[SPOILERS] Star Wars movie thread... [Don't read this thread if you haven't seen the movie yet]
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Mindcrime
Commodore
This is an awesome idea! He said he had the next trilogy written anyway. Might as well release his version of it. Would be cool to read so we don't have to watch all the CG shit all and bad acting again like we got in the prequels. Maybe he will consider it after ep 8 and 9 are released. However he seems to be done with Star Wars.
Mindcrime
Commodore
Watching the original trilogy and had some thoughts. Mind u this is the special edition.
Episode 4: damn george lucas got way to crazy with all the added cg crap. Annoyed me and the wife
Episode 5: what an amazing job! All the additions in this one were perfect. Nothing cheesy at all. Forgot how much i love empire strikes back!!
Episode 6: oh boy......i wanted to forget about that added song and dance segment in jabbas palace. How the hell did anyone think this was a good addition? As if all the ewoks weren't bad enough lol. I can definitely see how he went from return of the jedi to the jar jar crap in phantom menace. Funny how a few changes and Jedi would have been the darkest in the trilogy by far.
Episode 4: damn george lucas got way to crazy with all the added cg crap. Annoyed me and the wife
Episode 5: what an amazing job! All the additions in this one were perfect. Nothing cheesy at all. Forgot how much i love empire strikes back!!
Episode 6: oh boy......i wanted to forget about that added song and dance segment in jabbas palace. How the hell did anyone think this was a good addition? As if all the ewoks weren't bad enough lol. I can definitely see how he went from return of the jedi to the jar jar crap in phantom menace. Funny how a few changes and Jedi would have been the darkest in the trilogy by far.
Aginor
Vice Admiral
Well, there are some weird things in the special editions. Here's an interesting video, I agree with most points:
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Mmm, indeed. Gratuitous modifications are dangerous. CGI in particular is a huge risk, because it's so infernally challenging to do right. The only one of those changes that I really approve (and I'm probably in the minority on this) is the integration of Hayden Christiansen into Episode 6. It simply made sense as a way to bind the six episodes together.
NinjaLA
Alex Von T.
I'm gonna go ahead and parrot the unpopular opinion that Querto used above. I was not offended by the hayden christiansen force ghost thing because it was shortly after the prequels aired and it gives kids who were introduced to starwars via episode I-III a familiar face to anchor to. I do sort of wish they had aged him up a bit though.. you get old yoda, you get old obe-wan and you get young anakin. are we to assume that anakin really died the moment he became darth vader? I did feel a bit bad for Bernard Shaw getting cut from the credits though.
Mindcrime
Commodore
Ok, the idea of the Hayden force ghost was great. But there is a clear problem here. They show old Ben, old Yoda, and teenage Anakin. They all died old. So I would have been completely satisfied with it if they just gave Hayden some gray hair and wrinkles lol. The who shot first nonsense was dumb to me. Han was a selfish smuggler when episode 4 starts. A bounty hunter with a blaster pointed at him saying he is gonna enjoy killing Han. Of course Han would shoot him first. I always thought that was dumb to change it so Han would wait. Who would do that??
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Regarding young Anakin, notice that Anakin is also wearing Jedi robes, as opposed to the Darth Vader outfit that he actually died in, so clearly the ghost appearance doesn't necessarily translate directly from their appearance when they died..I think we can assume that these ghosts control their appearance in every aspect, and basically appear as they would like to be seen, or perhaps the way they were most comfortable with - I mean, they even control the fact that they are appearing at all, so why wouldn't they be able to determine how they look? From this perspective, it makes perfect sense for Anakin to appear the way he did before he turned to the Dark Side - he has repented all that he did afterwards, so in a sense, he has gone back to what he was.
But yes, I do think it would have been appropriate to nonetheless retain Bernard Shaw in the credits.
