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Star Wars Trilogy DVD - IGN Review

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ManaByte

Member
SKluck said:
Anyways, anyone watch Lucas on the Charlie Rose show last night on PBS? It was completely lame, and was just a bunch of cocksucking for an hour or so. No interesting questions or ANY questions at all about star wars, 7-9, or any of that. They mainly talked about Lucas' "genius" and "artistic ability to tell stories".

They aren't doing 7-9. Lucasfilm officially confirmed the TV series at the press event for the DVDs the other day.

Mark Hamill was talking about what Lucas told him about 7-9 and said that Lucas basically wasn't doing them because he realized after ESB that he didn't want to do Star Wars movies for the rest of his life. Obviously he was going to do I-III since he already established IV and V, but he wouldn't do the third trilogy. So the events of 7-9 were condensed into ROTJ, Leia was made Luke's sister (the real sister wasn't meant to show up until Episode VII), and they killed the Empire in VI when it wasn't originally going to happen until IX.

Basically the story of VI-IX was that Vader dies in VI, but the Empire gets away, and Leia is crowned Queen. In VII, Luke's long lost sister is found somewhere on the other side of the galaxy. IX had a climatic battle against the Empire with Luke going one-on-one against the Emperor in the lightstaber fight, the Wookiees (yes) involved in a massive ground battle after which a group of them become the next generation of Jedi Knights, and the final scene was to reveal that the entire nine-movie saga was being played back from the memory banks of R2.

Obviously none of that is going to happen as Lucas changed the story to end in Episode VI. Those rumors you heard of NDAs for VII-IX were 100% false. The Force.net posted it as a RUMOR, and then retarded CNN and MSNBC printed it as NEWS. However, ILM DID have to sign NDAs about the live action TV series ;)

Anyways, at the press event when Hamill mentioned that Lucas didn't want to do Star Wars movies for the rest of his life, someone in the audience shouted out "TV series?". Jim Ward, Vice President of Marketing for Lucasfilm and President of Lucasarts, responded by shrugging and saying "TV Series? Yea."

Comingsoon.net has a 5 minute MP3 of this Q&A, which you can listen to here:
http://downloads.nexcess.net/comingsoon-hamill-swdvd1.mp3

You can hear Jim Ward's comment between 1:55 and 2:00.
 

evil ways

Member
border said:
I'm a few pages in.....when do they stop waxing philosophical and trying to justify the existence of the "Superior Editions" (lol) and actually start reviewing the DVDs?

It never really happens. Aside from one of the guest reviwers(whose name escapes me at the moment) complaining about the changes, the rest of the reviewers basically go down on Lucas dick like a hobo on a ham sandwich.
 

Tritroid

Member
ManaByte said:
They aren't doing 7-9. Lucasfilm officially confirmed the TV series at the press event for the DVDs the other day.

Mark Hamill was talking about what Lucas told him about 7-9 and said that Lucas basically wasn't doing them because he realized after ESB that he didn't want to do Star Wars movies for the rest of his life. Obviously he was going to do I-III since he already established IV and V, but he wouldn't do the third trilogy. So the events of 7-9 were condensed into ROTJ, Leia was made Luke's sister (the real sister wasn't meant to show up until Episode VII), and they killed the Empire in VI when it wasn't originally going to happen until IX.

Basically the story of VI-IX was that Vader dies in VI, but the Empire gets away, and Leia is crowned Queen. In VII, Luke's long lost sister is found somewhere on the other side of the galaxy. IX had a climatic battle against the Empire with Luke going one-on-one against the Emperor in the lightstaber fight, the Wookiees (yes) involved in a massive ground battle after which a group of them become the next generation of Jedi Knights, and the final scene was to reveal that the entire nine-movie saga was being played back from the memory banks of R2.

Obviously none of that is going to happen as Lucas changed the story to end in Episode VI. Those rumors you heard of NDAs for VII-IX were 100% false. The Force.net posted it as a RUMOR, and then retarded CNN and MSNBC printed it as NEWS. However, ILM DID have to sign NDAs about the live action TV series ;)

Anyways, at the press event when Hamill mentioned that Lucas didn't want to do Star Wars movies for the rest of his life, someone in the audience shouted out "TV series?". Jim Ward, Vice President of Marketing for Lucasfilm and President of Lucasarts, responded by shrugging and saying "TV Series? Yea."

Comingsoon.net has a 5 minute MP3 of this Q&A, which you can listen to here:
http://downloads.nexcess.net/comingsoon-hamill-swdvd1.mp3

You can hear Jim Ward's comment between 1:55 and 2:00.
Ah, thanks for clearing that up. I found it hard to believe that Lucas would suddenly decide to do 7,8 and 9 after denying for so long that they were going to be made.
 

ManaByte

Member
Tritroid said:
Ah, thanks for clearing that up. I found it hard to believe that Lucas would suddenly decide to do 7,8 and 9 after denying for so long that they were going to be made.

