Star Wars Trilogy DVD set
- Thread starter ck9791
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Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Duh, for the same reason that WC fans would expect any remake of WC1 to include a timeline that correctly matches the events described in Action Stations and other pre-WC1 info - it didn't exist in 1990, but it exists now. Similarly, you can whine all you like about his explanation for Anakin not making sense, but I think we can all be certain that had the prequels existed in 1983, Anakin at the end of ep. 6 would have been the same guy as Anakin in ep. 3. And guess what - you'd have been happy about it, and it would never even occur to you to question its sense.LeHah said:
Don't blame Lucas for this - he's just stuck in a bad situation, where he can either live with the constant whining from fans about how the prequels screw up continuity, or live with the constant whining from fans that he's a picky bastard because he's dared to change something in the original trilogy.
(for what it's worth, though, in spite of my overall approval of the changes, I do agree with you that a DVD release of the original original trilogy would be nice)
)
LeHah
212 Squadron - "The Old Man's Eyes And Ears"
Quarto said:
The problem here is three-fold:
1.) Lucas from 1977 is not Lucas from 1999/2002. Anyone worth their salt knows that Lucas is not just a bad screenwriter but a very, very bad director and this hasn't changed. Its just the fact that he's not the same bad director from back then - he's more kid-friendly these days.
2.) The prequels weren't fully written out until the mid-90s - thus whatever connection they'd have to the OT would be back-peddling.
3.) Lucas directed one of three movies from the OT. It's bad form to screw with other people's work. Producers have control and play with money - directors are artists (the good ones at least). You can't tell me that Lucas would direct a movie as well as Irvin Kershner did ESB.
Quarto said:
I've said it before, I said it again - making prequels was a bad idea. Its doomed to fail from the start simply because they're not in the spirit of the originals. Yes, the ideas are there - especially in Episode 1 - but they lack a lot that the original had.
Quarto said:
That being said - I think he didnt release them simply because he wants to force us to see how he wants it to be now. Kinda arrogant, isn't it?
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Well, I don't know if this is true or not, and I don't particularly care to debate it in any case - I fail to see how it is relevant, however. None of the changes introduced in the new edition make the movie more kid-friendly in any way... although it would still be completely irrelevant even if they did. You don't like the changes, that's fine - but don't grasp at straws to turn your personal dislike into some sort of greater argument, because there's just no way to do it.LeHah said:
That's normal - Action Stations was also written several years after WC1, so if somebody would want to make the two fit together, they'd have to modify one or the other (and invariably, it's the older source that gets modified). I must also add that, like with your first point, I don't see any relevance of this point. How exactly is 'back-peddling' a bad thing?
No indeed, I can't tell you that. But again, irrelevant, because as far as I know, Irvin Kersher is not bothered by the changes. Besides, ESB and ROTJ are not like other films in this regard - pretty much everyone agrees that they're really Lucas' work, and the directors were little more than subcontractors. Credits can be quite deceiving.
Maybe so - but no more arrogant than the fans' belief that just becaue they love the original movie, any attempts to modify it must be motivated by greed, arrogance, or pure evil. I don't think the fans are the ones to teach Lucas about humility
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LeHah
212 Squadron - "The Old Man's Eyes And Ears"
Quarto said:
Ask yourself this - are the changes nessessary? We like Star Wars because it was a great movie - why bother fixing something that isn't broke?
There is most certainly a greater arguement here - however, I may not be the one to make a strong enough case.
On his deathbed, Orson Welles famously said "Keep Ted Turner and his goddamned Crayolas away from my movie!"
I wish Lucas had the same preceident as Welles - they have so much in common. They both had one major film that changed the way films were thought of (though, obviously, Lucas less so) and then lost almost all creative talent later in life.
At least Welles did some half-way decent movies. And did Touch Of Evil. And was Unicron. And was in The Third Man - and then kinda in Heavenly Creatures.
Orson Welles to George Lucas to Peter Jackson? Must skip a generation or something.
I understand that a director might want to go back and clean up his film. I don't mean colorization or godforsaken CGI - but sometimes a THX clean-up is needed. Has anyone seen what Criterion has done with Kurosawa movies? Yojimbo looks like the negatives are still warm and only a few minutes old. (Sadly, Seven Samurai is less so - but it was Criterion's second DVD release so maybe they didn't have their footing yet?)
And yet - and yet - Lucas goes back to add things, delete things, move things up and over, shake things up. The problem isn't in him doing that - the problem is he's not the George Lucas of 1977. Twenty years and a shitty, ugly divorce from his editor bitch wife can bring a man down. Three kids - 4 if you consider is gigantic manitee of a daughter - later and the man is tapping his home life to get inspiration for prequels.
"Gungan!" his son goes as he sees a truck go by, "Gungan!"
