yotsuya

Broom Kid said:

I disagree that it was a fitting end for her character. I don’t think it was that at all. I don’t think it could have been with what was left over, and the decision to go forward with this idea was a bad one, made for well-intentioned-but-ultimately-bad reasons. It was absolutely forced because Abrams had already decided he was going to put her in there before he had ANY story in place.

Carrie Fisher’s death was a tragedy. It was too soon, it was unfair, and I, like millions of others, wish it hadn’t happened. But whatever this was in Rise of Skywalker, it wasn’t a tribute. It was childish. It was refusal to accept that she was gone, and they used her image and her presence as maybe the ultimate act of “fan-service” in a movie packed full of it. “There’s no way we could make this movie without Carrie” is a noble sentiment. It’s also an untrue statement. They could have, and looking at the results, they should have.

They did her and her memory no real favors with this, and they certainly didn’t help their story out any, either.

I completely disagree. I think keeping her as the leader and having her play a part in Kylo’s redemption was very powerful. I think it worked very well. I think having her as Rey’s teacher worked as well. I would agree that a couple of the scenes could have been left out, but overall I think it worked very well and so did her daughter. It wasn’t just fan service, it was in service to the larger themes and story.

Z6PO said:

Back to the topic: there’s so much aspects of the movie that I found disappointing, so I don’t know what the most is, but what I would have liked to see at the beginning of the movie is Rey building her own lightsaber (the one we see at the end of the movie), using parts (the Kyber crystal!) salvaged from Anakin’s lightsaber (which got torn apart in the previous movie). She has the ancient texts, she would have known how to build one, and it should have been part of her training. It would have been ultimately cool to see her fight with an orange blade. (Seeing her ignite her new lightsaber for no reason at the end of the movie is just fan service)

ROTJ deleted scene of Luke igniting his lightsaber for no reason before putting it in R2.

Humby said:

Disney sabotaging their own film is blatantly BS. That being said, I don’t think it’s that much of a stretch to at least consider that the WB/Bad Robot deal may have been a catalyst for Bob Iger exerting some creative power over this film.

Cue speculative alternate narrative…
JJ signed on under the condition of almost full creative control, Bob reluctantly agrees knowing that JJ might be a good asset to have in his pocketbook. WB deal happens and now JJ won’t be working with Disney again anytime soon, so Bob likely felt he could reverse course and put out the movie he (and whoever other non-creative executive types) thought would be most profitable.

I’m not saying it’s probable, but it’s way more likely than the vindictive sabotage portrayed in the leak. If there is any truth to the leaks, this could be a classic case of telephone.

But Abrams is not just the writer/director. He is the writer/director/producer (he produced the entire Trilogy through Bad Robot, under Lucasfilm, under Disney). I don’t think the creator of this story understand what a no-no it would be for Disney to do that. The industry backlash could be terrible. None of the benefits are worth the risk. You hire a director you think you can trust and if they lose that trust, you fire them. You don’t meddle in the movie. The only way a studio can do that these days is for the Director to go past their deadline and then they can take the picture and finish it. That is what happened to blade Runner in 1982 (and how they made Ford the the voiceover and added the happy ending). Before they did that they had no power to make the director do anything. That is normal for Hollywood. They had to fire the Solo directors because they couldn’t meddle in the movie.

TavorX said:

This speculation is good fun and all, but I’m sitting here wondering how Rey Force lightning that troop transport made it blow up, but in the finale, Palpatine zapping entire ships only made them disabled 🤔

Sheev is more experienced and has better control, plus he was dealing with a lot more ships.

I think Poe put into words he arc of this Trilogy in TROS - saving what our parents fought for. Mythically and story wise this fits. It fits having Lando back and the OT trio playing such an important part. Kylo/Ben fits into that. Rey does to because her parents were fighting against Palpatine like everyone else.

Mocata said:

Broom Kid said:

Well, all of JJ’s movies share a lot of similarities because he’s got an identifiable, strong personal style. But Into Darkness, save for the very poor decision to sample the ending from Wrath of Khan and invert it despite it not having any set up (or real point, considering we’d already seen at this point Khan isn’t even the real bad guy in the film, more like an antihero), had some similar problems, but it also wasn’t as incoherent from a storytelling perspective. Almost all the beats it was trying to pay off were set up and investigated at least a little. It’s not a successful film overall, but there are more effective moments in it, and those moments are more competently strung together. It’s a much more consistently constructed and executed movie than The Rise of Skywalker.

