pinata242

"Couldn't". Fuck, people, you're on the Internet where everything you say is recorded and dissected ad naseum. At least, in this Century, understand the actual words you type.

Also, fuck GL and his bullshit. I'd wish the man death, but I don't think there's a "people's champion" behind him to make a damn bit of difference. His fuck-head "you'll still buy it no matter how much you hate the cover art" pseudo-daughter proves that.

Anyone that hopes for the original films or a piece of cinematic history is fucked. Everyone who acquiesces and accepts it is as much of the problem. I don't know how you sleep at night knowing you willingly rape the art.

pinata242

Footnote: I'm drunk. I don't care what you think. If you don't agree, you're an idiot. Yes, that's a "personal attack" on anyone that just accepts this crap. But you've been attacking me with your complacency for a decade and a half. You're wrong.

Jedi Master 33

Grammar Police! Grammar Police! Run!

The only thing worst than Lucas apologists are Lucas haters.


And this just proves it

Trout

And the average movie goer used to complain that their movies had black bars on the top and bottom of the TV screen too.

rennervision

I just keep thinking, as a director, you would have to be the biggest incompetent hack in the business to think a 30-year-old sci-fi series with new hokey CGI effects that jar you out of the movie at any given moment actually IMPROVES it.

It would take a LOT for me to ever fall back in love with the OT when it used to be my favorite group of films. It would be like trying to reconcile with an ex after a nasty divorce! I was just watching unaltered clips on YouTube thinking, "Ahh, the good times we used to have."

AnonomusBob15

Just because you're tired of hearing the argument doesn't make it any less valid, and whenever a new release comes along that doesn't correct the mistakes, it's time again to at least voice an opinion.

Even if you didn't want the original trilogy, i'd like to hear your argument on why they shouldn't be available.

I'd like to hear what a "Lucas apologist" has to say about him. Is there even anything to respect anymore?

pinata242

I'm a "Lucas Realist". There is no good in him. The man he once was has become replaced over time by a mechanical, soulless monster. The only way for him to redeem himself is to see his own creation about to be permanently lost forever at the lightning-filled hands of his meddling attitude. He's a slave to it. He needs to bring balance back.

Was that analogy nerdy enough for you?

Nick Martin

I'm firmly in the Fuck George Lucas camp, because all these other filmmakers have done the one little thing he refuses to, and even has people justifying and defending his reasons not to do it. He continues to screw with the movies and most changes are indeed for the worse, so yeah. Fuck George Lucas. I have nice fan-made restorations of the originals and they play just fine.

GoldenJCJ

"Much anger in him..."

Gizmo

I'm still buying this.

Travis McClain

You know where Lucas went wrong? He allowed 14 years to pass between Return of the Jedi and the Special Editions. In those 14 years, the original movies went from being a novelty to The Holy Trilogy for an entire generation of fans who built their entire appreciation of cinema on six hours of movies. Even the Expanded Universe was peripheral until the 90s, and don't forget that when the novels and Dark Horse Comics stuff picked up, it did so slowly at first. One Timothy Zahn novel a year from '91-'93. Six issues of Dark Empire published bi-monthly. Hell, I started and almost finished middle school just in the time it took those two initial stories to run their course!

Those OT fans elevated three movies into something far more than they ever should have, and that's the real problem. Had Lucas released something of substance during those fourteen years, maybe it would have tempered this worshipful fandom. It's that period of salutary neglect that allowed this to get so far out of hand.

But, in fairness, there's really no other movie that has had a comparable history of changes. Maybe if David Lean was still alive and decided that Lawrence of Arabia needed major revisions, I'd be just as upset. Then, as much as I appreciate and enjoy Lawrence, I don't worship it, so maybe it's a false equivalency anyway.

rennervision

The original movies were never just "a novelty."

Jason

One of the most profound things about Star Wars I ever read online was "I never knew Star Wars sucked until the Internet told me so." I've never understood people's incessant desire to run the original films down.

