It's in The Making of ROTS, along with a synopsis of the rough draft he is in, bringing Yoda intel about the location of Grievous.
Han: "Kid, I've flown from one end of this galaxy to the other and...well, actually now that you mention it, I used to hang around the Jedi a lot. It was really impressive, especially since I was 13 and still easily wowed by things like telekinesis and magic and feats of inhuman strength."
Kenobi: "Wait, you knew the Jedi?"
Han: "Sure. Is Yoda still around? I used to personally give him intel during the wars. Chewie used to give him piggie back rides, no joke."
Kenobi: "Holy shit, you guys knew Yoda? He's hiding on Dagobah."
Han: "Hey, you know what? Why don't we stop by and say hi. He would probably be helpful with this whole bringing-down-the-empire thing you're involved with."
Luke: "What? You said the Jedi were all but extinct!"
Kenobi: "Yeah, all but extinct. All but Yoda."
Luke: "Why wouldn't you say anything? And why have you guys been sitting around so long? Is this Yoda any good?"
Han: "I'm pretty sure he was like the President of the Jedi."
Kenobi: "Yeah, he's the most powerful person in the universe actually, and he trained me so I'm pretty tight with him. I can't believe I never thought of that."
Han: "Wait, I don't remember him training anyone."
Kenobi: "Well...technically, I was trained by this Qui Gon guy."
Luke: "And then you trained that guy, Darth Vader? The guy who killed my father."
Han: "Woah, woah, woah. You trained Darth Vader??"
Luke: "You've heard of him too?"
Han: "How could you have not?! Do you even know what you are doing here?"
Luke: "All the cool kids on Tatooine were joining the rebellion, so..."
Han: "And if you were Darth Vader's master I want all of you guys off this ship!"
Kenobi: "Relax, this was before he was evil. In fact, I pretty much killed him once and that's why he's in the suit."
Luke: "I can't believe you didn't mention any of this to me. Was this after he killed my father, Anakin Skywalker?"
Han: "Wait, your father was Anakin Skywalker?"
Luke: "You've heard of him too?!"
Han: "Well, back then everyone did, he was kind of famous. Don't they have Google on Tatooine? Then he became the Emperor's right hand man and kind of disappeared after he got into a fight with his former master...."
Kenobi: "Heh heh. So anyway Luke, about this mission..."
Luke: "Ben, what the fuck!! Is anything you told me true?? Well, maybe this won't be so bad if I can bang that smoking hot princess."
Kenobi: "Yeah, about that..."
LOL, just so we're clear here: the shot of Han saying "(Yes,) I bet you have" is shorter by a few frames in both versions of the SE, correct? Because if it is, I haven't included it.
I meant the shot of Han saying "I bet you have." But the wide shot with them firing is a new one, yes.
I would count that as a 1 or a 2. It's not a new shot, it's just a tweak to an existing one; they took out the "Yes" in 1997 but they added it back in, right? I might consider the 1997 version a 2 and then 2004 version a 1 for that shot.
Here is a working version of it:
I think that link should work. I'll be modding it and cleaning it up but in case anyone is curious to see the raw data.
You know what's scary? George Lucas considered putting Young Han Solo in Episode III so seriously that he was featured in a draft of the script! And they did concept art!
WTF!! Somehow the retardedness of it all just dawned on me. What the hell went through his head? It says a lot about how Lucas thinks these days.
In the case of 1, it's just a legal thing. Used resale is a valid form of purchase, so the point is that you've purchased and not simply stolen (via download) a copy.
In the case of number 2, it's a matter of pride. Lucasfilm has the resalers money, not yours. The guy that has your money is the resaler, who does not pass it on to Lucasfilm (he did that prior). I realize that doesn't make as much sense in terms of marketplace economics, but it's really just a matter of personal pride, at least for me.
True! Also, I edited my post while you were replying. The Luke shot in the cockpit: it's only used once? And is that really the only shot for cockpit recomps we've id'd?
Before I post the spread I just want to clean it up a bit. I also have a couple questions
-Ben at the tractor-beam matte painting: unchanged in the SE?
-Greedo and Han: is it just the one shot of them firing, or did they delete, shorten or alter the shot of Greedo exploding? The album just lists the wideshot of them firing but I thought there was more.
-Finally: we really only identified that one shot of Luke in the cockpit? Isn't that shot repeated twice?
Cuchulainn said:
Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:
Although in a sense, I suppose the "nooo!" makes him seem more like creepy Anakin from the episodes 2 and 3, the whiny one who always wants his way. Maybe that's why some of the gushers like it.
Are there seriously people who think this was a good idea?