It’s still very similar though, so I think that the idea Disney “made JJ do this” is pretty unlikely. This is all very close to something he would make both in style, laughable content, lack of imagination.

Bingo!

And as we saw with Solo, there is little the studio can do to an uncooperative director other than fire them. And the backlash from the Director’s Guild would be nasty and jeopardize all future projects if they tried to interfere any other way.

Broom Kid said:

Paxis had multiple sources (as did Making Star Wars) - the fact that leaks happened (leaks always happen, they’ve been happening on big movies for about 20 years now) regarding the plot of TROS doesn’t somehow lend veracity to this “leak” which has one single source and is very, very specific about a lot of details, and as such is very specific on how it contradicts itself.

This work of fan-fiction even makes sure to answer why those leaks were happening, and the answer it gave (it was studio-approved sabotage) is also ridiculous.

The Rise of Skywalker leaked because Bad Robot productions apparently are pretty leaky (you can look back and see this to be the case) and it leaked through at least 5 or 6 people, if not more. This is all coming from one person, unverified, who is telling a story so wild and contradictory and specific that it’s almost impossible to take seriously. It has an answer for everything, and those answers only make sense in a vacuum, because once you start looking at them as a whole nothing holds together. The story’s coherence depends on its reader being propelled by the feeling they get from “seeing through the lies of the Jedi” if you will.

Ironically - the story is constructed like a JJ Abrams movie. You’re so distracted by the latest example of “WTF now THIS is happening” that you don’t stop to look at the greater whole and realize that none of these stories really connect with each other at all.

Not to mention that Directors have a lot of protections and autonomy on their films. Sure, they can always be fired so the studio can hold that over their heads, but a studio can’t just take over a film like that says they did. A big studio like Disney would not want to anger the director’s guild to that extent (as it would limit the directors they could hire in the future). It is basically a run down of the leaks that weren’t in the final cut of the film. And Abrams has always been very positive when talking about the film and the editing process. So has the editor and his co-writer. So I don’t think any of this happened. It reads like a fanboy wish more than reality. Basically Abrams fans who didn’t like how TROS came out who are looking for a reason besides his directorial decisions. All the stuff on the list is stuff Mike Zeroh claimed was going to be in the film. Plus the longer running length.

My understanding is that all the home video releases had the matrixed surround in the stereo tracks. The 1985 mix was done differently for CBS Fox. Rather then use the studio mixed stereo track, they used the 4 indivdual tracks and encoded them in house to matrixed surround. I don’t know who did the mix for the Definitive Collection/Faces/2006 GOUT, but it definitely is matrixed surround. I have decoded all of them and certain scenes reveal improved sound on a 5.1 system, particularly the Luke and Leia chasm scene and sound like the distinct channel audio of the 97 SE and later.

One point of TFA that really didn’t fit with Rey being a complete nobody was that she could understand wookies and droids. That is not a normal skill. Now that we know who she belongs with and can guess at her upbringing, it makes sense. And a few more pieces seem likely. I would guess from his running and hiding that Palpatine’s son refused to have children while his father was alive. I would also assume he was born before ROTS. So he married, and Rey was born sometime post ROTJ. Then he finds out his good ol’ dad is back from the dead and goes into hiding. So he probably lived on Coruscant or another core world and Rey must have learned to understand wookies and astromech droids there before they went into hiding. And it seems safe to assume that Rey’s father had no force abilities or he probably would have been Palpatine’s first choice. So it skipped a generation (unlike the Skywalkers).

I think that information maintains what TLJ had to say about anyone can be strong in the force. And the outcome of TROS definitely states that who you are is not based on your blood. Rey may have Palpatine blood, but she is not on the Dark side like her grandfather. And Kylo did not have to be on the dark side because of his grandfather. And TROS reveals Finn as the nobody who is force sensitive. So those themes carry forward even if Rey is now a Palpatine. For me it made sense, though so did her coming from nowhere.

And I read the leaked plot summary before seeing the film. I liked the plot summary and was excited for the film until I read the critic reviews. Then the viewer reviews started coming in an most were the same reaction I had to the leaked plot summary. And in the end, I enjoyed the film more than the leaked plot summary. There were a couple of things that the leak had that weren’t in the film. I wish they would have kept the Lando/Jannah plot, but they left it open to still exist outside the films. And I’m really not sure how this film had a more convoluted plot than the PT films. My reaction to those was that there was too much in them. That was not my reaction to TLJ or TROS. Both films had me enthralled and the time flew by. I didn’t feel overloaded at all. Overall I think that under Disney, Lucas film has made 4 outstanding movies and 1 good one. I think those 4 are better overall than what Lucas did with the PT.

benduwan said:

yotsuya said:

I don’t see that I’ve commented on this before.