Travis McClain

Here's what Alec Guinness said in A Positively Final Appearance, published in 1999:

milo bloom

Didn't Guinness walk back from that attitude after a while?


Pursuant to what MinLShaw said, aside from letting so many years go between substantial SW releases, was also the DVD issue. DVD came out spring of 97, not long after the SE's had been released in theaters. I've read from moderately credible sources that there was actually a DVD release of the SE's planned along with the VHS and LD releases. If Lucas had allowed this to go forward, even if they were the usual non-16x9 releases that Fox was releasing those days, this would have taken a massive amount of pressure out of the whistling teapot that was the fanbase at the time. Even dumping the LD transfers on DVD like he later did, but much earlier in the DVD lifecycle would have been a decent move at the time.

Look, there's always somebody that throws out the "he doesn't owe you anything" argument, but I can't buy it. He teases the fans along, expecting them to lap up every little drip and dribble he throws out, if there's some backlash every now and then from not throwing the fans a bone here and there, it's to be expected.

rennervision

Yes, I am familiar with that story. Alec Guinness is entitled to his opinion, but how does that prove your point?

I think for some people, not being alive to experience Star Wars in the theater back in 1977 prevents them from having the insight into what a profound influence this movie had on filmmaking.

Take the cantina scene for instance - seems like a typical bar scene full of aliens, right? Well this was the first time anybody saw anything like that - and it was a crowd-favorite during the movie. Everybody was laughing and enjoying every shot of a different creature in the bar.

You can't recapture that feeling. Even rereleases of the movie can't capture that because now we're all used to CGI-creature-overload at this point.

So yeah - if you didn't see these movies 30 years ago I understand why you would think they were "a novelty." That's also no where near an accurate description of what it was like to experience the phenomenon firsthand.

nodeerforamonth

Very well said!

I believe it was also the first time you saw spaceships of monsterous sizes taking up the whole screen. We take stuff like that for granted these days, but back in '77, watching the Star Destroyer fill up the screen during the opening scene of ANH, was simply breathtaking.

Travis McClain

You misunderstand. I wasn't quoting Guinness to prove a point. I was quoting Guinness to articulate my point, which is that a large part of the fan base made way too much out of these movies. I enjoy them, they're fun and I'm looking forward to the Blu-ray release. I've probably financed an entire room at the Skywalker Ranch over the years. But the extent to which some fans have taken their adoration has transcended reason and entered the realm of hyperbole. Someone in this very thread insists he can no longer "recognize" the OT movies after the tweaks Lucas has made.

No, I wasn't there in '77 but my uncle was and he boasts of having gone to the theater at least 20 times to see it. I guarantee you, I'm a far bigger Star Wars fanboy than he ever was.

In any event, I can appreciate the "You had to be there" factor; I've got some of those myself. I get tired of reading comments from the Nolan fanboys about how "terrible" the 1989 Batman was and is. It blew my 10 year old mind, and based on the amount of money it made--and merchandise it sold--I'm pretty damn sure that few of those naysayers scorned it at the time. [I admit it's not an entirely accurate comparison to make, since there is no analog to the Special Editions; contrasting Batman and The Dark Knight equates with contrasting A New Hope and The Phantom Menace, but there's no Batman Retroactively Revised Edition for me to confront.]

But I still maintain that there are some fans--many in this thread--who built up those three movies far more than they ever should have. I don't say this to disparage either the movies or the fans, mind you, but rather as a matter of observation that it is this infatuation-nearing-obsession that makes it all but impossible to have reasonable discussions about the topic. Seriously, some of the things stated about Lucas in this thread are outright appalling. And the reason for those remarks is the disproportionate passion behind them.

Drexl

That's interesting. They might have had to do it with another distributor, since Fox's first "open DVD" titles weren't released until late 1998. They had initially supported Divx, but that didn't launch until mid-1998.

On the other hand, perhaps if Lucasfilm wanted to release the SW SEs, maybe that would have pushed Fox into supporting DVD sooner.

