Don’t even glance at the rest of Vader’s outfit in Episode 4. As a kid, I always thought he was wearing armor. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized he was essentially in a black snowsuit with shortwave radio controls taped to his chest.
More power to you Willis. This is one of those things I agree with you on. ‘Okay, that’s how it -is-, but this is how it physically LOOKS according to everybody who has seen it.’
Though, by that right, Hitler was entirely wro-oh wait… That sorta proves the statement rather than combatting it… Oh well, then, carry on.
Before this thread of complaint gets out of hand – yes, in Episode IV before the Special Editions, they were tinted red. Kind of a dark red, might not realize there was a slight maroonish or reddish tint to them on some TV setups. But it was there. Pre-1997 copies show this.
However, in Empire Strikes Back and forwards, he had black eye-lenses. And in the 1997 Special Edition, they digitally edited the scenes in Episode IV so the eye-lenses appear black there as well. It’s a testament to how dark the original reddish tint was that I never realized any of this until it was pointed out to me and I looked back for point of comparison, though. Anyway, ever since the 1997 Special Editions, as you know, the edits made then were either kept or re-done. So the digital recolor of the lenses has existed since then, including the 2004 DVDs and the modern Blu-Ray print.
It’s an interesting point of trivia – I believe that some of the original costume idea came from thinking of insect-like eyes if I remember some of the original concept drawings correctly – but as far as changes in the Special Editions, I worry much less about this change than about things like Greedo.
Even though Lucas loathes the Holiday Special more than anyone, that’s probably the one thing I’d love to see him go back and meddle with.
Partly because it’d be nice to have him butcher his own work intentionally for a change, but mostly because I want to see if making that piece of crap worse is even possible.
At least you didn’t put Mike in this comic, Mike and Star Wars seem like a bad mix.
Hey Luke, your mother knew some Jedi Tricks too, “this is not the hole you’re looking for” she’d say. But I did it anyway, she was horrible, so she did not get her nickel. P.S. she’s dead, and your dad is evil. Go use the force.
More Ideas found in the comics that I’d pay money to see. Seriously, if Wilis actually went through with all of the crazy but awesome ideas in the comments, I’d probably be almost as in debt to him as the US is to China.
Nonono. Amber would be Leia. Faz would be Luke. Don’t you want to see funny incest jokes?…No?…Cancer Incest?
Okay, fine. Ethan would be Luke in that case. Faz can be Jabba the Hutt. I could totally see him chaining Amber up in a bikini.
Also:
Mike = Han Solo
Galasso = Darth Vader
Leslie = C3PO
Robin = R2D2
Ronnie = Obi-Wan Kenobi
Sidney Yus = Tarkin
Ninja Rick = Boba Fett
Ultra Car = The Falcon
Malaya = Jar Jar Binks
David Willis = Palpatine
Ken = Chewbacca
Okay, so I have no idea what to do with Ken. But neither do the other characters.
Faz as Jabba is perfect now that I think about it, but I still like Leslie as Luke and Robin as Leia, it fits their characters, theirs more incest jokes which are hilarious by the way, and after all, Leslie is the big Science Fiction fan, so it makes sense for her to be the main character in this.
That annoying toy guy can be Chewbacca, just replace the barking and grunts with complaining about online forums and Playschool colors.
P.S. Willis, make this idea happen, please? I’ll be your best friend! Also I will give you a Hot Shot (no innuendo intended)
Speak for yourself. I think they should go one step further with hi-def. Just make a TV with an empty space where the screen should be and have the actors inside the TV performing everything.
ever watched pro-wrestling (or any kind of wrestling for that matter) in hdtv? every wrestler has a boner by the end of the match, not something you want to see. unless your into that, in which case I highly recommend it.
Meh, I don’t really care about all this stuff about star wars. Honestly, the originals weren’t any better than the prequels in my opinion. They were all pretty simple “good v. evil” stories with failed attempts at political undertones. They also had equal amounts of good and bad effects for their times. They both had mild but noticeable amounts of racism and sexism.
Personally, I think it’s all just nostalgia biases.
You are REALLY looking for some hate aren’t you? Not from me, I can respect your opinion (or ignore it) but some people are going to get really pissed at you.
If you watch Red Letter Media’s lengthy reviews of the three prequels, starting with The Phantom Menace, he’ll make some very good points about how bad the prequals are in comparison with episodes 4,5,6.
Simply put, episodes 4,5,6 were written by people who understood the basic principles of storytelling. Episodes 1,2,3 OTOH were written by George Lucas alone.