Ep VII Blu-ray/DVD/Digital
Ep VIII blu-ray/DVD/Digital
Rogue One Blu-ray/DVD/Digital
Solo Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital

And I expect
Ep IX Blu-ray/DVD/Digital
18 disc Blu-ray saga set

why do you buy this 3 times as bluray,dvd and download??
weird…

I didn’t buy those three times. I bought the BR/DVD/Digital set. Slightly more than the BR/Digital set, but a lot less than they are in 4K (which I have no use for). Now, much earlier in my list, I did buy the same thing in multiple formats, sometimes 3 times (the OT Faces set and the OT SE set). I did buy the BR/DVD version of the two trilogy box sets just because I wanted the 5.1 surround from the DVD (which is not on the BR). Probably weird, but there is usually a reason.

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

yotsuya said:

DominicCobb said:

I hope someday Lucas’s treatments do come out, I’d be curious. But knowing his past writing processes (on the OT and PT), it’s more likely than not that his treatments were pretty short and vague. More importantly, even if Lucas himself had made the films he would have certainly changed the story of his treatments significantly over the course of time. So the idea that they should have chained themselves to those treatments just because they had Lucas’s name on them is monumentally silly.

More importantly, the idea that evil will always return is “nihilistic” is ridiculous. It’s just factually true. The idea that evil can be defeated once and for all is pretty naive. It works for a fairy tale yes, but Star Wars has been becoming less and less a fairy tale with each new entry. The idea that evil will always return is sophisticated and nuanced (perhaps too much so for some viewers, which is why they ditched it in TROS), and the message that there will always be good to face that evil is anything but nihilistic. It’s the very heart of what Star Wars is - never ending hope in the face of potential despair.

Exactly. We do know that they kept some of what Lucas had come up with. They also revisited a lot of his abandoned ideas for earlier films. I would love to see his treatments, but if you read some of his other treatments, the final films came out much different. And in history and myth, evil is something always lurking and endangering the good we create. The idea that Star Wars should somehow deviate from that and must keep what the heroes of the OT worked so hard to win is indeed silly. Each generation has their own fight and some generations lose that fight (the PT).

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.

Lots of people wanted to see movies made after ROTJ, but they wanted new stories, and new settings, not a reset to Empire vs rebels without so much as an explanation. There’s nothing wrong with The New Republic facing a new thread, or even a thread with some links to the past. However, the ST presents us with a New Republic as ineffective as the old one, when Palpatine took control. That is a very cynical outcome, especially since our heroes fought and bled for its establishment.

If the PT taught us anything it’s that we should never fully trust our political institutions. The heroes fought for freedom, and they had it for 30 years. The fact that the system that was put in place ended up failing doesn’t discredit their achievements. Again, the cyclical nature is the whole point, and the cynicism of such an outcome is precisely the thing that serves as the main conflict of the trilogy. The hope in the OT was hope in the face of tyranny. The hope in the ST is hope in the face of cynicism and despair. It’s a permutation and a maturation of the themes of the original films.

Maybe it’s not what you would have done personally (I’m not sure if it’s what I would have done) but it’s crazy how stubborn people are that they won’t take something at face value and they can’t get past the simple fact that it’s not what they imagined. So what? Look at what the films are actually saying. They’re wrestling with these exact things.

The New Republic was turned into a cipher in TFA, not because it made narrative sense in terms of the first six episodes in the saga, but because it made financial sense, since the OT iconography is more marketable than a new story, and setting would be. I would also argue, that it would have been far more satisfying, if our new generation of heroes had to overcome new challenges, rather than have the old generation fail spectacularly at almost every turn, such that the new generation can effectively take their place. While there are some good narrative reasons for Rey to choose the Skywalker name, it’s also quite interesting to note, that Luke and Anakin’s victory is now Rey’s, as she is the one to “finally” destroy the Sith, and becomes the last Skywalker, and last Jedi. She quite literally replaced them. I will also note, that the cyclical nature was not Lucas’ intention, I believe. The Old Republic stood for a thousand generations. That is what our heroes were fighting to re-establish. The fall of the Old Republic was presented as a rather unique set of circumstances, that through the manipulation, and corruption of the Senate by a Sith Lord was turned into an Empire. It was the fact, that the Sith had been secretly undermining the Old Republic for a thousand years, like a game of galactic chess, that gave their final victory weight in the grand scheme of things. I feel the way the ST just pulls dark lords, massive fleets, super weapons, and resources out of thin air greatly undermines the meaning and weight of both the victory of the Sith at the end of ROTS, and the Jedi at the end of ROTJ. That to me is not a maturation of the themes of the original films.

