That bitch Lucas announces Star wars on Blu Rayz

[ColonelFatso]

Anyone know of any differences of the Lucas cut of Empire? You'd think the guy would realize the one version he didn't direct is the most popular and stay the fuck away. Oh, well.

Nothing concrete, but I'd put money on that stupid scene in the SE where Vader gets a call from MASSIVE EMPEROR HEAD, which in the context of second-and-later viewings makes no sense whatsoever.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

At my local art movie house in Modesto, CA, they plan to show the SW:TESB flick on August 28th, 2010. My question is, is it going to be the original 1980 theatrical version or the 1997 SE version? It'd probably be safe to say that it'll be the 1997 SE variant version anyways. I'd be thrilled if it was a 35mm reel print version of the 1980 theatrical version indeed. Just a single 35mm print reel of film stock weighs in at a whopping 44 pounds (U.S. weight measurements) -- so about three to four reels makes up for a complete film to be viewed properly.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[dan76]

Anyone know of any differences of the Lucas cut of Empire? You'd think the guy would realize the one version he didn't direct is the most popular and stay the fuck away. Oh, well.

I think his original cut slowed everything - I heard the story off an editor. Lucas put stuff in that was in the script but slowed the film down. Kershner's cut stayed with the characters and kept the momentum going. Not sure of the specifics. I've heard of a scene where IG88 fights Boba Fett in Slave 1 trying to get Han Solo... apparently it was shot but never used. Maybe that new book will have stuff like this in it.

In most films the first edit sticks to the script - that is, you basically put the script on screen, then you start to find out what film you've got. Start cutting away, stuff that isn't needed, switching things around, merging scenes etc, to make the film. Kershner's edit was a better film. Anyhow, when you look at the prequels and see how slow and bogged down with trade taxation plans and all that guff it makes sense.

[GaijinPunch]

Interesting indeed. I have no doubts it was probably crap in comparison.

PCEFX: I think the issue would be finding a 1980 print that was well taken care of at this point. I watched the original trilogy in the theatres as late as 1994, and they were in semi-bad shape at that point.

[Warp_Rattler]

Depends on how the theater cares for it, too.

I've read a few little essays from the folks at Criterion concerning the restoration they've done for some of their releases, and it sounds like they've handed much worse than what could have possibly happened to the best of the Star Wars prints. If Lucas doesn't want to restore the original releases, he should hand them off to a company that realizes 'restoration' means "don't fuck with the content, just clean the film up and get a nice transfer."

Just a single 35mm print reel of film stock weighs in at a whopping 44 pounds (U.S. weight measurements) -- so about three to four reels makes up for a complete film to be viewed properly.

Sounds like your theater works off of an older reel-to-reel system. Most new 35mm prints are shipped on 5-9 reels about 15" in diameter, which weigh 10-15 pounds each depending on the amount of film. They're then combined into one giant reel on a platter system that feeds the whole thing through the projector. Long stuff like Inception or Girl with the Dragon Tattoo can easily hit 100+ pounds. Schlepping one of those up and down uneven stairs in a converted Art Deco-style theater from the 1940's is fun. Woe unto you if you happen to drop it.

[CMoon]

This is just a continuation of the stranglehold on movies that we saw back in the 80's and 90's on videotape (where was E.T.? Why couldn't the disney movies stay in print?) Lucas is the last hold out of this bullshit (without his lard ass in the way, any other studio would happily clean up the original theatrical versions) and I can only hope it dies with him. Actually I really hope everyone just torrents him into poverty. Asshole.

[neorichieb1971]

Lucas just whores out the Sw franchise to show off technology. The reason to do the cuts and changing was to show off to other movie makers what he can do with his ILM. The 1997 reprint was to show what he can do with old 35mm reels. In essence he has done a lot for movie restoring. Some techniques he patented have brought us astounding Blu rays of really very old movies.

Lucas is a pioneer of technology and not a very good story teller. He created some excellent characters and worlds, but the story he attached to them was not really quite there. Unfortunately he comes across as a know it all bully. Recently he banned the Darth Vadar guy from showing up to conventions because he was a bit loud with his opinions.

the next time you see the prequels, look at it from an advertisement viewpoint. Its advertising ILM.

[Warp_Rattler]

I think part of the problem is that Lucas is not the auteur he thinks he is. Star Wars itself was a lucky stroke of writing, directing, and pretty damn impressive (and groundbreaking) visual work by ILM, but I'd hazard to say that if he had full control of the writing and directing of Empire and Jedi, we'd be fondly remembering that one classic kitschy space opera done by the dude behind American Graffiti. Yet the whole franchise is splashed with Lucas's name, and I think it's gone to his head. He doesn't recognize that he's the near-hack who made it big on the shoulders of friends and the more talented; he's the name behind Lucasfilms Ltd., and I almost believe he honestly thinks that by butchering the trilogy he's honoring some sort of film-school artistic vision which--as he says--he hasn't been able to properly create until now due to limited money/technology/etc. I don't think he's experienced enough with the practical nature of film making to realize these are not changes that will look good, much less be well-received by the public. Then again, if you're surrounded by sycophantic yes-men, it's not like the public opinion counts for much anyways.