I see Bjørn here is following the standard “just watch Red Letter Media, he’s totally right and not biased in any way” method of trying to convince people the prequels were bad.
I’ll give you that for sure.
BUT the main point the original poster missed, maybe because they were born long after they first three came out and they just don’t know any better, is that there was NOTHING out there that was even close to decent SciFi at the time. It was a double angle tangent from the norm that was Porkies and the like.
As for the FX, those were cutting edge at the time. Look at the theatrical rel;ease of Final fantasy The Movie and compare it to Avatar, then step back and look at the first TRON. All used the top of the line, at the time, computer and computer assisted animation available.
I like to pull out Fireball XL5, Captain Scarlet and the animated Captain Scarlet as prime examples of “special effects” then and now.
Oh, sure, it was revolution. No question.
Part of a few key films (2001) that pioneered very important techiques.
Motion controled cameras were a star wars first, where they moved the camera rather then the ships (=no wire work = smooth and much more realistic looking).
I wouldn’t quite say “nothing” was around however. While I’m not a fan plotwise, the original BattleStarGallatica pilot came out very close to it and also had very impressive special effects. Obviously less people saw that.
I also think you have to be far on the new trillogy though. For all the hate JarJar gets, he was probably the most impressive and well intergrated CG character at that time. Its kinda that by our day all the neat “physical” tricks have been perfected, and with CG the process is a bit more gradual, each film beating the one before normaly. (if the budgets are comparable).
Oh, and the CG Captain Scralet rocked too bad it was canceled.
Shame you bought these “re-re-re-reduxed” films. You’re contributing to the problem. Still, maybe this will encourage people to avoid it, so you can be a part of the solution.
I dunno, didnt the 97 versions have some poorly intergrated CG? I thought the latter versions actualy fixed a lot of the previous (poor) fixs.
At least from a technical perspective.
Which problem is that? The whining, self-entitled “fans” who constantly bitch and moan like petulant children about something as trivial as changes to a thirty-five-year-old movie?
It’s more the fact that A: The changes are, from a film perspective, bad. B: I’d prefer to have the original editions available, not soulley the modified editions. From a film history and filmatic point of view, they’re worthless. And C: It would take a simple digital remastery and rescan to get just as high quality a transfer for the old films as they were. Even 16mm could mach modern high-def.
Yeah, the MASSIVE multitudes of AWFUL changes the Special Editions went with totally ruined the movies. Like Greedo shooting first, and Greedo shooting first, and Greedo shooting first, or that part when Greedo shot first. Oh, and let’s not forget that part where Greedo shot first. And did I already mention that part when Greedo shot first?
There were probably a couple other changes, but that’s all you need to know. That 3-second special effect totally ruined the whole movie, man.
Why do people keep adding first to that? Greedo didn’t shoot at all in the original. Also, his shot is the only one that doesn’t leave any evidence of a shot. No scorch on the wall, no smoke, nothing. Han’s shot, smoke out the wazoo.
How about the crappy digital scream that comes and goes in ESB? Or the musical number in ROTJ? or the additional Vader “dialog” in the new release? The crappy extension of scenes to spite his ex-wife (like the now unworkable han-lea scene in ESB). The crappy new infiltration scene?
No? Then how about the new rocks, which inconsistently show up and then don’t, and seem to add nothing to the scene? Or the cheezy new sound Obiwan makes to scare away the tusken raiders? The change to EMPIRE palatine? The odd steady fire around the probe droid crater in a super-cold region? The new oddly mismatched door shots on Jaba’s palace?
The crappy new Thawing-Han scene? The CGI subulba ripoff in Jabbas palace that looks like something out of a bad PS2 Game?
Hayden christiensen in ROTJ in an addition that makes no sense given 1: the age of the others doesn’t change, and B: the character was already corrupt by the time that actor played him?
Heck, even the annoying spit from Phantom menace would have made more sense from a film perspective. At least he was from BEFORE the kid started down the road to psycho in a meaningful way.
This being noticed offhand about the blue ray transfers. The movies are WORSE under Lucas, a man whose flaws USED to be covered up by other talented people, but now out of a combination of spite towards exes and a sense of infallibility, he’s steadily unraveling them.
So yea, it ain’t about greedo’s scene, even if that was a fricking stupid change.
On that note, Greedo shooting (AT ALL!) is just one of the easier things to comment on, because
A: it’s one of the earliest
B: it happens so cheezily
C: He MISSED AT POINT BLANK RANGE
D: It does effect interpretation of Han’s character.
