Star Wars: The Complete Saga (1977-2005)

[fat_rancor_keeper]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think George said at some point that he specifically made the change so that Han would be seen as less of a cold blooded killer?

Now the story is it was shot in closeups and was confusing but Greedo always shot?

Um no...lol.

There was never any "confusion" from any fans that I can recall prior to 97. The controversy came after the poorly done hack job.

lol whatever man.

[Chordata]

Originally Posted by fat_rancor_keeper

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think George said at some point that he specifically made the change so that Han would be seen as less of a cold blooded killer?

Now the story is it was shot in closeups and was confusing but Greedo always shot?

Um no...lol.

There was never any "confusion" from any fans that I can recall prior to 97. The controversy came after the poorly done hack job.

lol whatever man.

I remember that, too....maybe it was just a rumor. Who knows. I love Star Wars, but if one thing is certain, it's that George changes his mind a lot -- this goes for his movies, his interview answers, etc.

[chip75]

The whole Han/Greedo thing is just a debacle, now George says Greedo always meant to shoot first? He couldn't write that down? Was pencil and paper technology not advanced enough?

Maybe it's the nice lady who typed out the scripts fault? I'm surprised he hasn't blamed it on Marcia! Looking at the new version I don't even think the dialogue makes much sense now, before it was blatantly clear that Han Solo was going to kill Greedo and I think in the original he shot him under the table not over the table (where his gun doesn't really point) and why do the laser blasts bounce off things? Maybe Greedo was going for a bit of laser ping-pong hoping to shoot Han in the back of his head?

I don't know why Lucas even mentioned it it seems like he's trying to be provocative. It feels like he's saying the film wasn't edited properly in 1977 even though it one Oscars for the editors involved!

[Chordata]

Right now, Rick McCallum is somewhere creating a fake, 1975-looking script that has Greedo shooting first.

[fat_rancor_keeper]

That is another problem with what he's saying....he's implying it was a faulty editing issue that "confused" people. LoL, Okay so Greedo (a sinister bounty hunter) was simply always supposed to shot and miss from a few feet away.



Well let's hope that Luke wasn't always supposed to see 3 suns on Tattoine.

[Chordata]

If George actually understood what confuses people, he'd have completely changed the PT by now.

[Dynamo of Eternia]

Originally Posted by Jay444

I don't think they will do much to fix the effects in the 3D versions. I pretty sure they will use the same masters as the blu rays as the general consensus at Lucas Film is 'they are good enough.' (at least according to Rick "yes man" McCallum). So, I don't see them putting much effort into this.

I think we learned A LOT about how Lucas feels about this series from his interviews around the release of Red Tails. He feels just as negatively about the fan base as the fans feel about him (not everyone hates him, but he feels that we all do from the sounds of things). The 3D is just a final cash in, nothing more, nothing less.

And it is a sad state of affairs. Yes, there is a lot of backlash against many decisions that he has made over the years (and IMO much of it is deserved). Yes, there are some people who do take it WAY too far (i.e. spamming his daughter's Twitter account, wishing terrible things upon Lucas, etc.) But for the most part the people who don't like what he's done simply express how they feel about these things. Obviously Star Wars is still has plenty of love behind it as well... just look at how well the Blu-Ray set sold.

I do find Lucas's comments in that article interesting, as he's not only aware of the backlash (which I know he has been to some extent), but I'm assuming he must have spent some decent time reading the things that people were saying, and getting into the 'nitty gritty' of it all.

I find this interesting because really, we don't get much insight into Lucas's actual thoughts on things very often. For example, back in 1997 there were interviews and featurettes (some of which ended up on the Special Edition VHS tapes) of him explaining how he felt the OT was incomplete and wanted to go back and "finish it". But after that, when he made these additional changes since that time, we didn't get any real insight into it. Granted, sure, we can likely infer the reasoning behind a lot of it (even if many of us don't agree with it), but he has really been largely silent on things. It must have gotten to him, though. I bet it's probably a bit part of the reason why within the last year or two or so they completely got rid of the message board forums on the official starwars.com site.

