yotsuya

There are 3 versions of The Phantom Menace. Theatrical, DVD, and Blu-ray. The running time of the DVD and Blu-ray are the same with the major difference being Yoda (DVD = puppet, Blu-ray = CG). The theatrical version is what was issued on VHS (Both pan&scan and widescreen), LD, and aired on European TV. There are two airings preserved, TB and Orf. They are the highest quality versions avaialble. The pod race sequence is the original and the Coruscant speeder scene is original (both were extended for the DVD which changed the running time). There are other differences, but those are the ones that affect the length. A couple of shots were cut in the process of changing those two things and so a handful of clips are only available in SD (From the European broadcasts) until such a time as a film print is scanned. The DVD version was also broadcast in HD and Schorman has preserved all 6 of those (eps 1-6). The quality is better on several of them and it was before the Blu-ray edits were made.

There is no HD version of The Phantom Menage theatrical version available. There are several recreations. I have my own (which I have not shared with anyone) and I intend to see if I can improve those scenes enough to be mostly unnoticable, but if you want the best raw sources, they are TB and Orf (I think this one is Sweedish).

Broom Kid said:

It’s a good point that in both TFA and TROS Abrams doesn’t seem to understand the basic tension principles at play that made the climax of Star Wars and Jedi work. It wasn’t just that the weapon was destructive, and could cause destruction. It’s that the destructive weapon was pointed at people we cared about, and the heroes had to disarm and destroy the weapon before it went off in the worst way.

It’s why fan-edits that combine Starkiller firing on Hosnian Prime with the climax of the movie tend to make that film work better. The battle at the end of TFA and ESPECIALLY the battle here at the end of TROS are dramatically inert because THAT’S the difference between knocking a gun off a table and KILLING THE PERSON POINTING A GUN AT YOU.

ROTJ’s climax was a re-tread (a lot of ROTJ was a re-tread, Lucas admitted as much a couple times - it’s his ANH makeup with more money) but at least the idea of the gun being aimed (and even fired) at our heroes directly was still intact and it added stakes and tension to the proceedings. In TROS you had an entire fleet of Star Destroyers, some of which had planet-destroying guns, but there was never any goal but “Don’t let them get out.”

They should have already gotten out and the race was to stop them from being able to fire.

Now, hold on a sec. ANH and TFA share the exact same pacing of the use of the weapon (the one area I do see a clear parallel). In ANH it is test on Alderaan and then is menacing the base on Yavin IV. In TFA it is tested on the Hosnian system and then turns to D’Qar in the Ileenium system to destroy the Resistance base. So how can the battle of the First Death Star and the Battle of Starkiller Base have less dramatic tension? We see them preparing to fire in both (something added to ANH late in development). And ROTJ and TROS do the same thing. We see the weapon in action and then there is a race to destroy it. And in the case of TROS, there are many weapons ready to go out and force the surrender of all the major worlds of the Republic. The stakes are even higher and I got that. Each one of these films and every time I see it that tension is clear. If anything, ROTJ is the weakest because the Death Star is not mobile yet and any threat to other systems is more distant while the threat to the fleet is what is imminent. Each battle handles the situation in a different way. ANH requires the McGuffin plans to locate the weak point and it is a race against time with Tarkin giving the order to fire almost as Luke fires his shot. ROTJ adds the parley between Luke and Palpatine, then his duel with Vader, then his torture by Palpatine. The real drama of this version is in the throne room. Then in TFA it they don’t have secret plans, but they have a sabotage mission where Han faces his son, creating yet a different slant to the same type of battle. The X-wings don’t get their chance until Chewy blows the charges. Then in TROS, it isn’t the Death Star weapon that endangers the fleet, it is Palpatine himself. This time Rey directly stops him by taking his attention and letting the fleet finish their work. Each of these is a race against time and I found each pretty tense. Outside of ANH, the space battle is secondary to the other drama going on, but each finds its own way to build tension in the battle and tension in the parallel story. If Starkiller doesn’t destroy the Hosnian system, then how does anyone know it works? The urgency is minimized because the weapon may or may not work. But we do see the weapon work and we know the resistance base (where Leia is) will be destroyed if the raid is not successful. The part of the film that just yanks me right out is everyone on Takodana seeing the destruction of the Hosnian system. Unless they are orbiting the same star, that is so impossible that I consider it one of the two worst scenes in Star Wars (the other being C-3PO’s entire role on Geonosis). I think TFA has some serious issues but I think they can be easily fixed without altering the structure. But the battle sequence is one of the best parts of the film (along with the opening).

I will collect what I can find. It would be good if others contributed as they find things. I’ll alter the first post to be a running list.

I really should finish this. I’ve been wondering if there is anything else I can do to it. I should render it out at 1080p at low compression and share it.