I like or don’t mind most of the changes. The only one that rubs me the wrong way is Han not shooting first. The rest I find kind of neat. (There’s a new thawing Han scene? It looked the same to me, and as the wife and I watched it, we wondered why he didn’t change that, because it looked kind of crappy and one of the things we would have changed. And not new kind of crappy, but “same crappy as since I was a kid” crappy. According to the Internet, apparently it IS different, but not to the point where it actually matters or I would even notice.)
(The new Jabba Palace song is awesome.)
(Also I’m happy to never hear Yub Nub again so long as I live. I never liked it.)
a) That’s not a fact, especially seeing as how you’re clearly no authority on what constitutes a quality film. b) Your personal preference is inherently irrelevant. c) Having worked in the industry for 7+ years, I’ll simply say your knowledge of the transfer process, never mind the status of those original releases, is… limited (to be polite about it).
yeah, while one or two bad changes get all the fuss, I think if people saw the original originals again (or the first poorer batch of changes) they would actualy be supprised.
A lot of it is quite sensible touch up and fixs.
Leslie’s complaining about the banged-up condition of Vader’s helmet? I thought the point of the SW universe was that it wasn’t all prestine and shiny. If Vader’s been wearing that helmet for 18 years, of course it’s gonna look banged up and scratched (neverminding he’s probably replaced them once a year or something).
There’s a context issue at work here. Vader’s helmet is supposed to look new and shiny. He represents the ruling class. The top of the empire. They’re supposed to be the bastards hogging all the best stuff. That’s why he’s walking around on polished, shiny floors surrounded by pearly-white, shiny stormtroopers.
You know, maybe High Deffinition is overratted. I mean, is Back to the Future any beter if you could see the penny in the JC Penny parking lot that one of the stagehands dropped?
you know, i once read about a study which proved that if you got a normal tv and told someone it was HD, then not only would they belive you but would also comment on how good the images were compared to an identical “non-HD” tv.
Also wrong, I have a HDTV, I think it’s overrated (least it’s a decent size I suppose.) But then again I’m a gamer who doesn’t give a crap about graphics as long as I can tell what I’m looking at.
No, I’m the same.
Also the difference is hugely exadurated anyway – colour,saturation and contrast have a bigger,better, image impact for me then resolution.
Well, in motion of course. Still or slow moving stuff HD makes more impact.
I considered buying the blu-ray edition of the original trilogy but it was actually the fear of something like this that made me decide against it – well, that and knowing George Lucas tinkered with it AGAIN. Some things just don’t look good in HD. HD purists will probably disagree with me on this, but sometimes SD is enough.
Of course, it’s inevitable that this was never going to be the “definitive” edition. Among other omissions, the original theatrical releases aren’t in the blu-ray set. It’s only a matter of time before he goes back over these and replaces the scene with a CGI Darth, I suppose.
It is borderline intolerable the number of half-assed changes he’s already made to the trilogy before fixing stuff like this, though.
Anything shot on film IS shot in HD. Film is HD. So something shot on film decades ago is shot in HD, while something shot a few years agon digitally could either be HD or SD, depending on which they shot it in.
Shhhhh! Don’t give Lucas any Ideas! He’ll put that in the Super Extra Extra special editons of Star Wars he’s planning to release in five years! Seriously, Lucas releases TOO many versions of Star Wars in his efforts to keep himself relevant.
If he’s such a great filmmaker he should try his hand at a different character. He really hasn’t done anything original since 1986. It’s like after Howard the Duck failed he stopped taking risks and exploring how far he could go with film.
The prequel films were some of the flattest stories I’ve ever seen. Told from a the dry historical perspective of a documentary. They didn’t have the engaging story or characters of the original trilogy. Lucas really is good at special effects, but his storytelling has fallen completely apart.
I have like 3 movies on BD and DVD (that I bought separately) two 80′s movies and one was recent. The worst one? The recent release. It was just the movie, no commentary or extras. The 80′s ones all had at least one commentary track and someone decrying some horrible effect shots they wish they’d fixed before making this release.
If you have a HDTV, you can pretty much pass on the BD version of anything released before 2000, as they were unlikely to be significantly better than the DVD unless the studio went to lengths to remaster it.
A lot of early blurays used Mpeg2 ccompression as well, which was so outdated and ineffiecient as to be crazy.
