DVDAnswers Star Wars Changes Comparison
10-11-04, 12:59 AM
#1
DVD Talk Godfather
Thread Starter
DVDAnswers Star Wars Changes Comparison
http://www.dvdanswers.com/index.php?...c=28&n=1&burl=
Great article, with screen shots comparing the changes.
Great article, with screen shots comparing the changes.
10-12-04, 03:21 PM
#11
DVD Talk Legend
A friend emailed me these articles. Thought they were interesting. I did not want to open a whole new thread for them so I thought they might fit in here.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...4/704jyoti.asp
Pray He Doesn't Alter Them Any Further . . .
Why the Star Wars DVDs are bunk and George Lucas has destroyed his own mythology.
by Jonathan V. Last
10/04/2004 12:00:00 AM
"I've got a bad feeling about this."
--Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, various Star Wars films
THERE ARE many substantive reasons to dislike the new Star Wars trilogy DVD set. Despite boasting of a total remastering of the original movies, the color timing is off during the opening scenes on Tatooine in Episode IV. In spots, the dialogue is not perfectly clean. And, as sound obsessive John Takis noted recently, the rear-channel music score is flipped throughout A New Hope, resulting in what Takis observes is "essentially a 124-minute audio glitch."
Yet these are mere quibbles beside the terrible narrative and symbolic failures of the Star Wars DVDs. More than anything else in the last 30 years, this four-disc set is a sign that George Lucas hates you.
Let's begin with the Star Wars DVDs' raison d'être. Why has Lucas decided that now is the moment to bring the original trilogy to DVD? He has avoided bringing these movies to the digital platform for years, often citing piracy concerns. DVD piracy hasn't gone away. And, with the final installment of his prequels due in theaters next summer, this isn't an obvious moment for a look back at the originals. It would have made more sense to release these movies on DVD in 2006, after the final prequel had come to disc.
The problem with that, however, is DVD technology. The first high-definition DVDs will rollout next fall. By putting out the Star Wars DVDs now, Lucas gets two bites at the apple:
He'll sell a boatload of conventional DVDs now, and then will be able to resell them to the same consumers in a couple years as the HD DVD standard takes hold.
If that sounds like a paranoid distrust of the Lucasfilm commercial juggernaut, consider this: Today, "ewok" is a household word, is synonymous with Star Wars, and is part of the national consciousness. Yet, as Film Threat notes, the word "ewok" is never uttered even once in any of the Star Wars movies. We know it not because of the film, but because of the toys, the t-shirts, the cookies, and all the other claptrap Lucas used Star Wars to sell.
No, these new DVDs are nothing more than a chance for Lucas to make a fast buck from the old digital format before it's put out to pasture.
OF COURSE, the movies now out on DVD are most likely not the Star Wars movies you remember. They have been edited and altered into a special-edition-director's-cut amalgam that weakens the originals in almost every way.
The catalogue of changes Lucas has imposed on his original Star Wars movies is exhaustive, and shall not be reproduced here. It is enough to note that the changes range in scale from altering how a villain is affected when shot by a laser-blaster, to music cues, to the changing of looped dialogue, to the insertion of entirely new scenes. These revisions demonstrate no consistency of purpose: Some were made to compensate for technological shortfalls. Some were made to alter the narrative structure. Others were made just because.
For purposes of understanding George Lucas, it is worth considering two of these changes in some depth: The introduction of Jabba the Hut in Episode IV and the treatment of Anakin Skywalker in Return of the Jedi.
THE 1997 SPECIAL EDITION release of Star Wars included a new scene where Han Solo encounters Jabba the Hut on Tatooine. Solo owes Jabba money, and has just killed a bounty hunter sent after him by the Hut. Running into one another in a hangar, Solo and Jabba banter and eventually reach an agreement whereby Jabba lets him go on the condition that Solo repay him with hefty interest.
This seems like a small change, but it sets off a chain reaction which undermines the basic arc of Han Solo's character: Throughout the Star Wars series, Solo is on the run from an implacable gangster who wants him dead. This deathmark influences his decisions and is what makes him a skittish, mercenary scoundrel. Solo is the type of guy who has to look around every corner. But now that he has a deal with Jabba the Hut, none of that makes sense. Han isn't being chased by bounty hunters and can go square with Jabba any time he likes. As a result, his character loses a good bit of danger and romance.
(As an aside, it's worth noting that this new scene also manages to confuse the character of Jabba himself. When the great Hut made his first appearance in 1983 in Return of the Jedi, he
is a crass, stupid bully. In the Special Edition scene grafted onto the original Star Wars, he's a smooth-talking, genial Mafioso. Will the real Jabba please stand up?)