Nick Martin

I like the revamped Millennium Falcon blast-off from Mos Eisley, I like the more energetic final space battle, I like the more opened-up Cloud City. I never had much of a problem at all with the effect upgrades or enhancements.

It's the editorial changes like the re-inserted Jabba scene, the Greedo revision, the Darth Vader returns to his ship and destroys the pacing of a sequence, the 'Jedi Rocks' musical number, the Hayden-as-ghost Anakin and so on that ruin the movies for me and why I prefer those plot / pacing elements the way they were originally. That's why I prefer the originals which don't have those shoehorned-in scenes.

First time I saw a Star Wars movie was on TV in 1990, and I was born in 1981. I'm not that big on it beyond those three films. Despise the prequels, never got into the Clone Wars show, the expanded universe stuff and all of it.

I just know one thing:

There's always an exception for Star Wars movies when it comes to why the original versions won't be released when so many other directors / expanded cuts are released in addition to their original films, and people just love coming up with possible excuses why it couldn't happen even if Lucas wanted to, all the while there are thousands of other movies released without much of an issue in terms of cost, negative scans, and all the other technobabble reasons people use to say why it hasn't happened beyond Lucas just not wanting to.

Always an exception.

AnonomusBob15

When you grow up watching something, and know everything scene for scene, it becomes your go to version. Apocalypse Now, despite the theatrical cut being the best version, is the version I grew up watching. I know it scene for scene, and when watching the Redux, it feels off, and the flow is screwed up. I grew up watching the Extended cut of The Abyss, and like Apocalypse Now and Star Wars, I know it scene for scene, and I couldn't fathom choosing the theatrical cut first. Quality of cuts aside, these are major motion pictures that indeed have fans. The Abyss didn't come out but a few years after it's theatrical release. A small enough window to close the gap between people having a truely preferred version.

Star Wars waited 20 years. And in those 20 years, people became used to the theatrical cut. Even if it wasn't the best version, IMO it is, it's just wrong to say, here is the new one, take it or leave it. I got fairly used to the 97 Special Edition having watched it on VHS so many times, but even that isn't what we have now. I meant what I said when I stated that I couldn't recognize the films anymore, because each time it's released, there is something else different about it.

Jedi Master 33

I never said it wasn't valid. Nor did I say the OT shouldn't be released. That's ridiculous. But at least I don't claim that Lucas supposedly raped my childhood just because he made some changes to a movie I absolutely love. Some fans just get too obsessed sometimes.

The Monkees

I both agree and disagree with you on some of these things. I like all the enhanced effects because they just look better. I despise the musical number in Jedi at Jabba's palace, it's completely out of place and serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. However, I am one of the few that doesn't mind the Hayden as Anakin at the end of Jedi. I feel it ties to two trilogies together. If you watch all the movies from beginning to end having the original actor appear is just weird, but I do completely understand why others hate it.

I will admit that I'm a little irritated that they replaced Yoda in Episode I, if they did it in Episode I why not replace him in Empire and Jedi also? I'm not suggesting that but it's just logical from HIS point of view. Also why not have Ewan McGreggor come back and react the entire original trilogy and replace Alec Guiness? Lucas' changes are just stupid sometimes.

Joe Schmoe

I'm thrilled to hear they've replaced the Yoda muppet in Episode I. I always hated the muppet they used; it simply didn't look like the Yoda we knew from Episodes V and VI. At least the CG Yoda in Episodes II and III resembled the Yoda muppet from Episodes V and VI.

rennervision

We all need to be careful not to give George any ideas, OK?

I remember when I heard he was going to reshoot the Emperor scene from Empire with Ian McDiarmid - I thought, "Well George finally has a good idea for a change." Then I saw it with all the extra clunky dialogue added and I realized when it comes to Lucas, you should best wish for no modifications - or you will end up wanting the forever-banished former version back. Often times, it seems like this constant tinkering always creates additional issues when no one thought the scene was broken in the first place.