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

You mean Rick "I do what my boss tells me to do" McCallum. I suppose the producers who let Ridley Scott, Kubrick, James Cameron, Spielberg, etc. proceed exactly as their vision dictates are just stupid "yes" men in your book.

Originally Posted by Jay444

Dude, McCallum is a poor producer that just allowed George to do whatever he wanted with the films. Are you trying to tell me that someone else in McCallum's role couldn't have made the PT better? C'mon man, George needed to be challenged on his ideas. When George has team of people working WITH him and not FOR him, he is one of the best creative film talents ever.

When some are emotional, such as George certainly currently sounds, they make poor decisions. I did not say I wished any ill will upon Mr. Lucas (you should read the whole post), but I feel he should just walk away from Star Wars as he doesn't feel good about the series/fans anymore. You only focused on the one part of my post that upset you. Much like how Lucas currently views the vast majority of his fan base. He concentrates soley on the negative, and with that attitude he is getting destructive.

Yeah, I (of course) agree with Jay444.

While I haven't seen most of his recent work (as most of it just hasn't caught my interest enough to want to see it), I have a lot of respect for how Robert Zemeckis describes his creative process on the new documentaries on the Back to the Future Trilogy Blu-Ray set.

He explains how he colaborated on the stories with Bob Gale (who ultimately wrote them), and the idea was that they would check their egos at the door and all ideas were up for questioning and debate, and it wasn't to "win", but it was all in the interest of making the movie as good as it could possibly be. Zemeckis also explains how tries to surround himself with people who will challenge him for this very reason.

To the best I can tell, Lucas has largely been the opposite of that... especially in during the process of making the Special Editions and prequels. And he is in a position now (and has been for some time) where for the most part no one who works for him would dare to cross him or question him. I think that was less true during the OT days... even on TESB and ROTJ. With the original movie (ANH), he of course hadn't established himself and had a lot of people kind of watching over him and helping to make the movie what it could be. While ANH was very successful, it was still too recent at the times of making the sequels for him to have the "legendary" status that he had by the mid to late 90s. Plus many of the people working with him on those sequels (especially TESB) were the same people who worked with him on ANH, so they knew him before he became a big deal. Plus from what I understand he got rid of some of the producers that worked with him on ANH and TESB so that he (despite not being the credited director), could have more control over ROTJ.... which is often considered by many to the be worst of the OT (hmmm... go figure ).

And I agree about his own negativity being destructive. Which leads me to...

Originally Posted by fat_rancor_keeper

The main problem with the last release is that lfl had countless years to iron out issues, they claimed 3 levels of quality control and tons of "tlc" went into work on the films. I dig the blu-rays and all, but there's no denying they still have problems and no way in hell did that light saber on the falcon, the r2 rocks continuity gaffe, remaining matte boxes or anything else like that get past three levels of quality control.

Bull.

In any case I credit lfl for awesome work such as cg yoda in TPM and for finally fixing the emperor's slugs and the crossed saber blades over palps face.

But I think most people would gladly trade in blinking ewoks, added noos and krayt calls for consistent light sabers.

IMO the quality control issue goes above any beyond the last release and arguably goes all of the way back to the 1997 SE release.

A big part of the problem with many of the changes to the movies that have happened over the years is the half-assed execution of many of them. Now, I want to make this clear... while I have issues with some of the changes and like some others.... my point here with what I am saying is NOT to criticize the changes in and of themselves, but rather to critize the execution of those changes.

Let's take for example the Jabba scene in ANH. In 1997 Jabba looked pretty terrible and rather off-model. Some improvement was made in the 2004 DVD release in which he looks closer to how he should look, but something is still very "off" about him.