They reside at theforce.net boards. I have witnessed this myself in the last few days. It's hard to imagine what they wouldn't tolerate but I also think most of them are to a degree just saying that to convince themselves, if you gave them the choice I don't doubt almost every person would pick the silent version of that scene.
Either way makes little sense.
Also, yeah, child Anakin was never at the homestead, while the guy who actually lived there his whole life is for some reason an apparition as though he is symbolic or something.
Everything about it makes no sense. It's hard to believe Katie Lucas chose that, but she chose it out of a lineup so maybe the alternatives were even worse. It's hard to know how much I should be blaming her. :P
Motion control of a model on a bluescreen is nothing. The reason they did motion control was so that they could do really dense layers in the composite. It was all about the composite, otherwise you'd have ten shots of single models on bluescreen with the same camera movement. The effect is when you put them together and they all exist at once and move with the camera the same so it looks like they are all filmed together.
I could be mistaken about you missing some of the duel shots. I was going shot-by-shot in order and I noticed that the album didn't match the film. This could just be because there is a shot or two that you listed out of order, as this happened at least once earlier. Rather than figure it all out, I just decided to stop using the album and just catalog each shot myself using the film. I ran into this with the prison shoot-out too but I think in that case I was just confusing myself and had to do lots of album-to-film comparisons as I went to make sure I was on the right page.
With the trench run, I really have no idea when it comes to replacing the background for the cockpits. It's too hard to tell because the video we have is so bad, looking for signs like matte lines is such fine work that it often is difficult to see in video from the 1990s. It doesn't help that I was using Puggos 16mm either. I guess what you could do is look at each shot until you can find some clue you can use as a reference, like a transparency or a matte line around the actor, then go check that against the SE and see if that reference clue is still present, and if it's not then it means it's a recomp. You can sometimes tell if they haven't recomped because the colour of the background is a little off, the Death Star sometimes prints as a mild blue or purple and the space and stars sometimes print blue.
It's such a headache I just listed that one shot of Luke that you did and called it a day. :p If more are ever identified I will add them.
I also noticed the Kenobi tractor beam matte was not listed as a re-comp. I wasn't watching the SE, but I thought that was re-done. Or did the black crush just make it match better?
Here's a question: is there a single visual effects shot in the film that isn't changed?? When I was going through the list the only ones that I noticed were missing was the "Here they come" scene and a couple of cockpit point of views. You don't list the shot of the SD going towards the DS, but I don't remember seeing any matte lines on that in SE, but maybe I'm just not remembering it correctly. It would be interesting now to catalog the shots that have not been re-comped or touched in any way. There's probably only a handful of them! This would be an interesting analysis to use in that you can scientifically say that 90% of the Oscar-winning visual effects have been removed (and yes--to me, the composite is the effect; a model against bluescreen is not the visual effect, anyone can film that, it was the way they were put together that was pioneering).
So, I did an experiment last night with ANHSE by making a spreadsheet cataloging the changes. I used 005's changes album as the reference, but there were shots in the saber duel that he didn't include (an other shots had multiple pics for a single shot) so I had to go through that shot by shot myself to get each cut; there were a lot. I suspect this may also be the case with the trench run regarding some of the cockpit BG replacements, as the changes album only includes the one shot of Luke. So, my spreadsheet might need to have more added. The 2011 changes aren't included, but I did note when the 2004 version introduced something or modified something, but I didn't include the 1981 crawl as a change.
Anyway, the way I did it was that I had 4 levels of alterations.
The first is Level 1. These are invisible fixes, mainly re-done wipes, but also recomposites where it resembles or basically resembles the original image but just is cleaner. I also included a few background things that no one tends to notice unless it's pointed out, like the redone prison hallway (I debated about this one) or the new holograms composites, or the continuity fix on the background when Luke discovers R2 is missing (I debated this one too). It's basically the stuff that some people ask to be "fixed" if they got an OOT, and the stuff that if this was all the SE ever was no one would care about the original.
Level 2 were minor additions or modifications. This includes stuff like adding a ronto to a background, or replacing the background matte to the sandcrawler approach, or adding the floating droid to the sandtroopers. This includes Greedo shooting first, which maybe seems unfair but I am just going by superficial modifications and not their impact on plot, character, etc. or how well they integrate. There actually weren't a lot of these.
Level 3 is a change where a shot has been nearly totally redone (like Han chasing the troopers or the ronto with Jawas) or has been totally redone (like most of the x-wing shots). So it could include all-CG shots as long as they were represented by model/matte shots in the original version.
Level 4 were shots that never existed editorially in the first place. This mainly includes the Jabba scene, but also some of the dewback search, Biggs, and the Falcon escaping from docking bay 94, etc.
