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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2022 13:44:18 GMT -5
At least two people I know are (or were) seeking the theatrical versions on DVD. Are they on DVD? I didn’t know, so couldn’t tell them.
There is a FB group devoted to Star Wars on home video. I have never commented in there, but have read posts, it seems some kept hold of their video players because they wanted the original films.
You know, I remember reading about how William Shatner sought money/time/resources from Paramount to do a proper version of Star Trek V. Now, that’s a film that I like 70% of, but have issues with the remaining 30%. I would have liked to see Paramount do that for Shatner. It didn’t happen. And I once said to a friend, “Where’s the justice in the world when Star Trek V can’t get a director’s cut - even though it needs it - while Lucas can endlessly tinker with his films?’
(I realise I may be comparing apples and oranges)
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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2022 13:48:30 GMT -5
And yet, none of it altered the story or the characters I fell in love with as an 8 year old in '77. They are still there any and every time I watch the move no matter what edition. -M Didn't it though? The change it the exchange between Han and Greedo makes a pretty significant change in Han's personality. I only marginally care because I dislike far more of Star Wars than I like. But what Lucas did is artistically vapid. And the unavailability of the original prints is definitely problematic from a historical standpoint. Han Solo w/Han shooting first-charismatic mercenary scoundrel engaged in illicit activity who has a hidden heart of gold and comes through in the end. Han Solo w/Greedo shooting first--charismatic mercenary scoundrel engaged in illicit activity who has a hidden heart of gold and comes through in the end. Still the same archetype/trope for the character. A little more cutthroat of a scoundrel with him shooting first, sure, but it essentially changes nothing about his arc. -M
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Post by Batflunkie on Dec 29, 2022 13:59:12 GMT -5
This was the conversation I had with my younger daughter the other day while she was watching Star Wars. I pointed out all of the garbage CGI crap that Lucas threw into the Mos Eisley street scenes, the extra cantina aliens, Han shooting first, the Jabba scene, etc. At one point she asked me if there was anything I still liked about the movie, to which I bluntly replied “the original version I saw in theaters”. And yet, none of it altered the story or the characters I fell in love with as an 8 year old in '77. They are still there any and every time I watch the move no matter what edition I'm reminded of a skit in an episode of MST3K (Boggy Creek II: And The Legend Continues...) where Crow makes a replica of "Self Portrait Of Bandaged Ear" out of Macaroni during a Scout den meeting.
When comparing the replica to the original, it may not look too different to the average joe, but it's indeed a difference
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Post by impulse on Dec 29, 2022 14:19:10 GMT -5
At one point she asked me if there was anything I still liked about the movie, to which I bluntly replied “the original version I saw in theaters”. Then it would be worth your time to track down Harmy's Despecialized Editions. They are (basically) that. And yet, none of it altered the story or the characters I fell in love with as an 8 year old in '77. They are still there any and every time I watch the move no matter what edition. -M Didn't it though? The change it the exchange between Han and Greedo makes a pretty significant change in Han's personality. I only marginally care because I dislike far more of Star Wars than I like. But what Lucas did is artistically vapid. And the unavailability of the original prints is definitely problematic from a historical standpoint. As usual, you've hit the nail squarely on the head. The edit changes Han's character considerably. If you go back and rewatch it, not only did Han shoot first; Han shot. Period. Greedo didn't even have time to squeeze one off, or it was unclear in the editing. Far different than shooting at the same time, or even worse in the more recent ones, Greedo shooting at point blank, MISSING, and then Han shooting after, to say nothing of the cringingly-bad CGI edit to have Han neck-dodge somehow. It turns Han from a cunning and ruthless rogue and neuters him to just some dude who got lucky. It shortens the length of the journey on his character arc, and for lack of a better term, it makes him less cool. It's a change born of the same rubbish ideas of Spielberg editing out the police's guns for walkie talkies in E.T. It added nothing good and made it worse. 100% agreed on the lack of availability of the original prints being an issue. If Lucas also wants to make his own director's re-edit to the edit director's director's cut of a cut recut edition every year, fine, go nuts. Do your thing. But at least also make the original culturally significant item available. He could draw dicks on the forehead of every character in every scene for the C.M.Y. Johnson edit if he wants as long as the original film is available somewhere. Not to mention every Star Wars nerd would pay full price for the series again to get their hands on the original version in a modern format. At least two people I know are (or were) seeking the theatrical versions on DVD. Are they on DVD? I didn’t know, so couldn’t tell them. Short answer: basically, yes. Longer answer: technically no. Those are as faithful as Harmy's versions in any case. The DVDs had a lot of