thecolorsblend

THX is not listed on Wiki's LFL filmography.  And I thought the Empire of Dreams doco indicated that LFL only came about after THX.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucasfilm

The point, though, is that several of the things you cite are niche titles for niche audiences.  THX 1138 is just about the dictionary definition of a non-mainstream release nowadays.  It's interesting, I really enjoy it but it's not going to do Indy numbers on DVD (or BRD).  Ditto a lot of other LFL releases.  Could Willow grow in stature if it gets a respectable Special Edition release?  Yeah, possibly, but what if you're wrong?  What if LFL spends millions on a deluxe Willow release that doesn't sell for anything?  That's a big hit for tiny LFL to take.

zombie84 said:

LFL has a lot more product than it seems they do:

-CW (CG)

-CG(non-CG)

-Indy IV

-PT

-OT SE

-Radioland Murders

-Young Indy series

-Tucker

-Howard the Duck

-Ewok Adventure

-Ewoks: Battle for Endor

-Droids series

-Ewoks series

-Captain Eo

-Indy trilogy

-More American Graffiti

-OOT

-American Graffiti

-THX 1138 SE

-THX 1138 original

Here's the kicker: they are distributor for none of these. Not one. Lucasfilm isn't a studio and they aren't a distributor, they are just a production company that gets to oversee the films they were involved with. Star Wars is slightly different because they actually own the copyright, but they share none of the marketing, manufacturing and distribution costs there. 

If you look at the track record here, there's not a lot of winners. The Indy DVD set had the films in excellent quality, but poor special features; the THX 1138 DVD had both great picture and features, but it didn't have the original. Young Indy was an interesting set, but it was ridiculously overpriced. Other than that, everything seems to be from pre-existing Laserdisks, except Tucker, Radioland Murders and American Graffiti, both of which have outdated DVDs by now anyway which are basically barebones.

Lucasfilm has the worst track record in DVD. I don't know who manages their DVD department there, but whoever he is he is a total idiot.

I was under the impression that THX 1138 was a Warner Bros film in association with Coppola's American Zoetrope.  Nothing to do with LFL.  That may not be right though.

As for Clone Wars, the Cartoon Network series has already had a DVD release.  The CG thing is, admittedly, fair game.  I've ignored pretty much the CG Clone Wars so I have no idea what the ratings and general consumer interest might be.

As for the other titles you cite, yes, LFL can certainly release them but (aside from maybe AG) those aren't the top tier, guaranteed sellers that SW and Indy are.

Baronlando said:

Eh, porno outfits have already managed to put out blu-rays. LFL just love to cultivate that image that everything they have is a special golden treasure that they occasionally deign to sell us if we wait long enough.

Actually, the disc budget at the big studios is so tiny these days, the guys doing  catalog 70s titles like Logan's Run would probably kill for the time and money LFL could lavish on a bare bones Star Wars '77 disc. (compare the Young Indiana Jones dvd sets to any big studio release of a failed 90s tv show)

An apples and oranges comparison as most studios have a litany of moderately successful and/or outright failed TV shows from which to choose.

LFL had Young Indy and now Clone Wars.

The porno thing is even worse.  The subject matter rather than the specific title and/or content is what sells discs in that, ahem, genre.  The fact that some porn outfit regularly releases BR discs only serves to prove my point that LFL has to be choosy about how and when they release new material.  People watch porno flicks for utterly different reasons than mainstream Hollywood fare.  It's not title specific in the porn industry, it's subject matter specific.  And in many cases, one porno title is about as good as another.  Again, LFL has only three or four titles to release at any given time.  A certain amount of caution is good business on their part.

And just so we're clear, I'm not defending the hackjob 2004 remaster, releasing GOUT in letterboxed widescreen only, edge halos on TPM, etc.  This isn't about quality control, it's about caution in any new format/business venture.

Then it's on them to seek a legal remedy.  But whining and crying about it on the Internet solves nothing.