Barring the revelation of exactly what Lucas’s treatments were about, I’m not sure we can say definitively that he didn’t come up with exactly what you are complaining about. Kennedy did say they started with his treatments and then let the story grow from there. Abrams completely restructured it when he did TFA (Luke was supposed to appear midway through the film and probably die at the end). That means the entire story had to be redone at that point. And I still don’t agree that the ST just redoes the Empire/Rebellion conflict. It is much different and the stakes are vastly different. They aren’t fighting to topple an evil empire that had ruled for 20 years. They are fighting the invasion of a powerful enemy rather than toppling the existing order. And it is setup as so many post-revolution democracies are, very light on the military side (unless the need presents itself).

And once we had the Death Star in Episode IV, there is no reason not to continue the technology. You complain about the appearance of the Emperor’s fleet out of nothing and yet in ROTJ we had a second (and larger) Death Star show up the same way. I really get the sense that you do not carefully think how the OT may done similar things before you judge the ST so harshly. Now, 31 years later, we can have that sort of weapon on ship (well, not really the same, the Death Star weapon fired a quick blast and these new ships fired a long steady beam). So ultimately you are upset that the ultimate weapon was introduced in the very first movie. When you put it in historical terms, Alderaan is the Star Wars Hiroshima and the Death Star is the atomic bomb. Now 35 years later we have the hydrogen bomb and a much smaller bomb can destroy a much larger target. You are basically arguing that the bad guys should abandon the Death Star technology instead of perfect it. That didn’t happen in reality with atomic/nuclear weapons so that is an unrealistic complaint of the Star Wars universe. And this in a universe where we had Starkiller base with a weapon that could destroy an entire system from a completely different system (it was called a hyper-lightspeed weapon), ship based planet killers isn’t so far fetched. We survived a cold war in reality based on weapons that can destroy cities that improved exponentially over a 30 year period. And the fleet we see in TROS would fit inside the first Death Star and rattle around, so its existence is supported by the chronology the ST lays out.

And I still haven’t figure out why TROS can be considered a mess and a failure. It is well written, with definite goals, a solid plot, and en emotional ending. It is connecting with Star Wars fans around the globe. So they did something right.

DominicCobb said:

I hope someday Lucas’s treatments do come out, I’d be curious. But knowing his past writing processes (on the OT and PT), it’s more likely than not that his treatments were pretty short and vague. More importantly, even if Lucas himself had made the films he would have certainly changed the story of his treatments significantly over the course of time. So the idea that they should have chained themselves to those treatments just because they had Lucas’s name on them is monumentally silly.

More importantly, the idea that evil will always return is “nihilistic” is ridiculous. It’s just factually true. The idea that evil can be defeated once and for all is pretty naive. It works for a fairy tale yes, but Star Wars has been becoming less and less a fairy tale with each new entry. The idea that evil will always return is sophisticated and nuanced (perhaps too much so for some viewers, which is why they ditched it in TROS), and the message that there will always be good to face that evil is anything but nihilistic. It’s the very heart of what Star Wars is - never ending hope in the face of potential despair.

Exactly. We do know that they kept some of what Lucas had come up with. They also revisited a lot of his abandoned ideas for earlier films. I would love to see his treatments, but if you read some of his other treatments, the final films came out much different. And in history and myth, evil is something always lurking and endangering the good we create. The idea that Star Wars should somehow deviate from that and must keep what the heroes of the OT worked so hard to win is indeed silly. Each generation has their own fight and some generations lose that fight (the PT).