INFINITELY WORSE is the end of the new DVD version of Return of the Jedi, which has been altered so that when Luke looks over at the ghosts of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, and Anakin Skywalker, the actor who played Anakin in the original trilogy, Sebastian Shaw, has been replaced by Hayden Christiansen, the actor who portrays Anakin in the prequels.
Again this seems a small matter, but on closer inspection it nearly unravels the entire Star Wars universe:
(1) Hayden Christiansen is 23 years old. When he filmed Return of the Jedi, Shaw was 78.
(2) This creates a timeline problem for Lucas: If Anakin Skywalker is in his early twenties when he becomes Darth Vader, and Star Wars introduces us to a Luke Skywalker who is also in his twenties, that means that (a) When Darth Vader dies, he's only in his forties; and (b) the reign of the evil Empire has been barely 20 years--not nearly long enough for all the drastic changes we're led to believe have happened since the Emperor took over. For example, after only 20 years, would people already be regarding Jedi knights and the Force as "old wizards" who practice a "hokey religion"?
(3) Making Anakin Skywalker younger runs counter to everything Star Wars had told us about his character. In Episode IV, Obi Wan tells Luke that Anakin was "the best star fighter pilot in the galaxy and a cunning warrior." In Jedi, Obi Wan says that Anakin was "a good man" before he turned to the Dark Side. To hear Obi Wan tell it, Anakin was a grown man when he suddenly turned evil, which is dramatically interesting. Now, Lucas is saying that Anakin was simply an adolescent who went bad. Not a particularly epic theme. After all, when people are young and irresponsible, they're young and irresponsible.
(4) Forget the epistemology: At the end of Jedi, Mark Hamill is 32 years old, so he's now looking on beatifically at his 23-year-old father. Even worse: At the end of Jedi, Luke removes Vader's mask and sees the face of his father for the first time. This face belongs to actor Sebastian Shaw. So when Hayden Christiansen appears as Anakin's young ghost, Luke wouldn't have any idea that this kid is his father.
(5) By inserting an actor from the prequels, Lucas has made it philosophically impossible to separate the original trilogy from his weaker and less interesting work. After seeing The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, some Star Wars fans believed that they would be able to stick their heads in the sand and continue to enjoy the originals by pretending that the new installments never happened. George Lucas has now denied them even that cold comfort.
THERE IS MORE, if you care. Much more. Originally, Han Solo shot Greedo first in the Creature Cantina. In the 1997 release, Lucas made Greedo shoot first. Now the two of them now fire at the same time. Vader has been made to appear as if he didn't know he had a son. After the Emperor has been assassinated, we see scenes of celebration on several planets, including one quick cut to Naboo, where a Gungan shouts, "Weesa free!"
These changes, counterproductive as they are, should be endurable. After all, George Lucas created these movies. He has the right to wreck them if he wants. But Lucas isn't just putting out newer, flawed versions. He is embarked on a campaign to create The One True Version of the Star Wars mythology. You see, every time Lucas tinkers with one of his movies, the changes becomes the official version. The older versions are then quietly and efficiently erased from the public record.
If you want to see the Star Wars movies as they once were, tough luck. You'll need to go to eBay or the black market and pay hundreds of dollars for the 1993 laserdisc set, or find a bootlegged DVD of the same. The early, unscarred VHS editions are all aging and deteriorating and besides which, were mostly in pan-and-scan full screen.
In a few years the original versions of the Star Wars trilogy will be vanished completely. Many filmmakers put out director's cuts of their movies, which are sold alongside the theatrical versions. George Lucas, on the other hand, is so obsessed with airbrushing history that at the end of the day, only Jar-Jar Binks will be left seated on the couch with Lenin.
IS ALL OF THIS complaining missing the forest for the trees? Perhaps so. DVD Journal's always reliable Alexandra DuPont calls the overall presentation of the films "unimpeachably great." Which is true--the Star Wars trilogy has never looked better.
But it is a measure of the deleterious effects of Lucas's tinkering (and the awfulness of the prequels) that it is difficult to care about Star Wars anymore.
Twenty years ago that would have sounded like heresy. People growing up in the 1970s and '80s committed Star Wars to memory and developed a cult around the movies (for instance, the band which performs the theme song to Buffy the Vampire Slayer is called "Nerf Herder," an epithet Leia uses to describe Han in Empire). Strangely enough, the cultural space Star Wars occupies has shrunk in recent years. People who were weaned on the originals have become disenchanted, and Lucas's revised versions aren't minting many new fans.