Here is the breakdown:
The crawl text is lifted from the BR of ANH.
The Star Wars title is lifted from the BR of TESB
The ships, lasers, and engine glow are taken from a scan of the non-Ep 4 crawl/flyover that Willarob gave me
The moons and planet are also from that scan, but enhanced with a scan of the original matte painting (to reduce the grain noise).
The stars are taken from many many different frames of TESB with a handful drawn in manually to match the LD editons of the crawl. The best was the 1982 pan&scan PAL LD where the titles were squished (more vertical information).
Everything was timed and aligned to the very dark scan of the 1981 crawl that was released with the Silver Screen Edition.

I had to do a lot of frame by frame work to clean up and reposition the Blockade Runner and the Star Destroyer. In each of the three versions of the crawl/flyover, things are aligned slightly different. It took a lot of enhancing of the edge of the star destroyer to make it come out matching the 81 version. The 97 version has the right edge, but not the right engine details and I deemed that to be more work than enhancing the edge. The 77 and 81 seem to be closer connected, except for the stars.

Keep in mind this is a recreation that I hope is close enough that it would be hard to notice. I’m not sure I have the elements properly balanced. The good news is that because I lifted the lasers off as their own element, separate from the ships, I was able to use them in my BR restoration project to restore the look of the lasers to the 1997 crawl/flyover. I might share that as well. I think it came out better than the Disney+ (Which is better than the 2011 Blu-ray).

While working on this I found that the scan of the 1981 crawl has several mistakes (at least one duplicate frame) and it doesn’t match the timing of all the LD versions. It is also very much in need of stabilization. but it does have enough stars to get a good alignment of the crucial pan down. It also let me verify that the title was recycled from TESB (though it fades out earlier) and that the BR crawl is identical.

The most disappointing aspect for me is the ending of The Force Awakens. It is too much left hanging and in the wrong spot. The whole plot of the film feels unresolved. Yes, they find Luke, but then what? The main question of the crawl is left hanging until the next film.

idir_hh said:

Broom Kid said:

Also, I never actually criticized the video because I never watched it.

How bout this - I’m almost 100% convinced there isn’t anything MauLer is going to say in this video that hasn’t already been said somewhere else, by someone else, in a much more intelligent and less “upset” manner,

You assumed his video was a less unintelligent retread of other critique’s.

If you didn’t care, none of what just happened this afternoon would have happened at all. Nothing wrong with caring.

What I care about is discussing peoples work in a fair manner.

That is one of the things that irks me about some critiques of the ST films. Not saying anyone in particular (just had an FB friend share a YouTube review of TROS that was ridiculous), but I keep finding so many complaints about something in the ST that is exactly like in the OT. And so many just plain missed things that were so obvious to me. Again, not talking about anyone here. Most of the time it is on FB or YouTube. Most of the reasoning on here is pretty well though out even if I don’t agree with it.

DominicCobb said:

Mocata said:

Spoiler - he does.

I shut it off when he suggested that the Force theme wasn’t the main theme of Star Wars until “Disney.” That’s just plain silly, it’s been that way from the very first film (regardless of whether Williams originally wrote it for Ben or not).

Yeah, he hasn’t read the liner notes from the 1977 soundtrack. Williams wrote them and that liet motif was for Ben AND the force. That is why it was used for the Binary Sunset and for the Throne Room. Williams revisited that version on the Revenge of the Sith sountrack. But none of the themes were for one thing only. There are themes, variations, and other ways of mutating music to create other themes based on an initial one. Star Wars is full of that. Across the Stars is a variation of the Main Title (aka Luke’s theme). Everything ties together. I think the general simiarlity of Rey’s theme is no accident. There was a lot about the direction the ST was going to take during The Force Awakens that stayed true to the end. We are not privy to all those things, but Adam Driver said that what Abrams told him about his character during The Force Awakens stayed true. So it was not just created out of thin air with each film. A far cry from how Lucas wrote the OT - a great many things from the final version didn’t come about until it was time to use them. Earlier drafts had different things happen. So the ST is at least as well planned out as the OT was.

The purpose of a title is to attract consumers. So a title very well might make you decide not to partake or it make spark your interest. That is what titles are for. Some things rise above their titles (titles aren’t the only marking tactic). So anyone is justified in seeing a title and going “no thanks”. It means, at least for them, the title failed to do its job.

I can’t comment on what he said, but in the past he has extracted one theme from another. The similarities between Palpatine’s and Rey’s themes are striking. And he insisted he needed to do Rey’s theme for TFA, one of the things that brought him back. And in the end Rey did turn out to be a Skywalker, even if she adopted the name.