In total, these were the findings, and they could increase as a more complete list is created for sequences in which there are repeat cuts.
There are a total of 276 altered or new shots in the film.
Of these, 199 are Level 1. Mainly re-done wipes and re-done optical composites, but also the odd "invisible" fix for continuity or inconsequential background stuff. A very large amount of these were introduced in 2004 when they re-comped the saber fight.
There are 24 Level 2 shots, where minor additions have been made, usually enhancing a matte or adding a notable CG element to the image.
There are 37 Level 3 shots, where a shot in the original edit has been nearly re-done or totally redone. Most of these are in the trench run, but there are a few others like Ben's hut.
There are 16 brand new shots introduced into the edit. Exactly 8 of them are in the Jabba scene.
The 2004 SE introduced a whopping 103 new shots, but they are all Level 1 fixes. Mainly the saber duel (60-something shots) and the prison shoot-out (about 20).
The 2004 SE modified 9 shots already altered in 1997, about half of that figure being replacing the Jabba model.
Just thought people would be interested in this. It's an awful lot of changes, and we haven't even gotten to 2011 BD yet!
TV's Frink said:
WhatsMyName said:
So what everyone think of the ROTJ line at the end where vader saves luke?
Find me one person that likes it, so I can SHUN them.
Go to theforce.net boards. There's tons over there.
yotsuya said:
All this over one page in the back?
There are 10 other pictures that you aren't even talking about. While I would agree the quality is lacking, the OT cast gets their due. Each film gets an iconic shot. ANH gets that same image (although a painted version). Plus the cover features the Lars Homestead with Anakin and Luke. The location is far more iconic of ANH than any of the PT.
Plus, the two covers for the two trilogies both feature OT characters; Vader and Yoda.
And you don't even mention the image of Anakin and Luke in the middle of the booklet. It reminds me very much of the early art for ANH (see the novel cover). I can't find an online image of that picture, but the rest I found here http://halcyonrealms.com/film/star-wars-the-complete-saga-blu-ray/
The OT cast gets their due, the PT cast gets their due. That final image was supposed to be a conclusion, a "Saga" image, something that summed up the entire six-film epic. But its really just a PT tribute with the OT cast's eyeballs leering over the insert booklet, as if to say "can we join this party too or do you have to be in the prequels?"
These blu rays have been noted for taking much longer to load than typical ones. It's not your player. Newer players, or those with recent firmware updates, will of course load it faster than older ones or those with out of date firmware, but they seem to be just slower in general compared to a typical disc.
The thing that kinda bugs me is that this was a bar, and they weren't charging admission. As far as I know, you don't need permission for such a thing. If I walk into a video store, there is always a movie playing there, and movie stores, whether big chains like Blockbuster or your local indie, don't seek permission. Bars show television shows, news, sports, and sometimes order pay-per-view events (and sometimes charge cover too) in order to attract business. Restaurants play music sometimes for their customer's convenience. So do coffee shops. Dance clubs base their entire business off playing copyrighted material for free for the pleasure of their patrons, and make big bucks off the drinks and cover that come with it.
Is this really so much different? Stores like HMV even play movies while you shop. When I was a kid, there was a restaurant-store called Sci-Fi World that was basically a comic book, novel, magazine, collectible and RPG store with a sci-fi theme, and they had a hamburger restaurant with a big, giant projector screen that would show movies. The first time I was there, Star Wars was playing, and other times it was Star Trek or Superman and the like. Stores will play shows in their display windows, dentists sometimes have television and videos to entertain the kids.
In a way, stuff like this is industry norms. I've been to bars where they screen movies while you sit and talk and drink, and you can watch the movie or sit further away from the area its playing and have your own space. It's really nothing illegal. You shouldn't need permission every time you display something that is copyrighted.
Technically speaking, it would therefore be illegal for me to bring my Blu-ray over to your house and show you the new Star Wars set. Playing your DVDs at a house party would be illegal public display. But of course it's not, but when you start charging money for it then maybe it would become as such. But is this different from the entire dance club industry, or bars with cover? I'm not sure.
I'm not sure if I comfortable with the idea in society that you have to pay money or get permission every time you want to freely display something that's owned by a company. It didn't use to be that way, and it's still largely not, but I feel like more and more there is this acceptance of it.
Hoth-Nudist said:
xhonzi said:
Hoth-Nudist said:
He should have hired an actress that knew and loved SW, an actress that wanted to throw herself into the role with passion.
This never seems to be the case. Look at all of the comic book movies being made where the director has the passion for the character and the actors have to google the name as soon as they get the part.