edits, but those bonus discs that came with them had the versions from the laserdisc on them but in a subpar format. It was letterboxed and lower resolution I think. IIRC, there were some edits made from original theatrical cuts even on the Laserdisc, but they were pretty minimal, so they are more or less the original. Didn't it though? The change it the exchange between Han and Greedo makes a pretty significant change in Han's personality. I only marginally care because I dislike far more of Star Wars than I like. But what Lucas did is artistically vapid. And the unavailability of the original prints is definitely problematic from a historical standpoint. Han Solo w/Han shooting first-charismatic mercenary scoundrel engaged in illicit activity who has a hidden heart of gold and comes through in the end. Han Solo w/Greedo shooting first--charismatic mercenary scoundrel engaged in illicit activity who has a hidden heart of gold and comes through in the end. Still the same archetype/trope for the character. A little more cutthroat of a scoundrel with him shooting first, sure, but it essentially changes nothing about his arc. -M You're losing the point in the over-simplification. * Charismatic mercenary scoundrel with a demonstration of his ruthlessness and cunning. * Charismatic mercenary scoundrel who was incompetent because his opponent got the first shot off at point blank range who is only still alive because said opponent is even more incompetent and missed a point blank shot. The change neuters a cool scene and makes it lame, and there is a noticeable difference between a mercenary scoundrel who strikes first and a reluctant hero who only retaliates after being attacked first, even though his life was already on the line. It might seem like a subtle change, but it alters the whole thing. It's like when a company has a well-known product and replace one ingredient with something cheaper and it ruins it forever.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2022 15:51:23 GMT -5
You're losing the point in the over-simplification. * Charismatic mercenary scoundrel with a demonstration of his ruthlessness and cunning. * Charismatic mercenary scoundrel who was incompetent because his opponent got the first shot off at point blank range who is only still alive because said opponent is even more incompetent and missed a point blank shot. The change neuters a cool scene and makes it lame, and there is a noticeable difference between a mercenary scoundrel who strikes first and a reluctant hero who only retaliates after being attacked first, even though his life was already on the line. It might seem like a subtle change, but it alters the whole thing. It's like when a company has a well-known product and replace one ingredient with something cheaper and it ruins it forever. And I say you are overcomplicating things based on essentially minutiae. Did the change in any way change Han's arc? Change the way he behaved or was expected to behave throughout the rest of the film or trilogy? No. So it doesn't matter to the character, his arc, or his essence. Do we know Han is competent/incompetent only from that scene? Do we know he was ruthless/cut throat only form that scene? If that scene wound up on the cutting room floor in edits and not in the movie would that have changed anything about Han or his character arc? No. Therefore the change really is meaningless to his character and arc. If it were imprtant it would have story and character consequences. It doesn't. -M
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Post by impulse on Dec 29, 2022 16:18:47 GMT -5
You're losing the point in the over-simplification. * Charismatic mercenary scoundrel with a demonstration of his ruthlessness and cunning. * Charismatic mercenary scoundrel who was incompetent because his opponent got the first shot off at point blank range who is only still alive because said opponent is even more incompetent and missed a point blank shot. The change neuters a cool scene and makes it lame, and there is a noticeable difference between a mercenary scoundrel who strikes first and a reluctant hero who only retaliates after being attacked first, even though his life was already on the line. It might seem like a subtle change, but it alters the whole thing. It's like when a company has a well-known product and replace one ingredient with something cheaper and it ruins it forever. And I say you are overcomplicating things based on essentially minutiae. Did the change in any way change Han's arc? Change the way he behaved or was expected to behave throughout the rest of the film or trilogy? No. So it doesn't matter to the character, his arc, or his essence. Do we know Han is competent/incompetent only from that scene? Do we know he was ruthless/cut throat only form that scene? If that scene wound up on the cutting room floor in edits and not in the movie would that have changed anything about Han or his character arc? No. Therefore the change really is meaningless to his character and arc. If it were imprtant it would have story and character consequences. It doesn't. -M It quite literally changed the way he behaved. Instead of being ruthless and decisive and taking the shot, he hesitated and only made the shot after he was shot at. He would have been dead if Greedo was remotely competent. It would have been better to cut the scene altogether than to have it in its current form. It makes both Han and Greedo look incompetent whereas before they were both ruthless cunning mercenary types. It makes Han look less decisive, less competent, less capable, less on top of things, and just weaker at his role. Now, had Lucas not included the original scene at all in the theatrical movie and no other iteration was added, I'd be more inclined to agree that nothing really changes. But, that iconic scene was included, and Lucas for whatever reason decided to screw with it, so people have a sense of what was lost. I tend to ramble, so in short, they took a scene that made Han cool and replaced it with one that made him kinda lame.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 29, 2022 17:40:08 GMT -5
