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zombie84

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21-Nov-2005
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Post
#248453
Topic
What's Original '77 and What's Not?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/248453/action/topic#248453
Time
Originally posted by: StarWarsFan1976
ok what i mean was there all this diff versions of STAR WARS from 1977 for video there is the the bootleg tape, for audio there are a number of versions now...

that i am asking is there copys of Empire in a bootleg video from 1980 or audio and Jedia in bootleg video from 1983 or audio......

be intresting to hear or see this as they were in 70 mm audio if we can....


Also the 35 mm audio that was posted what version of the LD is it from ?


ESB and ROTJ did not change in terms of video. ANH was the only one that had a visual alteration in it between May 25th 1977 and Junary 30th 1997, and that is the addition of the new crawl in 1981. All three films did of course have many audio mix variations.

The 70mm audio has been posted in the form of a 1977 70mm screening bootleg in stereo sound. Its bootleg quality but quite a treat, and in relatively good condition.
Post
#248439
Topic
What's Original '77 and What's Not?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/248439/action/topic#248439
Time
Boris that would be "the original theatrical experience" and it would also have to come with bad concession stands, long line ups and noisey patrons. The term "original theatrical version" implies exactly that--the version of the film, in terms of content of sound and picture, that was show in 1977. Lucasfilm is using it to really mean "the home video version from before the SE," which is very different.
Post
#248237
Topic
The Merits of the Prequel Trilogy and the "Saga"
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/248237/action/topic#248237
Time
Thats actually very true. Works of art survive by the general consensus of the population. Its like the idea of a meme. If a work is not loved, then it withers away and is forgotten, for it has nothing of value to bring to society. If a work is loved then it is cherished and remembered, for it has something of value to bring to society. Society loved the OT with as much love as the public could have for a film series but its reaction to the PT was one of indifference, at best. The PT will sort of fade away, simply because society wont let it be recognized in the same category as Star Wars or the OOT. Why do you think Lucas is so worried to release the OOT? The decision to only have the OT-SE because "thats the one that is good and thats the one he wants the public to remember" smacks of insecurity at its most blatant. If it is as good as Lucas thinks then society will embrace it regardless of his actions or statements. And Lucas knows that society will reject the SE and uphold the OOT, which is why he has been so active to work against this. But he cant stop it. He can't change society, for all his power and control in every other facet of his life. Public opinion is the one thing that we control.
Post
#248219
Topic
The Merits of the Prequel Trilogy and the "Saga"
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/248219/action/topic#248219
Time
The situation is not that hard to understand, and CO has been consistently presenting a logical and--yes, i know it sound cliched--fairly objective observance of the situation.

Making great films is rare. Even good ones. 9 out of 10 films are lousy to okay, and the 1 odd films out is good. About 10% of that 1 out of 10 is great.

Star Wars was the most popular and highest grossing film ever made, and one that has such power that it has shaped the very fabric of the culture that embraced it; amazingly, it is also unanimously hailed by critics as a masterpiece, something that is all the more rarer. Lucas captured lightning in a bottle with ESB, a film many fans and critics feel is in many ways superior to even the first film. The only other film series to do this really is Godfather, and maybe Lord of the Rings. Because of this incredible--and indeed, seemingly impossible and unprecedented--track record and the fact that these two films were now part of a larger narrative, the bar was raised for the subsequent films and those same films were faced with the even greater challenge of linking up and completing the narrative which was began in 1977.
Very unsurprisingly, the final installment of that initial trilogy did not meet the standards of the first two. Normally this would be though of as "duh, what else did you expect," but the fact that ESB met--and perhaps surpassed in some peoples opinions--the original made us believe that the rest could keep up this standard. If ESB had been "average" the way ROTJ we would have gone "meh," enjoyed the original for the masterpiece it was, and painfully acknowledged that a bunch of sequels were unsurprisingly made for it that werent very impressive but had their moments. Like Jaws. Like the Exorcist. Like Rocky. Like Superman. Like The Matrix.
But people enjoy ROTJ because it survived on the coattails of ANH and ESB. It was just average as a whole, good in parts and great in moments. But it was part 2 of 2, the resolution of ESB, and in many other ways part 3 of 3, the resolution to the trilogy of which the other parts were two of the best films ever made. So it gets by, even though it is criticised.