You could actualy stick a Mp4(or Divx/Xvid) stream on a DVD and beat the quality of some early blurays
I’d much rather see costume seams, poor makeup, and wires, than see a screen full of compression artifacts, edge enhancement halos, crushed blacks, or banding.
THIS!!!! I feel as though I’m watching a bunch of actors run around in front of me in a studio carrying props. I mean that’s exactly what’s happening but the movie-filter-suspension-of-disbelief-factor is missing. I see reflections of crew members, hand prints, a coffee cup waaaay in the back which normally would look like a white blob BUT NOW I CAN READ IT SAYS STARBUCKS ON IT. Crap like that destroys movies for me and I can’t stand watching bluray for that reason.
If you think that’s bad, wait for blu-ray porn… If you can lose interest in star-wars, just imagine what that’ll do to sex. It’ll be just like those horrid sex ed movies back in high-school crossed with driver’s ed. I don’t know how many of the kids these days were subjected to the movies in either class, but it’s gotta be nightmare fuel.
I am like of looking forward to blu-ray porn, I figure it will be either pretty good, or so bad that it will be good, win-win either way. And I am can’t wait for modern 3-D porn.
Because it is.
I always did think the helmet used for Vader nowadays was suspiciously shinier…
The Helmet for Revenge of the Sith was computer designed and produced so it was more symmetrical, and you know… shiny.
Now the illusion is killed.
DAMN YOU WILLIS. DAMN YOU STAR TREK.
Don’t even glance at the rest of Vader’s outfit in Episode 4. As a kid, I always thought he was wearing armor. It wasn’t until many years later that I realized he was essentially in a black snowsuit with shortwave radio controls taped to his chest.
Star TREK??? Is this a sarcastic comment?
Just to be the anal guy, I feel I should point out that Vader’s eyelenses in Episode IV were red, thus rendering this comic invalid.
They don’t *appear* red in the screenshot I was working from.
They were tinted red. I’ll see if I can find a screenshot or something to back that claim up, but I do recall them being tinted Red.
I don’t doubt they were tinted red, and it’s one of those bits of trivia I’m aware of, but in the scene I was copying, they did not appear red.
Fair enough. DAMMIT, WILLIS, YOU MADE ME SQUANDER MY “I get to be right about something!!” FOR THE DAY.
More power to you Willis. This is one of those things I agree with you on. ‘Okay, that’s how it -is-, but this is how it physically LOOKS according to everybody who has seen it.’
Though, by that right, Hitler was entirely wro-oh wait… That sorta proves the statement rather than combatting it… Oh well, then, carry on.
Before this thread of complaint gets out of hand – yes, in Episode IV before the Special Editions, they were tinted red. Kind of a dark red, might not realize there was a slight maroonish or reddish tint to them on some TV setups. But it was there. Pre-1997 copies show this.
However, in Empire Strikes Back and forwards, he had black eye-lenses. And in the 1997 Special Edition, they digitally edited the scenes in Episode IV so the eye-lenses appear black there as well. It’s a testament to how dark the original reddish tint was that I never realized any of this until it was pointed out to me and I looked back for point of comparison, though. Anyway, ever since the 1997 Special Editions, as you know, the edits made then were either kept or re-done. So the digital recolor of the lenses has existed since then, including the 2004 DVDs and the modern Blu-Ray print.
It’s an interesting point of trivia – I believe that some of the original costume idea came from thinking of insect-like eyes if I remember some of the original concept drawings correctly – but as far as changes in the Special Editions, I worry much less about this change than about things like Greedo.
Marvel Comics Vader was sometimes drawn with red eyes.
Blu-Ray is like fluro lights, they show up ALL the flaws.
Maskne!
Don’t the CLONE WARS feature and the two EWOKS features count enough? And what about the HOLIDAY SPECIAL?
Even though Lucas loathes the Holiday Special more than anyone, that’s probably the one thing I’d love to see him go back and meddle with.
Partly because it’d be nice to have him butcher his own work intentionally for a change, but mostly because I want to see if making that piece of crap worse is even possible.
I want to see if making that piece of crap worse is even possible.
Thanks, Schala. Now we’ll have parallel galaxies and timeline-shifted Wookie clones running around.
*realizes he should explain that it’s a Chrono Cross reference, but decides not to*
If he made any changes to that awful piece of crap, they would most definitely be for the better.
Nah, he’d probably replace Bea Arthur with Hayden Christensen.
At least you didn’t put Mike in this comic, Mike and Star Wars seem like a bad mix.