Groan!, goes the rest of the world.
Basicly, as Lucas got older, he up and bolted from Joesph Campbell's table leaving us with Keanu Reeves and 'Mad' Max Rockatansky. He got cute on us because he had kids and no bitch wife. He got soft, he got easy-going. He didn't stop wearing those lumberjack shirts - but he did put on 40 pounds and is starting to run his mouth about the future of film or something.
Wait, didn't Welles do that? Yeah, he was washed up when he stacked on the pounds, too. And did MacBeth - which wasn't that bad if you ignore the Corman-level sets and shit-ass lighting.
So, again, the major problem here is that Lucas isn't Lucas anymore. He's like Evil Lucas - the moment he started sporting gray hair it was like Leonard Nimoy in a goatee. And just like Alternate Spock, he's ready to stab you in the back.
If you gave Lucas from 1977 a CGI studio, I'm sure Star Wars wouldn't change now. I'm sure there'd be no countless edits and additions, no unnessessary Super Mario Bros plants coming out from the Sarlacc, no hallways full of Stormtroopers. Then again, we'd have no concept of motion control cameras and the last person to use a VistaVision would've been Kubrick with Barry Lyndon.
Then again, ILM experimented with CGI in late 1978 for Empire Strikes Back. The 14 second test footage (X-Wings making flight manuvers) can be seen on the Last Starfighter DVD. But then, ESB wasn't a Lucas helmed movie, which is all the more reason why he shouldn't fuck with it.
All this thanks to his bitch wife and 3 bratty kids. The man's lost all nerve - Attack Of The Clones made no fucking sense. A detective story? In a Star Wars movie? What the fuck is this - was Dashiell Hammett the editor on "Hero Of A 1000 Faces"?
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
I'm suddenly reminded of that dreadful droid factory sequence. I can't wrap my head around Episode 2 - it makes no sense and can't decide what it is. Love story? Detective movie? Action? Suspense? I'm begining to damn even the one or two parts of it I found enjoyable - mostly the Jango/Kenobi fight - because the rest of it is terrible. Terrible! Ten years ago, I'd never say anything involving Star Wars was terrible.
And I can see Lucas in his fucking lumberjack shirt and his asshole "Jedi" cap, gesturing on that rainy "starship platform" set going "Ok, we have to make this suck as much as possible."
Ben Burtt giggles like an old man who for five cents hocks Junior Mints into a public toilet at seven paces. That man edits with a dull knife and a duller sense of how to use an non-linear editing machine.
CHOP CHOP CHOP. It's like Pac-Man - frantic and constant and always full of sound. No sound for 55-time nominated John Williams - but plenty of sound for a fucking swoop bike on Tatooine.
Hahaha, goes Jesus.
(Bling bling, goes George Lucas's ex-wife - who by the way, won an Oscar for editing Star Wars.)
So not only is Lucas fucking inept because he had a shitty marriage and 3 kids - but he can't even surround himself with capible people.
Ok, well maybe "Liam Neeson and his bulletproof fat ass" as a friend of mine once put it. At least Liam was Darkman, right? At least that was a Sam Raimi movie.
Jesus Christ, did I just say Raimi makes better movies than Lucas? I gotta lay off the coffee.
But in the end, Lucas is just another sci-fi nut who was reading Al Williamson comics in the 1950s and wrote a pretty good yarn.
25 years later, and the fucker is taking scotch tape and Sharpies to his own Jackson Pollock collection.
Quarto said:
I don't see them re-releasing Wing Commander (1) with new, timeline friendly additions and edits.
Quarto said:
With the exception of Spielberg, every director Lucas knew thinks hes an idiot. I can't even repeat what John Milius has said about the man.
Quarto said:
I'd urge you to brush up on your "Making Of..." history then. Kirshner was Lucas's film school teacher - George pretty much gave him free reign or as much as would be allowed.
Kirschner decided on the emphasis of the "zen" aspect of the Force.
Kirschner decided on the Han and Leia confrontation in the Carbon Freezing chamber.
Kirschner was the one who labored endlessly to make the Hoth battle work.
Lucas? Lucas was too busy trying not to have heart palpatations again after passing out from Star Wars.
Quarto said:Maybe so - but no more arrogant than the fans' belief that just becaue they love the original movie, any attempts to modify it must be motivated by greed, arrogance, or pure evil. I don't think the fans are the ones to teach Lucas about humility
Mine isn't so much an arguement about humility but a matter of art. Name another director who's done to their films what Lucas has done. No one - well that could be it's too costly to screw with something that works.
Edfilho
Cry some more!
Shit.
I really liked this post.
Maybe there is something good in le Hah after all.
BTW, This Special Ed./directors cut revisionist rage that we see in the DVD era has lot's of complicated implications.
