Six days after Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace first hit the theaters in 1999, I jokingly posted the following to the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc:
And now … the Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace DVD has hit store shelves … and it contains seven new scenes produced explicitly for the DVD release!
Dear George Lucas:
The Usenet post I made in 1999 was just a joke!! I didn’t really want you to make a Phantom Menace, Special Edition! Honest!!
The Special Edition won’t be out until AFTER the following:
VHS version
VHS version (widescreen)
DVD version
DVD version (gold edition)
DVD version (platinum edition)
DVD version (silver edition, which is worse than the platinum edition but what the hell, you don’t have it so you may as well buy it)
THEN you start the special editions. Remember, the goal is to maximize the number of times people buy the thing.
These special editions are killing me. I just want the same freaking movie that I saw in the theater. I am just thankful that I have the original trilogy on video, the only thing that they screwed with is the sound. There is no Jabba the Hut where he isn’t supposed to be.
He’s probably doing it because you dared to say he’s based in Los Angeles–about as low a blow as you can think of for a Bay Area resident.
Um, they haven’t been added to the movie (AFAIK) they are simply available to be viewed. Also, AFAIK, they were scenes he’d done preliminaries of for the film and then cut. He just went ahead and added the final touches for the dvd release.
From what I’ve heard, at least one of the deleted scenes would have been good to have in the movie, as it explained a rather key moment, but since Lucas has ZERO sense of editing and pacing, it was cut to make room for yet more pod race and two more trips back to Mos Espa.
Turns out the pod race scene could have been LONGER. Shudder.
I got the DVD yesterday and watched a little bit of it last night.
The second disk contains all seven deleted scenes, which I watched. I only watched a few scenes from the actual movie itself on Disc 1, and I noticed that the podrace scenes has new material in it. Not a great deal, just a few quick shots here and there, but it is definitely new. In addition, Lucas mentioned on the second disc that the deleted “Air Taxi” scene in Coruscant was added to the movie itself, although I haven’t jumped to that particular chapter on the DVD yet to verify it.
So he did indeed fiddle with the final cut of the movie for the DVD.
On preview I see Legomancer shuddering because he heard the pod race could have been longer. You want to know how long it originally was? On the second disc, it was mentioned by either the editor or Lucas that the initial cut of the podrace scene was nearly twenty-five minutes long. :eek:
Jesus. That whole sequence on Tatooine could have been cut as far as I cared. Midichlorians. Little kids playing around. shudder
Would it be heretical to ask at this point why people continue to revere Lucas?
(Of course, I’m still going to see the next movie anyway, just to see if he can do better than Phantom Menace, but… 
)
I think you should first ask if people revere Lucas. Speaking as a huge Star Wars fan, who visits many Star Wars fan sites and knows many Star Wars fans, even WE don’t like him that much.
Are they going to digitally erase Jar Jar Banks? 
Gotta go with Lego here. In my experience, Star Wars fans HATE Lucas more than the average American. Indian Jones fans hate him even more than Star Wars fans, due to his decision to not release the Indy trilogy on DVD until the next installment comes along. Indy fans that are also big Star Wars fans hate him more than anyone could possibly hate anything else in the universe.
Is it true that you can’t even buy the non-special editions anymore? I have the set that includes the interview by Roger Ebert in 3 parts before the beginning of each movie. Remastered, full-frame (before I saw the glory of letterbox), but before the “special editions” came out.
If Lucas knows what’s good for him (which he probably doesn’t), he will make damn sure that the IV through VI DVDs include the option for which version. Han is supposed to shoot first, damnit!
Has a “director’s cut” or “special edition” been more ruinous to any other movie? The only one that comes to mind is Blade Runner.
My friend and I like to joke that Lucas will announce after Ep II is finished that he made it “just because he could”, is not releasing it to the public, and the final version will only be seen by him alone in a secret home theater bunker at Skywalker Ranch.
Elwood, you have some explaining to do. Most people seem to think that the directors cut of Blade Runner was far superior to the theatrical release. Why do think that it was worse?
That’s Leonard Maltin.
I certainly hope that such fans are aware of the irony that, if not for Lucas, they wouldn’t be fans of anything.
I saw a television ad for the DVD of Phantom Menace last night that included the line, “Includes scenes you WANT to see!”
I was thinking, “Unlike, say, the version released in theaters, which did not include any scenes I wanted to see?”
Then I started to think about what scenes I might want to see- little Anakin drives his pod into a tree… Jar Jar Binks gets his ears caught in an oscillating fan… Obi Wan and Qui-gon discuss the importance of never leaving your wing man behind in a fight…
The pod race was the best part of the whole movie. I mean, the movie existed just to show off the FX skills of ILM and their best work was in the pod race. (Well, they also told us about “midi-chlorians”, so I guess the rest of the movie was a waste.)
I think that Episode I should have included the following:
The opening sequence with Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan landing on the Trade Federation battlecruiser.
The subsequent fight scenes that show them escape.
The fight between Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and Darth Maul.
The End.
And the three-way lightsaber battle should have been an hour long.
Well, I took a look at the DVD and enjoyed it.
What, you guys didn’t want him to put the extra scenes on the DVD? Only a couple brief things are thrown into the movie, so it’s no biggie.
I love the scene with Greedo, by the way.
In the commercial, they say there are added stuff that “you will actually want to watch” because so many DVD’s have crap extras. I have to admit, Lucas did put everything on this DVD.
This is an excellent DVD. Not an excellent movie, but an excellent DVD.
By the way, let’s make sure this doesn’t become a debate about the Bladerunner directors cut. Use the search engine and ressurect one of those old debates if you want to discuss it. If you are wondering, about 50% think it’s better with the narration, 50% think it is better as the directors cut.
Ah, but there ARE scenes that you want to see! Like, say, this one, wherein a Jawa Sandcrawler opens up the throttle and takes on the pods!