Hey Luke, your mother knew some Jedi Tricks too, “this is not the hole you’re looking for” she’d say. But I did it anyway, she was horrible, so she did not get her nickel. P.S. she’s dead, and your dad is evil. Go use the force.
He’d be more interesting than Obi-Wan in the role of mentor, though.
There’s an idea, maybe Willis should do a Star Wars special, Characters as the cast etc.? If Family Guy can do it, so can Willis.
Leslie as Han Solo and Robin as Leia would be a pretty interesting mix.
More Ideas found in the comics that I’d pay money to see. Seriously, if Wilis actually went through with all of the crazy but awesome ideas in the comments, I’d probably be almost as in debt to him as the US is to China.
…almost.
Nonono. Amber would be Leia. Faz would be Luke. Don’t you want to see funny incest jokes?…No?…Cancer Incest?
Okay, fine. Ethan would be Luke in that case. Faz can be Jabba the Hutt. I could totally see him chaining Amber up in a bikini.
Also:
Mike = Han Solo
Galasso = Darth Vader
Leslie = C3PO
Robin = R2D2
Ronnie = Obi-Wan Kenobi
Sidney Yus = Tarkin
Ninja Rick = Boba Fett
Ultra Car = The Falcon
Malaya = Jar Jar Binks
David Willis = Palpatine
Ken = Chewbacca
Okay, so I have no idea what to do with Ken. But neither do the other characters.
i would kill/pay/sell my organs (choose one) to see ninja rick as boba fett.
You’d kill your organs?
What would you pay them? I find the concept of paying one’s organs very intriguing.
Faz as Jabba is perfect now that I think about it, but I still like Leslie as Luke and Robin as Leia, it fits their characters, theirs more incest jokes which are hilarious by the way, and after all, Leslie is the big Science Fiction fan, so it makes sense for her to be the main character in this.
That annoying toy guy can be Chewbacca, just replace the barking and grunts with complaining about online forums and Playschool colors.
P.S. Willis, make this idea happen, please? I’ll be your best friend! Also I will give you a Hot Shot (no innuendo intended)
Mike liked Vader in It’s Walky, he wanted to choke people.
HD. Sometimes we don’t want to see every detail.
Speak for yourself. I think they should go one step further with hi-def. Just make a TV with an empty space where the screen should be and have the actors inside the TV performing everything.
They already have that. It’s called “Broadway.”
He’ll be here all week, ladies and gents! Try the veal!
Somehow, I can never afford the HD seats.
or the veal.
ever watched pro-wrestling (or any kind of wrestling for that matter) in hdtv? every wrestler has a boner by the end of the match, not something you want to see. unless your into that, in which case I highly recommend it.
Meh, I don’t really care about all this stuff about star wars. Honestly, the originals weren’t any better than the prequels in my opinion. They were all pretty simple “good v. evil” stories with failed attempts at political undertones. They also had equal amounts of good and bad effects for their times. They both had mild but noticeable amounts of racism and sexism.
Personally, I think it’s all just nostalgia biases.
You are REALLY looking for some hate aren’t you? Not from me, I can respect your opinion (or ignore it) but some people are going to get really pissed at you.
Racism? I suppose in the sense that they only had one black dude, but he was Billy Dee Williams, who is worth 10 of any normal man.
Unless you mean the fact that the Empire seems to be staffed entirely by Brits…
Don’t forget that Darth Vader himself was voiced by James Earl Jones!
If you watch Red Letter Media’s lengthy reviews of the three prequels, starting with The Phantom Menace, he’ll make some very good points about how bad the prequals are in comparison with episodes 4,5,6.
Simply put, episodes 4,5,6 were written by people who understood the basic principles of storytelling. Episodes 1,2,3 OTOH were written by George Lucas alone.
Whatever happened to the Episodes 7, 8 & 9 that were supposed to be made?
I happened to them. You can thank me later.
I seem to recall reading rumblings that Lucas is still interested somewhat in doing them.
Honestly, I figure that’s why he’s releasing them in 3D theatrically – so he can get the money to bankroll new Star Wars films.
I see Bjørn here is following the standard “just watch Red Letter Media, he’s totally right and not biased in any way” method of trying to convince people the prequels were bad.
Theres a simple difference; The originals had Harrison Ford.
Chessy or poorly written lines when said by him become charming lines.
I’ll give you that for sure.