It is a bizarre relationship Lucas has with his audience. He is the sole keeper of the gospel and he goes to great pains to show that he, and not his audience, is the arbiter of what is or isn't changed in the Star Wars universe. But like any high priest, he has need of his lowly followers. Maybe some day, when enough of his audience has checked out, George Lucas will have the good sense to change his movies back.
Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard. In 2002 he wrote The Case for the Empire defending the integrity of Darth Vader's Galactic Empire.
See also Matthew Continetti's defense of the Star Wars DVDs.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...4/727umtcl.asp
. . . So Be It, Jedi
Why George Lucas has every right to alter his films, and why we have every right to be mad at him for doing so.
by Matthew Continetti
10/04/2004 12:17:00 AM
THERE MUST BE A NAME for people like me, people who are caught in a terrible, interminable inbetween. We were too young to see the original Star Wars trilogy when it first came out in movie theaters, but not quite old enough to escape its spell. I didn't exist when Star Wars opened in 1977, nor when the evil Empire struck back in 1980, and was too small to go to the movies when Return of the Jedi opened in 1983. Yet I wasn't so small as to be immune to marketing. After Jedi's release, I soon had dozens of action figures and model ships and playsets. My third birthday party had an Ewok theme. Looking back, I realize now that at the time, the films were only an afterthought; if I saw them at all, it was on television or BETA cassettes or early VHS tapes. What was important were the toys and the Happy Meals and other souvenirs. I was caught, in other words, in a cultural backwash.
That changed. Years passed, and one lost interest in the toys, but never the movies, which you could watch over and over again, and which always seemed epic, even on the small screen. And they were always on the small screen: George Lucas didn't rerelease his original trilogy in movie theaters until 1997, by which time I was well into adolescence, and by which time, of course, he had also changed the films irrevocably.
But did that really matter? Did the fact that
Lucas toyed with his creations somehow diminish the originals? Certainly I thought so in 1997. Seeing the movies for the first time in a dark and crowded theater, I raised a weary eyebrow and snickered at Lucas's alterations: These aren't the films I know, I thought. And yet, settling in my couch last week to watch the Star Wars trilogy on DVD, I found I wasn't bothered by Lucas's 1997 revisions, nor his further revisions. In fact, I liked a few of them. Sort of.
What occurred to me was that I had never seen the films in their "original" versions. So why complain? When I first saw the movies, after all, they were on videotape. This meant that I saw the "Pan & Scan" versions, which meant, in turn, that I saw only a small corner of each original frame. It meant, too, that the images were dulled; it meant that the (monophonic) sound quality varied; it meant that you could pause in the middle of the story and rewind and fast forward. Already Lucas's trilogy had been altered--mostly for the worse.
But no longer. These new Star Wars DVDs are in letterbox. You see the actual images that Lucas shot. They are in THX, so the sound and picture quality are outstanding. They are in stereo, which means that if you have the right equipment (I don't), you can have theater-quality sound in your living room. All of which are alterations performed on the original movies. But clearly they are alterations for the better.
AREN'T THEY? Not to Lucas's critics, who focus intensely on the special-effects "improvements" he's made. He has added scenes in Star Wars and Return of the Jedi, for example, and has played with the backgrounds in all three films. Originally these backgrounds were matte paintings or small outdoor sets in Tunisia or indoor soundstages in London backlots. Technology has advanced so far in the twenty-seven years since the first film was released, however, that Lucas says now he can produce the effects he had always wanted. There is no question that such changes make the films look different. What Lucas is doing is giving twentieth-century films a twenty-first century veneer.
And in some cases it works. In Star Wars, for example, there is a scene in which Han Solo, trying to escape from the Death Star, chases down a column of Storm Troopers, turns a corner, finds even more bad guys waiting for him--and promptly turns around and flees for his life. It's a funny scene. In the film's original version, Solo turns the corner and sees maybe 10 Storm Troopers before scurrying away. In the new version, Solo turns the corner and sees hundreds of Storm Troopers and regular Imperial troops, all training their blasters at him. He has even more reason to run for his life, screaming.