Now, I actually REALLY like the way Jabba looks in Episode 1. I think they did a great job with him (something that I actually find complimentary about TPM). Supposedly the Jabba put in ANH in 2004 was the same model. I don't quite buy it. Maybe he was based on that model, but something is off. For one thing his coloring is off and he looks way too green and dark (I'm not sure if this is a result of the color timing issues that started with the '04 versions... but that's assuming that the dropped the new Jabba in and then adjusted the color timing, which I doubt was the case). Another is that he just looks... 'flat' at times. I'm not sure how to explain it. For instance, all of the details, buldges, rolls, etc on his chest seem to have more actual depth to them in TPM (and I'm referring to the 2D version here), while in ANH it just looks flat to me... the same sense of depth seems to be lacking.

Then there's the biggest visual issue with this scene, which has existed in all versions to date.... the part where Han walks around Jabba. In the original filmed clip with the human Jabba, he just walks around him, not rising off of the ground.

But in all of the versions from 1997 and forward (regardless of which version of CGI Jabba is in the scene), the "special effect" of making Han lift up off the ground to step on the tail and then step back down JUST LOOKS AWFUL! Han rising up and coming back down is VERY choppy looking, he goes between being in focus and blurry throughout that bit. Seriously... next time anyone here watches that scene, focus on Han when he walks around Jabba. It's just rechid.

It really looks like that should be a 'rough cut' of what that effect should look like and not the final product. I realize that it's probably not the easiest thing to take an old filmed clip of someone and manipulate it to move in a way that wasn't part of the original filming, but with today's technology they should be able to do a better job than this. If they can make a fully CGI character like Jar Jar (as annoying as he may be) and have him as part of the main cast for an entire film, having Han walk around Jabba and have it look decent shouldn't be an impossible task.


Another similar problem is with the Greedo shooting first scene. Again, the point here is not to criticize the fact that Greedo now shoots. But rather, the execution of the scene. The biggest issue with this scene is the crappy little head bob thing that they added in digitally to Han to dodge Greedo's shot. It's obviously not a motion that Harrison Ford made during filming, and it stands out badly (Lucas seemed to really like manipulating Hans' motions for the worse with these editions for some reason). I will admit, however, that this doesn't look quite as bad on the Blu-Ray version. I don't think they actually changed the special effect, itself, at all. But they did (once again, as was previously done in 2004) further shorten the amount of time between Greedo and Han's blasts, and as such when it cuts to that particular shot, he's already in the process of making that movement, rather than him starting out being still and then making the movement. So it's not quite as jarring, but it's still not great.



Then there's stuff like adding in Hayden at the end of Jedi. From what I understand, the footage of him used was just some random cut footage shot for the prequels or something. Hayden didn't actually specifically shoot footage specifaclly for this scene as far as I understand the case to be. As such, he doesn't really seem to be naturally acting or reacting off of anything going on in the scene. I know it's just him standing there for a short time, but you would think a bit more effort than that would have been put into it.


Then there's Ian McDiarmid added in as the Emperor in TESB. Now despite the fact that I do very much want to see the UOT released, this is change that makes sense and I agree with the concept of it. The execution, however, is still questionable IMO. I'm not too thrilled with the dialogue changes, but even that's not the issue. My problem with it is that he looks exactly like Palpatine from Revenge of the Sith (probably because they just had him shoot this while in make up when filming ROTS). The problem is that Palpatine in ROTS, after his face gets all messed up from battling Mace Windu, looks a lot "fuller" in the face than he does in ROTJ. This is, of course, largely because Ian is older now, and while not being morbidly obese or anything, seems like he's probably put on a few pounds since ROTJ, and then when the make up is put on over that, he looks fuller in the face. Now, him looking this was in ROTS works because it's supposed to be well over 20 years before the events of ROTJ, so the idea that he became more of a thinner old man over the years works. But for him to look just like he does in ROTS during his appearance in TESB doesn't make sense since that's also well over 20 years after ROTS, and it would mean his look much change signifantly during the very short time that passes between TESB and ROTJ. They really should have either put him in different make up or done something to make his look for that scene (whether that would require digital manipulation or whatever) look more consistent with the look of the character in ROTJ.
(Also, while I'm not a big follower of fan edits, I have seen a clip on youtube of The Emperor in Adywan's update of TESB, and the execution is much better... it's kind of sad when people can do a better job on their home computer than what Lucas does with ILM).


