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OT SE vs OE Were they really necessary?

#1 User is offline   Mnesymone Icon

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Posted 08 April 2005 - 11:03 PM

I'm lucky enough to have the original trilogy in both the original theatrical VHS and the Special Edition VHS. I usually watch the Special Edition, since the originals are quite worn and have been watched a great deal, but I was watching the originals when I had a thought. After the pain of this new experience faded - I decided to compare the two - both in my head and on screen.

I have come to the conclusion that the Special Edition wasn't really necessary.

To begin with - the special edition added new footage and visual effects, cleaned up the older film so it was nice and pretty looking, altered existing effects and redone the sound.

The new footage - several minutes have been added to the entire trilogy - largely of scenes that were omitted because they removed flow from the story and were plain old technically too difficult to do. To begin with, minor detail shots have been added - the approach to and exit from mos eisley - these add nothing to the story, feature no new dialogue, and are ,as it were, fluff. Though some of the ones they did around bespin were cool, they remain fluff.

Some shots that never made it in have been dusted off - given life and grafted onto the existing movie - however, the only one that I remember is Jabba and his goons surrounding the Falcon. It seems to me that this one was cut, not just because of the technical difficulties with Jabba, but because it was an unnecessary scene - it simply repeats and reinforces Greedo's dialogue, rather than adding anything to the melting pot - as for Greedo, he shoots first, and misses at a range of three feet.

But some of the dusted-off scenes make it in in bits - poorly edited bits - a big chunk is cut from the shelved scene of Luke, Biggs and Red Leader before it goes in, so the conversation ends abruptly and feels stilted.

The new visual effects - well... Here's an example of the actual quality of the new effects. In the original they wanted stormtroopers mounted on dewbacks looking for the droids - so on the hill in the background there is a dewback, and a stormtrooper riding it. But with these new visual effects more can be done - and an actual dewback can walk around in the foreground. But the thing with effects is that they aren't supposed to stand up and say "I'm an effect" - you see the thing the thing the effect creates, but not the actual effect - with the dewback, it's so far in the foreground you can't help but notice the 'paintedness' of its pixelation, or the stormtrooper riding it looking extremely fake. Maybe this guy might have done some good further back - but where he is he might as well say "Look what we can do" - and they didn't fix the poor sod up on the hill.

Then - as for the content it adds, you see a droid go "honk" to another droid, which hits it, and a jawa fall from a ronto, saying "oo-teeny". Cause that was truly necessary.

Then - the enhancement of existing effects. I did notice problems with the original effects - a slight transparency to the printed snowspeeders as they flew over a landscape - a slight fuzzy scrubbed effect beneath the Lars family speeder - X-wings launching from Yavin looking like nothing so much as dots on the horizon.
So - there are new effects. The transparency is gone, the scrubbed effect cleaned, the X-wings are up-close and personal.

All this, and the cleaning up of the film - is handy.
But you also notice what they didn't change - and see that the original stuff wasn't bad.

In short - though I like the enhanced older effects, the polished film and sound quality - the new visual effects and scenes add nothing at all.

Everything that is fixed is also corrupted - Greedo shooting first, despite the excuse that George only wanted to do a 'technical' touch-up, rather than change the actual content of existing scenes. The annoying ewok song is gone, but the rioting and celebration scenes make it seem that there is no strength left in the Empire at all - not even a few stormtroopers to massacre rioters demolishing statues of the Emperor - is pissy as all hell.

As for the extra ring in the big explosions - that was just an effort to go oooh and aaah - but it doesn't actually make you go ooh and aah.

I haven't seen the DVDs yet - and I don't intend to.

Everyone, feel free to add your thoughts on a direct and measured comparison between the Special Edition and originals, and to make points re DVDs too.
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#2 User is offline   ernesttomlinson Icon

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Posted 09 April 2005 - 03:31 AM

Only one comment, but a telling one, I think.

I've got Star Wars in two formats: the laserdiscs (which you're prising from my cold, dead hands) and the Special Edition VHS tapes. Preceding each VHS presentation of each Star Wars movie is a short movie describing the changes wrought for the Special Edition and why they were made.

One of the big reasons given for modifying The Empire Strikes Back, says Lucas and his flunkies, is that the matte lines are just too frickin' obvious in the Hoth battle sequence. To illustrate how jarring a matte line can be the short gives us a clip of the battle between Luke and the Rancour from Return of the Jedi and displays how obvious is the matte line around the synthetic creature. (And it is, I think, the most obvious example in any of the Star Wars movies.) But they go to all this trouble to minimise the matte line in the Hoth sequence but don't bother to change anything about the fight between Luke and the Rancour in ROTJ?
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Posted 09 April 2005 - 10:31 AM

The only special edition I like is 1997 The Empire Strikes Back. I will amit that I think its better than the original. The hoth battle is cleaned up to perfection, and cloud city looks stunning and more realistic, the cloud city in the originals looked like something out of Doctor Who. Yes, theres still Lukes scream which is pretty dissapointing, but after watching it over and over I kind of got use to it, so it doesn't bother me anymore that much.
The rest of the SE are shit and insulting, greedo shooting first, Boba Fett and Jabbas crappy introduction, and the stupidest ending in ROTJ, the celebrations on other planets completely defies the EU, and is absent from all logic and reality.