Hamill's comments were very sparse on VII-IX. The storyline stuff has been known for a long time. Originally Lucas had an idea for 12 movies, but he was able to cut it down to 6.
 

border

Member
No word on what the TV series is going to be about, or who is working on it?

Some of the guys from needcoffee.com were at DragonCon last weekend, and claimed that Lucas refuses to release the original versions because his ex-wife gets royalties from it but not from the Special Editions (a part of their divorce decree).....so fans are getting screwed over purely out the guy's spite for an ex. Any truth to this?
 

ManaByte

Member
border said:
No word on what the TV series is going to be about, or who is working on it?

Some of the guys from needcoffee.com were at DragonCon last weekend, and claimed that Lucas refuses to release the original versions because his ex-wife gets royalties from it but not from the Special Editions (a part of their divorce decree).....so fans are getting screwed over purely out the guy's spite for an ex. Any truth to this?

The TV series is set in the twenty years between III and VI and shows the rise of Vader and the Rebellion. It's rumored to heavily feature Boba Fett so much that he may be the main character.

THIS is why the originals aren't out on DVD, not some BS about royalties:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htforum/showthread.php?s=&postid=2359072#post2359072

For the umpteenth time (sorry, I know few folks have read every page), there are not two sets of negatives! The original negatives were physically cleaned and chemically treated (when necessary, as some of ANH had "gone pink") at YCM labs back in '95 or '96. Some shots were too far gone and were replaced with dupes from a 3-strip Technicolor (you heard me) print Lucas had had struck back in '77. No doubt there were shots scanned in and cleaned up digitally without any other enhancements, and of course there are those shots that were scanned in and changed dramatically, with new CG effects and stuff.

Also all of the standard opticals (wipes, flops and dissolves) were redone optically (the old fashioned way).

Then everything was put back together. Which means the SE negs contain mostly ORIGINAL CAMERA NEGATIVE, and the "OT negs" NO LONGER EXIST IN THEIR ORIGINAL FORM.

This info is culled from press kit info, interviews and B-Roll on the SE EPKs, magazine interviews, television interviews, etc. I poured over this stuff extensively when creating my (now-moldy) SE changes site.

So repeat after me, folks:


THERE ARE NO "OT" NEGS. THERE ARE NO "OT" NEGS...

This is true. There were some scenes on the original negative that were BLUE from damage and others were completely lost. The movie was in that bad of shape.
 
In fact, after the Superior Editions I have a hard time watching the originals. They look almost unfinished now. I can't stand the Vaseline under the landspeeder in A New Hope, the transparent AT-AT and snowspeeders in Empire, and the matting problems in Jedi. The Superior Editions fixed all of that.

What kind of point is he trying to make with this statement? Cleaning up technical gaffes is the only thing most people wanted Lucas to do with the movies. It's all the other additions/deletions that people have problems with.
 

border

Member
Actually it does look like they do some decent reviewing once you make it out to page 8 of the review/7-page fanboy masturbation session....
All three films feature commentaries by George Lucas, sound designer Ben Burtt, special effects guy Dennis Muren and actress Carrie Fisher. They sound as if they were recorded separately, at least in places, and stitched together because there is next to no interaction.
Ugggh, I can't stand stilted patchwork commentaries. Since the Star Wars documentary is going to be aired on TV anyway, I'm running out of reasons to buy this set.....
 

Tritroid

Member
ManaByte said:
The TV series is set in the twenty years between III and VI and shows the rise of Vader and the Rebellion. It's rumored to heavily feature Boba Fett so much that he may be the main character.

THIS is why the originals aren't out on DVD, not some BS about royalties:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htforum/showthread.php?s=&postid=2359072#post2359072



This is true. There were some scenes on the original negative that were BLUE from damage and others were completely lost. The movie was in that bad of shape.
Yeah, back before the SE release, I remember watching a special about how bad the OT films were shortly before they started cleaning them for the re-release. They even showed a short clip of how ANH looked before the cleaning, and my God did it look bad.
 

ManaByte

Member
border said:
Actually it does look like they do some decent reviewing once you make it out to page 8 of the review/7-page fanboy masturbation session....Ugggh, I can't stand stilted patchwork commentaries. Since the Star Wars documentary is going to be aired on TV anyway, I'm running out of reasons to buy this set.....

The docmentary on TV is 90 minutes. The one on the DVD is 2 1/2 hours.

Yeah, back before the SE release, I remember watching a special about how bad the OT films were shortly before they started cleaning them for the re-release. They even showed a short clip of how ANH looked before the cleaning, and my God did it look bad.

When Lucasfilm says the originals don't exist anymore it's true. There was A LOT of Star Wars that degraded due to time and they couldn't recover.

And before anyone says "but they should have to give back the oscars!" or "now Star Wars should be removed from AFI's top 100 list!" because the original version no longer exists, if a Best Picture winner's negatives were destroyed in a fire do they have to give back the oscar because the original negatives no longer exist? No.
 
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