After listening to the TROS soundtrack a few time I started to hear something. I just found a video from back in August where someone else had noticed something before the soundtrack had come out or the very detailed plot leaks.

https://youtu.be/8uvEtIWpLYI

Basically it lays out that Kylo Ren’s theme (or motif if you prefer), Rey’s Theme, and Palpatine’s Theme are musically linked. Why in the world would Williams link Rey and Palpatine’s themes (he wrote Rey’s for The Force Awakens) unless there was something being planned at that point in time to link her to Palpatine. And Adam Driver said that nothing changed from the secretes Abrams told him during TFA to the end. I think this trilogy has been more planned out than we have thought. I’m not sure Palpatine was originally intended to come back, but I think Rey was intended to be related to him.

doubleofive said:

Like the shot where he puts his hands up? I don’t see any difference from a quick look.

The two long shots. Meaning long distance. They have Ben and Yoda in the background and Luke and the X-wing in the foreground. The rest of the shots are medium shots of Ben and Yoda or closeups of Ben and those appear unchanged. But the two in question have a noticeable fade to Ben’s feet.

I really don’t see the point of using such a puppet. It is a wonderful accomplishment, but I don’t see why. Motion capture lets one person inhabit the character and give a performance.

I do think there is a point to having a separate topic, at least for now, on the new changes.

I sometimes have problems finding the right old thread and in this case I created a new one. But in any case, I noticed another D+ change to TESB.

When Luke is leaving Dagobah the two long shots of Ben’s force ghost have been changed. The 1980-through 2011 version shows Ben head to toe in the same glowing effect. The D+ version has been recomposited to be a bit darker overall and at about the knees, Ben fades to dark. The overall effect is a much better look to those two shots, but it is yet another change.

yotsuya said:

I think it is going to pass the 1 billion mark. My guess is next Sunday or sometime during the following week. And it is still playing on a lot of screens and hasn’t hit the second run theaters yet. So there is potential for it climb a couple of notches higher for the 2019 worldwide box office.

I’m going to revise that and guess over the next 3 to 4 weeks.

I love the character banter. Poe is really in his element in this film. Some great lines.
Finally getting flying Stormtroopers. How long have the Mandalorians been flying?
Rey’s yellow lightsaber
Ending the movie on Tatooine
The music. Best score since TPM. Though it doesn’t really have a new theme in the film (there is one on the soundtrack).

It didn’t take long for the edit to the Greedo shootout to become known. And it wasn’t long before it was discovered that a scene in the desert with C-3PO had been changed again. But what other changes might there be that aren’t so immediately noticeable. Well, I found another. In TESB, when Luke is getting ready to leave Dagobah and Ben appears, in the two long shots of him standing near the trees, the new version has been edited. Previously Ben was bright and glowing down to his feet. Now he is bright and glowing down to his legs which then darken toward his feet. I couldn’t see that the other shots were changed, but those two most definitely were from the 2011 Bluray (which seems unchanged from the GOUT).

What other changes lie hidden in these new transfers? What can we uncover?

A New Hope

1. New sky over C-3PO in the desert
2. Changed light area on wall behind CZ droid to shadow.
3. New Sky over Stormtroopers in the desert (1997 SE added scene) including a cloud
4. Fixed ghost Luke at Lars homestead
5. Added some missing shadows to the added rock in front of R2
6. ‘Maclunkey’
7. Fixed the fade in to Jabba (previously some of the 1997 version could still be seen).
8. Luke’s lightsaber on the falcon has been redone and the glow is a consistent color and covers the whole frame
9. Ben and Vader’s lightsabers have been redone and one shot of Ben’s saber where the core was missed was fixed.
10. A Y-wing added in 2011 is missing

The Empire Strikes Back

1. The Hoth shield generator explosion was changed
2. Faded bottom of Ben into background in long shots when Luke is leaving Dagobah

Return of the Jedi
none at this time

A fun item to note, TROS has been nominated for 3 BAFTA awards. Original Score, Sound, and Visual Effects.

Mocata said:

I’m not arguing the fact, it’s just interesting to see how little (comparatively) some films made. But they carried forward anyway instead of being reactive. By Phase 2 it was clearly in the groove.

Solo was a game changer because they spent too much on it. They had to fire the directors and essentially refilm most of the movie with a new director and that shot up the cost. If that hadn’t happened I think it would have made a profit and we would have gotten another film. I think they should try some lower budget side films, which like the Mandelorian are not tied to the saga, and see how they do.

I find it interesting that Frozen II, which has been out longer, has a lower domestic gross than TROS. But it’s international gross is twice TROS. But none of the Star Wars films have done that well internationally (as in double the domestic gross).

I have not come to the place where I can rank the movies individually yet. But I can rank the trilogies (internally and externally).

Trilogies
1 - OT
2 - ST
3 - PT

OT
1 - TESB
2 - ANH
3 - ROTJ

PT
1 - TPM
2 - ROTS
3 - AOTC

ST
1 - TLJ
2 - TROS
3 - TFA

I need to watch them all again and see if some rise higher. all I can say for sure is I think TROS, TLJ, TPM, ROTS are better than TFA and AOTC but not as good as ANH or TESB. But what order I can’t say.