On a sidenote, I think my opinion of Lucas' changes was far more negative when I thought that he was really the only one to do this kind of thing. In recent years, though, there's been a lot of other filmmakers going back and altering their films. And then I found out that even Tolkien had gone back and made changes to The Hobbit in its second edition - he literally retrofitted certain things into the narrative in order to set the stage for Lord of The Rings, going even so far as to explain that the previous edition was in fact the false narrative that Bilbo Baggins used to tell
. I think we as audiences really want the "security" of knowing that a given work is now definitively finished and will never change, and it's a legitimate concern that creators need to take onboard, but we also have to take onboard that a creator will sometimes want to revise their work for all kinds of reasons.
...But Han still should have shot first.
But yes, I do think it would have been appropriate to nonetheless retain Bernard Shaw in the credits.
Well, that's why it's ranked number one among the worst changes. It doesn't necessarily alter the character the way the fans claim (it is conceivable that Han still wanted to shot first, but simply wasn't quick enough), but why change it at all? And then change it again with the DVD edition? It ended up as a silly compromise where both shoot first. A very peculiar thing, to be sure.
On a sidenote, I think my opinion of Lucas' changes was far more negative when I thought that he was really the only one to do this kind of thing. In recent years, though, there's been a lot of other filmmakers going back and altering their films. And then I found out that even Tolkien had gone back and made changes to The Hobbit in its second edition - he literally retrofitted certain things into the narrative in order to set the stage for Lord of The Rings, going even so far as to explain that the previous edition was in fact the false narrative that Bilbo Baggins used to tell
. I think we as audiences really want the "security" of knowing that a given work is now definitively finished and will never change, and it's a legitimate concern that creators need to take onboard, but we also have to take onboard that a creator will sometimes want to revise their work for all kinds of reasons....But Han still should have shot first.
DefianceIndustries
Rear Admiral
I believe I read somewhere that the reason they used Hayden Christiansen was A) to tie in the prequels and B) was that was a direct reference to what Obi Wan told Luke in Jedi:
Since Luke redeemed him, his force ghost appears as the last incarnation of Anakin, pre-Vader. I'll have to go dig it up now...
Aginor
Vice Admiral
Han didn't shoot first, Han was the only one who shot.
It absolutely makes sense, Greedo said he wanted to kill him. Those changes are extremely pointless.
About the Anakin Force Ghost: I understand why George Lucas did it, and Quarto's explanation actually makes a lot of sense, I still think it was an unnecessary change to a scene I liked before the change.
This short scene, with no dialogue at all, and those three men looking at each other, smiling. It was great and touching.
Anakin appeared as he wanted to. The force ghost of the person that won against his dark side eventually, the friendly old man who was inside Darth Vader during the trilogy and the normal human without the suit, but in his Jedi robe. Luke's father, as opposed to someone Luke's age.
The audience hadn't ever seen him, still anbody knew it was Anakin. No need to put Hayden Christensen in it.
For me it is not the worst change, Sy Snootles is much worse, but I still dislike it. It takes away something from the movie.
BTW @Quarto and @NinjaLA : It was Sebastian Shaw, not Bernard Shaw.
EDIT: Oh, and about the CGI: I kinda liked the 1997 version of Mos Eisley, it looked less than a ghost town and more of a space port. I also kinda liked the added CGI scenes in the space fights and the "Han meets Jabba" scene in ANH was.... still ok although not great. But Sy Snootles.... no. Just no. Lucas ruined the scene.
It absolutely makes sense, Greedo said he wanted to kill him. Those changes are extremely pointless.
About the Anakin Force Ghost: I understand why George Lucas did it, and Quarto's explanation actually makes a lot of sense, I still think it was an unnecessary change to a scene I liked before the change.
This short scene, with no dialogue at all, and those three men looking at each other, smiling. It was great and touching.
Anakin appeared as he wanted to. The force ghost of the person that won against his dark side eventually, the friendly old man who was inside Darth Vader during the trilogy and the normal human without the suit, but in his Jedi robe. Luke's father, as opposed to someone Luke's age.
The audience hadn't ever seen him, still anbody knew it was Anakin. No need to put Hayden Christensen in it.
