned it in the ESB commentary.
I think it's at times underplayed more than anything. It's made clear that attachment is only part of Anakin's problem. Yeah, he wants to save Padme... but it comes down to what HE wants and the power HE needs. Anakin's issues were less about Padmé and more about his desire to control his life... and the people in it.
Like I said, if Lucas is guilty of anything, it's underplaying that. On the other hand, the alternative would be scene after didactic scene of Anakin brooding about how he needs more power to defeat this guy, more power to protect that chick, etc, and, at some point, saying that the Dark Side is really the only way to get there.
Good little thread so I'll resurrect it.
I think in the OT, Yoda and Obi-Wan weren't necessarily concerned about Luke joining up with Palpatine as they were in keeping Luke away from the Dark Side. Rationally, giving in to the Dark Side doesn't mean one is necessarily a Sith (although they're probably bigger experts of the Dark Side than anybody).
And yeah, Obi-Wan and Yoda had their own agenda for Luke. I think the entire point of the prequels was to show the Jedi Order's many and varied moral failings. They were allegedly dedicated to all of these lofty ideals but by the time of the PT, they'd obviously sold themselves to the Republic and jumped when ever the Senate told them to. Qui-Gon was probably the only Jedi of the old ways who followed the will of the Force, even if it ran counter to the will of the Jedi Council, the Republic or anything else, and got labeled as a "rebel" and "maverick" for his actions. Qui-Gon -- independent and attuned to the Force -- is what the Jedi Order should've been; Yoda -- two-faced, dishonest and self-serving -- is what they had become.
I don't think it's a coincidence that the PT Yoda was all about prophecies and the future and all that crap while the OT Yoda lambasted Luke for not paying attention to where he was, what he was doing. The OT Yoda had learned the hard way how bad things can get when a Jedi's focus is too far away from his immediate circumstances.
Seems like two different things are being talked about here- visual effects and stylistic decisions.
To the latter, I would argue that the characters in the prequels were part of the elite, the upper crust. Everything looks crisp and new because they can afford crisp and new. The OT follows impoverished farmers, fugitive smugglers and other (according to the establishment) lowlifes. They're not going to have the same brand spanking new ships and clothes that the upper crust had decades earlier.
Also to the latter, I don't understand why this is a problem. Lucas intentionally set out to push TPM as far away as possible from the aesthetics of the OT so that he could have something to migrate to over the course of the films (color pallettes, production design, costume design, etc). It's not just that he used CG (even non-CG elements have this same "new" look at times) or that he used digital cameras (Ibid TPM, shot mostly on film), it's that he wanted a different look for a more elegant period in the galaxy's history.
Do you perhaps mean the 2004 CG Jabba? Because I honestly wouldn't be able to understand someone preferring the 1997 CG Jabba.
If you are talking about the 2004 Jabba, well, that would make sense because it was five years newer and more high tech than the Ep 1 Jabba.
Incidentally, the fact that we're talking about all of these variations and versions and years is another reason why the original trilogy should never have been tampered with in the first place.
I think the scene should be left out because of the crapitude of staging a scene around a CG Jabba. For whatever reason, Lucas can't simply cut away to something, he has to make Han step on Jabba's tail.
Basically, Han is at Jabba's mercy. Jabba has a crew of bounty hunters with him, any of whom, I'd imagine, would be perfectly willing to blow Han away if Jabba gives the order. Stepping on Jabba's tail isn't what any thinking person would do in such a situation.
But there's also the CG itself to think about. It played in TPM because Jabba was only in, what, two or three shots? Plus, he needed to move around a little bit. No big deal. But he's the focal point of the hangar scene and the aesthetic differences between even the 2004 CG Jabba vs. the 1983 puppet are too vast to really believe in.
ANH was fine the way it was, it doesn't need a bunch of CGI and crap like that. The Jabba scene should be cut back out.
Bingowings said:
People are different.
There are people on here who love TPM because they are young enough to be nostalgic for it.
The same goes with ROTJ.
But if you brake the film down, look at the art design, the writing the acting, the attention to detail, even the score, ROTJ is the weakest film of the OT and set the scene for almost everything wrong with the PT.
I realize which forum I'm on but while I grew up watching the OT and admiring the movies as much as the next guy, I wasn't big into Star Wars. TPM, however, is what made me a fan. It helped me put the OT in a better context and I could genuinely appreciate it. It could totally be a generation gap but I view the movies as a six part saga, not a trilogy.