ESHBG said:

Oh wow 2011, LFL you are soooo up on the new and current technology!  Hey maybe in 2012 we can get the super duper version on Betamax!!! 

LFL/Luca$ has shown us all time and time again that they are a total joke of the industry, the originals were flukes and only ended up as the magical masterpieces that they were because Luca$' fat hands were inadvertently kept out of most of it, and he has successfully killed SW and turned away all of the true fans...

Until I see a *TRUE* OOT restoration out there (no crappy Laserdisc rip, non-anamorphic crap either), they don't get another dime from me...

 I really don't understand this mentality.  Whether or not it's true, it simply defies logic.  This is LFL we're talking about.  Not Warner Bros, not Sony Pictures, not Paramount, etc.  LFL.  How many top tier releases does LFL have in their archives?  Well, there's Star Wars and Indy.  And that's about it.  WB has numerous hit titles.  If they screw up one title, they can learn their lesson and apply their new wisdom to some other title.  And hey, maybe rerelease the first title a few years later.

LFL?  Just Star Wars and Indy.  A lot less room for mistakes.

What kind of budget does your average big Hollywood studio have to work with when making DVD's?  I don't know either but 10:1 it's a lot bigger than LFL's budget.

Why should LFL automatically take the plunge on such a big venture when (A) the 2004 and GOUT discs are and were such nice, tidy sellers and (B) there's no reason to think the Blu-Ray market has even begun to peak just yet?

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I'm this big Hollywood/DVD industry expert and all that but what I know of business and entering new ventures indicates that LFL (with their smaller catalogue and lesser budget) has been wise to stay out of the rat race like they have given how well their standard res DVD's are selling.

The LFL folks have made many mistakes (2004 remastering/audio problems) and bad choices (letterboxed widescreen GOUT discs) but keeping out of the Blu-Ray pissing contest isn't one of 'em.

SilverWook said:

Someone else in that thread claims to have seen the whole episode and no credit was given. I'd be willing to bet someone at an overseas animation sweatshop is the culprit.

Sadly, I've seen this sort of thing happen before too.  There's a SciFi channel movie where some fantasy artwork is seen on the wall of someone's lab. It seems someone involved with that production simply downloaded images from the website they were created for, and printed them out. No credit or compensation was given at all.

Say there's an episode of a TV show where a cop walks into the bedroom of a comics collector and posted on the wall is a reproductive print of the cover for Action Comics #1.

Do you think the station or the TV show's production company should be obligated to give Joe Shuster some kind of shout out in the credits?

This could be a good opportunity for LFL to make amends on some things.  Throw in the OOT (bonus points if they include the mono, stereo/surround and 6-track soundtracks!) and also include George's latest "original vision".  It'd be neat if they threw in commentary from Kurtz, Kasdan, Kazananjaijanianajakasajianwhatever, Oz, Hamill and maybe Ken Ralston or some other effects guys on the OOT discs or something.

Shit, all I really care about is just getting the OOT.  Bonus stuff is not even under consideration anymore.

I wasn't a huge Star Wars fan back then.  Mostly I was just interested in seeing ANH for the CG Jabba and the upgraded Death Star dogfight.  ANH was my fave of the three and I figured I could check the other ones out on video.

Overall, not bad.  I mostly geeked out over seeing ANH in a theater as opposed to TV.  Felt like I got my money's worth at the time but as the years wore on, reality sorta had to set in a little bit.  "CG Jabba looks like crap, Luke isn't supposed to scream as he falls down the pit on Bespin, do we really need to see Coruscant's celebrations" and so forth.

Of course, the SE was only the tip of the iceberg of crappy movies that would unspool that summer...

Vaderisnothayden said:

C3PX said:

Yeah, having to watch Chewie's dad masturbate for ten minutes is one of the most frightening and upsetting things I have ever seen on a TV screen.

And whose bright idea was it name Chewie's relatives "Itchy" and "Lumpy"? Sounds like chicken pox.