Friends don't let friends watch the "Special Editions", simple as that.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,085
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Post by Confessor on Dec 30, 2022 3:45:02 GMT -5
And yet, none of it altered the story or the characters I fell in love with as an 8 year old in '77. They are still there any and every time I watch the move no matter what edition. -M Yeah, this is pretty demonstrably false. As others have pointed out, Lucas's changes alter the character arc of Han Solo pretty drastically. But there are lots of other smaller, but no less significant ways in which the changes alter the story beats and undercut the dramatic tension found in the original film. To give just one example, the whole seriousness and menace of the visit to Mos Eisley is completely undercut and spoiled by the new CGI additions. The spaceport is supposed to be a scary place. The scene on the bluff overlooking the spaceport, in which Kenobi describes it as a "wretched hive of scum and villainy" and tells Luke "we must be cautious", is there precisely to establish that the characters are about to go into a perilous place. But in the SE, this scene is immediately followed by a badly animated slapstick routine involving a droid hitting a floating remote and a Jawa falling off of a startled Ronto, completely destroying the dramatic tension set up in the previous scene. This is just bad filmmaking, pure and simple. Actually, the whole Greedo shooting first thing also contributes to this "defanging" of Mos Eisley, by making both Han and Greedo less dangerous characters. And that's without touching on the artistic or moral implications of what Lucas and his Special Edition team did -- especially in their removal of pioneering ILM model work and analogue special effects. To not have the unaltered films readily available to view is also problematic from a historical perspective, I believe. Don't be fooled: Lucas's CGI changes in the Special Editions are anything but purely cosmetic. EDIT: Count me as another big fan of Harmy's DeSpecialized Editions.
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Post by The Captain on Dec 30, 2022 7:01:11 GMT -5
This was the conversation I had with my younger daughter the other day while she was watching Star Wars. I pointed out all of the garbage CGI crap that Lucas threw into the Mos Eisley street scenes, the extra cantina aliens, Han shooting first, the Jabba scene, etc. At one point she asked me if there was anything I still liked about the movie, to which I bluntly replied “the original version I saw in theaters”. And yet, none of it altered the story or the characters I fell in love with as an 8 year old in '77. They are still there any and every time I watch the move no matter what edition. -M I can't get past how the movie itself has been altered. The CGI elements are so obviously out of place, like first She-Hulk trailer bad, that my eye is drawn to them immediately, taking me out of the story. The Jabba scene should have been left on the cutting room floor (or the original comics, albeit with a different-looking Jabba). He isn't well-integrated into the background, so he looks completely fake, and much of the dialogue is relaying information that was already covered between Han and Greedo in the cantina. As well, the Boba Fett cameo is cheesy, as he looks directly at the camera in an almost-knowing fashion; this is fan service at its absolute worst. I don't care if Lucas wants to monkey with the film until the day he dies, churning out endless new editions of it with just one more cool thing he thought of while sitting on his golden throne, but for the purists, for the people who loved the movie that was released in 1977 and don't care that he can do more now because of technology, just make that version available for us to enjoy. As others have pointed out, Lucas's changes alter the character arc of Han Solo pretty drastically. But there are lots of other smaller, but no less significant ways in which the changes alter the story beats and undercut the dramatic tension found in the original film. To give just one example, the whole seriousness and menace of the visit to Mos Eisley is completely undercut and spoiled by the new CGI additions. The spaceport is supposed to be a scary place. The scene on the bluff overlooking the spaceport, in which Kenobi describes it as a "wretched hive of scum and villainy" and tells Luke "we must be cautious", is there precisely to establish that the characters are about to go into a perilous place. But in the SE, this scene is immediately followed by a badly animated slapstick routine involving a droid hitting a floating remote and a Jawa falling off of a startled Ronto, completely destroying the dramatic tension set up in the previous scene. This is just bad filmmaking, pure and simple. Actually, the whole Greedo shooting first thing also contributes to this "defanging" of Mos Eisley, by making both Han and Greedo less dangerous characters. IRT the bolded portion, I say 1000 times yes! Those little things add nothing to the story; they're gingerbread that Lucas added only because he could due to technology. It's the same kind of silliness that infiltrated the prequels, like Jar Jar Binks' pratfalls and fart jokes, when playing it straight would have been so much better.