Then there's other little continuity issues...

The scene in cloud city where Han and the gang first discover Darth Vader there. In all versions from '97 and forward, when they are walking down the hall leading up to the Vader reveal, all of the new effects for all of the stuff going on outside of the windows are there. But then when they open the door and we see them looking in and what should be those same windows are behind them, all of the effects are missing.

The rocks in fron of R2 in ANH on Blu-Ray... 2 issues here... how did he get back there, and why do the rocks magically disappear after he comes out and the little cave or whatever is in the background sans additional rocks?

The bigger door on Jabba's Palace in ROTJ on Blu-Ray... Why do they need such a big door for what ends up being such a small opening? And since 3PO and R2 go to one side of the door since most of the expansion was on the other side, why is the opening not centered in the middle of the door, but instead mostly off to one side? Addmittedly, this is a smaller issue compared to most, but still raises quetions.


Some of these things may seem nitpicky, but they are all examples of poor executions of the changes. It's kind of hard to take Lucas too seriously as an artist and stand up for his artistic rights when he seems to go for "good enough" and not the best that he can with all of the resources at his disposal. It's not like the guy has moderate resources available to him... he's a billionaire! If he cared that much about this, he could fix it. And I doubt that the cost would be so monumental that he wouldn't have made the money back on the Blu-Ray sales (or upcomming 3D theater sales).

It's just funny how he seems to go for mediocrity these days. Back when the OT first came out, sure it wasn't perfect, but he did the most with what he had to work with. There are flaws, but most of them can be attributed to the resources and technology available at the time. That's no longer an issue today. Now he's just doing medicore half assed work to make things "good enough" in his eyes, and to not spend more money than he absolutely has to, despite having more cash than he'll ever know what to do with. Yup, that's some solid artistic integrity there! It's funny that he's so concerned about things like studios messing with his films if they were in control of them since he seems to be making similar decisions of comprimising art to maximize profits that the studios often make.

All of this, combined with the fact that instead of fixing the color timing issues of the '04 OT release he instead just 'put a band-aid' over some of the absolute most glarring errors just shows how little he really cares about the end presentation. While he has issues with the fans that criticize him, I'm not even sure how much he cares about the fans that love him, praise him, and support him in most endevors, including the changes. He seems more interested in making things "good enough" to appeal to everyday random people who only watch the movies once in a while and have no real knowledge or eye to notice the changes or problems. He goes for the lowest common denomenator rather than the people who are enthusiastic in one way or another. And I think this has just gradually gotten worse over the years as the negativity has gotten to him (hence there being a few little changes with minor continuity errors on the Blu-Ray that weren't needed but at least could have been executed better). Wow, what an awesome, thoughful artist.

It would be nice if he were to fix some of these issues by the time the OT comes out in 3D since those are still a few years off, but I doubt that will happen.

Originally Posted by Jay444

Hopefully no one shows up for TPM 3D (unlikely I know, but I can dream) and then these films will be properly shelved and not seen again until George has passed. I don't say that to be negative about the man or wishing any ill event upon him. But honestly, the way he has talked about the films/fans makes me think it could only get more destructive from here as his attitude is poor. It just is upsetting that he cannot see things from perspective (i.e. like Spielberg). Its his way or the high way.

It will probably rake in tons of money. Honestly I was debating on going to see it. Despite it being the SW film that BY FAR I like the least, it has some cool moments here and there and I was curious to see it in 3D on the big screen. But from some things I read today in a thread in the 3D movies section here on this site, it sounds like the 3D conversion isn't all that great. So, it's at least sounding like this is just another example of medicority brought to us by George Lucas.