As it goes for ROTJ though, that was my favorite of the bunch as a kid. Luke was pretty much a Jedi by this point, he could finally have his showdown with Darth Vader, you had the Emperor running around tearing shit up, lots of action sequences, etc. I guess it's only as you get older that you start seeing the film's shortcomings. As you say, the actors were mostly phoning it in.
But beyond that, it felt like most of the crew had no real passion for the film. Everything felt choreographed in the most negative sense of the term. Even without having the thing memorized, you can kinda start guessing what's coming. "Well, Han and Leia ain't out of the woods yet, we've still got another five or ten minutes before the traditional first act break so something gotta happen that'll... yep, there's Jabba, right on schedule." "There's no way the rebels can blow up the Death Star just yet, we've got another, what, fifteen or twenty minutes to go in the movie so something has to happen to slow them down.... oh, what do you know, the deflector shield will be quite operational when Luke's friends arrive. And I'll bet none of their ships can repel firepower of the Death Star's magnitude." And so on and so forth.
People can say whatever they want about Lawrence Kasdan basically serving as a hired gun who just did what Lucas told him to do but honestly I've never seen much after ESB from that guy that really impressed me. And even Raiders owes more to Speilberg and his vision than it does Kasdan and his writing, as far as I'm concerned. And I have to wonder how much of both of those finished products are really "his" and didn't come from other sources. One wonders how ROTJ might've turned out if a different writer had come onboard.
ROTJ has several bright spots and is worth watching but the saga deserved a stronger finish. Had Lucas and co. taken a year off or something after work finished on Raiders and found a better writer, I suspect ROTJ might've turned out quite differently.
And those discs all included the theatrical color-timing?
Have the theatrical cuts of LOTR been released since the initial DVD versions? There are more differences between the theatrical and extended cuts than just extra scenes. At least a few sequences have noticeably different color timing. There could also be soundtrack differences too but I've never bothered paying close attention because those movies are almost as interesting as watching a plant grow.
Anyway, point is that he's maybe not the best guy to ask about this.
Okay. So what? There's still a metric crapton of BRD players on the market now. More than enough, I assume, to justify a release in the fall 2010 if that's what LFL really wanted. But since it's fall 2011, LFL may as well spend the time doing something constructive with the BRD's. I don't think it's out of the question that they'll use the additional time for perhaps a remastering job or maybe digging up some more bonus stuff (I'd lovelovelove a solo Williams commentary). They've got, what, another 9 or 10 months before they have to turn everything over for mass production? That's a lot of time.
Of course, the main thing we'd all like to see apparently won't be included so it's all academic anyway. So there you go.
For me, it comes down to apathy. I don't need HD versions of the 2004 discs. If the extras consist of deleted scenes, BTS docos or whatever, that stuff will be on YouTube before too long.
And while I'm no video expert, I would think that the OOT wouldn't necessarily benefit from a BRD transfer given the optical effects and other things that HD technology might not be flattering to.
But then again, LFL could've had this sucker ready for release this year if they'd really wanted to. If they're waiting an extra year, might that indicate that they're at least remastering (or in some other way working on) the '04 editions?
Honestly, I can't swear I'd buy this thing even if OOT cuts were included. But if they're not, I really won't bother.
I would've thought if anybody had been considered a loose cannon, it would've been Anthony Daniels following his "the storytelling always gets subsumed" remark. That couldn't have won him any points with LFL.
Naboo.
Baronlando said:
Why would a dvd of Willow cost millions? And "tiny" lucasfilm? They aren't some scrappy little boutique just trying to scrape by with their adorable handmade craftsmanship, far from it. They're a big company that has done schlocky work for years now, look at the joke that THX has become (the process not the movie). They make money because Star Wars fans have OCD and buy almost anything.
Making a point sometimes involves hyperbole. Although, if Willow is in need of remastering (as would seem likely given that LFL would want to leave room for a future HD release) along with the other expenses involved with getting a deluxe edition of the movie out there, who knows how much it might cost?
Point is, it wouldn't be cheap.
SilverWook said:
Where is Fractalsponge doing that?
He's not; you are.
It's "whining and crying" to merely comment on how a studio that reaps millions of dollars went and stole your CGI model?
From what I know of the situation, he's giving it away for free. How can that possibly be theft?
By that logic, this whole site is devoted to "whining and crying".
Nothing is being taken from us without permission, we're simply denied the opportunity to pay for something we want and we come here, as much as anything, to vent. Apples and oranges.