BUT the main point the original poster missed, maybe because they were born long after they first three came out and they just don’t know any better, is that there was NOTHING out there that was even close to decent SciFi at the time. It was a double angle tangent from the norm that was Porkies and the like.
As for the FX, those were cutting edge at the time. Look at the theatrical rel;ease of Final fantasy The Movie and compare it to Avatar, then step back and look at the first TRON. All used the top of the line, at the time, computer and computer assisted animation available.
I like to pull out Fireball XL5, Captain Scarlet and the animated Captain Scarlet as prime examples of “special effects” then and now.
Oh, sure, it was revolution. No question.
Part of a few key films (2001) that pioneered very important techiques.
Motion controled cameras were a star wars first, where they moved the camera rather then the ships (=no wire work = smooth and much more realistic looking).
I wouldn’t quite say “nothing” was around however. While I’m not a fan plotwise, the original BattleStarGallatica pilot came out very close to it and also had very impressive special effects. Obviously less people saw that.
I also think you have to be far on the new trillogy though. For all the hate JarJar gets, he was probably the most impressive and well intergrated CG character at that time. Its kinda that by our day all the neat “physical” tricks have been perfected, and with CG the process is a bit more gradual, each film beating the one before normaly. (if the budgets are comparable).
Oh, and the CG Captain Scralet rocked
too bad it was canceled.
Shame you bought these “re-re-re-reduxed” films. You’re contributing to the problem. Still, maybe this will encourage people to avoid it, so you can be a part of the solution.
You sound like Hitler.
Well, it’s been known that Hitler is not happy about the Star Wars Blu-Ray releases.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_2GHlCUmCk
That was hilarious.
I was hoping the blu-ray would be the original, unaltered versions or at least the special editions from ’97…
But it seems like we’ll never get the original versions.
So, then you agree with me.
I dunno, didnt the 97 versions have some poorly intergrated CG? I thought the latter versions actualy fixed a lot of the previous (poor) fixs.
At least from a technical perspective.
Let me put it this way:
Get rid of one problem, add around 12.
I said solution. Not “final Solution”.
What.
Which problem is that? The whining, self-entitled “fans” who constantly bitch and moan like petulant children about something as trivial as changes to a thirty-five-year-old movie?
It’s more the fact that A: The changes are, from a film perspective, bad. B: I’d prefer to have the original editions available, not soulley the modified editions. From a film history and filmatic point of view, they’re worthless. And C: It would take a simple digital remastery and rescan to get just as high quality a transfer for the old films as they were. Even 16mm could mach modern high-def.
Yeah, the MASSIVE multitudes of AWFUL changes the Special Editions went with totally ruined the movies. Like Greedo shooting first, and Greedo shooting first, and Greedo shooting first, or that part when Greedo shot first. Oh, and let’s not forget that part where Greedo shot first. And did I already mention that part when Greedo shot first?
There were probably a couple other changes, but that’s all you need to know. That 3-second special effect totally ruined the whole movie, man.
Why do people keep adding first to that? Greedo didn’t shoot at all in the original. Also, his shot is the only one that doesn’t leave any evidence of a shot. No scorch on the wall, no smoke, nothing. Han’s shot, smoke out the wazoo.
How about the crappy digital scream that comes and goes in ESB? Or the musical number in ROTJ? or the additional Vader “dialog” in the new release? The crappy extension of scenes to spite his ex-wife (like the now unworkable han-lea scene in ESB). The crappy new infiltration scene?
No? Then how about the new rocks, which inconsistently show up and then don’t, and seem to add nothing to the scene? Or the cheezy new sound Obiwan makes to scare away the tusken raiders? The change to EMPIRE palatine? The odd steady fire around the probe droid crater in a super-cold region? The new oddly mismatched door shots on Jaba’s palace?
The crappy new Thawing-Han scene? The CGI subulba ripoff in Jabbas palace that looks like something out of a bad PS2 Game?
Hayden christiensen in ROTJ in an addition that makes no sense given 1: the age of the others doesn’t change, and B: the character was already corrupt by the time that actor played him?
Heck, even the annoying spit from Phantom menace would have made more sense from a film perspective. At least he was from BEFORE the kid started down the road to psycho in a meaningful way.
This being noticed offhand about the blue ray transfers. The movies are WORSE under Lucas, a man whose flaws USED to be covered up by other talented people, but now out of a combination of spite towards exes and a sense of infallibility, he’s steadily unraveling them.
So yea, it ain’t about greedo’s scene, even if that was a fricking stupid change.
