the crimes of george lucas ('90s on)

I always took Princess Leia's message to Obi-wan as a desperate hail Mary attempt due to the proximity of Tatooine rather than as the original point of her mission. I thought she was trying to get the plans back to the rebel base so they could analyze and plan out their attack.

Nunez, you just blew my mind.

Its fun to think of this stuff, if kind of pointless. I don't see how this is any worse than those threads that spin into endless meta debate about which universes fictional characters reside in and how they cross over with real like contemporaries. political gossip

so wait does the death star have a hyperdrive? it hadn't come to mind before that its passage from alderaan to yavin must have been pretty quick. except then it took forever to actually get into position to fire off a shot.

Interstellar travel times make no sense and have no consistency at all in SW.

Whatever, I bet I can make the Kessel run in like, two or three parsecs.

"Using linked banks of 123 hyperdrive field generators tied into a single navigational matrix, the Death Star could travel across the Galaxy at superluminal velocities."

superliminal is a pretty great bit of nonsense

superluminal motion is a real concept! possibly real according to a possibly-not-to-be-recreated experiment!

A friend of mine bought the bluray box sets of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars Ep 4-6. They cost exactly the same amount. The Lord of the Rings box has five discs per movie, a huge book, and a nice packaging design. The Star Wars box has a standard DVD case with three discs in it, one per movie, and a single card for the cover art. That's it. The discs are gray.

also the movies suck

superluminal motion is a real concept! possibly real according to a possibly-not-to-be-recreated experiment!

― so i had sex with a piñata (mh), Monday, September 26, 2011 5:48 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

http://ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=77&threadid=89454&action=showall&bookmarkedmessageid=2983714

aw 77 link ruined my joke

then again you typed "superliminal" so it must be I who has missed the punchline

you can let me know when the ban for linking 77 offboard runs out :D

Watched the blu-ray ANH last night. New Jabba sounds less like Jabba and more like one of the aliens from the prequels. He talks too fast. Also, he looks like a giant dried turd. He really looks like he needs a glass of water or something.

Obi Wan's new yell is fine. R2-D2 behind the rock, whatever, it's pretty ignorable. Everything else looked real nice. The first time you see the lightsaber it still looks like it did back in the day, with that strong flickering white light. Most of the other sabers in the film are more like the prequel versions but I'm glad that one bit stayed.

obi-wan's yell re-edit didn't annoy me as much as it did more hardcore fans, but it just sits as yet another pedestal example of superfluous changes lucas implemented for the sake of seemingly who the fuck knows what

quite honestly the rebel yell wasn't something i'd ever have retained after 429x viewings of star wars. it's funny trying to figure out lucas's head and why he thinks these changes are necessary

"rebel yell"... erm, was listening to billy idol today. but i guess obi-wan is a rebel, as in distantly of the rebel alliance, no?

STET

http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/8968/041911tatooinefull600.jpg

Some LOLs from Mark Hamill in an AV Club interview today: http://www.avclub.com/articles/mark-hamill,62502/

Star Wars/The Empire Strikes Back/Return Of The Jedi (1977/1980/1983)—“Luke Skywalker”
AVC: How has your relationship to your performance in that movie shifted over the years?

MH: Well, I remember when we were like Sushi Girl. We were a little film trying to get attention, and having no idea whether people would be interested. So I was a great champion in the early days, and then it took on a life of its own. It was like being in a pop band that had a No. 1 single, and you’re just swept up in it all. And again, I thought there was a beginning, a middle, and an end. And that was fine for me, but it never really ended. Because it stayed in the culture for so long, and then [George Lucas] did the prequels, which brought it all back. At a certain point, you think you’ve reached the saturation point where you can’t really find anything new to add to the myth of it all, but it’s new generations. So in that sense, it’s hard to be cynical about something that makes people so happy.

But like I say, it’s frustrating, because I’m not creatively engaged when he makes the special editions or… I guess it’s coming out in Smell-O-Vision now, where you can smell the wet Wookiee, and 3-D, and it’s a roller-coaster ride, and a breakfast cereal. It’s all these things. It’s almost like one of the original Mouseketeers being asked their opinion of Epcot Center. I mean, you’re tangentially connected to it, but not really hands-on. But it’s hard to say. I mean, I really related to George Harrison when they said, “What’s it like to be in The Beatles?” He says [imitates Harrison], “Well, what’s it like to not be in The Beatles?” ’Cause he didn’t know. He was in The Beatles, so he couldn’t imagine any other way.

But like I say, I try and keep a distance, but also want to make people know. Because people will say, “I know you hate talking about Star Wars…” I say, “I don’t hate talking about Star Wars if you don’t hate talking about Star Wars.” I mean, I’m really in tune with what people want. And I’m not cynical about it at all. And people will say, “Oh, you didn’t get a very good deal.” But I didn’t get into this business for the money in any way. And I didn’t get into it to be remembered in any way. So the fact that it’s had such long-lasting resonance with new generations of audiences, it’s, to me, very special.

