Star Wars Trilogy... I know, I know...
Grr... ok, so I finally got around to watching the "new" Star Wars trilogy on DVD this past weekend (fall break). Listen, the changes aren't that bad... EXCEPT for Hayden Christenson at the end of Return of the Jedi. That's just lame. Really, really lame. They should've left it the same. Why couldn't a young Hayden Christenson look like an older Sebastian Shaw when he grew up? They changed the eye color didn't they? Wasn't that enough? That was the only part that really annoyed me. Everything else I could deal with. That was just pathetic.
The CGI is... well... blah. You can tell where they used it. (Except for Cloud City; I thought that was pretty well done in the special editions.) The adding to the cantina scene, Jabba the Hut's party in the palace, and the ending song with the Ewoks were all ... blah. I wasn't that impressed.
I'm really hoping for the originals to be released sometime. I can wait to purchase until then. I wonder if we'll ever get them, though.
Anyone else irked the same ways I was?
The CGI is... well... blah. You can tell where they used it. (Except for Cloud City; I thought that was pretty well done in the special editions.) The adding to the cantina scene, Jabba the Hut's party in the palace, and the ending song with the Ewoks were all ... blah. I wasn't that impressed.
I'm really hoping for the originals to be released sometime. I can wait to purchase until then. I wonder if we'll ever get them, though.
Anyone else irked the same ways I was?
Comments
I was very disappointed with the original VHS special editions, I thought that all the CG they added did nothing to help the story(Except cloud city, which I thought was enhanced wonderfully) it was lame, I didn't like them that much, but, since my original release copies were in shambles, it was all I had.
The new DVD releases are leaps and bounds better, they are far closer to what the special editions should have been, but there are still some problems. I really like all the clean up work they did, contrast, spots, lightsaber and blaster effects, explosions..etc. all that really helped the movies, and made things a lot more enjoyable to watch. I really liked how they modified the greedo shooting first scene. I still don't like that scene, but the DVD release made it a lot more palpable.
I liked that they redid jabba in ANH, still, he looks a little weird, but on the whole, he looks more slimy, more evil, and less cartoonish, also the han tail step thing fits better and is less comic relief, which I like.
I didn't really like the new emperor scene in Empire strikes back, because it takes away from the mystique of the emperor, and while I see what lucas was going for when he did that, I still have trouble accepting it, the new dialog there is also pretty cheesy.
The hayden scene is pretty ridiculous, though, I do see where lucas was coming from, it's still just plain weird that he looks younger than luke does in that scene.
Will we ever see the originals again? probably, lucas knows how to milk this shit.
Originally posted by adamrao
The CGI is... well... blah. You can tell where they used it.
CG was used all over the place. All of the X-wing battle scenes, and as far as I know, most of the spacecraft, were all re-worked scenes. You can only tell when they're modeling organic stuff. The texturing and animation just weren't that good, especially with the pit monster. Otherwise, the added CG is good. The overlays without the CG are really weak. In the making-of disc they show a little bit here and there about that.
I bought the box set last weekend, and watched all the discs in succession, since the whole damn area was under curfew on account of the hurricane.
But yes, seeing the goofy illumination of Hayden Christensen was irritating, especially with the long, blonde wig. They should have replaced Obiwan while they were at it, since at least the guy who played him in the new series did a good job with the acting and character, at least as far as I could tell.
I only rented RotJ, and though the video restoration was very good, I felt the sound restoration was really mediocre, especially for such a blockbuster sci-fi production. It had good clarity, dynamics, and noise suppression across the primary audio range, but strangely was lacking any enhancement to the bottom end- like only stuff above 50 Hz was worked on.
Originally posted by Splinemodel
You can only tell when they're modeling organic stuff. The texturing and animation just weren't that good, especially with the pit monster.
Rancor or Sarlacc? Rancor is old style stop motion still. Sarlacc was updated (not sure whether for DVD or the previous SE).
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The Hayden thing simply makes no sense and I can't force it to either. Unless Jedi can pick whatever personae they want to for their ghosts. Seems rather egotistical for Anakin to want to look young
Perhaps Anakin wanted to show Luke how he looked at the same age as Luke, perhaps as a warning. Ok, I guess I did force it.
But it screws up my favorite part, old man father who made mistakes being forgiven/redeemed and young son on the verge of making them seeing his possible future self in his old man's face.
The way it is now is like "Look, being dead is cool, you can be young forever!"
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One mistake still needing a fix is the scene with Luke escaping the ice cave in ESB. His lightsaber makes the switching off swoosh sound but it is showing as still being turned on. This is easily remedied by shifting the sound to the exterior a split second before he comes out of the cave.
It's certainly not the perfect edition.
(Plus loads of blocky tracking mattes in ANH and elsewhere).
I'm not what you would call a Star Wars enthusiast. I think they are fun movies. The better image quality is worth the little bits and pieces of CG editing, which really don't bother me at all. Unless you're a Star Wars geek, don't waste your time with the laserdiscs.