And see, I find it to be a very fitting end to Star Wars. The gist of the entire ST is to not lose what our parents fought for. Not to let the old evil regain its power. In the ST, the First Order and the Emperor’s new Last Order never rise to supremacy and rule the galaxy. They are stopped before they get to that point. It isn’t the rebellion vs. empire again because there is no empire. This story goes back to the PT and stops Palpatine before he can forge his new Empire, what Obi-Wan, Yoda, Mace, Anakin, and Padme failed to do. The victory over the Empire remains intact but is in danger and the ST characters save the Galaxy from that take over. Some worlds were taken over, but not the all encompassing Empire of the OT. It never reached that level. A year is not enough time. The Resistance was victorious in stopping the resurrection of the Empire, even if they weren’t able to save the Republic. So the story is very different than either the PT or OT. And we get to see those who helped Palpatine destroyed as well as Palpatine himself, so the chance of him coming back is pretty non-existent (where in ROTJ we see him fall down a shaft and an explosion of blue light but not what happened to his body). I found this story to be much more satisfying than anything the EU every created. The Zahn Trilogy was fun, but this felt more in line with the rest of the saga. I also found it very in keeping with the Flash Gordon serials that inspired all this and with the ancient myths where the new generation has to keep what their parents achieved. I can’t help thinking of Uther, Arthur, and Mordred. Arthur lost (in the end) what his father had built. The echos are strong that if Kylo had not been turned back to Ben, that what Leia and Luke worked so hard for would have been lost. Instead, Ben and Rey were able to save it.

I personally think of the toxic fandom issue as one of grumpy people with little else to do. The people on OT.com for the most are are highly intelligent and have well thought out arguments compared to the mostly emotional reaction of the toxic fans. I don’t know of any long time regular poster here that I would consider toxic. I don’t agree with a few people on a regular basis, but their comments are well reasoned even if I don’t agree with them. It makes conversations quite enjoyable and what keeps me posting here. I don’t want to agree with everyone. Disagreement can broaden the mind and make you really think about your position and either find more support for your reasoning or be forced to change your mind. Arguing with a toxic fan just makes you angry. I hate that.

liamnotneeson said:

yotsuya said:

Broom Kid said:

DrDre said:

Both JJ and RJ reverse engineered the OT to figure out where to go with their part(s) of the story either in an attempt to replicate the Star Wars formula, or to deliberately starkly deviate from it at key moments, but neither feels like a good, and natural way of developing a story to me. It feels very artificial, like the writer is constantly aware someone (the audience) is watching over their shoulders, and so the entire trilogy is shaped by what the writers’ believe are the audience’s expectations, and they either chose to cater to, or subvert those expectations.

There are only 2 films I can think of in the entire saga that didn’t do the above (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back).

Writers are always aware the audience is watching/reading. Knowing that isn’t a bad thing. Catering to it CAN be a bad thing, depending on how indulgent the writers get. Pandering is absolutely a bad thing. But many good, natural ways of developing stories involve keeping the audience in mind. “Write for yourself first” is great advice for any storyteller, but that “First” implies that there ARE other concerns to keep in mind as well.

But creation (especially on a scale this big) isn’t all inspiration and desire. Sometimes you have to plink and plunk at it, and that can feel (or appear to be from the backseat) artificial in the moment. That’s where the craft comes in. Passion can’t get a project across the line alone. Often you have to “artificially” introduce things that didn’t just appear in a flash, hand-delivered from the muse.

But that’s also a huge part of why I feel like judging finished work mostly on suppositions of behind-the-scenes machinations and making-of anecdotes isn’t very useful. Most of the audience will never know HOW a thing got made, or what went into its making, or even think to wonder about that aspect, and it honestly shouldn’t really matter. What matters is if it works or if it doesn’t - and if it doesn’t, WHY it doesn’t should be pretty clearly explained without having to go “I bet the guy who wrote it just didn’t feel it like this other guy did.”

Granted, The Rise of Skywalker was very obviously fumbled in its execution and I imagine there are plenty of behind-the-scenes stories we’ll hear eventually as to why it’s such a mess. But acting like the very business of creating fiction is somehow “artificial” because they had knowledge of “the formula” and chose to tinker with the recipe for their own purposes seems like a weird read considering how often that exact bit of business is NECESSARY as a creator to come up with solid work.

Just because we notice the artifice involved in creating and maintaining good fiction doesn’t mean that by the mere fact of our noticing it that it’s now BAD. That’s unfair not only to the writer, but to us as well, because it assumes that we shouldn’t be smart enough to spot seams if we’re looking for them. Of course we are. Most audience members are, honestly. The magic of a good story is that it distracts us from looking, or it engenders enough goodwill that even if we do spot the seams - we don’t care. In some cases, even the seams look good to us.

