Let me say that there is one thing that has bugged me since I first saw Star Wars in the theaters as a youngster 27 years ago, and which still wasn’t fixed in the Special Edition 7 years ago, and which after all this time has finally, finally!! been fixed in the new DVD release:
There is a point in the light saber duel between Vader and Kenobi where Kenobi’s light saber is pointed almost straight at the camera. It has always looked like it went out at that point, and all you saw was a little blue glowing point of light atop a foreshortened not-at-all-glowing stick.
They have finally fixed this. Obi-wan’s light saber now glows blue along its entire length for those few frames, like it always should have. I can die now.
I honestly don’t know why you people are so up in arms about this. Sure, some of the changes are not great, but the scene that is the most annoying addition for me (the added song in ROTJ), still isn’t a big deal. With the new cleanup of the original footage, the added special effects blend in very well, and I think the overall presentation is enhanced. None of the changes ruin the movies in any way or make major plot changes. It’s not like they made Leia Han’s sister or something. The whole Greedo shooting first thing is not a big deal…like Han wouldn’t shoot if shot at either? Sure, it made him more of a badass to shoot first, but it doesn’t make him weak because he reacted…he was still PLANNING to shoot him dead, but got beaten to the trigger…it doesn’t change Han’s character at all. The new special effects look great for the most part. If you watch the documentary in the DVDs, you’ll see that Lucas truly ran out of time and money to do what he wanted to do…so now he made what he wanted to…oh well. Live with it.
Sure, Jabba’s a little out of character, but at the time, Han is a good smuggler to him…and Jabba likes people that don’t take his crap (look at what he does when Leia says she’ll blow him to hell if he doesn’t pay 50,000 for Chewy). Even if it is a little odd, it certainly isn’t such a big thing that it ruins the movie. Not even close. It’s 15 seconds of footage, with a 1 second discontinuity, I sure as heck am not going to let it ruin the film for me. Most of the additions make legitimate improvements. There are 2 or 3 things that I think…well, that wasn’t needed…but it doesn’t kill the film.
Ah – it seems a comment on the Internet Movie Database has something to say about that line. Apparently, Mark Hamill ad-libbed it during the original shoot, and when it came time to re-dub the scene in super hyper maxi stereo THX 5.1 Double Dolby surround whoop-dee-doo sound, Hamill merely read the line as it was written in the script. So, at least in this case, Lucas did not deliberately alter the line.
One thing I don’t see mentioned about the Jaba the Hutt addition. Originally as Greedo said in the bar, it didn’t matter if Solo could get the money- he was to made an example of. With the new scene Jabba explicitly gives him another chance. So:
Even if Solo still had had a change of heart and decided to stick with the rebellion wouldn’t have been in everybodys’ best interest to have paid off Jabba with the reward sitting on the Falcon? Would there have been any need for Boba Fett to still be chasing him? Doesn’t this screw the whole story arc? Am I not remembering something?
I’m one of the ones who believe Lucas is just luring customers–er, fans–into double dipping when he claims he’ll never release the original version of the trilogy on DVD. The cost excuse is pure bullshit. If millions of fanboys are begging him to release the damn thing, then obviously there’s money to be made from it.
I pesonally don’t care. I passed on watching the SE in theaters, so when I watched the DVDs I expected a travesty and instead thought that the films looked beautiful. The only annoying thing, to me, was changing the last song in Return of the Jedi because even though the original song was annoying, it was a part of the movie that was strongly ingrained in my memory. Heck, I remember radio stations playing the stupid song when ROTJ was playing in theaters! The changes to the trilogy could’ve been much worse, like if Lucas tried to make it more appealing to urban youths by having Darth Vader tell Luke Skywalker “Luke, I’m yo daddy!”.
The movies’ biggest problem is something that was always there. To me, the worst thing about Star Wars, which I overlooked as a little kid but drives me nuts now, is the heavy use of modern American colloquialisms in a movie set “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.”
Not as bad as the excruciating ‘new’ song by Sy Snootles and the band in Jabba’s Palace. Have they done the CGI up on that? It looked shit on the cinema version of the SE. Completely unneccessary and dated looking even when new.
I haven’t got round to Jedi yet, I may well do by Thursday. Watched Empire last night, which doesn’t seemed to have suffered. And rightly so.
When I saw RotJ in its original theatrical run in 1983, the old song by Sy Snootles and the band in Jabba’s Palace (titled “Lapti Nek”) was unbelievably excruciating. It was disco, for crying out loud! I am glad glad glad glad glad that Lucas replaced it with something else.
Like? I think the OT is remarkably free of such examples (unlike the prequels, which I believe indulge in it quite a bit). Or were you expecting them to speak in some formal, pseudo-archaic-sounding language (like, say, Yoda)?
:rolleyes: Yeah, and I’m sure there are no mystical religions that exist in that time either that differentiate good from evil, with concepts of after lives, and…oh, wait.