This post has been edited by thrawn: 09 April 2005 - 10:34 AM

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Posted 09 April 2005 - 03:23 PM

The special editions were not necessary. Everyone knows that.

I was never big on Cloud City. It was just there. Without the characters it's just another matte painting and CGI hodge-podge.
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Posted 09 April 2005 - 06:09 PM

I'll go with Empire Strikes back being better - more refined quality-wise,
I'll go with A New Hope being hideously tormented by its demented creator. I'll go with every improvement to Return of the Jedi accompanying and equal and opposite crap thingy - the musical number and the little ending thingy - the point about the rancor is true - I noticed it - sheer laziness is the only explanation I could find...

Why they didn't just clean up film quality, sound quality, fix existing effects and re-release it as the original trilogy is beyond me - anyone whose seen the DVDs feel free to add on to this post.
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#6 User is offline   barend Icon

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Posted 11 April 2005 - 10:13 PM

the THXing was nice....

but here's my beef with the SE97ers:

1.the extra creatures in Mos Eisley made it look less isolated and more like an interchanging train station. "if there's a bright centre to the universe, you're on the plant it's furthest from!" - apparently not. Tatooine is quite the place to be now.

2.Greedo shooting first. i've covered this too many times to repeat ie now.

3.the lack of a deleted scene that puts lukes friendship with his x-wing pilot friend in proper contex. (not totally essential, but for all they put in it would have been nice)

3.Jabba...
a. He was originally human in that scene and in the books. the book of ROTJ explains that his slug-like appearance was the result of over exposure to the three tatooine suns without protection. (an interesting idea, that seems to have been both forgotten and abandoned)
b. han stepping on Jabbas tale. done as smoothly as that scene in the simpsons when the kill off poochie. (and the same way)
c. Bobba Fett. the coolest hitman in the galaxy, moonlighting as a body guard? if these two were so insepreable, where the fuck was the old hut when Vader was hiring BF? huh?

4. Extra Storm troopers... on tatooine. unneccasary.

5. the extra storm troopers that chase han on the death star, also unneccasary. if i chased a dozen armed storm troopers down a corridor only to have them reach a dead end and turn to face me... that would be enough to send me back.

6. the conversation between luke and his friend. half way through, a fake silhoutte crosses the camera as clumsy ruse to disguise a cut where suddenly everyone is in a different position and mood. there must have been something cut out there (propably something that openly contradicted a future plot twist or pending prequel inconsistency)

7. the ring around the rosey, i mean Death Star... why? seriously... barforama... didn't star trek do that already, by that point?

that's all i remember of ANH

8. the Wampa (? is it, you know the bigfoot thing)... more needless dickery.

9. the cloud city thing didn't bother me. So he improoved the view... he didn't have to, but it didn't hurt the story... and was possibly the one time when he made a change that fit in with his 'not enough rescorces to make it appear the way it was meant to be' excuse.

10. the scream. the fucking scream.... honestly. why didn't he just CGI him into a girl...

ROTJ

11. everything in Jabbas palace. EVERYTHING!!!!

12. the failure to fix the once scene in the trilogy that needed fixing! much like that moment in 'Raise the titanic' (w/ Alec Guiness). for anyone who knows the ridiculous situation that occured behind the model and tank fiasco.

13. growing up i had always noticed a little splodgy black spot hovering arounf the edge of the emporers cloak. this was no doubt a 'spotting' job gone wrong. [spotting: (before photoshop) was the art of painting on film to cover dust specs], applied here to cover a larger and longer lasting error. this practice was fine to cover a single mistake that takes up one frame (which lasts one 25th of a second). This mistake, addmittedly not noticed by most outside of the industry, lasted for a few seconds at a time. from memory (as i only went to the movies and never watched these abominations again) they failed to fix that.

14. yes, the celbrations on couresc, coures, croissant. WTF?!?
the iperial seed looses a battle station, and it's all over? suddenly they have no troops or numbers to push back the rebel marigras? that's the lamest plot hole ever...

15. the extended music and ending in general... why was the whole galaxy celebrating? there were forces everywhere, if not, how did they controll the galaxy? Idiots.

16. the ewoks should have been removed!!!
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Posted 11 April 2005 - 10:30 PM

6: Yes, the bit they removed was Red Leader telling Luke he knew his father, and that he hoped Luke would be just as good a pilot. In light of the way Anikin is being handled in the SITH trailer, I thnk it's going to be an open secret that Luke's father was a notorious villain. That Luke never heard of him is starting to seem ridiculous.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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#8 User is offline   barend Icon

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Posted 12 April 2005 - 12:50 AM

*in best duckman voice*: AH HA!!!!

but yeah, Anikan is pretty flamboyant with his fucked upedness!!!

it's the galaxies best kept secret... it must be awkward when people meet him...

