Josh-da-man

When I'm in charge of Lucasfilm, I'll make an Obi-Wan Kenobi movie that features Vader hunting down the remaining Jedi. I will then rechristen and rename Attack of the Clones as Episode I: The Gathering Storm, Revenge of the Sith as Episode II: The Republic Falls, and the Obi-Wan movie as Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. The Phantom Menace will then be downgraded to "A Star Wars Story" and serve as an "episode zero" to the Skywalker Saga.

The Phantom Menace: A Star Wars Story
Episode I: The Gathering Storm (aka Attack of the Clones)
Episode II: The Republic Falls (aka Revenge of the Sith)
Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (aka Obi-Wan: A Star Wars Story)
Episode IV: A New Hope
Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
Episode VII: The Last Skywalker (aka The Force Awakens)
Episode VIII: The Dark Side Awakens (a newly made Episode VIII)
Episode IX: Balance of the Force (a newly made Episode IX)

And everyone can be happy!

Josh Z

But it should have been ashamed. It really should have.

milo bloom

I've long thought TPM should have been a story told in comics leading up to the Prequel Trilogy, which would have started with an adult (or at least late teens) Anakin. I get that we needed to know about his mom, but the way he did it just didn't land.

JeffTheAlpaca

It is now $199 at Best Buy unless that is a sales price or the new standard price though still a lot of money

milo bloom

Still way too much money for something that doesn't include the UOT.

Mike86

I prefer having regular cases for the most part or something that’s at least about the size of a regular case like a Steelbook. I tend to mainly avoid oversized, awkwardly shaped box sets that don’t fit on the shelf with everything else.

That’s why I opted for just the individual 4K releases of the Original Trilogy. Probably will get the rest over time when they’re on sale or if there’s another buy two get one free sale at Target or someplace.

Adam Tyner

You won't have to wait long! The next one is on Sunday.

OldBoy

I guess this is right thread, but I’m watching the OT on blu for first time. Why do they have a 6.1 DTS? Why not 5 or 7? Never heard of 6. Why would Lucas deprive us of 1 speaker?

E Unit

Back central speaker. That was a sort of common mix a while back.

DJariya

Is there anyone here who actually bought this set? Feels like No.

E Unit

Nope, not even for $199.99. If it goes to $149 or less, I may bite.

PerryD

I'll bite at $125 or less. I'm still hoping for Best Buy to release those Zavvi theatrical poster steelbooks though

Josh Z

The 6.1 sound mixes were created for the 1997 "Special Edition" theatrical releases. At the time, 6.1 was the maximum number of channels available. It was basically 5.1 with a single Surround Back channel. Dolby advised splitting that channel between two speakers in order to avoid sound reversal problems. (If you just put one speaker directly behind your head, your ears tend to perceive it as coming from in front of you.) On DVD, 6.1 was delivered in the Dolby Digital-EX and DTS-ES formats.

Discrete 7.1 came to theaters later, and to home video in 2006 with the launch of the Blu-ray format. For whatever reason, the sound team at Lucasfilm did not remix the Star Wars movies again to bump them up to 7.1. The recent Atmos mixes were the first time the audio for these movies was remastered since 1997.

OldBoy

you know i thought the sound was very hollow in beginning, but got much better right after. image looked amazing, but those changes Lucas made, i know everyone and just take some of the magic, i so enjoyed, back in the day, just a bit...

OldBoy

Why did Lucas let 2 others direct OT and he was adamant only he should direct PT?

Michael Corvin

All of the answers you seek are , and .

OldBoy

Wow. Ok. Kinda not exactly what I had in mind, but I’ll make do. Thanks.

Jay G.

As Michael Corvin stated, there's a lot of detail into why those things shook out the way they did, but for the short, oversimplified version:

For ESB, Lucas was so busy creating a film studio from scratch, Luasfilm, and building Skywalker Ranch, all in California, that he didn't have time to go direct the movie in England, so delegated the job. I think Lucas is a film editor at heart, and viewed directing as almost journeyman's work, i.e. interchangeable. Lucas also wasn't considering Star Wars to be a huge cultural legacy at this time, but a light adventure series that he could crank out some sequels for in order to fund the "real" films he reportedly wanted to make. For ROTJ, it was more of the same, with Lucas still overseeing Lucasilm, but many view Richard Marquand as being more of a proxy to Lucas than having the independent vision and unsurpervised creative freedom Irvin Kershner had in ESB.