For instance, take Blade Runner: you can't find the "original" one anywhere...
Some directors include deleted scenes on the DVD, but won't let you watch the movie with those back in it, because they prefer the movie "the way it is". Others splice the scenes back and say "THIS is the real movie". When the director says that, the other versions are gone. You don't get the manuscripts when you buy a book...
Lucas will ont release the original original trilogy in DVD because, as far as he's concerned, it's been made obsolete. Lucky I got my tapes.
I really liked this post.
Maybe there is something good in le Hah after all.
BTW, This Special Ed./directors cut revisionist rage that we see in the DVD era has lot's of complicated implications.
For instance, take Blade Runner: you can't find the "original" one anywhere...
Some directors include deleted scenes on the DVD, but won't let you watch the movie with those back in it, because they prefer the movie "the way it is". Others splice the scenes back and say "THIS is the real movie". When the director says that, the other versions are gone. You don't get the manuscripts when you buy a book...
Lucas will ont release the original original trilogy in DVD because, as far as he's concerned, it's been made obsolete. Lucky I got my tapes.
Maj.Striker
Swabbie
Banned
Lehah's post is too long to respond to the multitude of things wrong with it. Someone else with a lot of time on their hands can take a shot at it, but I won't. I'm only going to say this:
Lehah, you're messing with things you don't know anything about. How could you possibly know what George Lucas is like, what his thought processes are, how he lives his life, how he handles things? I'm willing to bet you haven't even met the man, how are you qualified to say that his latest movies are crap because he was divorced from his wife and had 3-4 children? Have you been divorced? Do you even know what that's like? If you do, what makes you think that George would handle it exactly like you did? You are pronouncing a judgement on something that you have no knowledge of? Maybe George is a better man as a result of the divorce and the children...maybe he's worse off, whose to say? Blaming his latest movies and recent decisions regarding those movies on things like that divorce is possibly one of the unlikely things I've heard recently.
Also, I'm no deep SW fan (casual at best) but I can see where some people have a deep deep deep love for the movies, and I think the only thing that would make those people happy is if they personally directed/changed the movies themselves because they already have their own opinion of what they want to see. They seem to have forgotten that the reason they loved SW so much was because it was brand new, a vision of a future no one had considered. Now with the mainstream media it has generated people have come to expect, no rather, demand certain things and if Lucas' delivery isn't like their expectations they feel that somehow he's at fault for delivering what he sees his creation as. It's his, let the man do as he pleases but don't spin a bunch of crap about things you don't possibly know.
Lehah, you're messing with things you don't know anything about. How could you possibly know what George Lucas is like, what his thought processes are, how he lives his life, how he handles things? I'm willing to bet you haven't even met the man, how are you qualified to say that his latest movies are crap because he was divorced from his wife and had 3-4 children? Have you been divorced? Do you even know what that's like? If you do, what makes you think that George would handle it exactly like you did? You are pronouncing a judgement on something that you have no knowledge of? Maybe George is a better man as a result of the divorce and the children...maybe he's worse off, whose to say? Blaming his latest movies and recent decisions regarding those movies on things like that divorce is possibly one of the unlikely things I've heard recently.
Also, I'm no deep SW fan (casual at best) but I can see where some people have a deep deep deep love for the movies, and I think the only thing that would make those people happy is if they personally directed/changed the movies themselves because they already have their own opinion of what they want to see. They seem to have forgotten that the reason they loved SW so much was because it was brand new, a vision of a future no one had considered. Now with the mainstream media it has generated people have come to expect, no rather, demand certain things and if Lucas' delivery isn't like their expectations they feel that somehow he's at fault for delivering what he sees his creation as. It's his, let the man do as he pleases but don't spin a bunch of crap about things you don't possibly know.
LeHah
212 Squadron - "The Old Man's Eyes And Ears"
Maj.Striker said:
But you're going to anyway - and in a large, unspecific response.
Maj.Striker said:
Well, I don't think I'd qualify as a George Lucas professor - but I've read a number of books on him and his craft over the years. (1, 2, 3, 4 and theres one more I can't seem to find on Amazon for some reason). I'm familiar with his accident in his little Italian car into the Walnut tree, I'm familiar with the photo to his former wife - his head sticking out of Obi-Wan's home and the caption "Did Orson Welles start out this way?", I'm familiar with Harrison Ford's mockery of the man - "One day, massah say I be free!" - but the fact that I took a crack at what changed the man who admitted himself in interviews that his wife leaving him to raise a child on his own had severe consequences on his health, finances and outlook on life and put it into a more digestable-if-dour context - No, I guess I don't know much of anything.
Maj.Striker said:
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0 said:
Well, that would make anyone's knees buckle, wouldn't it?