Here is another example: In The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Princess Leia, and C-3PO travel to Cloud City, a huge, bustling gas-mining colony. Except that in the 1980 version, Cloud City isn't
bustling at all. Most of the streets are empty. So are most of the skyways. Nothing seems to be going on. Watching the 1980 version, you begin to think the only citizens of Cloud City are Lando Calrissian and that bald guy with the piece of metal wrapped around his head who follows Lando all over the place. In the new version, however, Lucas and his special effects teams have gone in and added new life to what once seemed like a necropolis. There are trams and crowds and space ships. The result: Cloud City's pearl white corridors feel less like a movie set, and more like an actual, lived-in space.
Such alterations only enhance what were already classic films. And yet, as much as I want to defend these new DVDs, I find I can do so only up to a point. That's the point at which Lucas changes things in order to forge continuities between his original Star Wars movies and the three "prequels" he's spent the better part of the last decade creating. You reach this point, for example, when Lucas moves all-CGI characters into the already-crowded Jabba's palace in Return of the Jedi--characters that recall the crime against humanity named Jar-Jar Binks.
And you reach this point at the end of Jedi, when Luke Skywalker, having just redeemed his father and defeated the malevolent Emperor, having just seen many of his friends perish, looks upon the ghostly faces of his teachers, Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. In the original version, Anakin is a middle-aged man played by Sebastian Shaw. In the new version, Luke sees Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi and . . . Hayden Christensen.
CHRISTENSEN, of course, is the teen hearthrob who plays Anakin Skywalker in Lucas's prequels. But here he sticks out like a sore thumb. When you see him, the only reasonable reaction is to laugh and think: What the hell is he doing here? It's an egregious, silly alteration--why is Darth Vader's ghost only 20 years old?--and one that only reminds you of things you'd rather forget.
It is a painful reminder. With the original Star Wars trilogy, caught in a cultural backwash, I loved the films even though I never saw them in the theater. As for the prequels (The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones)--well, I saw them in the theater--and what I saw was crap. Twenty years ago, when it came to liking Star Wars, I wasn't old enough to know better. And that's the way I felt as I watched these new DVDs, right until Hayden Christensen showed up in Jedi, and I realized that when it comes to George Lucas's latest films, I do know better. Sorry, George. You had me right until the end.
Matthew Continetti is a reporter at The Weekly Standard.
See also Jonathan V. Last's attack on the Star Wars DVDs.
I thought that they both brought up some good points.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...4/704jyoti.asp
Pray He Doesn't Alter Them Any Further . . .
Why the Star Wars DVDs are bunk and George Lucas has destroyed his own mythology.
by Jonathan V. Last
10/04/2004 12:00:00 AM
"I've got a bad feeling about this."
--Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, various Star Wars films
THERE ARE many substantive reasons to dislike the new Star Wars trilogy DVD set. Despite boasting of a total remastering of the original movies, the color timing is off during the opening scenes on Tatooine in Episode IV. In spots, the dialogue is not perfectly clean. And, as sound obsessive John Takis noted recently, the rear-channel music score is flipped throughout A New Hope, resulting in what Takis observes is "essentially a 124-minute audio glitch."
Yet these are mere quibbles beside the terrible narrative and symbolic failures of the Star Wars DVDs. More than anything else in the last 30 years, this four-disc set is a sign that George Lucas hates you.
Let's begin with the Star Wars DVDs' raison d'être. Why has Lucas decided that now is the moment to bring the original trilogy to DVD? He has avoided bringing these movies to the digital platform for years, often citing piracy concerns. DVD piracy hasn't gone away. And, with the final installment of his prequels due in theaters next summer, this isn't an obvious moment for a look back at the originals. It would have made more sense to release these movies on DVD in 2006, after the final prequel had come to disc.
The problem with that, however, is DVD technology. The first high-definition DVDs will rollout next fall. By putting out the Star Wars DVDs now, Lucas gets two bites at the apple:
He'll sell a boatload of conventional DVDs now, and then will be able to resell them to the same consumers in a couple years as the HD DVD standard takes hold.
If that sounds like a paranoid distrust of the Lucasfilm commercial juggernaut, consider this: Today, "ewok" is a household word, is synonymous with Star Wars, and is part of the national consciousness. Yet, as Film Threat notes, the word "ewok" is never uttered even once in any of the Star Wars movies. We know it not because of the film, but because of the toys, the t-shirts, the cookies, and all the other claptrap Lucas used Star Wars to sell.
No, these new DVDs are nothing more than a chance for Lucas to make a fast buck from the old digital format before it's put out to pasture.
OF COURSE, the movies now out on DVD are most likely not the Star Wars movies you remember. They have been edited and altered into a special-edition-director's-cut amalgam that weakens the originals in almost every way.