 Maybe there's a connection between the masturbation, and "itchy" and "lumpy".

Everybody's got an agenda, it seems.

Didn't like ESB all that much until I got older.  I preferred ANH and ROTJ back then.

TheBoost said:

I've always liked the scene because "We would be honored, if you would join us." isn't just evil... it's SARCASTIC. It's the only time we see Vader just straight be a dick.

 "[Admiral Ozzel] is as clumsy as he is stupid."

"Perhaps you think you're being treated unfairly?"

Probably some others too.

As for the laser bolts, I figure Vader just borrowed a variation on Yoda's "lightning catch" trick from AOTC and ROTS.

What was the point?  I would've thought it was clear.  George forced that change in there even though it totally conflicts with the tone and pace of the surrounding scenes.  He wanted to show Vader travelling on the shuttle to the Star Destroyer, pacing be damned, and the "alert my Star Destroyer" stuff better clarifies Vader's little trip.

"Bring my shuttle" is truer to Vader's character (esp at that moment) though.

Sluggo said:

Replacing the DE version of ANH with the Holiday Special?  The DE version is awesome.  The HS is... well, not.

 Frankly, the original ANH is much better than DE's version.

As for the HS, I'd just want to keep it with ANH as they're of the same basic vintage.  So hmm, maybe I can find a standard width, 4-DVD case and include both...

I ended up economizing a lot to save shelf space.  I gave my 2004 and my Definitive Collection LD transfer discs to my brother when the GOUT came along.

From there, I combined sets as much as necessary.  TPM was pretty much left alone.  No combining done there.  But for the rest...

-- AOTC
Disc 01- AOTC
Disc 02- AOTC extras
Disc 03- Cartoon Network Clone Wars, vol. 1

-- ROTS
Disc 01- ROTS
Disc 02- ROTS extras
Disc 03- Cartoon Network Clone Wars, vol. 2

-- ANH
Disc 01- GOUT
Disc 02- 2004
Disc 03- Darth Editous

-- ESB
Disc 01- GOUT
Disc 02- 2004
Disc 03- Musical Journey

-- ROTJ
Disc 01- GOUT
Disc 02- 2004
Disc 03- 2004 set extras

When I got my copy of the Holiday Special back from my friend, maybe I'll make that disc 3 for ANH and throw the Darth Editous thing away.

The more you analyze the Jabba scene in ANH, the less sense it makes.

Like someone else said, the dialogue is repetitive.  The Greedo scene already exposited the important parts of the Jabba scene.

But ya know what else?  It doesn't.  Make.  Sense.  This is Jabba, not Vader.  Jabba is not a hands on kind of guy... thus the entire frickin' reason he hired bounty hunters in the first place!  Jabba wouldn't personally go after Han.  He'd send lackey after lackey after until one of them hit paydirt.  Let someone else do the dirty work, Jabba would never risk his own neck.

And, Crispin's Han Solo trilogy books aside, Han wouldn't stick around on Tatooine if he was trying to avoid Jabba.  So Tatooine can't be Jabba's main base of operations or else Han would never have felt safe there.  If you're trying to avoid the Mafia, you don't hide in their back yard.

For reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with effects, there's simply no justifying the restored Jabba scene.

-- ANH
In the original, Vader's saber is flat white after he kills Obi-Wan and Luke shoots the control of a door to keep Vader from entering the fight on the Death Star.  I think the '04 edition corrected that.  Incidental but there you go.  It's fine the way it was though.

-- ESB
The expanded approach to Cloud City is okay, with the all the CG buildings and whatnot.  It's fine the way it was though.

-- ROTJ
Uh, hmm...

Stampede said:

 Any challengers?

Piett?  Ozzel?  Wicket?

I only gave in to the OOT side of the Force after the GOUT DVD's came along.  It'd been forever since I'd seen the OOT but watching it again, man, I get it now.

When I first heard about Hayden being tossed in to ROTJ, being the pro-SE/revision guy that I was, I didn't have a problem with the fact of Lucas doing it.  I thought the integration left much to be desired though.