On that note, Greedo shooting (AT ALL!) is just one of the easier things to comment on, because
A: it’s one of the earliest
B: it happens so cheezily
C: He MISSED AT POINT BLANK RANGE
D: It does effect interpretation of Han’s character.
I like or don’t mind most of the changes. The only one that rubs me the wrong way is Han not shooting first. The rest I find kind of neat. (There’s a new thawing Han scene? It looked the same to me, and as the wife and I watched it, we wondered why he didn’t change that, because it looked kind of crappy and one of the things we would have changed. And not new kind of crappy, but “same crappy as since I was a kid” crappy. According to the Internet, apparently it IS different, but not to the point where it actually matters or I would even notice.)
(The new Jabba Palace song is awesome.)
(Also I’m happy to never hear Yub Nub again so long as I live. I never liked it.)
a) That’s not a fact, especially seeing as how you’re clearly no authority on what constitutes a quality film. b) Your personal preference is inherently irrelevant. c) Having worked in the industry for 7+ years, I’ll simply say your knowledge of the transfer process, never mind the status of those original releases, is… limited (to be polite about it).
As soon as i have the money I’m buying the set. I WANT the changes, since they, you know, make the movies BETTER.
Better like a brick to the head…
yeah, while one or two bad changes get all the fuss, I think if people saw the original originals again (or the first poorer batch of changes) they would actualy be supprised.
A lot of it is quite sensible touch up and fixs.
Leslie’s complaining about the banged-up condition of Vader’s helmet? I thought the point of the SW universe was that it wasn’t all prestine and shiny. If Vader’s been wearing that helmet for 18 years, of course it’s gonna look banged up and scratched (neverminding he’s probably replaced them once a year or something).
Yes, I’m inclined to agree — a lot of what contributed to the realistic feel of the environment in the first movies was that the robots were grungy.
There’s a context issue at work here. Vader’s helmet is supposed to look new and shiny. He represents the ruling class. The top of the empire. They’re supposed to be the bastards hogging all the best stuff. That’s why he’s walking around on polished, shiny floors surrounded by pearly-white, shiny stormtroopers.
Pearly white stormtroopers…what does that make me think of?
Nothing.
What if they were infiltrating the Death Star, racing to get to the core?
Nope, still nothing.
You know, maybe High Deffinition is overratted. I mean, is Back to the Future any beter if you could see the penny in the JC Penny parking lot that one of the stagehands dropped?
The only people who say hi-def is overrated are the ones who have not yet experienced the amazingness of a nice big HDTV.
I have. Hi def is Overrated. mind you it’s wonderful, but it’s overrated.
Or, you know, people who just don’t care about that sort of thing. Yeah. It’s overrated.
I’ve experienced a huge HDTV, and it’s overrated. A good story is a good story and a turd is a turd regardless of how pretty you make it look.
As Mythbusters has confirmed, you CAN polish a Turd, but it will still smell the same.
my first experience with hi-def was watching the news at my brother’s house. it was horrifying.
you know, i once read about a study which proved that if you got a normal tv and told someone it was HD, then not only would they belive you but would also comment on how good the images were compared to an identical “non-HD” tv.
crazy stuff.
It’s not that they haven’t experienced a nice HDTV; it’s that they can’t afford a nice HDTV of their own.
Also wrong, I have a HDTV, I think it’s overrated (least it’s a decent size I suppose.) But then again I’m a gamer who doesn’t give a crap about graphics as long as I can tell what I’m looking at.
So maybe you’re fussy about these things?
Or maybe you should schedule an appointment with an optometrist.
I say it’s overrated for anything but sports. And yes, I have seen it. I still prefer regular tv in non-hd.
…and for all these years, I thought it was made out of plastic.
ehehehe.
I am one of those people who thinks HD might not be such a good idea sometimes… but maybe I am just backwards.
It’s a good idea if you want a TV bigger than 37″ without everyone looking like a blurry mess.
And to be fair, it would have looked exactly the same in the cinema.
No, I’m the same.
Also the difference is hugely exadurated anyway – colour,saturation and contrast have a bigger,better, image impact for me then resolution.
Well, in motion of course. Still or slow moving stuff HD makes more impact.
Apparently, he doesn’t give “good helmet”!
I choise to stay away from the Star Wars blu-rays so not to have my childhood memories further ruined
I considered buying the blu-ray edition of the original trilogy but it was actually the fear of something like this that made me decide against it – well, that and knowing George Lucas tinkered with it AGAIN. Some things just don’t look good in HD. HD purists will probably disagree with me on this, but sometimes SD is enough.