The catalogue of changes Lucas has imposed on his original Star Wars movies is exhaustive, and shall not be reproduced here. It is enough to note that the changes range in scale from altering how a villain is affected when shot by a laser-blaster, to music cues, to the changing of looped dialogue, to the insertion of entirely new scenes. These revisions demonstrate no consistency of purpose: Some were made to compensate for technological shortfalls. Some were made to alter the narrative structure. Others were made just because.
For purposes of understanding George Lucas, it is worth considering two of these changes in some depth: The introduction of Jabba the Hut in Episode IV and the treatment of Anakin Skywalker in Return of the Jedi.
THE 1997 SPECIAL EDITION release of Star Wars included a new scene where Han Solo encounters Jabba the Hut on Tatooine. Solo owes Jabba money, and has just killed a bounty hunter sent after him by the Hut. Running into one another in a hangar, Solo and Jabba banter and eventually reach an agreement whereby Jabba lets him go on the condition that Solo repay him with hefty interest.
This seems like a small change, but it sets off a chain reaction which undermines the basic arc of Han Solo's character: Throughout the Star Wars series, Solo is on the run from an implacable gangster who wants him dead. This deathmark influences his decisions and is what makes him a skittish, mercenary scoundrel. Solo is the type of guy who has to look around every corner. But now that he has a deal with Jabba the Hut, none of that makes sense. Han isn't being chased by bounty hunters and can go square with Jabba any time he likes. As a result, his character loses a good bit of danger and romance.
(As an aside, it's worth noting that this new scene also manages to confuse the character of Jabba himself. When the great Hut made his first appearance in 1983 in Return of the Jedi, he
is a crass, stupid bully. In the Special Edition scene grafted onto the original Star Wars, he's a smooth-talking, genial Mafioso. Will the real Jabba please stand up?)
INFINITELY WORSE is the end of the new DVD version of Return of the Jedi, which has been altered so that when Luke looks over at the ghosts of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, and Anakin Skywalker, the actor who played Anakin in the original trilogy, Sebastian Shaw, has been replaced by Hayden Christiansen, the actor who portrays Anakin in the prequels.
Again this seems a small matter, but on closer inspection it nearly unravels the entire Star Wars universe:
(1) Hayden Christiansen is 23 years old. When he filmed Return of the Jedi, Shaw was 78.
(2) This creates a timeline problem for Lucas: If Anakin Skywalker is in his early twenties when he becomes Darth Vader, and Star Wars introduces us to a Luke Skywalker who is also in his twenties, that means that (a) When Darth Vader dies, he's only in his forties; and (b) the reign of the evil Empire has been barely 20 years--not nearly long enough for all the drastic changes we're led to believe have happened since the Emperor took over. For example, after only 20 years, would people already be regarding Jedi knights and the Force as "old wizards" who practice a "hokey religion"?
(3) Making Anakin Skywalker younger runs counter to everything Star Wars had told us about his character. In Episode IV, Obi Wan tells Luke that Anakin was "the best star fighter pilot in the galaxy and a cunning warrior." In Jedi, Obi Wan says that Anakin was "a good man" before he turned to the Dark Side. To hear Obi Wan tell it, Anakin was a grown man when he suddenly turned evil, which is dramatically interesting. Now, Lucas is saying that Anakin was simply an adolescent who went bad. Not a particularly epic theme. After all, when people are young and irresponsible, they're young and irresponsible.
(4) Forget the epistemology: At the end of Jedi, Mark Hamill is 32 years old, so he's now looking on beatifically at his 23-year-old father. Even worse: At the end of Jedi, Luke removes Vader's mask and sees the face of his father for the first time. This face belongs to actor Sebastian Shaw. So when Hayden Christiansen appears as Anakin's young ghost, Luke wouldn't have any idea that this kid is his father.
(5) By inserting an actor from the prequels, Lucas has made it philosophically impossible to separate the original trilogy from his weaker and less interesting work. After seeing The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, some Star Wars fans believed that they would be able to stick their heads in the sand and continue to enjoy the originals by pretending that the new installments never happened. George Lucas has now denied them even that cold comfort.
THERE IS MORE, if you care. Much more. Originally, Han Solo shot Greedo first in the Creature Cantina. In the 1997 release, Lucas made Greedo shoot first. Now the two of them now fire at the same time. Vader has been made to appear as if he didn't know he had a son. After the Emperor has been assassinated, we see scenes of celebration on several planets, including one quick cut to Naboo, where a Gungan shouts, "Weesa free!"