For me it is not the worst change, Sy Snootles is much worse, but I still dislike it. It takes away something from the movie.
BTW @Quarto and @NinjaLA : It was Sebastian Shaw, not Bernard Shaw.
EDIT: Oh, and about the CGI: I kinda liked the 1997 version of Mos Eisley, it looked less than a ghost town and more of a space port. I also kinda liked the added CGI scenes in the space fights and the "Han meets Jabba" scene in ANH was.... still ok although not great. But Sy Snootles.... no. Just no. Lucas ruined the scene.
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capi3101
Admiral
I was gonna say something about that. Isn't Bernard Shaw an anchor for CNN? I suppose considering James Earl Jones did commercials for them in the '90s, it's an understandable mistake to make...
Aginor
Vice Admiral
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Hey, don't blame me, I was just mindlessly repeating what Ninja said
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Jdawg
Rear Admiral
I agree its a lot of fun and I like where they are taking ezra and kanan
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
Sadly, the Kanan comic is coming to an end after the current arc. I suspect it would have done fine a year or two ago for Dark Horse, but can't compete with the incredible numbers Marvel's other Star Wars series' are doing. (I've enjoyed it, too, and I like that the backstory for Rebels was sort of their first test of approaching the new canon with multimedia... between the comic and the A New Dawn novel.) The good news is that it's being replaced by an ongoing Poe Dameron series, which should be interesting (and likely much, much more popular.)
I do with we could get away with a 'after the movie' style comic like they did in the 1970s and 1980s for both Star Trek and Star Wars. We look back at stuff like Jaxxon or Captain Kirk of the USS Excelsior with a bit of embarrassment... but they're SO much fun, and I'd love to have something like that for future Star Wars fans to cringe about (and then the 'get everything back into place!' arcs are so interesting looking back.) Seems like you could do it harmlessly with Episode VII, too, with a comic series about Rey's adventures on the way to find Luke.
I've never been particularly concerned about the changes to the original trilogy, and especially changes to A New Hope which seem to be entirely within Lucas' rights (I think there's probably an authorship debate with regards to the other two... Lucas may have been the man pulling the strings, but he wasn't the director of either of the sequels... but I can't especially say I want to have it) The "Han shot first!" argument always feels to me more like an audience looking to legitimize their general dislike for the changes by drilling down until they locked in on a change that could feel academic rather than glossy. Does it make sense that Han would shoot first? Yes. Was it something anyone was especially concerned with before we crowdsourced the complaint about it and in so doing legitimized criticism of all the edits beyond our innate feeling that the CGI looks kind of dumb? Not really.
The exception to all this is the dance number in Jabba's palace, which is just awful. It takes you directly out of the movie. It should be removed from the film and shot into the sun immediately.
I do with we could get away with a 'after the movie' style comic like they did in the 1970s and 1980s for both Star Trek and Star Wars. We look back at stuff like Jaxxon or Captain Kirk of the USS Excelsior with a bit of embarrassment... but they're SO much fun, and I'd love to have something like that for future Star Wars fans to cringe about (and then the 'get everything back into place!' arcs are so interesting looking back.) Seems like you could do it harmlessly with Episode VII, too, with a comic series about Rey's adventures on the way to find Luke.
I've never been particularly concerned about the changes to the original trilogy, and especially changes to A New Hope which seem to be entirely within Lucas' rights (I think there's probably an authorship debate with regards to the other two... Lucas may have been the man pulling the strings, but he wasn't the director of either of the sequels... but I can't especially say I want to have it) The "Han shot first!" argument always feels to me more like an audience looking to legitimize their general dislike for the changes by drilling down until they locked in on a change that could feel academic rather than glossy. Does it make sense that Han would shoot first? Yes. Was it something anyone was especially concerned with before we crowdsourced the complaint about it and in so doing legitimized criticism of all the edits beyond our innate feeling that the CGI looks kind of dumb? Not really.
The exception to all this is the dance number in Jabba's palace, which is just awful. It takes you directly out of the movie. It should be removed from the film and shot into the sun immediately.