Basically, what I’m saying is: The Rise of Skywalker doesn’t work because the elements IN the story aren’t well-thought-out, and aren’t executed very well on top of that. If I’m not willing to indulge an imaginative exercise as to how a fabulous movie I watched this weekend was written and executed - like, for example, I didn’t finish watching Little Women the other day and conjure up a possible story as to how Greta Gerwig adapted the book to explain why it worked the way it did - I don’t know that it makes sense for me to do that when JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio drop the ball.

I do think it’s safe to assume they didn’t MEAN to drop the ball.

Well, not all of us think they dropped the ball.

No offense, but I don’t understand how one can think that they didn’t drop the ball. To me, after seeing the movies and the lack of consistent character development, and hearing about all of the drama behind the scenes, I don’t get how one could hear and see all this and think that Disney did a great job.

I am one of the apparently large number of people who really enjoyed the film. I have yet to find any major problems with it. I liked what the characters did, and where the movie went and I loved the ending. I thought that part was perfect. And frankly, I don’t really care what drama happens behind the scenes on a movie. Often the most drama filled productions turn out to be the best films. So many greats in cinema history have had troubled productions that it seems to be a requirement for a truly great film. And I found the character development in the three films to be very consistent. And to be clear, Disney cares about the end product and I have yet to hear of any interference with either Marvel or Lucasfilm. All the good and bad things about this film have the stamp of Abrams all over them (and I found little to complain about - as I said in another post, I thought some of the Leia scenes were a bit off, though most were perfect). So I found nothing to bring this down to the level of TFA (which I think shows off some of Abrams worst writing/editing decisions) or AOTC. I find I want to see it again, which tends to mean that I thought it was a very great film. And Williams did his best job since TPM. I’d love to see him get an Oscar for it. After seeing it twice, I find most of the complaints to be unfounded. It doesn’t quite come up to the greatness of ANH or TESB, but it far from the worst Star Wars film. I think I need to do another Saga Marathon before it leaves theaters and really compare each of them. My current feeling is that TROS, TLJ, and Rogue One rank right below the OT. Definitely better than the PT, though I need to think about TPM and ROTS as individual films.

I don’t see that I’ve commented on this before.

Mid 80’s Trilogy (P&S VHS) CBS FOX video
Faces P&S VHS, Letterbox VHS, Letterbox LD
SE P&S VHS, Letterbox VHS, Letterbox LD
Ep I P&S VHS, Letterbox VHS, Letterbox Japanese LD
OT Letterbox DVD box set
Ep 1, 2, 3 DVD 2 disc set
2006 OT 2 disc with GOUT
2006 OT & PT 2 disc sets PAL
Ewok movies DVD
2011 BR 9 disc box set
PT Yoda BR/DVD box
OT Vader BR/DVD box
Ep VII Blu-ray/DVD/Digital
Ep VIII blu-ray/DVD/Digital
Rogue One Blu-ray/DVD/Digital
Solo Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital

And I expect
Ep IX Blu-ray/DVD/Digital
18 disc Blu-ray saga set

All the VHS tapes I originally had are long gone (water damage), though I do have a SE P&S VHS box set someone gave me.

OutboundFlight said:

All the ridiculous stuff that I broke out laughing at in the theater.
8. The ancient dagger lines up to a recent crash.

You did get that the dagger was inscribed with the site of the crash, right? So the edge lining up to the specific spot does makes sense. So the dagger isn’t ancient.

I’ve been thinking it about Anakin’s force ghost and I think what I’ve settled on (if I ever get around to doing the SE fan edit I want to do) is start out with Shaw and have it morph to Hayden. Not sure if that would work, but it is worth an experiment. The Emperor’s dialog should not have been changed and they shouldn’t have used the same makeup as Ep III. But the makeup is one of those things that the saga is now filled with as it was done out of order and is rife with changes.

And to be blunt, there is a lot of imperfection in what you actually see on the screen. It depends on how accurately the theater was built and how well the camera is aimed at the screen, how the film is adjusted in the projector, and any curvature that shows up. From the 35 mm scans that have been done, all the 2.39:1 versions from LD to streaming, capture more of the image from the film than you would have seen in a theater. The various impefections in how films were projected from film meant that some of the image was projected on the black area surrounding the reflective screen and went unseen. In ANH, the wide shot of Vader walking over to the Falcon in the Death Star Hanger has two stormtroopers on either side of the screen. When I saw the SE in the theater in 97, they were partly cut off, but on the DVD, Blu-Ray, Disney+ and the 35 mm scan of the 1977 prints, you fully see all the stormtroopers and a bit of the hanger on either side.

