Star Wars DVD

[Trainz]

Man...

Me, my wife, and two of my friends just watched the whole thing today.

After RotJ, we looked at each other, and said "that's IT ?".

The only thing I really liked is in ESB, the new emperor in the holo with DV. That was very cool. And luke not screaming when falling in ESB. That's a good fix (it was like that originally anyways...).

I have about 10 to 20 or so nitpicks (some of which have been mentioned), so the list is too long to type here.

Some stuff that was awful they left in, some stuff that was good they changed. It's actually worse than the previous re-release.

Very disapointed.

If you make a sales pitch saying the movie will be much better, at least deliver. Since TPM I gave up on GL, and with each new thing he does/touches/massacres he loses more and more respect from me.

Still, I have hopes that Ep. 3 will be the best (as in less worse) of the prequels.

 

[Truth Seeker]

Hmmmm...between the pos and the negs view.

Me buying it with Man on Fire, Passion of Christ...just for $80.00 total...I guess it was a good deal.

 

[Gizzard]

I wasn't planning on picking up this boxed set; the funny thing was that I automatically assumed that if Lucas had re-editted the films yet again he had probably done something new and horrible while he was at it. But when the biggest things people were complaining about where Anakin's ghost Photoshopped into the final sequence and another re-tinker with the already bastardized Greedo v. Han sequence; well I decided to give it a spin. It helped that Best Buy had it for less than $45 and they gave you soda, popcorn and doritos when you bought it. ;-) So, a few thoughts on Episode IV.02 :

1) The new digital Mos Eisely didn't bother me when I saw it in the theater, but it sure gets old quick on DVD. There's always some gargantuan beast grunting or howling in the background or doing something distracting. Probably a good object lesson for Filmmaking 101 classes about focus on the story at hand.

2) The Greedo v. Han thing sucks less than the first re-release, but the effect still looks terrible. I can live with the simultaneous shooting, but is it worth putting in a bad effect to tinker with this scene? I was hoping this would be less bad, but it is not.

3) Commentary tracks I: Lucas, Carrie Fischer and the effects & sound guys. Hmmm. Lucas has to fill the whole commentary by himself pretty much, I think the sound guy has the second most to say. One more cool participant would have made a world of difference. Maybe I am spoiled by "Fight Club" and "LotR" which have exceptional commentary tracks.

4) Commentary tracks II: It's funny listening to Lucas talk about the film; he spends a lot of his time talking about the overarching the themes of the movie rather than what's on the screen at the moment. There's only so much material to mine there, so he tends to ramble and repeat himself a bit. He does give a mysterious, implausible and unnecessary explanation of why Han says "parsecs" though. It reminded me of a friend who never wants to admit he is wrong, so he spins a complex scenario instead of just saying "I didn't know what a parsec was, but it sounded cool, so that's what I wrote. Live with it, it's just a movie."

5) Overall I enjoyed the DVD, I'd really rather have the originals, but when it comes right down to it these things are 97% faithful which is good enough.

 

[Gez]

Heh. I've VHS tapes of the original release (I was well inspired to buy them way back then when it was advertised with "For the last time in their original version"). Except for changing the ESB emperor with one that looks like the Emperor, none of the changes done were needed.

I never saw the special edition, and I'll only see this new special special edition if one of my friends buy the DVDs and lend them to me.

 

[Tom Cashel]

Dept. of Useless and Puzzling Changes:

When the swamp creature spits out R2-D2 in ESB, Luke runs over and now says in a dubbed-sounding voice, "You were lucky to get out of there," instead of the original "You're lucky you don't taste very good," which at least had a little zing to it. Ho hum.

 

[Kai Lord]

Hey Tom,

1997 called, it wants its dead horse back.

 

[John Crichton]

Heh. I love "X called" jokes.

Anywho - I'll comment after I watch the durned things. Not enough time these days...

 

[Tom Cashel]

Hey Tom,

1997 called, it wants its dead horse back.

Oh, did they make that change in '97? I only saw that version once, in the theater, blitzed to the gills on Colorado flower.

I'm only postin' 'em as I notice 'em.

...And I am no longer taking calls from the last millenium; please make a note of it.

 

[Kai Lord]

Oh, did they make that change in '97?

Yeah, the "lucky you got outta there" line was the original scripted take, and the "don't taste very good" line was an on-set ad lib by Mark Hamill that they originally used instead.

When Ben Burtt went back to the original sound recordings for the 1997 restoration, he chose the former because the audio quality held up better than the other line. In fact, I read that he was surprised that the line was actually different.

It ended up happening a couple other times in the trilogy as well (Han's "its all right, trust me" changed to "its all right I can see a lot better", etc.)

 

[KnowTheToe]

I have only watched ANH, but I am very happy with it. After all it is stil the same movie I grew up on, all of the small things we nitpick really don't impact the film. The large groups of new youg fans prove that every time they chime in and call us old folks Mr. cabapple about complaining on how things "used to be".


Anyway, I wish only Han shot, but in the long run it makes absoluely no difference. He has enough lines about being in it for the money that we still see his character grow.