These changes, counterproductive as they are, should be endurable. After all, George Lucas created these movies. He has the right to wreck them if he wants. But Lucas isn't just putting out newer, flawed versions. He is embarked on a campaign to create The One True Version of the Star Wars mythology. You see, every time Lucas tinkers with one of his movies, the changes becomes the official version. The older versions are then quietly and efficiently erased from the public record.
If you want to see the Star Wars movies as they once were, tough luck. You'll need to go to eBay or the black market and pay hundreds of dollars for the 1993 laserdisc set, or find a bootlegged DVD of the same. The early, unscarred VHS editions are all aging and deteriorating and besides which, were mostly in pan-and-scan full screen.
In a few years the original versions of the Star Wars trilogy will be vanished completely. Many filmmakers put out director's cuts of their movies, which are sold alongside the theatrical versions. George Lucas, on the other hand, is so obsessed with airbrushing history that at the end of the day, only Jar-Jar Binks will be left seated on the couch with Lenin.
IS ALL OF THIS complaining missing the forest for the trees? Perhaps so. DVD Journal's always reliable Alexandra DuPont calls the overall presentation of the films "unimpeachably great." Which is true--the Star Wars trilogy has never looked better.
But it is a measure of the deleterious effects of Lucas's tinkering (and the awfulness of the prequels) that it is difficult to care about Star Wars anymore.
Twenty years ago that would have sounded like heresy. People growing up in the 1970s and '80s committed Star Wars to memory and developed a cult around the movies (for instance, the band which performs the theme song to Buffy the Vampire Slayer is called "Nerf Herder," an epithet Leia uses to describe Han in Empire). Strangely enough, the cultural space Star Wars occupies has shrunk in recent years. People who were weaned on the originals have become disenchanted, and Lucas's revised versions aren't minting many new fans.
It is a bizarre relationship Lucas has with his audience. He is the sole keeper of the gospel and he goes to great pains to show that he, and not his audience, is the arbiter of what is or isn't changed in the Star Wars universe. But like any high priest, he has need of his lowly followers. Maybe some day, when enough of his audience has checked out, George Lucas will have the good sense to change his movies back.
Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard. In 2002 he wrote The Case for the Empire defending the integrity of Darth Vader's Galactic Empire.
See also Matthew Continetti's defense of the Star Wars DVDs.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...4/727umtcl.asp
. . . So Be It, Jedi
Why George Lucas has every right to alter his films, and why we have every right to be mad at him for doing so.
by Matthew Continetti
10/04/2004 12:17:00 AM
THERE MUST BE A NAME for people like me, people who are caught in a terrible, interminable inbetween. We were too young to see the original Star Wars trilogy when it first came out in movie theaters, but not quite old enough to escape its spell. I didn't exist when Star Wars opened in 1977, nor when the evil Empire struck back in 1980, and was too small to go to the movies when Return of the Jedi opened in 1983. Yet I wasn't so small as to be immune to marketing. After Jedi's release, I soon had dozens of action figures and model ships and playsets. My third birthday party had an Ewok theme. Looking back, I realize now that at the time, the films were only an afterthought; if I saw them at all, it was on television or BETA cassettes or early VHS tapes. What was important were the toys and the Happy Meals and other souvenirs. I was caught, in other words, in a cultural backwash.
That changed. Years passed, and one lost interest in the toys, but never the movies, which you could watch over and over again, and which always seemed epic, even on the small screen. And they were always on the small screen: George Lucas didn't rerelease his original trilogy in movie theaters until 1997, by which time I was well into adolescence, and by which time, of course, he had also changed the films irrevocably.
But did that really matter? Did the fact that
Lucas toyed with his creations somehow diminish the originals? Certainly I thought so in 1997. Seeing the movies for the first time in a dark and crowded theater, I raised a weary eyebrow and snickered at Lucas's alterations: These aren't the films I know, I thought. And yet, settling in my couch last week to watch the Star Wars trilogy on DVD, I found I wasn't bothered by Lucas's 1997 revisions, nor his further revisions. In fact, I liked a few of them. Sort of.
What occurred to me was that I had never seen the films in their "original" versions. So why complain? When I first saw the movies, after all, they were on videotape. This meant that I saw the "Pan & Scan" versions, which meant, in turn, that I saw only a small corner of each original frame. It meant, too, that the images were dulled; it meant that the (monophonic) sound quality varied; it meant that you could pause in the middle of the story and rewind and fast forward. Already Lucas's trilogy had been altered--mostly for the worse.