Nowadays, I wish it'd been left alone.  It's a moment that Anakin has earned.  He was born as a slave.  Then he was "freed" and became a slave of the Jedi.  Then he was "freed" by Palpatine and became a slave of the Sith.  Through out his whole life, he's been a slave to his emotions.

Death was his only escape.  An act of love, heroism and self-sacrifice, for the first time acting on someone's behalf strictly for their good, was probably the one wholly decent thing he ever did his entire life.

Reunited with his mentors and surveying the hero and Jedi Knight his son has become, Anakin has every reason to feel pride and joy...

... all of which is completely thrown out the window when Hayden is thrown in there.  I dig the prequels and everything but Hayden simply has no business in ROTJ.  None.  Zero.

Worse, it's pretty obvious that Lucas didn't actually shoot him specifically for ROTJ.  Most likely, Lucas took some random footage of Hayden from the ROTS production, maybe Hayden between scenes, and then had someone badly paste him into ROTJ.

All in all, I wish Lucas had left Shaw where he belonged.  Old Man Anakin has earned that moment with Luke; Young Anakin hasn't... which was sort of the entire plot of the prequels.

TheBoost said:
I accept your point that to the vast majority of people who know "Star Wars" (including people who love it) it is the movies and nothing more. BUT... if we're talking about the EU we can acknowledge that it's a fictional universe thas been added to consistently for over 30 years.

Like Superman, I think it would be swell if Star Wars had a seperate continuity for each property.

And since we're running with Superman as an example, speaking from firsthand experience, I can tell you that fanbase is unspeakably fragmented right now because of concurrent live action adaptations (Smallville TV show vs. that abortion Bryan Singer presided over).

Be careful what you wish for.  Between saga fans vs. OOT fans, prequel lovers vs. prequel bashers, weirdos like me who dig on the prequels but also prefer the OOT over the SE/2004, etc, I'd say that SW's fanbase is just about fractured enough.

Vaderisnothayden said:
The point was that Lucas's treatment of the OOT is not something that's done to please fans. You insisted that everything an "entertainment property" does is done to please fans, a point of view that has no basis that I know of. I'm giving you obvious examples of things being done with Star Wars that have been done to satisfy George Lucas and not the fans. Which provides examples of how not everything an entertainment property or Star Wars does is done to please fans.

The fanbase speaks for itself on that one.

Looks to me like Lucas just dug in his heels out of pride.  LFL knows that most fans would be interested in getting the OOT, they saw/see the bootleg market going and apparently the GOUT was a decent little earner.  It's no mystery to them.

The fact that we haven't had a deluxe (can't say "special", can I?) edition DVD of the OOT says a lot about George's stubborn price in all of this.

The terms of cloning implied by AOTC is that the original host's memories cannot be transplanted into the clone's mind.  I say that because Jango Fett had obvious combat skills while his clones had to be trained.

That being the case, it begs the question of why the Emperor would clone himself.  He, Emperor Prime for like of a better description, would still die.  Sure, the Emperor's clone would rise up and take over... but it wouldn't be Palpatine Prime doing it, just someone who looks like him, has a similar array of powers and none of his life experiences or memories.

Why would the Emperor bother since (as far as he knows) Sith hegemony of the galaxy will continue in the form of his Sith apprentice taking his place as ruler?

If I recall the terms of DE correctly (and honestly the idea of cloning the Emperor is so awful that I've never been able to even entertain the idea so I've never read all of DE), a host's memories can be implanted into a clone.  If so, Palpatine would be risking himself.  What if a clone should escape/prematurely be released from where ever clones are grown?  Now Palpatine will be faced dealing with a Sith literally every bit as cunning, intelligent and powerful as himself.

What do you suppose the odds are that an escaped Palpatine clone would want to overthrow Palpatine Prime and install himself as the new Emperor?  Being a Sith is treacherous business, after all.

