IN THE ENTIRE SPAN OF RECORDED HISTORY?!?

I bought the 2 DVDs of the Tartovksy series and enjoyed it well enough. Still haven't gotten around to watching the CG series but I've heard pretty good things overall.

I guess my point is that they had an entire UNIVERSE of stories to mine from and they kept going back to the Clone Wars well time and time again. It would have been nice at least one time in the last decade to go outside the clone wars idea and give us something new...anything new.

That would have been a great idea. Seeing Anakin slowly turn to the dark side would have helped an awful lot for his character, and seeing him as a leader in wartime would have been a perfect opportunity to see him get slowly corrupted and see him make increasingly evil decisions. Instead we see him turn to the dark side as if someone flipped a switch. One minute he's just a little confused about things and the next he's slaughtering an entire school of children!

True story, bro.

I thought the whole point was it wasn't gradual, he made a choice, he did it for love....

These are the versions that are meant to be seen TODAY. Why live in the past?

Because there was nothing wrong with them in the first place?

Really? I always see people asking for touched up saber effects etc, but removing other changes. You can't have it both ways.

I have often said that you could toss out The Phantom Menace, make Attack of the Clones "Episode I" and Revenge of the Sith "Episode II" with only a few minor tweaks, and then an all-new "Episode III" about Vader hunting down the Jedi Knights, and it would be a pretty decent trilogy.

I would change "Revenge of the Sith" so that Padme doesn't die and doesn't reveal that she's pregnant until after Anakin gets burned and left for dead. We wouldn't see Palpatine recover him, the armor being put on, or that godawful NOOOOOOOOOO!

Then "Episode III" would open with the birth of Luke and Leia, and the reveal of Vader. Vader and the Empire then hunt down the remaining Jedi, Vader would take off his mask and reveal himself to Padme and Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan and Vader would fight, Obi-Wan would lose, but Anakin would let him live either as an act of mercy toward his old friend or so Obi-Wan would have to live with his failures. The movie would end with baby Leia on Alderaan with Bail Organa and Padme disguised as a handmaiden, and Obi-Wan leaving baby Luke at the Lars homestead on Tatooine.

Couple of things...

One, people wouldn't be so pissed about the changes if the originals weren't being suppressed by Lucasfilm.

Two, there's a difference between cleaning up special effects shots and making a few minor tweaks here and there and adding pointless scenes and changing plot points.

This is why very few people lose their shit over the HD remasters of the original Star Trek. The originals are still readily available in good quality via two previous DVD releases and the blu-rays which have both versions, and the changes enhance the viewing experience rather than "Greedo shot first" crap and that horrible musical number in ROTJ.

Nothing that has been added changes any of the plot points, though...

This can't be repeated enough. The public-at-large would completely indulge Lucas every one of his silly flights of revisionism if he would only include the original releases (or a passable facsimile thereof) alongside them.

Yeah, but back in '97, Lucas was saying that the technology wasn't available to TELL THE STORY THE WAY HE WANTED, and now with digital technology he could. Which means that either Lucas is a liar, or that the "enhancements" are completely superfluous. I think its both.

Remember this is the same George Lucas who gave Ted Turner stick about colorizing movies...

???????????

The whole context of the force ghost scene (and ROTJ in general) is changed once Lucas added a younger Anakin (Hayden) standing there next to Guiness and Yoda. Lucas is essentially saying that Anakin died on Mustafar, and he was ressurected after he killed The Emperor in ROTJ. That contradicts the 1983 ROTJ version where Anakin NEVER died, as there was always a small part of him that remained. Luke was appealing to that small amount of good in him all movie to redeem him and it worked when he saved his son at the end of the movie.

It's amazing that even Lucas doesn't even understand what he was trying to do in 1983, as he not only changed in an actor in ROTJ, he changed the whole context of the movie!

There's more to a film than just plot. There's things like characterization, pacing, and tone, and the SEs fuck with all of those.

Also, Lucas didn't know what the hell he was doing when he made the changes. He added a scream to Luke's fall in Empire Strikes Back, which changed that character and the tone of that scene, then later went back and removed it. He appeared to be acting more on random whims than on any serious consideration of the films and how they play.