By the time of the PT, Star Wars had been firmly established as Lucas' cultural legacy, and people had been giving ever more credit to Lucas, and Lucas alone, for their success. However, Lucas initially didn't want to direct. He offered the job for directing The Phantom Menace to Ron Howard, Robert Zemeckis, and Steven Spielberg. However, all turned it down. I think George Lucas and Star Wars had become too intertwined for anyone else to want to try and direct a Star Wars movie at that time. It really wasn't until after ROTS that there was a large sentiment of, "ok, maybe let someone else have a crack at Star Wars now," as I think there were a lot of people still hopeful that Lucas could pull the ending of the prequels off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_W...ce#Development
https://www.cinemablend.com/new/3-Pe...els-96377.html

Josh Z

I received a strange email from Zavvi this morning regarding the A New Hope 4K SteelBook I purchased earlier this year:

"We previously reached out to you to advise we will be sending a replacement case for the steelbook as we were aware some cases arrived damaged. We now have stock available and will be aiming to dispatch the replacement steelbook case over the next few days."

My copy of the SteelBook seems fine, and they never contacted me previously. Not sure what this is about.

Josh-da-man

I'm imagining a prequel trilogy directed by Guillermo del Toro, David Fincher, and Darren Aronofsky with Lucas executive producing and hiring actual writers to develop the story...

Mike86

Yeah, I was thinking after that post how different than the prequels could have been if in the hands of different directors. Lucas is an idea man, but needs to be reigned in. The prequels had potential but fell short.

rocket1312

Lucas openly seems to resent the fact that Empire is almost universally considered the best of the series. It's the movie he had by far the least hands on involvement with and I don't think he cared for some of the choices Kershner and co. made making it. Even though he wasn't the credited director on Jedi, by all accounts he was much more involved in that one. It doesn't surprise me that no one took him up on his offer to direct the prequels.

And to keep things on topic, I haven't purchased this set and I never will because I have no interest in the OT special editions. That's not meant to be some sort of principled stand or anything. I just don't like them and have no desire to ever watch them. The fact that the restorations, while a vast improvement on the blus, still feel half assed doesn't help. Plus I already have the sequel trilogy in Blu/4k and the prequels on dvd, which is good enough for my purposes.

milo bloom

Yeah, I have a mix of Blu and 4k versions of all 11 films and whatever extras were in that box (I've already forgotten) just weren't worth it, especially without the UOT.

Does Lucas really resent it? I know he's been dismissive of TESB thinking people just like it because it's dark (which is baloney). It is dark, but that's because our heroes are facing real challenges. He also hated that it went over budget. He always seemed to be a businessman first, artist second.

Josh Z

In his defense of The Phantom Menace, Lucas repeatedly used the argument that, "These are movies for children." He'd made similar comments years earlier regarding the lighter tone and Ewok silliness in Return of the Jedi. I think in his mind, watching the money roll in from the huge success of the toy line and merchandising, Lucas decided that Star Wars was ideally marketed toward an audience of 8-year-olds, and he felt that Kershner and Brackett had made ESB much too "grown up" for that target demo. The fact that ESB was the lowest grossing of his Star Wars movies at the box office seemed to confirm that line of thought.

Of course, some of the dark s***t Lucas put into Attack of the Clones and especially Revenge of the Sith would seem to contradict that reasoning. But George Lucas is nothing if not a hypocrite.

milo bloom

Yeah, exactly. The fall of Anakin was never going to be light and fluffy tale. And I can't imagine the merchandising for TESB back in the day really took a hit, I was the perfect age for it myself (born in 74) and I know my folks were still buying me stuff at the time.

And the whole of idea of media for kids needs to be re-examined. Barney and Teletubbies and stuff like that is specifically "for kids". Things like Star Wars should be for kids and people who are "kids at heart". Like a lot of classic animation, it was never meant for kiddy stuff, it was just another way of telling a story.