In my local Wal-Mart today, I stumbled across the Star Wars movies on VHS (Come on, Lucas! Put 'em out on DVD already, wouldja?) and I picked 'em up, not having any copies. As I was watching the first one, I got to wondering about the Jawa eyes. Has Lucas come up with any explaination as to why they glow? And this was the first time I’d seen Lucas’s retouch job and for the most part, I wasn’t all that impressed. Very little of it seemed necessary (though it was nice that the squares around the ships in the asteroid field in Empire were gone), and I noticed that they didn’t correct the infamous lightsabre shot, also, I spotted something else that I’d never seen before! You can see Kenny Baker inside R2 in the shot inside the Jawa sand crawler! Also was the actor who played “Gold Five” in the first one, one of the Maytag repair men?
Don’t get me started on the Special Editions. Han shot first, dammit!
Maybe he’ll fix it in the upcoming Super Special Editions.
Yeah, I’m kind of hoping that in the DVD releases (whenever those might happen) that Lucas has the origina release of the film, along with his retouched versions. The whole time I was watching the films, I kept hearing what Orson Welles supposedly told a friend of his before he died, “Please don’t let Ted Turner rub his crayons all over my beautiful movie.”
What lightsaber shot? Is it in Episode IV where the tip of Obi-Wan’s lightsaber is like a pinpoint?
Note on the Special Editions:
In the original version of Empire Strikes Back, Luke falls silently through Cloud City after deciding not to join forces with Vader. In the “Special Edition”, he screams! Almost as if he’s changed his mind right after he leapt!
Yeah, you can see that the thing’s just a plastic rod hooked up to a flash light, its a pretty glaring error and one that’s been talked about for years.
I think they should have left the part where Mark Hammell screams “Carrie!” in. It always made me feel strangely gleeful.
He never screamed that. The soundtrack remains the same in both movies. He says “Hey!” That’s is. You watch it and tell me if you here “Carrie.” StarWars.com says as much on the subject.
Ah, so I’m not the only one who heard “Hey!” instead of “Carrie!”… good, I’m not nuts. Here’s a hint… “Carrie!” doesn’t have only one syllable.
(Lucas waves hand)
You don’t want to see the original releases…
These are not the videos you’re looking for…
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Based on what I know of Lucas, I think the chances of seeing the original releases on the market again are rather slim. The odds of seeing further alterations and tinkerings, on the other hand, seem quite good.
Sorry, George, your Jedi mind-tricks won’t work on me. That does make me wonder about something, though. Lucas has things set so that once he’s gone, no one else can make Star Wars movies, I wonder if that also means that no one can release the movies he made in any other manner (besides format changes) than what he’s done while he’s alive. Which, of course, would mean that there’d be zero chance of the Star Wars Holiday Special making it to home video, given his loathing of that particular piece of “work.”
There’s ways around that. (cough EBAY cough)
(cough fragile media cough uncertainly copy quality cough, cough)
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Tuckerfan *
**Sorry, George, your Jedi mind-tricks won’t work on me. That does make me wonder about something, though. Lucas has things set so that once he’s gone, no one else can make Star Wars movies, I wonder if that also means that no one can release the movies he made in any other manner (besides format changes) than what he’s done while he’s alive. **
I think that would be a safe assumption.
I’m not too worried. I don’t need the unaltered original movies on DVD. I’ve got my original VHS tapes stored safe and sound on my huge electromagnet.
Well, I can’t fault him for that.
Good thing i have my copy on CD i got from…uh…taping off TV!! yeah, that’s the ticket, when i was negative 2 months old, i crawled out of the uterus to tape the holiday special! It’s true!
Oh, and to answer your other questions, (as much as I’d love to bash the Special Editions for the remainder of my natural life…)
Lucas never explained the glowing eyes. It’s possible that some Expanded Universe stuff has explained them, but I don’t know. It seems like I remember reading somewhere that they have good night vision.
Maytag Repairman? No. Gold Five was played by the late British actor Graham Ashley. The Maytag Repairman has been played by two actors. Jesse White and Gordon Jump.