The PT is similar to ROTJ, only a bit less dramaticly compelling in its constructed and execution. The OOT doesn't need it, the OOT survives on its own, thus the immunity granted to large parts of ROTJ isn't given. Thus the PT is what ROTJ without any OOT connection, only even more poorly executed--movies that range from lousy to average as whole, with a bunch of really good parts and moments. But every FX extravaganza has its moments. Bad Boys 2 is a piece of shit but i enjoy watching some of the car chases for instance, and the Matrix sequels follow on an almost identical manner.

Really, is it any surprise that in a series of 6 films, two are great, one is okay and three are below average? I think it is incredible that not just one is great but that two are. I'm sorry but its just so impossible to consistently make films as good as the first two--we got spoiled by ESB because if it wasn't for that then we wouldnt get so attached to "the saga." What makes the PT particularly tragic for its maker, who truely tried his best, is that while ROTJ is accepted into the great pantheon of ANH and ESB to form the original trilogy, the OT doesn't depend on the PT at all, and thus the films are exposed for what they truely are and tossed aside (after spending millions of dollars at the box office and home video of course). But people go to great pains to like the PT and include them simply because the OT is so great, because that first film was so powerful and the story presented in the one great sequel and one okay sequel so fascinating that we can delude ourselves to accepting a quality that we would ordinarily dismiss simply because we love the world and characters introduced way back in 1977. Thats really all there is to it.

Also, some people just have shitty taste. I mean Bad Boys 2 and Lucky Number Slevin do more business than any film by Wong Kar Wai and PT Anderson. Most people are just fucking dumb when it comes to entertainment, and the amount of people who would claim such average films as the PT as "great" is consistent with the idiocy proved in numbers at the box office.
Post
#248216
Topic
This person added Qui-Gon into the end of Return of the Jedi as a force ghost.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/248216/action/topic#248216
Time
Looks dumb. Unconvincing and illogical. I've also seen an edit that has a ROTS flashback in the emperors lightning attack during ROTJ that is equally stupid. People need to stop believing that because they pirated a copy of Final Cut that they have an talent. Don't put Qui Gon in ROTJ, at least Hayden has a shred of relevance.

People need to stop this desperate attempt to tie the trilogies together. These desperate attempts exist because the PT were so poorly made that the two trilogies don't link up on their own merits; fiddling just makes things worse. Accept that the PT is lousy and move on.
Post
#248192
Topic
MOVED THREAD
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/248192/action/topic#248192
Time
That whole reaction has nothing to do with whether the comments or valid or whether or not their response was hypocritical--the reaction was due to the sheer fact that Islam was being criticised. Thats the problem--and its a very primitive and irrational type of "kneejerk primal emotional response" with no self restraint or respect. Its like the abusive dad who beats his daughter because she is talking back or questioning authority; one of the prime tenants of Islam is the bowing down to authority, and a slander against Islam is the ultimate act of defiance, one which is taken personally by the followers. This is true in all religions, since it is the prominent way in which the religious authority allow themselves to stay in positions of power, and Islam that is more strict than any other. Sadly, this type of reaction is a product of a relatively primitive lifestyle that is allowed to endure in certain parts of the world, and performed by people who are mostly otherwise reasonable and good-hearted.
Post
#247837
Topic
The Merits of the Prequel Trilogy and the "Saga"
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247837/action/topic#247837
Time
Originally posted by: Go-Mer-Tonic
By that rationale, we didn't even need ROTS.

By that rationale, all we -really- needed was ROTJ. After all they touch on the fact that there was a first Death Star by saying the one in ROTJ was the 2nd Death Star. They go over why Anakin fell to the dark side on Dagobah, and even recap why Luke was kept in the dark about Anakin.

I guess perhaps the divide here is between people who can't get enough Star Wars, and people who only want as much of it as is absolutely necessary.

