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Lucas Hustles his fans into buying the movies one more time?

#16 User is offline   KurganX Icon

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Posted 29 August 2006 - 06:58 PM

Well I would point out that the people putting out the "bootlegs" of LaserDisc transfers of the SW O-OT to DVD distribute them for free and explicitly tell people to not charge if they do distribute them.

Folks selling those things are not only doing so illegally, but also against the wishes of the folks who spent the hours and hours transfering and encoding them.



Lucas just wants to milk as much money out of his fans as he can and at the same time send a "message" that yes, he'll bow to our whining and give us the movies that "no longer exist for me anymore" ... but it'll be on his terms, "disrespected" (as you say) and distanced from himself.

"Oh, you want the original movies huh? Well fine, but no special features, just the same crap from the 1990's and you have to buy another copy of my newfangled editions!"

I may just wait for ebay/amazon... seriously. I bet the news of the new 2007 set will debut after the Limited Edition 2006 set is cleared from shelves. That'll be great fun! Argggh.
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#17 User is offline   johnnycancer Icon

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Posted 29 August 2006 - 08:44 PM

QUOTE (KurganX @ Aug 29 2006, 04:58 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Well I would point out that the people putting out the "bootlegs" of LaserDisc transfers of the SW O-OT to DVD distribute them for free and explicitly tell people to not charge if they do distribute them.

Folks selling those things are not only doing so illegally, but also against the wishes of the folks who spent the hours and hours transfering and encoding them.


Oh okay. I wasn't actually aware of that. I'll be honest, I haven't really researched fan edits and bootlegs in too much depth yet. When I made the comment about purchasing bootlegs, I was thinking almost exclusively of what might be available on eBay.

So, being pretty ignorant of how these things work, now that I know that they're supposed to be distributed for free, I know I definitely won't be "purchasing" a set of OT discs any time soon. Thanks for the enlightenment on that topic, KurganX.

Incidentally, how limited are the Limited Editions that are coming out in September? Do you really think they'll disappear after just a month?

johnnycancer
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#18 User is offline   HK 47 Icon

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Posted 30 August 2006 - 02:46 AM

QUOTE (KurganX @ Aug 28 2006, 11:03 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
In ESB there's Luke's line to R2D2 after he gets spit out by the swamp "monster" on Dabogah "You're lucky you don't taste very good!" which is replaced in the THX enhanced version with "You were lucky to get out of there."

In ROTJ when Lando is being held by the Sarlacc tentacle and Han is about to shoot it, Han's original line is "Don't worry... trust me." In the THX version he says "Don't worry, I can see a lot better!"


There was also Lukes girly scream in Empire right? I just don't get this, at best it's a marketing gimmick for the hardcore fans, at worst it seems as if the director is somehow trying to improve upon the morals and ethics of the story. "I can see a lot better" sounds more responsible than "trust me", but it's also a deviation from Hans persona. And what about "You don't taste very good" replaced with "Lucky to get out of there"? What's the point? Eating people, I mean droids, is bad and therefore shouldn't be mentioned in the Lucasverse? These changes just waters down the movie. As opposed to the Greedo incident which is just ass.

Come to think of it, I saw Temple of Doom recently. It had been censured, a lot! Almost all of the burning heart scene was cut, as well as all the whippings near the end of the film. What is it with Lucas? Does he think kids today more sensitive than we were back then?
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#19 User is offline   johnnycancer Icon

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Posted 30 August 2006 - 05:00 AM

QUOTE (HK 47 @ Aug 30 2006, 12:46 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
There was also Lukes girly scream in Empire right?


Actually, does Lucas ever explain this in some of the commentary for the Special Editions? I don't understand what possible justification there could be for adding this to the film.

I can imagine Lucas saying something like, "Well, I had always intended to have Mark scream like a girl during this scene, but, in the late 70's when we were in the process of filming, all we had to work with was Dolby 2.0 sound. Clearly, the audio equipment wasn't sophisticated enough to record the complex acoustics of such an effeminate wail..."

johnnycancer

This post has been edited by johnnycancer: 30 August 2006 - 05:01 AM

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#20 User is offline   KurganX Icon

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Posted 02 September 2006 - 02:31 PM

Well, I checked the prices on Amazon.com and if you bought all three 2 disc packs of the new 2006 set (which releases in 10 days), it'd run you $53.61 (with free shipping), so that's only $3.76 more than the 2004 Four disc set costs new ($49.85, also from Amazon with free shipping, and I'm not talking about the release price, I'm talking how much it costs right now).

That's much more reasonable than this $90 crap (though we all knew it wasn't going to be quite that expensive, even with tax).

You're also getting more content (6 discs instead of four, even if they are just two versions each of three movies and nothing else), less than $9 per disc (so that makes the "Bonus Disc" from the 2004 set cost about $12.50).

Still, how much would an "ultimate" set cost?

So I imagine an "ultimate set" would cost about $95-$111 (only justified if it were all six movies, plus the original original trilogy + a bonus disc equivalent to the bonus disc in the 2004 set).