Maybe, maybe not. But I havent seen a comic movie with a lead actress' performance that was as bad as Portmans. Portmans was the worst and she didnt want to be there. And what an aweful time to pick such a shoddy performance, during the most anticipated films of all time. Your point reminds me of the x-men movies though. Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, and Famke Jansen werent too familiar with x-men prior to their filming, but they fell in love with it and even read some comics. And they loved their job and wanted to be there, and their performances were great for 3 movies. Not Natalie's though. A good actor/actress will read the script, research the role and mentally prepare himself/herself for the performance. Thats Luca$s' fault for hiring Natalie, and Natalie's for not being professional.
I think that's unfair. Natalie Portman is a great actress; so is Sam Jackson. And look at Ewan McGregor in Episode I. There were ton of Oscar-winning actors in this series that gave in shitty performances.
Why? Well, Lucas can't direct actors. Older actors have learned how to just direct themselves, that's why Christopher Lee and Ian McDiarmid gave the best performances, followed to some degree by Pernilla August and Liam Neeson. But Lucas can't direct actors that need guidance, and that's the directors failing. He's also to blame for miscasting any roles if you feel it is the actors after all.
But the main reason is that the script. That's why the actors are shit: the characters are shit. The dialogue is bad, there's no development, they don't behave like real people. Why does Padme fall in love with pyscho stalker Anakin? Who the hell talks the way she does? What makes her character tick? Who are these people? The only scenes that attempt to answer these questions were cut out, and that's not coincidentally the only scene in AOTC that has good acting in it (Padme's parents house).
The fact is, she probably didn't want to be there, but she had no choice--she was tricked. Everyone was. They had to sign up in 1997 and 1996 without seeing any scripts. Think of how Star Wars was regarded back then--god-like. Lucas was a genius! Even though people knew Star Wars never had the best dialogue, it had well-developed, likeable characters you could relate to. So everyone assumed the prequels would have this but not only that, be better! Imagine their shock when they read the script for Episode I. But Episode I is pretty light, it's just setting everything up. But then imagine their shock when Episode II is even worse! They didn't even get the script until the week they began filming (because it wasn't done!), not even the main cast.
So yeah, probably Portman was like "are you fucking kidding me?" Even Hayden Christensen said to reporters that he was "worried" when he first saw the script because he didn't know "how to make the dialogue sound believable." He never found a solution. There is no solution, the character was simply written awfully.
See, if any good actor saw that script beforehand, they would have turned down the role. "Are you crazy? I can't make this work. No one can. This is professional suicide, I'll be laughed at." That's why it's usually shitty actors that take shitty parts, because the good actors have turned down the role. But Lucas tricked everyone because he made them all sign up based on the success of the OT without ever having seen a script or any scrap of dialogue.
Luckily, Portman continued to take good roles after the films. Christensen, well, his whole career is a bit of shame. He's a good actor if you've seen his early stuff, he thought Star Wars would be his big break but now he can't get good roles because no one has confidence in him as an actor so he gets stuck with stuff like Jumper. Same thing happened to Hamill, who was probably the best actor in the OT aside from Harrison Ford and even then maybe better.
I considered that, but there isn't enough material to compose a whole book. It would like 50 pages. I proposed maybe extending this base to something book-length with her collaboration but she didn't go for it.
I don't think there is any legal shenanegans going on. The truth is, she just wants out of the spotlight. She gave up editing to raise a family long before she divorced George Lucas. It was a decision she made around 1979 or so. There's almost certainly nothing to do with Star Wars copyrights and Special Editions and the like.
I have a feeling that by the time she had gotten her family time (the reason she left the biz and then Lucas) it was the 1990s, like Lucas, but unlike Lucas she couldn't really return to the industry if she wanted to because she hadn't edited anything since the late 1970s and probably couldn't get back into the union/ everyone forgot about her. She would have been about 50 years old keep in mind. I think by that time she had gotten involved in other ventures and didn't really have the inclination to try to break back in.
@ the prequelsrule: Marcia came to me after I wrote the only existing biographical article on her and her work. Our correspondence was not too extensive and she hasn't contacted me since.
They withhold screenings so that they can inflate the value of a strategic re-release. 1997, 3D, etc. It becomes a special, limited-time event, with a publicity and merchandise campaign behind it.
It's not really a matter of them seeking permission. The fact is, Lucasfilm doesn't permit screenings. Period. So, it's not like there was every any chance of them doing it legitimately, if you want to show the films, ever, you have to do so illicitly.
The only exceptions they make are to institutions like AFI, they get granted special permission, but it's exceptional and only done in the case of award ceremonies, tributes, etc.
That's my thing: if you can present deleted scenes in HD as a bonus, why not the original version? Isn't it the same thing? Apocrypha?