A lot of your questions equate to "Who cares"?

Well -I- care.


ROTJ seems like the only "needed" film because you are looking at with the pre-conceived Tragedy of Darth Vader "Saga" mindset. The PT were built to support this so once you strip those away, ROTJ hence becomes useless in that regard, and because ESB is part 1 of 2 it becomes unneeded as well. Hence, all you need is Star Wars. And yeah--the back story was not necessary. Star Wars became the biggest hit ever made in 1977 without that story, and as Lucas has admitted on many, many occassions--"the back story was never meant to be a movie." But it certainly had the potential to make a good one.

I think the divide, as you have indicated is indeed between two groups of fans--one group who just wanted more Star Wars films, who love the PT, and the other group who wanted more Star Wars films but only if they were good, and these people love the OOT but hate--or tolerate/sorta-enjoy-parts-of--the PT. The PT as a whole was just a badly written series but with a lot of really good moments sprinkled about. ROTS fares much better because it is constructed the way a dramatic film should be--which is unsurprising given that Lucas has admitted that the actual story only begins in ROTS.
Post
#247830
Topic
The Merits of the Prequel Trilogy and the "Saga"
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247830/action/topic#247830
Time
There's enough of it set up that you get the idea. You see that there is a senate, with senators in pods that presumably vote of things, and that a supreme chancellor is the top authority in said body. You know that Padme is a senator and opposes the war with other government officials. You know that a seperatist movement within the republic created the clone wars. You know Anakin and Padme fell in love and are secretly married. You know that Dooku is a sith working with a higher mastermind named Darth Sidious. You know that Anakin was seperated from his mother and the he had dreams of her before she died and that he killed the sandpeople--these last points would have been made clearer and emphasized had the film been actually designed as a stand-alone piece. But for one that is supposed to fit into a trilogy it is incredibly self-sufficient.

Additionally, all that other stuff gleaned from the first two films is boring, superficial expository information. How does the voting process in the senate particularly work? Who cares. How did Palpatine actually get himself voted in? Who cares. How did the clones specifically get created? Not necessary. How did the Republic stand at the height of its glorious power? Who knows--TPM and AOTC don't show it either, as Lucas has stated many times we enter TPM with the Republic already crumbling and corrupted. Furthermore, all the actual character exposition that we aren't privy to--such as Anakin's courtship and his relationship with his mom and Obi Wan--are so poorly handled that the best thing about ROTS is that it ignores such things and simply presents them as they should be, with motivation, believable writing and dramatic interest.
We don't need to learn EVERY detail. This is what made the original film so intriguing. In fact there is a specific literary device to describe this technique--"in media res". In the middle of things. The story begins in the thick of action and increases audience interest by not revealing how things exactly got to be where they are. ROTS accomplishes this nicely--it explains things and shows how the important events occured but enough is left unsaid that it not only makes things more interesting but the audience fills it in with their imagination much better than the shitty writing Lucas used to give us those same things in AOTC.
Post
#247822
Topic
The Merits of the Prequel Trilogy and the "Saga"
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247822/action/topic#247822
Time
I find that ROTS plays well as a stand-alone movie. In fact, to me it truely is the only "prequel", a filling in of back story to the main story which is the OOT. It introduces everything so you don't have to have seen the first two, and you even get the impression that Anakin has always been a heroic warrior, that he and Obi Wan are best buds and that he and Padme have a somewhat believable relationship. Its ironic that after all this "set up" in the first two movies--none of it was necessary! And treating ROTS as simply a "prequel" and not "episode III" of the Tragedy of Darth Vader, the OOT is mostly unaffected in its perception. For me, i can re-watch ROTS as an interesting-but-not-great prequel to the OOT trilogy, and TPM even as an unrelated stand-alone space fantasy film. But the trilogy as a whole doesn't work. You get back story (ROTS), then a back story to the back story (AOTC), then a back story to the back story to the back story (TPM). All that was needed was ROTS. Everything in AOTC and TPM that was actually relevant to ROTS is in ROTS itself--all you lose are a few expositories pieces (ie how Anakin is found, how his mother dies, how Padme falls in love) but those were conveyed in ROTS in a better manner than the poorly written corresponding scenes in the previous two films. Lucas screwed himself because he numerically bound himself to three films. He didn't need three. He only had enough story for one.
Post
#247783
Topic
MOVED THREAD
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247783/action/topic#247783
Time
Originally posted by: JediSage
Originally posted by: zombie84
and in the Jesus Seminars, conducted in the late 1990's, New Testament scholars
Which scholars?