SOME OLDER PILOT: "yeah, hi... you're dad was a pretty good pilot."
LUKE SKYWALKER: "yeah, alot of people say i take after him"
SOME OLDER PILOT: "you don't say..." *walks of mumbling* "we're gonna get killed..."
LUKE SKYWALKER: "uh, what was that!"
SOME OLDER PILOT: "good luck out there, force be with you and all that..."
LUKE SKYWALKER: "uh, thanks..."

This post has been edited by barend: 12 April 2005 - 12:50 AM

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#9 User is offline   Mnesymone Icon

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Posted 12 April 2005 - 03:26 AM

I remember that one from the novel!

He said "If you've got half your father's skill CUT you'll do alright"

I had always - always, thought from that scene in the novel that when we meet anakin he was a mid-to-late twenties, slightly grizzly fighter pilot. And Obi-Wan should have been the knocking-on-forty General Kenobi.
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Posted 12 April 2005 - 05:52 AM

Genral Kenobi...

somewhere in this movie he has to be (starting no higher than):
2nd Lieutenant Kenobi
1st Lieutenant Kenobi
Captain Kenobi
Major Kenobi
Lieutenant Colonel Kenobi
Colonel Kenobi
(Brigadier) General Kenobi... (we'll skip the 5 ranks of GENERAL and settle here.)

Yoda, will have to force choke alot of senior officers for young ben to climb that many ranks...

Admiral Yoda: "Your appology I accept Captain Windu"
Captain Windu: "hack, choke"
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#11 User is offline   Lord Aquaman Icon

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Posted 12 April 2005 - 07:22 AM

What I don't get is how Lucas thinks it's more important to keep black & white films black & white while constantly butchering the OT with pointless changes that hurt the story rather than enhance it. He calls black & white films our "national heritage" and says its important for our children to see b/w films in their old formats. That's just one more reason to release the OT in it's old format!

The man's inability to follow his own logic is astounding.
I am the Fisher King.

I'd like a qui-gon jinn please with an obi-wan to go.
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#12 User is offline   Paladin Icon

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Posted 12 April 2005 - 08:15 AM

George Lucas acts like a kid who's angry with some of his older works because he wasn't able to do things that he wanted to do. So he changes them and claims the older ones don't exist anymore.

I remember I was like that once... I wrote stories who's plotlines I accidently botched up beyond recovery, and then I wanted to rewrite them in their entirity and claim that the older ones didn't exist anymore. But I quickly got over it and just realized that I was being stupid.

The only thing I did do was ask the webmasters who had my stories on their websites removed. They did what I requested and that was really the end of it. If anyone brings up the topic of those old stories, I'll talk about them without much 'shame' of it since everyon'es skill improves with practice and I'm no different. No one starts out a grand master...
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#13 User is offline   Paladin Icon

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Posted 12 April 2005 - 08:23 AM

QUOTE
What I don't get is how Lucas thinks it's more important to keep black & white films black & white while constantly butchering the OT with pointless changes that hurt the story rather than enhance it. He calls black & white films our "national heritage" and says its important for our children to see b/w films in their old formats. That's just one more reason to release the OT in it's old format!


I agree with that statement of his. I personally think that every movie made, regardless of whether it is a 200+ million extravaganza project or a B-movie, should be preserved for future generations. I once downloaded the 1922 movie, Nosferatu, an old vampire movie. It was hailed as a masterpiece for that time but was sued for copyright infringement by the Stoker estate for ripping off the novel Dracula.

Some of those old movie reels survived that little event and now you can download it off the net legally. I got that movie and I have to admit, it really WAS as good as they say it was.

What really made the movie good is not simply because it was well done (it rightly deserved the 'masterpiece' title they gave to it) but because it provided such a refreshing relief from all the modern stuff the throw at us in the movies. There weren't any CGI, no weird and wacky special effects, no digital backgrounds and characters. It was a B&W silent, the first serious themed silent I ever watched (I did watch Charlie Chaplin movies, but they were comedy).

But it doesn't change the fact that GL doesn't want to follow his own logic for some reason, as you said.
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#14 User is offline   ernesttomlinson Icon

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Posted 12 April 2005 - 11:52 PM

I think "General" perhaps means something different in Star Wars than it does in real life. Remember what Return of the Jedi teaches us - it doesn't take much to become a general. Han Solo and Lando Calrissian are made generals just because they're competent pilots. (Although I have to admit that Han is a singularly resourceful guy it doesn't mean he's any good at leadership and that's what "General" implies to me.)

So maybe Obi-Wan Kenobi makes General just by killing a couple of droids or something.

I'm reminded of a little insight I had about next generation Star Trek a while back - it's really a kid's fantasy of what the Navy is like. Everyone's an officer. (How many times did you see anyone on the ship who wasn't?) It's possible to become an officer just by hanging out on the bridge long enough (q.v. Wesley Crusher.) My dad actually *was* in the Navy (Korea) and he thought Star Trek TNG was ridiculous - and it is. Star Wars with its legions of Generals is just as bad, maybe worse.
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#15 User is offline   Mnesymone Icon

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Posted 13 April 2005 - 02:55 AM

Or maybe Obi-Wan was really meant to be a General because he was a military advisor to Alderaan during the Clone Wars... rather than another Jedi Knight who killed droids...

At least thats how I thought of him. Before the dark times. Before the prequels.
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