LOL! Han not shooting first completely changed his character and his redemption!

It's not about living in the past. It's about respecting the past.

You are clearly just trying to be a troll in this thread. Do you not have anything better to do with your time?

The technology to have Han duck to the side as Greedo shoots at him didn't exist in 1977. Cut Lucas some slack.

Exactly. My favorite Lucas defense of the SEs is when he points to how many times Blade Runner has been tweaked. First of all, Scott never had full control over the end product the way Lucas did, and second, the blu-ray release features 5 different verisons to choose from. The fact that Lucas equates the two is ignorant at best and completely disingenuous at worst.

Yeah, because those are real shots getting fired...

The technology to have actors hold fake prop guns didn't exist in 1977. They had to use real laser pistols and actually shoot at each other. That's why the Stormtroopers are such bad shots with lousy aim. Lucas couldn't have them kill all the important cast members on camera.

I can barely get through workdays, I don't know if I can wait that long .

You could always ask the writers on any Transformers series who've had to work around toys on the shelves.

Point taken.

Are Disney going to be collaborating with Hasbro on the toys then?

Maybe. But they're still in the top-tier of box office. The Star Wars brand name commands a lot of financial cache, regardless of what the final product turns out to be.

I'm guessing a good chuck of the viewing public will be dragged there by their kids who want to see the new Star Wars movie too, whether it's good or not.

I hope so, but doubt it, FOX are probably hurting from this summer of flops, I doubt they'd want to give up the launching pad for the most successful franchise in the world.

Nor I. I swore off any and all things Star Wars after the 2006 bullshit and didn't buy those DVDs either. I've tried to swear off all things Lucas, but I think Episode VII might tempt me.

Lucas is very good with building blocks. He's great at jigsawing together pieces of stories, and putting together building blocks, it's what make him such a great businessman. But he does not work well with actors and he does not write dialogue well. He needs to be the money-man and overseer, which is what he does best, and leave the artistic stuff to other parties.

If those were the only changes, small cosmetic things like that, then there probably would've been less uproar, but with Lucas tweaking with it constantly, we don't even know what his "original vision" was to begin with, if it ever was. And I want the original versions. The ones I grew up with were the 1996 VHS releases, was there any difference in those besides the sound mixes?

Ah, but here's the catch-22: the 2006 releases! Now Lucas could say "well, I released them, and they didn't sell well!" It sucks that the fans of the OOT should actually have to specify that they wanted high-quality versions, since that should've been a fucking given, but it appears they do.

Besides which, you can put in the Blu-Ray, click, and watch whichever version makes you happy.

Like I said, it comes back to the spit in the eye of the 2006 release. Would I have liked it if Lucas had never released the originals? No. But at least he'd have stuck to his guns. But now we have that half-assed release. If you can't do something correctly, don't do it at all, don't just pull your pants down and shit on my face. Now it become clear that it can happen, they just don't want to put the effort into it.

George Lucas did not become a billionaire by being an idiot, he must know the difference full well. He's obviously being disingenuous. There are countless cases in film history of film of the film being taken out of the hands of the filmmaker, an alternate cut of the movie down the road, etc. But the creator willfully suppressing the version that many fans prefer? I can't think of any other example like it.

Maybe they went to target school at the same place as COBRA and the pre-movie Decepticons. It'd explain a lot.

Fox is re-releasing new combo packs of each trilogy on October 8. New artwork:

OOOH! Shiny new packaging, same shitty films. Pass.

Yeah Lucas is an asshole and he wonders why a lot of his fans disrespect him. He does it to himself. There's absolutely no reason other than his own stubborn minded never ending takes on how he can change the original trilogy with each subsequent re-release that he can't release the films the way they originally came out in good quality. I would buy a set that included the originals (no changes whatsoever), the shitty re-releases, and even the prequels if it were to be put out. The fact that he's so adamantly against it especially when fans want it and we're talking Star Wars fans here who eat up practically anything (which is good and bad because sadly a lot will just buy what he gives) it's not like it's some obscure franchise or something is ridiculous.