What was it like not to be in Star Wars? I don’t know. What I like about the prequels is, they have their own identity. They’re of the CGI world in a way that we never were. We’re sort of the last vestiges of the old school of matte paintings, miniatures, and models. So this whole new world of CGI where everything was created, the buildings, the clouds and everything—it’s a different tone. They’re much more serious, and almost like religious epics, in a way. Ours were much more goofy, I think. It’s like Little Rascals in outer space, vs. The Greatest Story Ever Told.

a breakfast cereal!

http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/c3pOS.jpg

Had those! The mask was disappointing. The cereal was good.

hamill sounds surprisingly wkiw in that interview.

I recently watched this, Star Wars Revisited, which is now basically the definitive version, imo. The picture quality and sound are superb too. Fuck the SEs.

So what exactly is the revisited version? It isn't really clear to me how he's deciding to make a lot of these changes. What was it like for you?

I keep seeing references to new Laserdisc rips of the OT but my searches have come up empty. I think those would pretty much be the definitive versions.

Also it is somewhat funny that there exists a whole facet of fandom intent on "recreating the original cuts" and then end up doing things like adding in new CGI Tie Fighters and putting blinking lights on Darth Vader's voice box. Isn't all that why you guys were pissed off at GL in the first place?

yeah, that's exactly what I'm trying to figure out about the Revisited version. It seems like less of an effort to bring back the original versions and more just this guy getting up to the same highjinx that got everyone pissed at Lucas.

Is Revisited HD for New Hope done?

I only watch the ASCII version of SW now. http://www.asciimation.co.nz/ (/hipster)

Yeah I don't get the Revisited nerds at all. I'd be down if they were intent on recreating the theatrical cuts, but this whole "OH GOD GEORGE DON'T MESS WITH MY MOVIES AGAIN, but here, let me tell you how *I* think they should look" is nagl.

Revisited isn't about taking it back to the the original as it was in '77. It's more like Blade Runner: the Final Cut, in that it corrects multiple errors and inconsistencies, and shonky effects, jarring edits etc. As well as cutting out, cutting back, or re-doing some of the CG revisions on the SEs. It's amazing to me that ILM didn't do this, mostly basic, work themselves, but they didn't. Now it has been done. The only quibble I might have is that the Revisited guy may have overstepped his mark on the final battle over the Death Star (which looks fkn excellent now, btw). He's pretty much redone the whole thing in CG quite liked the original model work. That said, it does look better, and play better, than it has ever done. So...

Cannot wait for Empire Revisited tbh.

I quite like the original model work.

(Chewie now gets his medal, as well)

Is there an official place to download this or is it just available through various file sharing sites?

All that stuff is available thru illicit channels. A cool thing about GL is that he doesn't necessarily hunt down fan-made reinterpretations of his stuff.

Oi, I'm really nerding out on Star Wars recently. Here's a story about a rare Technicolor print of the original. Check out the comparison between it (bottom) and the DVD (top):

http://savestarwars.com/images/goutstluke.jpg
http://savestarwars.com/images/goutstluke.jpg

http://savestarwars.com/technicoloribscreening.html

That link is great! Would dearly love to see the original Star Wars in the cinema again, the Technicolor print looks gorgeous.

I've been on a Star Wars Ripoffs kick lately, with "Battle Beyond the Stars" and now watching "Starcrash". I'm starting to enjoy them more than the genuine article. There are lots of gratuitous special effects, silly plot points, hotter babes, and usually some gorgeous pulp-style paintings used for planets. Plus since the plots and acting are so cheesy, you can just kind of run them in the background while you're doing other things.

In "Starcrash" there is a great scene where the Emperor very smugly commands his spaceship "Computer, STOP THE FLOW OF TIME!" so they can escape a nuclear holocaust. This comes right after David Hasslehof has a light saber duel with two Harryhausen-style robots. The Luke Skywalker guy has a huge fro and rainbow-colored Force powers. The main damsel goes through the film in a space bikini and thigh high boots, and she has some awesome hot mess eyes. The main villain looks like a Liberace version of an Italian crime boss and has the greatest evil laugh ever. Some of the effects sequences resemble 60's psychedelic light shows more than anything. Lots of great, quotable batshit lines throughout.

I think the greatest gift "Star Wars" inadvertently gave was the contemporary ripoffs. Does anyone have any favorites?

Holy crap the bad spaceship is a giant hand that turns into a fist!

Battle Beyond the Stars is hilarious

giant boob ship!

In "Star Crash" they fire torpedoes that have soldiers in them! They fly in through the window and the guys pop out and star shooting. LOL

I love Star Crash.

One thing I see is that lots of these films are using scenes that actually ended up in the "Star Wars" sequels, which were made after these. For instance, "Star Crash" has the ice planet (Hoth) and the girl gets kidnapped by the savages being saved by a golden god (Ewoks).

last night i had a dream that george lucas was shooting at me with a laser (it was some sort of new addition to one of the movies) while i yelled "OCCUPY HOTH" at him

omg

where might you find Star Crash or Battle Beyond the Stars? Netflix doesn't seem to have either...

Amazon has 'em.

Torrents.

another noted ripoff is Kinji Fukasaku's "Message From Space"

http://lotuswatcher.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/battlebeyond1.jpg

http://brianorndorf.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54ee7b642883301538f4d5727970b-500wi