But no longer. These new Star Wars DVDs are in letterbox. You see the actual images that Lucas shot. They are in THX, so the sound and picture quality are outstanding. They are in stereo, which means that if you have the right equipment (I don't), you can have theater-quality sound in your living room. All of which are alterations performed on the original movies. But clearly they are alterations for the better.
AREN'T THEY? Not to Lucas's critics, who focus intensely on the special-effects "improvements" he's made. He has added scenes in Star Wars and Return of the Jedi, for example, and has played with the backgrounds in all three films. Originally these backgrounds were matte paintings or small outdoor sets in Tunisia or indoor soundstages in London backlots. Technology has advanced so far in the twenty-seven years since the first film was released, however, that Lucas says now he can produce the effects he had always wanted. There is no question that such changes make the films look different. What Lucas is doing is giving twentieth-century films a twenty-first century veneer.
And in some cases it works. In Star Wars, for example, there is a scene in which Han Solo, trying to escape from the Death Star, chases down a column of Storm Troopers, turns a corner, finds even more bad guys waiting for him--and promptly turns around and flees for his life. It's a funny scene. In the film's original version, Solo turns the corner and sees maybe 10 Storm Troopers before scurrying away. In the new version, Solo turns the corner and sees hundreds of Storm Troopers and regular Imperial troops, all training their blasters at him. He has even more reason to run for his life, screaming.
Here is another example: In The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Princess Leia, and C-3PO travel to Cloud City, a huge, bustling gas-mining colony. Except that in the 1980 version, Cloud City isn't
bustling at all. Most of the streets are empty. So are most of the skyways. Nothing seems to be going on. Watching the 1980 version, you begin to think the only citizens of Cloud City are Lando Calrissian and that bald guy with the piece of metal wrapped around his head who follows Lando all over the place. In the new version, however, Lucas and his special effects teams have gone in and added new life to what once seemed like a necropolis. There are trams and crowds and space ships. The result: Cloud City's pearl white corridors feel less like a movie set, and more like an actual, lived-in space.
Such alterations only enhance what were already classic films. And yet, as much as I want to defend these new DVDs, I find I can do so only up to a point. That's the point at which Lucas changes things in order to forge continuities between his original Star Wars movies and the three "prequels" he's spent the better part of the last decade creating. You reach this point, for example, when Lucas moves all-CGI characters into the already-crowded Jabba's palace in Return of the Jedi--characters that recall the crime against humanity named Jar-Jar Binks.
And you reach this point at the end of Jedi, when Luke Skywalker, having just redeemed his father and defeated the malevolent Emperor, having just seen many of his friends perish, looks upon the ghostly faces of his teachers, Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. In the original version, Anakin is a middle-aged man played by Sebastian Shaw. In the new version, Luke sees Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi and . . . Hayden Christensen.
CHRISTENSEN, of course, is the teen hearthrob who plays Anakin Skywalker in Lucas's prequels. But here he sticks out like a sore thumb. When you see him, the only reasonable reaction is to laugh and think: What the hell is he doing here? It's an egregious, silly alteration--why is Darth Vader's ghost only 20 years old?--and one that only reminds you of things you'd rather forget.
It is a painful reminder. With the original Star Wars trilogy, caught in a cultural backwash, I loved the films even though I never saw them in the theater. As for the prequels (The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones)--well, I saw them in the theater--and what I saw was crap. Twenty years ago, when it came to liking Star Wars, I wasn't old enough to know better. And that's the way I felt as I watched these new DVDs, right until Hayden Christensen showed up in Jedi, and I realized that when it comes to George Lucas's latest films, I do know better. Sorry, George. You had me right until the end.
Matthew Continetti is a reporter at The Weekly Standard.
See also Jonathan V. Last's attack on the Star Wars DVDs.
I thought that they both brought up some good points.
10-12-04, 09:20 PM
#13
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I can't believe people care that much. Actually, if I got paid to write about Star Wars I'd do it too, I guess. Unfortunately my current occupation doesn't allow that for some reason.
10-13-04, 03:22 AM
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Originally posted by BizRodian
Bitch Bitch Bitch.
Bitch Bitch Bitch.
Originally posted by Toad
I can't believe people care that much.
I can't believe people care that much.
Originally posted by PixyJunket
Jesus.. some people are ready to kill themselves over such minor changes.
Jesus.. some people are ready to kill themselves over such minor changes.
The link supplied by the original poster is interesting. I love seeing comparison shots like that, and the restoration work is impressive. One thing I really do dig about the SEs (or the SSEs) are the skies--they're absolutely beautiful, in some cases.