The Phantom Menace is available from 3 sources. There is the Japanese LD and two European broadcasts. The original cut of Attack of the Clones only exists as an in theater bootleg recording. Though the DVD is probably very close to the digital version of the film that originally came out in a few theaters during the original release. Revenge of the Sith is virtually unatlered from the original. The Blu-Ray/Disney+ version has some added detail to the roofs on Kashyyk, and some added Clone Trooper background dialog when they appear over Obi-wan and Grevious’s head. The DVD/HDTV Broadcast is the even closer… only a cut instead of the original wipe between Anakin crawling and Obi-wan and Threepio in the cockpit of Padme’s ship (the wipe was restored for the Blu-ray).

The 35 mm release of Attack of the clones has three noticeable differences. 1st, when Obi-wan catches Anakin’s saber, there are more speeders in the background. When Padme talks to Anakin about his attack on the Sand People, they recut the scene for the DVD version and added some additional dialog. And in one scene, there are more sparks added to Jango’s jetpack. It is not definite that any of these changes were or were not made to the digital theatrical print, but they are definitively changed between the 35 mm film prints that nearly everyone saw and the DVD. According to Rick McCallum, there are more differences, but they have not been documented.

But The Phantom Menace is the most edited with the additions to the Pod Race and the speeder ride on Coruscant.

joefavs said:

Good article about the issues with the creative process that got us here.

“Conspiracy theories abound regarding this film, but the truth is probably dumber and more well-meaning than angry fans love to hate to believe.”

https://birthmoviesdeath.com/2019/12/31/decoding-the-rise-of-skywalkers-difficult-creative-process

Different writers have different ways of working. Some like to plow through with no prep and see where it takes them. Some like to plan out every stages. Some like to write scenes and then piece them together. All are valid avenues as writers of each type have produced New York Time bestsellers and box office hits. So you can’t say that the method of writing led to the problems. That is a nonsense argument. What is an argument is that their screenplay was too long and they filmed way more than they needed and then they cut it down in the editing room. That is a valid complaint and one that Abrams seems especially guilty of.

Making movies is not the same as writing. Writing gives you great leeway to redo anything to make corrections. Once you shoot a movie, your options for fixing things become limited. A good director and writer will make sure they have the movie streamlined and polished BEFORE they shoot it so that what ends up on the cutting room floor is minimal. This is how Lucas, Kasdan, and Marquand did the OT. Their reshoots were minimal and necessary. Abrams likes to fix his films with reshoots and in the editing room and it shows (TFA had the same issues). Sometimes that makes fatal issues and sometimes they can be smoothed over. I think for most of TROS that it is seemless.

I think for the Leia scenes a few things are off. But none of that affected the feel of the film for me. It didn’t affect the flow of the story. Frankly, I’d rather have Leia a part of the story imperfectly than not at all. I felt her part to the overall plot was crucial and that was good writing. While the scenes individually were not always perfect, her presence was. The way her part of the story concluded was beautiful and well done. A fitting exit for a marvelous actress and iconic character.

As far as his typical method of fixing the movie in the editing room, I think Abrams did his best job ever on this one. The holes in TFA were glaring to me on the first viewing and have bugged me ever since. I found no such glaring holes in this film. And if we are going to get nitpicky about plot holes, there are a few in our beloved OT that we tend to ignore most of the time and I don’t think we need to hold the ST to a higher standard. I found the story to flow in a way that I have yet to notice any serious plot holes. In my experience with movies there are two types of issues. Ones I notice the first time and can never get around and others that it takes a while to noticed that never really bother me. TROS and TLJ have none of the first type while TFA and AOTC both have them (probably why I rank them at the bottom of all the films).

I’d say that overall the positive changes are countered by the negative changes. I hate the dialog changes and the wampa scenes were not needed. I like Ian as Emperor, but they shouldn’t have changed the dialog. Vader already knows that Luke is his son and he has already mentioned Skywalker by name earlier in the film so Palpatine pointing it out is rather stupid. Some of the extra windows in Bespin are cool, some are stupid, and some are inconsistently applied. I did love the extension of the ending and thought it built more tension and was an improvement. But overall the SE is no better or worse. It is mostly because the core of the film is unchanged and it is mostly just corrected or enhanced FX.

Broom Kid said:

Leia being around was a key part of Kylo’s redemption, and they specifically tied her dying to his redemption. It seems pretty apparent to me they only wrote Kylo’s arc (which essentially superseded Rey’s arc in terms of importance) the way they did because they worked backwards from what would redeem him, and they decided his mother’s choice to kill herself by reaching out to him during that fight would be the catalyst.