The prequels new on dvd (again using amazon.com here) in widescreen cost:

$13.45 each for Episode I or II
$17.99 for Episode III
(so $44.89) (you only get free shipping on orders over 25 bucks and you still have to figure in tax of course)


They've probably lowered the prices not only because of the time gone by but also in anticipation of the holiday shopping season and any new sets rumored to come out.


But anyway, there you go. You can spend $54 in two weeks, and then another $95-111 bucks in 10 months, in addition to the $50 you already spent to pay the Flanneled One for his endless revisions of "his original vision" of Star Wars! (for a grand total of $199-$214 for six movies, which would buy you a few seasons of any decent TV show on DVD...)

Would you pay $31-$36 for a DVD? That's another way to look at it. That's how much you could conceivably invested into one of these movies in a six year period (not counting theatrical viewings, VHS tapes, rentals, etc).
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#21 User is offline   KurganX Icon

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Posted 02 September 2006 - 03:09 PM

QUOTE (johnnycancer @ Aug 29 2006, 08:44 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Oh okay. I wasn't actually aware of that. I'll be honest, I haven't really researched fan edits and bootlegs in too much depth yet. When I made the comment about purchasing bootlegs, I was thinking almost exclusively of what might be available on eBay.

So, being pretty ignorant of how these things work, now that I know that they're supposed to be distributed for free, I know I definitely won't be "purchasing" a set of OT discs any time soon. Thanks for the enlightenment on that topic, KurganX.

Incidentally, how limited are the Limited Editions that are coming out in September? Do you really think they'll disappear after just a month?

johnnycancer


They will come out September 12, and cease sometime in December (9th? 15th? I forget, but certainly by the end of December). I don't know if that means they will be pulled from store shelves (I doubt it, the same rumor was passed about the previous two Star Wars DVD sets, and I still see unsold stock sitting around and on amazon, and the price hasn't shot up or anything either) or if they'll just stop pressing new copies to ship to stores then.

3 months isn't that long, but I doubt it will be impossible to find a reasonably priced copy even after that time, unless Lucas is really going to be super anal about it and insist that stores return their unsold copies for a refund or something (which would seem unheard of... I mean these aren't commemorative collector plates for crying out loud, they're repackaged DVDs!).

The bootleggers would also probably say that they won't distribute anything for free that is commercially available, meaning they'll only distribute their encodes until Sept 12 (and maybe continue them after the Limited Edition set becomes difficult to found after December, if that happens). But yeah, the people selling them on ebay or at some storefront in Hong Kong are just trying to make a fast buck. You can print your own, professional looking covers for a couple of bucks at any copy place, they sell dvd label printers now (though you can use the crappy sticker labels much cheaper though they may not last as long), and DVD recordable media is cheaper per meg than CD recordable.

QUOTE (johnnycancer @ Aug 30 2006, 05:00 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Actually, does Lucas ever explain this in some of the commentary for the Special Editions? I don't understand what possible justification there could be for adding this to the film.

I can imagine Lucas saying something like, "Well, I had always intended to have Mark scream like a girl during this scene, but, in the late 70's when we were in the process of filming, all we had to work with was Dolby 2.0 sound. Clearly, the audio equipment wasn't sophisticated enough to record the complex acoustics of such an effeminate wail..."

johnnycancer


Nope, it's never explained. He just copied and pasted Palpatine's 1983 scream from ROTJ into ESB (something impossible in 1980) into the Special Edition of 1997, and then removed it again in 2004.

I guess you could say it was some kind of "foreshadowing" for the Emperor's death, but beyond that, no.

I mean it LOOKS like he's screaming, since his mouth is open as he falls (but having your mouth open doesn't mean you have to scream, though falling that distance would scare the hell out of most people, I don't care if you chose to jump at first or not), so perhaps Lucas did it because of that. Or he just did it "because he could" which justified most of the changes he's made over the years (rather than "I always intended" or "closer to my original vision"). He also recycled ROTJ footage into ESB with Vader's "arrival" on the Executor (actually on the Death Star II from 1983, spliced into ESB in 1997).


QUOTE (HK 47 @ Aug 30 2006, 02:46 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Come to think of it, I saw Temple of Doom recently. It had been censured, a lot! Almost all of the burning heart scene was cut, as well as all the whippings near the end of the film. What is it with Lucas? Does he think kids today more sensitive than we were back then?



Really? Was this on the official DVD set? Because it's routinely censored on TV (Temple of Doom, along with Gremlins was responsible for the creation of the PG-13 rating!).

Let's not forget that Lucas also censored the blaster squib explosions on the chests of the Imperial Officer/Commandos in Star Wars: A New Hope in 1997 (though he forgot one! and the scene is repeated, including the accidentally left in explosion in the 2004 edition). I guess having guys in masks have their chests erupt in flames/sparks from being shot is okay, but not guys who's faces you can see! (Oh don't worry little billy/sue, the good guys wouldn't shoot real people, those white guys are just robots...).

Honestly though, back in 1983, as a child of 6, I thought that the Stormtroopers were robots (a few viewings of ANH since then convinced me otherwise!).

This post has been edited by KurganX: 02 September 2006 - 03:09 PM

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