Subtle…SUBTLE??? There’s a CROWD-SURFING STORMTROPPER AT THE END OT THE ROTJ SPECIAL EDITION! That’s just retarded. The rest of the “improvements” are garish, glaring additions with dated CGI.
But enough of that- the Lucasfilm camp has said several times over that the DVD release in the fall will not be the originals, nor will they be the '97 special editions. They will be further tweaked.
It’s still better than an ewok.
Actually, he’s being lynched.
Well, at least he is according to one of the TWO Google hits I got for “crowd-surfing stormtrooper”, implying that not many people noticed it and that it is, by definition, subtle. The search itself turns up a paltry two pages of hits, all but two of which refer to things unrelated to Star Wars.
Arguing that the CGI is dated doesn’t hold water. It was fine CGI for its time. I mean, the FX for the actual Battle of Yavin have looked dated for years. Does that mean they suck? No, of course not.
I’ve just got twenty five words for you:
*Nub Nub
Icha Yub Nub
Atomi Topi Chiki
Duluptap Flingu Ah
Yawa
Icha Yawa
Atomi Topi Chiki
Duluptap Flingu Ah
Tomi Topi Dah
Nub Nub*!
(I also greatly prefer the original song for the big floor show at Jabba’s Palace!)
Now that one I have to give you. The new number is embarrassing to watch. :o
What about Han stepping on Jabba’s tail? AWFUL!
I agree. However, I still don’t like the CGI in the special editions just because it looks so out of place at times (big CGI intros to Mos Eisley, Cloud City, etc.). And nothing is as bad as that horrible CGI droid smacking down the tiny floating droid that was taunting him in ANH. Yeesh.
The only good addition from the “Special Edition” Star Wars movies were the wide views of the bigger-n-better Mos Eisley. Everything else sucked.
And the suckiest addition of them all was the gratuitous cameo of Boba Fett among Jabba’s entourage. The galaxy’s most notorious bounty hunter has far better things to do than hang out on a backwater planet with a low-level crime Hutt, just so the fanboys could see him for six seconds and wet their pants as a result. :rolleyes:
I couldn’t stand that myself. One of the things that drove Luke nuts about being stuck on Tatooine was that it was this forgotten little pisspot of a planet, where no one ever went and nothing ever happened. The original Mos Eisley looked like that; it now looks like a bustling hyper-metropolis, leading one to wonder what, exactly, Luke’s problem was.
I have been privately entertaining a hypothesis that I admit is somewhat goofy but that I find appealing nonetheless.
I think Lucas is clearly uncomfortable with how seriously many people take the Star Wars universe. For a not insubstantial segment of the fan base, the core movies are taken as an equivalent to Holy Scripture. Consider how the hardcore people know which of the comics, novels, games, and assorted ephemera can be taken as “canon” and which cannot. It’s just a movie, for crying out loud: yes, it’s based on ancient mythological structures and thus has powerful narrative resonance, but it’s still just a movie. And the degree to which people have embraced the story and its world is understandably distressing to its creator. (One wonders if Roddenberry had similar feelings about what happened to Trek.)
So my hypothesis is this: Lucas is messing with the movies, creating alternate versions and including elements that remind you it’s just a movie, in order to short-circuit the process by which powerful myth makes the transition into True Scripture.* If there are five or six mutually contradictory versions of a movie’s story, all endorsed by the creator at various points, then no one version can be said to be “official,” which is one step short of “real,” insofar as that means anything in a work of fiction. Lucas keeps saying the previous versions don’t exist and whatever he’s offering at the time is the only one, but most of us have the original trilogy on videotape, thus making the assertions of their nonexistence ridiculous. Lucas may be a lot of things, but he isn’t stupid, and he knows that claim simply won’t fly; the previous versions exist just as much as the new ones, side by side, with all the flaws and divergences that have accumulated over time.
In short: The original vision arrived with startling and powerful clarity, and was a siren call to a generation at loose ends with traditional beliefs; and Lucas, looking ahead to the future, has decided to muddy the waters rather than be held responsible for creating a monster that escaped his control through inattention.
(Of course, differing versions haven’t stopped Christians, for example, for holding up the King James or the New Revised or any of the other varying adaptations of the original ancient Biblical texts as being superior to one another, so Lucas may be trying to divert the Mississippi with a krazy straw, as it were.)
Now, I know this is kind of a far-out hypothesis, and I’m offering it not because I believe it’s completely true but more because I find it interesting and appealing on a certain level, and it’s a lot more satisfying for explaining why Lucas has been doing what he’s been doing to the SW universe than simply concluding that he’s lost touch with reality, which is, to me, the only other rational explanation.
*I’ve been vaguely considering starting a thread to consider which modern-era works of art and fiction are most likely to evolve into full-scale religious phenomena over the coming centuries, using “Star Wars” and this particular take on it as a starting point, but also including Tolkein, Trek, Buffy, the Beatles, and so on. Any interest?
Another thing that they botched in the 97 versions is that in ANH, you can see Kenny Baker inside R2!!! That gaffe was known about for years (my brother caught when the “Making of” aired on TV) and yet Lucas forgot to fix it!!!
Oh, Cervaise, you might be right, but Lucas is too late, since it’s already a religion. (Of course, these guys are liable to have bootleg versions of the untouched originals floating about, so they might have their uses.)
SNenc, I’m not the kind of guy to bother with fiddling half-measures, and am a firm believer in overkill. And trust me, I’m being humane, as there’s certainly far worse movies out there.
But aren’t you then calling Ben a liar? How can a little dusty two-horse town be considered the most “wretched hive of scum and villiany”? There’s nothing on Tatooine for Luke to do because he’s a good little farm boy - not a bounty hunter or bootlegger.
I’ll call Ben a liar. Hell, I’ll call him the biggest fucking evil lying piece of shit that ever oozed out of some festering slimehole…from a certain point of view.
Fenris
Interesting nitpick, and one of the few I haven’t seen. Where in the film is it, and what can you see?
I have a feeling that this particular bone of contention will be handled quite satisfactorily in Episode III. You really will believe that Darth Vader killed Anakin Skywalker.
It’s been a while since I’ve watched the films, so I can’t say for certain exactly where in the film it is, but I can tell you which scene it’s in. It’s definately in the shots of R2 inside the sandcrawler, IIRC, it’s when he turns his head to notice C3PO entering. It’s a fairly quick shot and you can see Kenny Baker’s eye, along with part of his head in the big lens in R2’s face. Apparently, they lit the inside of R2 so Kenny could see the controls to manipulate R2.
There is a shot of the R2D2/Kenny Baker thing here, pic half way down. Not sure if this is what they are getting at, but I can kinda make out a face positioned at about 3 o’clock on the lens. Looks like a reflection to me.
I still maintain that the scream added to Luke’s fall at the end of Empire Strikes Back is as bad as the Han/Greedo “fix.” It ruins one of the few good dramatic scenes in the trilogy. I’m not particularly bothered by the CGI additions.
This was the best part of the whole deal:
:eek: 
I don’t think that’s it, unless it’s a really crappy screen capture. As I recall, it’s quite clear that you can see part of Kenny in the lens as he moves around (Kenny, not R2).
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Buffy?!?!?
You include Buffy in this list? Please don’t take this personal, but you’ve got to be kidding. I’m not criticizing the show or its fans, but come on. I cannot see how Buffy has anywhere near the popularity to be lumped with the others on your list.
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