All of them i suppose. It was a conference conducted in 1999 I believe between the top 200 New Testament scholars, and I believe took place in the United States; this body of scholars itself was founded in 1985 by Robert Funk.
Post
#247777
Topic
MOVED THREAD
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247777/action/topic#247777
Time
Its also ironic that the very arguments that the Pope offered--namely that Muhammad offered no new or unique message--are the very same criticisms that were levelled at Christians by the pagans in the early second and third centuries CE; Christianity was seen as a synthesis of all the pagan Mystery Cults, a sort of "best of collection" that borrowed things from everything from Jove to Mithra to Osiris, and in fact that there is even an amusing early church father exchange between a preacher from the Jove cult where the church father defends the animosity developing between the two competing sects by explaining "we propound nothing different from those you esteem Sons of Jove." Pretty much all the sayings attributed to religious figures were not actually spoken by that person, if we are even to believe that said person actually existed--most of the sayings attributed to Buddha and Confuscious have been realised to be generic wisdom sayings that were existing in the culture long before attached to those figures, and in the Jesus Seminars, conducted in the late 1990's, New Testament scholars came to the shocking realisation that nearly every quote attributed to Jesus in the Bible--the beatitudes, the turn-the-other-cheek, the sermon on the mount--were not authentic but merely wisdom sayings that were "in the air" and were later attached to the figure of Christ. Saying any religion is unique is completely ignorant because anyone who actually has researched into history and science inevitably comes to the conclusion that its all bullshit. But then i wouldn't expect such feats of knowledge from Popes and Imams--best thing to do is probably let them kill each other; only problem is that they fight by proxy through their innocent followers.
Post
#247739
Topic
Making our own 35mm preservation--my crazy proposal
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247739/action/topic#247739
Time
The 33% argument also doesn't take into account the fact that this is a 1993 telecine made for Laserdisk, also with DVNR. So, accounting for those things, which in my opinion are far more significant than the anamorphic issue, the disks are probably closer to 40% or more in terms of actual visible quality. A non-anamorphic modern 2006 transfer is passable--but not a 1993 LD one.
Post
#247732
Topic
Worst movies ever.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247732/action/topic#247732
Time
A lot of these movies are Bad movies though. As in ones that are so good they are bad. Like Snakes on a Plane. These movies listed are actually entertaining, even if they are poorly constructed.

A truely bad movie would be like Behind Enemy Lines, or How the Grinch Stole Christmas (live action). I'm usually very good at avoiding crappy movies so i luckily spare myself the pain of watching these. Looking at the top box office earners as of this week, i would say that pretty much all of them are bad movies, though Jet Li's Fearless is no doubt an impressive film i am sure.
Post
#247728
Topic
MOVED THREAD
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247728/action/topic#247728
Time
I think most can agree that pretty much every religious leader has been a fool in some capacity and this one is no exception. Same old, same old. This is the same Pope that also said homsexuality is "Evil".