End of the day, I can't envision Palpatine cloning himself under any circumstance.

That stuff aside, a Palpatine clone completely defeats the purpose of Vader's sacrifice.

TheBoost said:

thecolorsblend said:

Why is this even an issue?  Because LFL and some of the subsidiaries thereof insist that we fans regard these (largely inferior) offerings as being the prior/ongoing adventures of the movie characters.

The idea of canon only exists to please a certain sort of fan. Lucasfilm would make just as much money off the franchise if they discounted the idea entirely, like Star Trek does.

Look at any other fictional universe that's in the hands of multiple creators, from the Marvel Universe to Zorro. It's totally natural there will be inconsistencies, changes, retcons, and widely varying quality. We're talking about a fictional universe that spreads across hundreds of hours of film, hundreds of thousands of pages of books and comics, and even wierder supplementary materials.

In the early 80s "Superman: The Man of Steel" was a comic that reworked Superman's origin (at the time I didn't know that. I was 7). It was my favorite comic. I understand that a new Superman origin series was published in the early 2000s (Birthright), and "Man of Steel" doesn't "count" anymore. All I can do is shrug my shoulders and re-read a 25 year old comicbook that I like. 

With all these Star Wars writiers fighting for scraps from Lucas's table, the 'canon' idea that somehow gives equal weight to blurbs on a Star Wars CCG card, RPG supplements, and well-written epic novels is bound to have flaws, massive ones, but to the degree canon policies work, (which I don't persoanlyl care for), I respect it, because it's trying to please the fans (who of course, are never pleased).  It has no other purpose.

 

 I have to laugh that you cited Superman comics as I'm a bit of a junkie.

The "rules" are different for comics and like properties.  Their realities are far more elastic, likely given their longevity.

If you say "Superman" (who is going through yet another reboot right now, which is also destined to fail, but that's another topic for another day) to a group of people today, you'll get a variety of first impressions.  Christopher Reeve, George Reeves, Tom Welling, a particular comics incarnation, maybe a Superman cartoon, whatever.  Superman (and comic book properties in general) are many things.

Star Wars, however, is a movie.  Nothing else.  When you say "Star Wars", 99% of people will think of something tied directly back to the films.  The "reality" of Star Wars is much narrower.  It exists in a different kind of medium with different rules.  Comics adaptations (X-Men movies, The Dark Knight, et al) do not have to jibe (in terms of continuity) with the comics.  The rules are different for TV/movie-based properties however.

And again, while certain EU novels do have that classic SW feel, the majority are warmed over ROTJ ripoffs with different characters substituting for Vader and the Emperor.

There's also style to consider.  Novels typically dig deep into their characters.  Bashing aside, that's not something SW movies of any era have ever really done.  The EU tries to deepen thinly sketched characters with a lot of unnecessary baggage and weight.  The Han Solo trilogy by AC Crispin (as enjoyable as it is) is a good example of this.  Han's a selfish rogue who only protects his own neck.  I don't really feel like I need to know how he ended up that way.  But even if I did, I find some parts of that trilogy difficult to accept.

-- TCB's Canon
Prequels and the OOT

-- Interesting (but not canon where not confirmed directly explicitly by the films, I don't care what anybody says)
Cloak of Deception
ROTS novelization
Han Solo Adventures (whatsisname Daly)
Han Solo trilogy (Ann Crispin)
Shadows of the Empire (without question the most Star Wars of all the novels)
Heir to the Empire

-- Crapola (whether I've actually read it or not)
Everything else (yes, including the rest of the Thrawn trilogy)
-----------------------------------
Why is this even an issue?  Because LFL and some of the subsidiaries thereof insist that we fans regard these (largely inferior) offerings as being the prior/ongoing adventures of the movie characters.

And, sorry, I cannot convince myself that Luke would ever recommission the Jedi Council under any form of government considering how demonstrably screwed up the entire concept is, as per the prequels in general and ROTS in particular.  This is but the tip of the iceberg.