TCFHE Press Release: STAR WARS Movies Celebrated With New Limited Edition SteelBooks (1 Viewer)

[Jonathan Perregaux]

This is like beating a bottle of glue at this point, but I'm glad to take Star Wars to task once again as an example of film desecration, rather than restoration.

What of all those Academy Award winning visual effects they deleted? What of the odd pacing problems caused by inserting random "Hey, look!" CGI in the middle of nowhere? What of the retconned changes to character? What of actors from the future wholly replacing actors of the past? What of the sheer arrogance involved in altering another director's work post-mortem--for the worse? And why in the name of the Great Dionoga did they ALMOST fix all the VFX issues while paradoxically creating all-new ones requiring additional Special Edition releases to "correct"?

Keep asking these many questions, and maybe we can stop this from happening again. This happened infamously with E.T. but fortunately saner heads prevailed. Now that catastrophic "special" version is as buried as the Atari 2600 cartridges it once inspired.

This kind of tinkering has worked better in the past. Blade Runner. Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Even so, in my opinion, I really can't condone this practice.

 

[TravisR]

The new Death Star battle shots stick out to me like a sore thumb. They just don't blend in with the original model shots.

They might not blend perfectly but I think the shots are now far more dynamic than the original. As groundbreaking as the 1977 effects are, a number of the space battle shots are weak and a few are bad even in comparison to other shots in the movie. I love the SE shot of the Millennium Falcon arriving to save Luke at the end because it's much more exciting than in the original where the Falcon slowly moves across the screen. And like Tommy R above, I think Cloud City is helped out by the CG set extensions and windows. The original looks like a set and now it looks more like a city.


Before anyone has a meltdown and tries to dunk me in a river to see if I'm a witch, I'm not saying that the SEs should replace the originals but I'm willing to point out where I think a change (as unnecessary as it may have been) was an improvement.

 

[SilverWook]

And The Phantom Menace has more dynamic shots done with motion control models too. So why did they go with CGI ships that haven't aged very well?


And if you're replacing "bad" shots, Red Leader's ship crashing into the Death Star surface should have been high on the list.

 

[cineMANIAC]

I just finished watching all 6 SW films and I gotta say, from a standpoint of a casual as opposed to a diehard fan, I'd like to see the original unaltered versions of the 3 original films fully restored. The CGI "enhancements" just took me out of the films since the new EFX are obvious - they just don't fit. The films are still a blast to watch but I want to see what Lucas originally created, warts and all. Disney being Disney I'm sure they'll milk the franchise for all it's worth and probably give fans what they've been begging for AFTER several reissues. And for God's sakes PLEASE include the Empire of Dreams documentary next time.


BTW, I'm beginning to hate the Complete Saga Collection Blu-ray set. Aside from the hard labor needed to remove the discs from the slots (stupid packaging choice), It's a pain in the ass attempting to navigate the special features menus. Pressing enter kept taking me back to the main menus. I've barely touched the surface of many of those extras.

 

[Bryan^H]

I just finished watching all 6 SW films and I gotta say, from a standpoint of a casual as opposed to a diehard fan, I'd like to see the original unaltered versions of the 3 original films fully restored. The CGI "enhancements" just took me out of the films since the new EFX are obvious - they just don't fit. The films are still a blast to watch but I want to see what Lucas originally created, warts and all. Disney being Disney I'm sure they'll milk the franchise for all it's worth and probably give fans what they've been begging for AFTER several reissues. And for God's sakes PLEASE include the Empire of Dreams documentary next time.

BTW, I'm beginning to hate the Complete Saga Collection Blu-ray set. Aside from the hard labor needed to remove the discs from the slots (stupid packaging choice), It's a pain in the ass attempting to navigate the special features menus. Pressing enter kept taking me back to the main menus. I've barely touched the surface of many of those extras.

Yeah the navigation is wretched isn't it?
I was showing a friend the deleted scenes a couple months ago on the disc, and just gave up because of all the back n forth. Watched them in order play all style on YouTube instead. Much easier.

 

[andySu]

I just finished watching all 6 SW films and I gotta say, from a standpoint of a casual as opposed to a diehard fan, I'd like to see the original unaltered versions of the 3 original films fully restored. The CGI "enhancements" just took me out of the films since the new EFX are obvious - they just don't fit. The films are still a blast to watch but I want to see what Lucas originally created, warts and all. Disney being Disney I'm sure they'll milk the franchise for all it's worth and probably give fans what they've been begging for AFTER several reissues. And for God's sakes PLEASE include the Empire of Dreams documentary next time.


BTW, I'm beginning to hate the Complete Saga Collection Blu-ray set. Aside from the hard labor needed to remove the discs from the slots (stupid packaging choice), It's a pain in the ass attempting to navigate the special features menus. Pressing enter kept taking me back to the main menus. I've barely touched the surface of many of those extras.

The bluray funny how George Lucas, THX/TAP thing, if you found this film distracting call 1-800 THX. Yeah its distracting alright.


CBS/FOX Laserdisc = no distractions.

 

[SilverWook]

I just finished watching all 6 SW films and I gotta say, from a standpoint of a casual as opposed to a diehard fan, I'd like to see the original unaltered versions of the 3 original films fully restored. The CGI "enhancements" just took me out of the films since the new EFX are obvious - they just don't fit. The films are still a blast to watch but I want to see what Lucas originally created, warts and all. Disney being Disney I'm sure they'll milk the franchise for all it's worth and probably give fans what they've been begging for AFTER several reissues. And for God's sakes PLEASE include the Empire of Dreams documentary next time.


BTW, I'm beginning to hate the Complete Saga Collection Blu-ray set. Aside from the hard labor needed to remove the discs from the slots (stupid packaging choice), It's a pain in the ass attempting to navigate the special features menus. Pressing enter kept taking me back to the main menus. I've barely touched the surface of many of those extras.

The 1983 doc Star Wars to Jedi:The Making of a Saga was strangely absent as well. Guess they needed the space for all those Robot Chicken parodies you can get elsewhere.

 

[andySu]

And The Phantom Menace has more dynamic shots done with motion control models too. So why did they go with CGI ships that haven't aged very well?


And if you're replacing "bad" shots, Red Leader's ship crashing into the Death Star surface should have been high on the list.

Yeah its funny how that didn't seem to get butchered up into CGI. Maybe George Lucas left the stag theatre at the time to take a piss in the toilet and returned to the Jedi 4 minutes later and forgot about that scene?

 

[Wayne_j]

I liked Yub Nub.

 

[andySu]

I liked Yub Nub.

 

[andySu]

This had me in stitches of laughter.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

For anyone who's interested in picking the Saga repackage up, you might be pleased to know that it's a standard BD multidisc case (a thick one like the Blade Runner set came in) with a slipcover. I came across it yesterday in my local Walmart when I was picking up Jurassic World 3D. No, I didn't buy it; I'm still holding out for the originals.