Personally, even though the comments he made may not be entirely inaccurate they are clearly very foolish ones to make in the context of the current political situation, especially considering he is the head of the largest religious organization in the world. Leaders with followers of this magnitude are expected to behave a bit better than some obscure idiot Muslim preacher, or by the same token some obscure idiot Christian preacher (Pat Robertson immediately comes to mind as an irrational christian biggot who encourages and incites violence and hatred). Like I said--becoming a public religious figure and being a moron are practically mutually exclusive. What I can't figure out is why people put so much stock into what these people have to say.
Post
#247718
Topic
hi original trilogy peple
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247718/action/topic#247718
Time
My basic understanding is that Jay Sylvester starting the site as a hosting site for a petition to release the original trilogy again. The petition quickly gained thousands of signatures and soon became a beacon of hope for the many fans of the OOT who thought they may have been suffering in silence for all these years but whose pain was really shared by many around the world. A discussion forum eventually opened which became a nesting ground for all the OOT fans who supported the petition, and a community of OOT fans, mostly home theater enthusiasts, blossomed, with the Fan Preservation/Edit forum the prime place for the sharing and knowledge of the ongoing LD transfer efforts.
Post
#247572
Topic
The Merits of the Prequel Trilogy and the "Saga"
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247572/action/topic#247572
Time
I think another one of the big problems, as CO, already pointed out is the jarring disconnectedness between Episode I and II.

Lucas has said "the point of this movie is to see how a good person turns bad. Thats why i set Episode I up to introduce Anakin as an innocent--not 'well, he was a demon-seed, so it was obvious that he was going to turn bad.' But to explore how people turn to evil and the choices they make."

Well, here is the thing--this, the most crucial linchpin in Anakin's character--is 100% absent from the film. It occurs in Episode 1.5.
We meet Anakin as a 9 year old--cheery, full of compassion, resourceful, always helping people, the sweetest kid you could meet. What a brilliant irony to present Vader this way. Then next we see him--he is angst-ridden, emotionally-upset, power-hungry and with aspirations of dictatorship. What the fuck? How did we get there? Who knows! Use your imagination--assume things. Asssume everything. The problem is that these issues are the core of the PT, and according to Lucas they are both the main reason why Lucas wanted to do the PT and the only reason Lucas introduced Anakin as a child in part 1. But he not only botched it--he completely threw it away. He didn't even try. The Anakin in Episode II is not the same character from the previous film--i never even once imagined that Jake Lloyd grew up to be this person. And whatever reasons that made him become that way are not even so much as hinted at--its not that we have to use our imagination: we don't even have a frame of reference.

Thus, we don't understand why he's a whiney brat, why he's a power-hungry prick that can't take hearing the word "no." Not only do we not sympathize with him, we don't even understand him. Thats the reason why people hate him. Luke was a bit of whiner in ANH but we could understand his situation because we've all gone through that kind of stuff. But with Anakin people just say "what the hell are you whining about now? Shut the fuck up and be a man." And its because there's absolutely no character motivation. People say "oh well he's a teenager." That doesn't cut it. "Oh well he was a slave and separated from his mother and has no friends." That doesn't cut it. Show us these things--or at least indicate them. Thats the real issue--most people who like Anakin or claim to understand him are reading into his character things that aren't there, probably simply because they want to like him.

And thats one of the reasons i thought ROTS was kinda good. Finally there was character motivation and emotion. You could understand why Anakin was confused in the first half of ROTS, where everyone is telling him to stab people in the back, you could understand Anakin's fear at loosing his loved one and the drive that made him become obssessed with finding this greater power. The first half of ROTS is great because its the way an actual dramatic movie is written--ie, not a piece of shit (for the most part). Once Anakin kills the kids of course everything falls apart because the arc gets destroyed (due to the revisions as stated before).

I also came to another conclusion today--in retrospect, many feel that TPM is the closest to having the "Star Wars feel", even though the style and aesthetic are completely dissimilar to the OT. But, I finally realised why this, the movie that should be the complete opposite of the OT (and is, visually) still retains a strong Star Wars feel through much of it. As CO pointed out, the OT is a macro story. And so is TPM. It has no central character, although it revolves around Qui Gon Jinn--just as the OT had no central character, though revolved around Luke. Jar Jar and Obi Wan share equal screentime with Anakin, just as the droids and Chewie share equal screentime with Han, while Padme acts as a plot motivator just as Leia does, with Qui Gon centring the film just as Luke. Theres also a clear and very active villain, unlike AOTC, with a somewhat lighthearted plot and scenes that at least develop and resolve instead of being rushed through like the sequels.
Post
#247461
Topic
The Merits of the Prequel Trilogy and the "Saga"
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247461/action/topic#247461
Time
The reason why he had to change it is because he hadn't designed the film(s) to fascilitate that "driven by greed" angle properly. There needed to be some kind of emotional angle to invest our sympathy, and thats what Episode II was lacking and why Anakin was hated by most viewers--he was just whiny and greedy and wanted things his way. Why should we care about a character like that? Episode III IMO was the best prequel and i think Lucas' changing of Anakin's arc in that film was the best thing he has done in Star Wars since he hired Irvin Kershner in 1978.