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Post by impulse on Dec 30, 2022 9:33:09 GMT -5
]Yeah, this is pretty demonstrably false. As others have pointed out, Lucas's changes alter the character arc of Han Solo pretty drastically. But there are lots of other smaller, but no less significant ways in which the changes alter the story beats and undercut the dramatic tension found in the original film. To give just one example, the whole seriousness and menace of the visit to Mos Eisley is completely undercut and spoiled by the new CGI additions. The spaceport is supposed to be a scary place. The scene on the bluff overlooking the spaceport, in which Kenobi describes it as a "wretched hive of scum and villainy" and tells Luke "we must be cautious", is there precisely to establish that the characters are about to go into a perilous place. But in the SE, this scene is immediately followed by a badly animated slapstick routine involving a droid hitting a floating remote and a Jawa falling off of a startled Ronto, completely destroying the dramatic tension set up in the previous scene. This is just bad filmmaking, pure and simple. Actually, the whole Greedo shooting first thing also contributes to this "defanging" of Mos Eisley, by making both Han and Greedo less dangerous characters. And that's without touching on the artistic or moral implications of what Lucas and his Special Edition team did -- especially in their removal of pioneering ILM model work and analogue special effects. To not have the unaltered films readily available to view is also problematic from a historical perspective, I believe. Don't be fooled: Lucas's CGI changes in the Special Editions are anything but purely cosmetic. EDIT: Count me as another big fan of Harmy's DeSpecialized Editions. I wish Proboards would let me like this more than once. Extremely well-said, and thank you for finding the word that covers the concept I was clumsily trying to express - defanging. That's exactly what it is. They defanged Han and the Cantina and Greedo and all of it. Spielberg replacing police officers' weapons with radios was the same. Swapping the turtles' weapons for sausages and inflatable clowns in TMNT2 was the same thing. Giving goons in cartoons energy weapons instead of real guns to make it more kid-friendly (which is more understandable than some other examples, particularly in cartoons made for kids from the start, compared to altering an already-beloved and influential classic film). It all just reeks of 4th-wall breaking neutering a story, and it has the effects both of breaking immersion and making it feel blatantly pandered to small kids to the point of distraction. Mos Eisley is dangerous. Let it be dangerous. Han was a dangerous dude in a dangerous line of work in a dangerous place working with dangerous people. Let him be a dangerous dude.
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Post by kirby101 on Dec 30, 2022 14:04:44 GMT -5
I will say this. The re-edited run on the Death Star worked much better in the SE. There were tactics and designated wing attacks. In the original, it was just ships diving in to get to the opening.
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Post by Prince Hal on Dec 30, 2022 14:34:27 GMT -5
Saw this today at Daily Kos... Sherlock Holmes will finally escape copyright this weekend"The Holmes news specifically also marks the end of a tortured legal debate about how copyright law should treat the character. Several of Doyle’s earlier works were already in the public domain before 2019, but the author’s estate argued this shouldn’t loosen its hold. That led to multiple legal tangles over unauthorized new Sherlock Holmes stories, including a now-settled suit against Netflix for its spinoff Enola Holmes. Now, if you were considering a new interpretation of the world’s greatest detective, there’s never been a better time to do it. Just spare a thought for Canada while you do it — thanks to a law issued earlier this year, it’s about to start its own 20-year freeze." Full story here: www.theverge.com/2022/12/28/23528003/sherlock-holmes-metropolis-to-the-lighthouse-public-domain-day-2023The Mickey Mouse story is much more complicated.
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Post by spoon on Dec 30, 2022 15:59:26 GMT -5
To give just one example, the whole seriousness and menace of the visit to Mos Eisley is completely undercut and spoiled by the new CGI additions. The spaceport is supposed to be a scary place. The scene on the bluff overlooking the spaceport, in which Kenobi describes it as a "wretched hive of scum and villainy" and tells Luke "we must be cautious", is there precisely to establish that the characters are about to go into a perilous place. But in the SE, this scene is immediately followed by a badly animated slapstick routine involving a droid hitting a floating remote and a Jawa falling off of a startled Ronto, completely destroying the dramatic tension set up in the previous scene. This is just bad filmmaking, pure and simple. I hate how the overcrowding with CGI characters in the "these aren't the droids you're looking for" scene takes diminish the focus on Obi-Wan and the Stormtroopers. I think at one point there's actual someone/thing in the foreground that walks past and we lose sight of the characters we should be focusing on.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2022 16:03:35 GMT -5
A week ago from this morning, it was about -30F wind chill outside in my area. Today it's in the mid-60's and we just got back from a hike in short sleeves. Crazy!!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 30, 2022 16:08:04 GMT -5
Back on the Star Wars topic, why do I get this feeling that Icctrombone is long gone from this spirited debate after just mentioning he was planning to maybe watch them, and instead will start vacation reading a stack of old Avengers books with maybe a nice beverage with an umbrella while we continue to debate?
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