[Chordata]

That is an excellent post, and I'll apologize in advance for the amounts of and you're going to get from some people...

[Dynamo of Eternia]

Originally Posted by Chordata

If George actually understood what confuses people, he'd have completely changed the PT by now.

The problem, though, is this. Assuming that he even recognizes what many perceive to be problems with the films and would even want to change some of those aspects of the PT (which I doubt that he does), there's probably not much that he can do about it.

The OT changes, for the most part, have been largely visual. Very little has occurred in the way of dialogue changes, short of swapping out a line here or there for a slightly different alternate recording that already existed or something like that. The exceptions to this being things like the replacement of the Emperor in TESB and the new dialouge that came with it, but that was a new recording added in at the time.

Many of the confusing or otherwise commonly disliked aspects of the PT are embedded within dialogue and the like. CGI won't do crap to fix that. He can't swap that out with completely alternate, less confusing dialogue if no such dialogue was ever recorded.

He can't really reshoot an existing scene (or additional scenes) or rerecord dialogue now. For one thing I doubt that he would want to spend the money that would be needed to make that happen. The actors are all older now, so additional filming would be out of the question. And even rerecording dialogue could be costly and would require the actors to agree to do it. And that would only work anyway for any actors who still sound the same (i.e. they couldn't do this for any of Jake Lloyd's lines).

[fat_rancor_keeper]

Dynamo of Eternia I agree 100% with your detailed post. Every SE point you touched on I've thought about as well.

If GL would insure that ILM execute his changes and tweaks thoroughly and with care than I'd support that. Also, I would guess many other fans would at least be more willing to consider the changes if they were executed properly as well.

But when work is done half-assed or with the "good enough" mindset it's very obvious.

A can of worms was opened in 97 and that's 100% on GL. Prior to that year nobody was ever asking for SW to be modernized or updated. But all the same - if you are going to do something - do it right or don't do it at all.

If you are going to claim 3 levels of QC and "tlc" then when I watch my blu-ray set I hope/expect matte boxes are gone, light sabers are consistent, color timing is accurate, audio and music are flawless....etc.........

Obviously the last thing I expect to see is NEW issues and problems mixed in with ancient problems.

PS: If I were GL or worked at ILM and saw Adywan's ESBR Palpatine which matches ROTJ Palpatine I'd be ashamed of myself.

Adywans - The Empire Strikes back: Revisited - The Emperors new holo. - YouTube

^ This is what the blu rays should look like. Now that's "tlc".

[Stinky-Dinkins]

Originally Posted by chip75

The whole Han/Greedo thing is just a debacle, now George says Greedo always meant to shoot first? He couldn't write that down? Was pencil and paper technology not advanced enough?

Yahahaha. It's almost to the point where it's parody now, it's sad if anything.

[JamesKurtovich]

Poor Jar Jar. Nobody wants his merchandise. Maybe some of the PT fans here want to buy some?

http://www.theonion.com/articles/80-...w-70-perc,706/

I'm going to see TPM in 3D tomorrow, anyone else going?

[Stinky-Dinkins]

That's actually a picture of Beast's basement.

[JamesKurtovich]

Originally Posted by Stinky-Dinkins

That's actually a picture of Beast's basement.

I was going to say, "Maybe Beast wants to buy some?" But I didn't want to name names.

[Dynamo of Eternia]

Originally Posted by fat_rancor_keeper

A can of worms was opened in 97 and that's 100% on GL. Prior to that year nobody was ever asking for SW to be modernized or updated. But all the same - if you are going to do something - do it right or don't do it at all.

I of course largely agree.

To slightly come to Lucas's defense though, some of the problems that I mentioned earlier that existed in the 1997 version (crappy CGI Jabba, Han looking like crap when stepping on the tail, Han's bad looking head-bob during the Greedo scene) I can kind of excuse at the time since a lot of this was largely experimental at the time. All of this then-relatively new technology was at their disposal, and they were kind of taking it out for a test run before making the PT by trying to add in things that Lucas couldn't do years beforehand.