But, CO is right--the rest of the film does not follow the logic laid out in the "doing it for padme" arc. Lucas was so close to creating a great character film. What happened? Well, the film was not written--or even shot--with the whole Padme arc in mind. It was all added in post-production--even the dream sequences; initially it was just a single nightmare, and not even the primary reason for his turn. But it fell flat. It didn't work because AOTC was a debacle, so he had to re-shift the entire film to a spontaneous, emotional act--saving Palpatine in order to save Padme. This was a stroke of brilliance in my opinion--finally we are dealing with character motivation and emotion here. But Lucas ultimately botched it. Why? Because he didn't rebalance the rest of the film. It was just too late--the film was already shot and in the can, and in order to re-balance it the film would essentially have to be re-shot and re-filmed from the ground up. The problem was that after Anakin turns the film links back up to the initial version where Anakin is "twisted by the darkside". When he accepted Palpatine's offer in Palpatine's original "reveal" scene he genuinely believed that the Jedi were plotting against him and was slowly feeling the darkside and being corrupted by it; in fact, in the original version when he kills Mace Windu he doesn't say "what have i done"--he says "i cant believe the jedi were really taking over." Thus, his decision to go to the temple and kill these traitors was justified, and this links up with what he says at the end--"I should have known the Jedi were plotting to take over...from my point of view the Jedi are evil." But instead Lucas re-filmed the entire arc of his transformation. He re-filmed the reveal scene to make about keeping Padme alive. He added more vision scenes and more scenes about anakin become obsessed about saving padme. He added a scene where Anakin tells Mace about Palpatine's identity. He added the brilliant rumination scene. And he added the great scene were Anakin is absent for the Mace-Palpatine fight, comes in halfway and is goaded by both of them to choose a side--and then choses Palpatine, saying "what have i done...just help me save padme." But now after this section is finished, it returns to the original version--why the hell is Anakin suddenly killing his children, when he was just loyal to Mace windu a few minutes earlier when he told him the truth about Palpatine?? His acceptance of the Sith was a spontaneous emotional response related to Padme, not any sort of personality flaw or corruption/betrayal issue.

Lucas got the first 50% of it right, but then didn't have time--or didn't realise--that the all-important final 50% was not re-aligned in sync with the new story arc. I would rather have the version that exist now and is inconsistent rather than the absolutely flat and totally unconvincing original version. ROTS was imperfect but i thought it was pretty good in spite of these inconsistencies because i felt some emotional attachment to the story and characters for once--Lucas set it up great, and although the ending didn't follow through he at least had me by that point and the terrific action scenes and drool-inducing finale partially made up for the few flaws that remained. If you thought ROTS sucked you can at least be thankful it wasn't as bad as it was originally shot.
Post
#247378
Topic
Info: Best OUT materials at Lucasfilm?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/247378/action/topic#247378
Time
Originally posted by: Karyudo
Originally posted by: Darth Lars
How does Eastman film stock work?

Pretty sure most film stock works the same way: three separate layers, one each for R, G, and B (or C, Y and M). So, no, there's no separate chroma and luma in film.


Chroma and Luma are technically digital video terms. 35mm Kodak negative stock has three layers of colours, RGB, which record the respective information of those spectrums.

Seperation masters are three black and white masters made from each colour value. One is a record of all the red value information, the other the green and the other the blue. The combined master of these three colour sepation records would theoretically give you a perfect replica of the original. George Lucas had these made for Star Wars, although I'm not sure about the two sequels.