As for the changes, I'm going to have to agree that there are two which do indeed destroy some of the story's logic and consistency: the added Jabba scene in ANH, and Hayden Christensen in ROTJ. I used to think the former was merely redundant, but now that I think about it more, it completely destroys the threat of being captured for Han, which is his primary motivation in these movies. He makes peace with Jabba now, yet all these bounty hunters are still after him. Why? It simply makes no sense, and stuff like this pulls you out of enjoying the movie.
Now I'm not going to kill myself over this
but I think the people who've written the above articles have made some good, objective points regarding the story presented in the newest revision of these movies (completely regardless of personal preference and taste when it comes to such things). If you really have a problem with people pointing such things out, you should assess why you're spending time in this thread.
10-13-04, 11:43 AM
#17
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Originally posted by Duder
First, I haven't seen any mention of suicide over this. Second, if you all don't care, why did you bother to go to the Star Wars DVDs sub-forum, click on this thread, and take the time to post?
First, I haven't seen any mention of suicide over this. Second, if you all don't care, why did you bother to go to the Star Wars DVDs sub-forum, click on this thread, and take the time to post?
10-13-04, 06:56 PM
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Forget Greedo. Forget Jabba. Forget young Anakin. I just hate the whole "Inform my Star Destroyer of my Arrival" line and seeing the actual arrival of Darth Vader toward the end of Empire. Maybe the new line could stay, but the actual arrival scene kills the pacing of the Falcon's escape from Bespin.
Lucas, we don't need all the dots connected for us.
Lucas, we don't need all the dots connected for us.
10-14-04, 07:26 PM
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The link supplied by the original poster is interesting. I love seeing comparison shots like that, and the restoration work is impressive. One thing I really do dig about the SEs (or the SSEs) are the skies--they're absolutely beautiful, in some cases.
10-14-04, 08:03 PM
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People act like their life depends on this movie. Personally, I find it very disturbing. What the heck do you do when you die? Are you going to take these movies to the grave with you?
10-14-04, 08:28 PM
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Originally posted by jiggawhat
People act like their life depends on this movie. Personally, I find it very disturbing. What the heck do you do when you die? Are you going to take these movies to the grave with you?
People act like their life depends on this movie. Personally, I find it very disturbing. What the heck do you do when you die? Are you going to take these movies to the grave with you?
birrman54
10-15-04, 12:46 PM
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Originally posted by brianluvdvd
This seems like a small change, but it sets off a chain reaction which undermines the basic arc of Han Solo's character: Throughout the Star Wars series, Solo is on the run from an implacable gangster who wants him dead. This deathmark influences his decisions and is what makes him a skittish, mercenary scoundrel. Solo is the type of guy who has to look around every corner. But now that he has a deal with Jabba the Hut, none of that makes sense. Han isn't being chased by bounty hunters and can go square with Jabba any time he likes. As a result, his character loses a good bit of danger and romance.
This seems like a small change, but it sets off a chain reaction which undermines the basic arc of Han Solo's character: Throughout the Star Wars series, Solo is on the run from an implacable gangster who wants him dead. This deathmark influences his decisions and is what makes him a skittish, mercenary scoundrel. Solo is the type of guy who has to look around every corner. But now that he has a deal with Jabba the Hut, none of that makes sense. Han isn't being chased by bounty hunters and can go square with Jabba any time he likes. As a result, his character loses a good bit of danger and romance.
10-15-04, 05:00 PM
#23
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Originally posted by Class316
This is 100% false. Because in the 1977 release he states that he talked to Jabba.
This is 100% false. Because in the 1977 release he states that he talked to Jabba.
10-15-04, 06:36 PM
#24
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Lucas, we don't need all the dots connected for us.
I'm sorry, but I've seen whiny fanboys obssess over every niggling little detail of these films, that isn't explained away in these films. Obviously, a lot of Star Wars fans do want everything explained, then they whine they don't need everything explained.
So obviously, Lucas can't win either way. If he explains everything, fans whine about it. If he doesn't explain everything, fans obssess and nitpick every little thing that isn't explained. So he's f**ked no matter what he does.
Bitch Bitch Bitch.
10-16-04, 04:23 AM
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I wonder if these subtle changes are why my younger relatives don't "get" the fuss over this dvd set?
It does make a difference to me, in some ways, but at least I still have the original on VHS.
It does make a difference to me, in some ways, but at least I still have the original on VHS.