So with that being the case, I can kind of excuse that to some degree, since it kind of might have been the case of him reasonably getting what he could out of the technology at the time since it was kind of new territory. And had he just decided to leave the films as-is after that for future releases, while I'm sure some criticism would still exist (i.e. leaving that initial crappy CGI Jabba in there), at least there would have been an excuse if he wanted to make the changes and updates a one time thing.

But the DVD release release came out after 2 prequels were in the can and the third was in progress (and the BD release came out years after that). And since additional changes and tweaks were happening anyway, there's no reason that some of the other problematic issues shouldn't have been fixed (and there's no reason that the 2004 ANH Jabba updat shouldn't have looked better). Even if he wants to blame it on the supposed rush job that they did to get the DVDs released, then he had PLENTY of time to get all of this right with the Blu-Ray set. But, he didn't fix most of these issues and just added more half-assed changes instead.

Granted, yes, there's some changes that I don't like and am not thrilled about and would feel that way regardless... but when the execution is bad, it just adds insult to injury. I may not like the fact that Greedo shoots, but if it at least looked natural and not like a badly added effect when Han dodges the blast, it would be more tolerable.

[svenge]

Originally Posted by JamesKurtovich

I'm going to see TPM in 3D tomorrow, anyone else going?

<<crickets>>

[fat_rancor_keeper]

http://news.moviefone.com/mike-ryan/...ust_reloaded=1

[Stinky-Dinkins]

Originally Posted by fat_rancor_keeper

http://news.moviefone.com/mike-ryan/...ust_reloaded=1

11:23 p.m. A member of my party states, "We're seeing it near NYU. Of course it will be sold out." I'm actually starting to panic about not being in line yet.

11:38 p.m. A man uses the kiosk the purchase a ticket. I ask him if I can take a picture of him buying a ticket to The Phantom Menace. He replies, "I'm seeing Safe House."

11:42 p.m. There are 24 people in this theater to see the midnight showing of The Phantom Menace. Then again, this is a rural area and that is to be expected. Oh, wait, no, we're in the heart of New York City. For a second I forgot.

11:46 p.m. Alison Willmore is here writing a review for Movieline. She has a conflicted look on her face that's somewhere in-between, "I'm happy to see you," and, "Oh, God, now there's proof that I was here."

12:30 a.m. Jar Jar Binks makes his first appearance on screen. The audience bursts into laughter. Not because of Jar Jar's actions, but it's more of a nervous laughter of, "Good God, this really happened. I forgot how awful this was."

1:33 a.m. The first time Anakin yelled, 'Yippie," the audience let it go. The second time, they did not. An outbreak of, "Yippie," floods the theater.

1:45 a.m During the Senate scene, right when the line, "We now introduce the delegation from Naboo," is spoken, Matt Patches from Hollywood.com let's out an overly dramatic snore. Apparently he is not a fan of this scene.

1:45 a.m. Nope, he's actually sleeping. I bet he's dreaming about a better movie.

2:01 a.m. This really is a pretty boring movie.

2:37 a.m. As we walk out of the theater, a older gentleman in the last row is still sleeping. We debate waking him, but the general consensus among our group is that, at this point, he's earned that right to sleep.

Hahahaha. This makes me want to see it again. I forgot how awful the experience of actually seeing it on the big screen really is. I remember the first time... the combination of Jar Jar and that underwater frog king that shakes his head like a mental patient left me stunned. I didn't think it could get any worse. The Pod Racing and young Anakin proved how wrong I was. Truly a terrible movie.

[Chordata]

I think the writer should be institutionalized for going to see a movie again that he already obviously hated.

[Stinky-Dinkins]

He's the Senior Writer for Moviefone.

Lots of critics are going to see it to see how it plays 3D. It's not like critics can always choose to see movies they know they'll love.