If it were true they would be talking about the home video release. All I hope is that we get some better deleted scenes than the last two films (and no timestamp). But I don’t believe the reports.

And I find it funny that the movie was too fast is such a complaint. That was my complaint for each of the PT and I thought TROS was fine.

I think it is going to pass the 1 billion mark. My guess is next Sunday or sometime during the following week. And it is still playing on a lot of screens and hasn’t hit the second run theaters yet. So there is potential for it climb a couple of notches higher for the 2019 worldwide box office.

Broom Kid said:

People don’t overcome their shortcomings and then never ever make them ever again for the rest of their life, though.

His mistake in this example is “seeing that his nephew will commit genocide on a scale his father never dreamed of and instinctually flicking on a lightsaber” - before immediately feeling a flood of total shame at himself in response. It’s actually a lesser mistake, considering the first time he tried to save one of his genocidal relatives he kicked the hell out of him and then cut his hand off before just barely managing to stop himself from delivering the killing blow.

Nobody solves a problem in their life once and then it stays solved forever. Even real life heroes struggle with those sorts of things. That he made that mistake (among others, including subtly succumbing to hubris and vanity) doesn’t erase his maturation as a character (especially considering the rest of the film’s characterization of Luke, and Hamill’s amazing work in bringing it depth and meaning). It complicates it, but by the end of the film’s arc, it’s enriched. Luke does something no Jedi’s ever done, not even Yoda. He only unlocks the potential and ability within himself to do that because he learns - finally - from the failures he kept incurring (as we all do) when his life continued past “happily ever after.”

I think you nailed it. His mistake in that flashback is minor except that he Ben catches him doing it and lashes out. Had Ben not been on the verge, that would not have happened. Luke makes a minor mistake and Ben goes into a rage. That shows that Snoke had already turned him. Luke isn’t about to Kill Ben. And I have said many times that Luke in TLJ very much pulls from the Luke we saw in the OT. His stand at the end of ROTJ was great, but that is a moment. I really feel the rest of ROTJ and the two previous films is more true to his character and insisting that he must live up to that high point of heroism at the end of ROTJ is lifting him above being human and putting him on a pedestal. TLJ brings humanity back to the character and makes him more real and relatable like he was in the OT.

DominicCobb said:

Well he didn’t want her dead. Finn confirms this, with the info from D-O that Ochi was supposed to bring Rey to Exegol. I guess you could say that he wanted to raise her as his predecessor but when he lost her he switched to Ben.

At some point though you have to ask if he just supremely lucked out that Rey came back into the picture by herself?

Palpatine is evil and crazy. He wants people to submit to him or he wants them dead. If you are a pain he wants you dead. If he might be able to use you, then sure, he will take what he can get or he will kill you anyway. He spent two of the OT movies wanting Luke and then when Luke stood and declared himself a Jedi, Palpatine tried to kill him. So it makes perfect sense for the character to be inconsistent on wanting to kill or convert someone.

Voss Caltrez said:

DominicCobb said:

I don’t agree with everything your saying but it is important to remember Flash Gordon. Star Wars, like old space opera serials, is supposed to be a never ending saga, where we know no matter what the heroes will always be there to save the dar. If the evil can be defeated for forever, that’s it’s not really never ending is it?

This gets back to the fact that I fully believe that many people just fundamentally did not want to see movies made set after ROTJ, whether they say so or not. Simply put, to make a story set after ROTJ, you needed to undo that ‘happily ever after’ victory. What made TFA and TLJ so great is that they didn’t just wantonly undo it, they gave a thematic reason for doing so that justified their addition to the story. TROS… not so much.

But Flash Gordon didn’t go on forever. There were three Flash Gordon serials, with each episode within each serial only being 12-15 minutes long. Even the OT is split up into “episodes,” each film is equal in story to one full Flash Gordon serial. Not to mention, there was a two year wait in between the film serials, not unlike the OT. However, in the ST’s case, there’s been a 30+ year wait. So having the same villain as all the others feels much different from 30 years ago is different than just bringing back the same one two years later.

Even though bringing back Palpatine makes sense of all the mysteries about Rey and Snoke? It is almost like that is what Abrams was thinking when he wrote TFA. And since Ian is still alive, how do we know that wasn’t one of Lucas’s ideas that they reused? It is the kind of move he would pull. Probably why I like it. And it is what they kept doing with Ming in Flash Gordon. It is what they keep doing with the Master in Doctor Who. He’s supposed to be dead and unable to regenerate, yet he keeps finding new ways to cheat death. I think we are up to 5 or 6 different ways at the present. So I really have no complaints about bringing back Palpatine once. It fits with the mythic origins of Star Wars.