So they kept her active in the plot by recycling footage and writing dialog to mad-lib their way to the end of the 2nd act, specifically because they needed that presence to register just enough for Kylo’s redemption to pay off as intended.

If anything, Terrio’s answer when he was trying to explain why Rose Tico got so minimized seemed to hint that their initial “We’re not going to CG her” was an out and out lie, (it kind of was already, considering that training scene) and I wouldn’t be surprised if Han’s appearance was similar to how Superman’s mother is who showed up in Superman II once Marlon Brando was cut out. “Well, we can’t CG Carrie for this scene, let’s see if Harrison will do it instead.”

So even setting aside the fact her scenes aren’t particularly good (and it’s fairly obvious she’s not really acting with anyone in the scene, and nobody in the scene is really acting with her) the initial decision to make her self-sacrifice key to Kylo’s redemption, to justify repurposing a bunch of deleted scenes, is what hemmed them in.

It’s why the movie is so plot-focused at the expense of any real feeling or thematic coherence. They approached it like a puzzle first and foremost instead of really exploring what they had to work with at the end of The Last Jedi and building from there. If your primary story question (and they kept saying keeping Carrie is where they actually started) isn’t “Where do I want my characters to go from here” but “How do I repurpose deleted scenes so they’re so vital to our endgame that you can’t remove them,” you’re starting from a pretty mercenary spot, even if you’re doing so with the best, most honorable intentions.

That training scene of Leia was recycled from ROTJ. That was Carrie’s face and probably Mark’s as well. And the use of Han for that scene was crucial to his redemption. He had killed his father and that was the only way to redeem himself of that act. I hope you noticed that that scene mirrored the one from TFA, but ended how it should have the first time.

And I think they did work forward from TLJ. They picked up the story where TLJ left off, where the characters were, how they’d grown, and they continued on from there. I felt the story was very organic and did not feel forced or cobbled together at all. I thought some of their choices with the Leia scenes could have been done better. They missed a chance for Leia deliver some typical Leia expressions at the right times, but overall it was well done for what they had to work with. It was a fitting end to her character, much better than writing her out off screen. It was both important to the fans and the story for Leia to be there. It wasn’t forced, just very limited. It is one of the things I would edit if I think the film needs a fan edit. But the Kylo/Ben part I wouldn’t touch. I think that worked very well and it didn’t detract from the main character arcs or take much story time.

oojason said:

‘Star Wars Co-Writer Chris Terrio Sets Record Straight on Perceived ‘Last Jedi’ Jabs’:-

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-writer-sets-record-straight-perceived-last-jedi-jabs-1265168

^ The title of the article doesn’t really reflect the many topics that the TROS co-writer covers from in and about the film.

Well worth a read - regardless of whether you enjoyed the film - or not.

(apologies if already posted)
 

That was eye opening and insightful. Thanks for sharing.

RogueLeader said:

FreezingTNT2 said:

Do you think Rey’s yellow lightsaber should be removed altogether from the final scene in this franchise? She has truly brought balance to the Force, Darth Sidious and his followers have been destroyed once and for all, the Skywalker bloodline is now extinct (no, Rey doesn’t count as a biological Skywalker), and tyranny has come to an end, so the Jedi have already served their purpose and now no longer have a reason to exist.

I think this is a fair question. If this is suppose to be an ultimate victory, then maybe. If you’re stressing that fascism and tyranny can rise when you least expect it and do-gooders have to remain vigilant, then maybe not.

Regarding Ben and Rey’s kiss, I think some people didn’t like it because they felt it wasn’t set up. While I think it was (“I offered you my hand once”), I don’t think it was set up as explicitly as Han/Leia or Anakin/Padmé. Both pairs talk about their feelings explicitly, whereas the Ben/Rey romance could be written off as a special connection. According to leaks, in the deleted scene of Kylo Ren’s confrontation with the Oracle, the Oracle would’ve mentioned his feelings for Rey. Maybe Kylo could be given new dialogue that makes those feelings clearer. I’ll have to go through Driver’s filmography and see what kind of dialogue we have to work with.

I think the new Jedi’s main focus would be to keep the balance rather than act as galactic police, they ignore all non-force related events and stick to maintaining balance. Her yellow blade becomes a key piece of balance (in the color spectrum it lies between red/orange and green/blue/purple).