(He also dated Linda Ronstadt for quite a while. He's since been mostly a bachelor.)
Maj.Striker said:
Perhaps your understanding of the situation is askewed then - the majority of complaints are because we don't want any changes at all. We don't want to play pick-and-choose, we just want the series as is.
Maj.Striker said:
I could say the same of you - you're obviously not in the know of the complaints of a large demographic of people, but insist on adding something anyway.
We want the movies as they were - unaltered and on DVD. Thats it. But he insists on "fixing" the OT. We always assumed "changes" meant "improvements". The thing is - it's not broke, why fix it?
As it stands with me, this arguement in this thread is over. I wish I could be as apathetic as some people and just take the new Star Wars DVDs as a glorious thing of my childhood - but I can't simply because it's a giant dogpile to me. And I know I can't get people to see that - but I figure thats their loss. I'm perfectly happy being livid that a single man failed the creative culture of the last 27 years - you can't convince me otherwise that retooling a movie nearly 30 years later enriches the enjoyment factor.
Shit served on a silver platter with some garnish is still just smelly ol poo.
Bandit LOAF
Long Live the Confederation!
LeHah? I just met 'ah.
I watched (well, actually just listened to) the director's commentary of Star Wars (A New Hope) last night.
Why can't they just make the commentary vaguely interesting? All it was about was...
".and the story of blah blah, is that because I didn't think to make it so that blah blah..."
"...the sounds of the laser sword were like that because blah blah....."
"...I didn't think to make the sequels because blah blah...."
That's all great and fine - but stick something else in there too! - you know, maybe some funny anecdotes or something that happened on the day they shot the scene or something!
Maybe something like...
"...and here, the scene with the tie-fighter, we shot that scene on the day that Joe broke his leg playing frisbee in the parking lot. Oh, how we laughed at him as he writhed in pain"
I was also hoping to get to hear about little bloopers and changes that occurred in the film - for example, the moment where the stormtrooper knocks his head on the door (I still have no idea where that is!) or the moment where Luke says 'Carrie' when he's climbing out of the X-Wing.
Instead, we get dross like "..and the costumes were easy to put on and were very light."
What about stuff like "...and here, if you watch carefully, this guy is gonna hit his head on the door" or "oh, I remember this, Mark really screwed the pooch here and shouted out Carrie instead of Leia. We took him backstage and kicked his ass"?
Is it just me or am I wishing too much from a director's commentary??
(Admittedly, it might be different on Empire and Jedi but for the moment - Star Wars commentary = boring)
Don't get me wrong - the films are great and the main reason I went and got the DVD set. I guess I'm just being greedy and wanting more and more from a guy who has, undoubtadly, given a lot to film and cinema already.
Why can't they just make the commentary vaguely interesting? All it was about was...
".and the story of blah blah, is that because I didn't think to make it so that blah blah..."
"...the sounds of the laser sword were like that because blah blah....."
"...I didn't think to make the sequels because blah blah...."
That's all great and fine - but stick something else in there too! - you know, maybe some funny anecdotes or something that happened on the day they shot the scene or something!
Maybe something like...
"...and here, the scene with the tie-fighter, we shot that scene on the day that Joe broke his leg playing frisbee in the parking lot. Oh, how we laughed at him as he writhed in pain"
I was also hoping to get to hear about little bloopers and changes that occurred in the film - for example, the moment where the stormtrooper knocks his head on the door (I still have no idea where that is!) or the moment where Luke says 'Carrie' when he's climbing out of the X-Wing.
Instead, we get dross like "..and the costumes were easy to put on and were very light."
What about stuff like "...and here, if you watch carefully, this guy is gonna hit his head on the door" or "oh, I remember this, Mark really screwed the pooch here and shouted out Carrie instead of Leia. We took him backstage and kicked his ass"?
Is it just me or am I wishing too much from a director's commentary??
(Admittedly, it might be different on Empire and Jedi but for the moment - Star Wars commentary = boring)
Don't get me wrong - the films are great and the main reason I went and got the DVD set. I guess I'm just being greedy and wanting more and more from a guy who has, undoubtadly, given a lot to film and cinema already.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
You're wishing too much. Most director's commentaries are dull, because they're not intended to be entertaining - you can occasionally find out some interesting stuff, though, especially if you're actually interested in filmmaking.Percy said:
If you want a more interesting director's commentary, go watch an Abel Ferrara movie. Personally, I'm not a big fan of his films - but his commentaries can be highly amusing because of their general weirdness.
dextorboot
Spaceman
There are some director commentaries out there that are exactly what you're describing. Most with the funny anecdotes are lower profile movies or comedies. A few that jump out at me are Return to Me, The Last Starfighter, and Breed. In general, if you can get a commentary with some or even 1 of the actors in it, they tend to be pretty funny.