The problem isn’t HD as such, the problem is the extra detail revealed in film scenes that really weren’t designed to be seen that way.
If it’s shot in HD, it usually looks good in it.
Now, 3D…
Of course, it’s inevitable that this was never going to be the “definitive” edition. Among other omissions, the original theatrical releases aren’t in the blu-ray set. It’s only a matter of time before he goes back over these and replaces the scene with a CGI Darth, I suppose.
It is borderline intolerable the number of half-assed changes he’s already made to the trilogy before fixing stuff like this, though.
…. is Dr. Tongue’s 3D House of [fill in this blank at your peril]
Er, the film was shot on a medium with roughly 4K x 4K resolution for projection onto a 20 foot high screen.
Anything shot on film IS shot in HD. Film is HD. So something shot on film decades ago is shot in HD, while something shot a few years agon digitally could either be HD or SD, depending on which they shot it in.
I guess Lucas could have gone in a nd touched up the helmet by replacing Vader with aCGI version.
Shhhhh! Don’t give Lucas any Ideas! He’ll put that in the Super Extra Extra special editons of Star Wars he’s planning to release in five years! Seriously, Lucas releases TOO many versions of Star Wars in his efforts to keep himself relevant.
If he’s such a great filmmaker he should try his hand at a different character. He really hasn’t done anything original since 1986. It’s like after Howard the Duck failed he stopped taking risks and exploring how far he could go with film.
The prequel films were some of the flattest stories I’ve ever seen. Told from a the dry historical perspective of a documentary. They didn’t have the engaging story or characters of the original trilogy. Lucas really is good at special effects, but his storytelling has fallen completely apart.
I am waiting for when Lucas redoes “American Graffiti”. Take out all the cars and replace them with CGI cars.
I actually liked Howard the Duck, however, I had read the comics before the movie came out.
http://xkcd.com/732/
I have like 3 movies on BD and DVD (that I bought separately) two 80′s movies and one was recent. The worst one? The recent release. It was just the movie, no commentary or extras. The 80′s ones all had at least one commentary track and someone decrying some horrible effect shots they wish they’d fixed before making this release.
If you have a HDTV, you can pretty much pass on the BD version of anything released before 2000, as they were unlikely to be significantly better than the DVD unless the studio went to lengths to remaster it.
A lot of early blurays used Mpeg2 ccompression as well, which was so outdated and ineffiecient as to be crazy.
You could actualy stick a Mp4(or Divx/Xvid) stream on a DVD and beat the quality of some early blurays
I thank whatever deity there is that I managed to get a dvd boxset of the 1997 versions that came with the original unedited versions as well.
Do not HD tihngs that weren’t filmed for HD!
/flail
I’d much rather see costume seams, poor makeup, and wires, than see a screen full of compression artifacts, edge enhancement halos, crushed blacks, or banding.
With all the changes Lucas has made to Star Wars years from now people will be amazed by the special effects they had in the Seventies.
THIS!!!! I feel as though I’m watching a bunch of actors run around in front of me in a studio carrying props. I mean that’s exactly what’s happening but the movie-filter-suspension-of-disbelief-factor is missing. I see reflections of crew members, hand prints, a coffee cup waaaay in the back which normally would look like a white blob BUT NOW I CAN READ IT SAYS STARBUCKS ON IT. Crap like that destroys movies for me and I can’t stand watching bluray for that reason.
If you think that’s bad, wait for blu-ray porn… If you can lose interest in star-wars, just imagine what that’ll do to sex. It’ll be just like those horrid sex ed movies back in high-school crossed with driver’s ed. I don’t know how many of the kids these days were subjected to the movies in either class, but it’s gotta be nightmare fuel.
I am like of looking forward to blu-ray porn, I figure it will be either pretty good, or so bad that it will be good, win-win either way. And I am can’t wait for modern 3-D porn.
George Lucas: Ruining your Childhood joys one New Edition DVD at a time.
You know, I got since quite a few months the idea for a Episode V parody, in which Mike replaces Vader in you-know-which scene.
Mike: “Obi Wan never told you what happened to your mom.”
Luke: “He told me enough! He tol- wait what?!”
Mike: “I banged your mom.”
Or something like that. Imagine it just 100% more funny.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!
Somethings weren’t meant to be in Hi Def
Just a note:
Humans don’t see in HD.
Flys do….
You can, if you must, still find the Laser disks…