[greg]

Does anyone remember ten years or so ago when Lucas was saying that the Playstation 2's "Emotion Engine" is so powerful, that it would be capable of making the CG for Episode 2? Between Lucas and Ken Kutaragi, who's cock was in who's mouth that time? Or was it some sort of 69 thing going on?

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Yes, I do recall Lucas mentioning that statement when the PS2 made it's debut back in the Fall of 2000. I recall of another news article about terrorists getting ahold of the PS2 Emotion chips for use in missles against the Western world.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[BIL]

Yeah, Saddam was going to kick off the mother of all wars with his fat PS2, a Gameshark and a pirated copy of Smuggler's Run. Of course the PS2 just ended up terrorising the West with a year's worth of shitty games. Zing!

[GaijinPunch]

Ken Kutaragi in his crappy understanding of English was saying the PS2 would be like being in the Matrix. What a bunch of dumbasses.

[Ed Oscuro]

I think part of the problem is that Lucas is not the auteur he thinks he is.

I gotta say though, props to any dude who's rolling enough that he can treat entire movie franchises as his own Lego set. It'd be kind of like some obsessive changing the position of the raven on the Ghostly Hideout set, except instead of a bird it's entire races of fictional people being thrown willy-nilly into and out of thousands of film reels distributed across the country - and all the requisite packaging and merchandising that follows...it must be amusing for Lucas to see how far the ripple effects of "Greedo shot first" have gone.

So maybe he's really just a bored sociologist moonlighting as a film producer.

[Specineff]

and I almost believe he honestly thinks that by butchering the trilogy he's honoring some sort of film-school artistic vision which--as he says--he hasn't been able to properly create until now due to limited money/technology/etc.

I'm so glad you mention that, and so pissed to read it. My blood boils (BOILS!) when I hear a director or artist using that as an excuse for their shortcomings. Lorne Lanning used that excuse for the Oddworld series, and that's why it ended, I think. Yeah. Right. It's all because technology limits them. The fact that they may make mistakes or not be as talented or hard-working has absolutely nothing to do with it. Nope. No. No, sir. No. Nuh-uh.

Take Hideo Kojima and the MSX. The system had problems with lots of sprites on the screen, and instead of giving up or making up excuses, he worked around its limitations. And thus was Metal Gear born. (Raiden and the Patriots crap came later.)

Sorry for the derail.

[Warp_Rattler]

So maybe he's really just a bored sociologist moonlighting as a film producer.

Always a possibility--then wouldn't we all look the idiots? It scares me to give the idea anything more than a cursory thought.

And if everything really is as it seems on the surface and he is just all about the Benjamins--well, as far as hobbies go, nerd rage is hardly the worst thing.

Sorry for the derail.

I'd actually like to see an alternate universe in which James Cameron actually made Avatar back when he had a completed script and didn't wait for 3D and supah computahs to pad out the threadbare plot. As Avatar is much more a vehicle for its special effects than Star Wars was, I wonder if he too could resist the temptation.

On a further side tangent, you have something like Blade Runner, where the director's not entirely sure what the original vision was and which parts cut from which editions work with which other parts, so you just release a box set with eleventeen different versions and hope the fans can find one they like. I wouldn't mind if Lucas did this--workprints would be especially neat to see.

[CMoon]

On a further side tangent, you have something like Blade Runner, where the director's not entirely sure what the original vision was and which parts cut from which editions work with which other parts, so you just release a box set with eleventeen different versions and hope the fans can find one they like. I wouldn't mind if Lucas did this--workprints would be especially neat to see.

This and the Brazil box are why Lucas is full of shit.

[Zeether]

Lucas needs to release a 2 pack of Howard the Duck and the Star Wars holiday special on DVD.

[neorichieb1971]

Sorry to put a cat amongst the pigeons but I don't know whom is worse, the director or the fans or those who just want to give an opinion.

The blu rays are the 1997 editions. Thats 13 years ago. Everyone is still talking like it happened yesterday. 13 years is a long time. I've been married, divorced, fathererd a child, lost a child, owned 3 houses, lost 3 houses, raked up $50,000 in credit card debt and done more than 4000 posts on this forum since that time.

The only reason I would be talking about Lucas on this forum was if he paid off my debt.

[Ed Oscuro]

Sorry to put a cat amongst the pigeons but I don't know whom is worse, the director or the fans or those who just want to give an opinion.

Does this talking-to have a point? Forums are for, y'know, people giving opinions. I could understand defending Lucas against the fans, if they were acting like this and if he was like any of the other paparazzi-hounded "celebrities" who just need some of their privacy back. Holes in that defense: One, he continues to make money off what really is the success of other people; two, he doesn't show said other peoples' work any respect (even before the prequels, Darth Vader was a sore spot amongst fans, and then there is garbage like this); three, nobody here is really saying anything unfair. Mmm, the sweet smell of santimony!

[CMoon]

Sorry to put a cat amongst the pigeons

You're not--at least if you mean stirring things up more, that's mostly pretend. I don't really give a shit about star wars, at least not as a franchise. It was just my dumb luck to be 5 years old when 'A New Hope' came out, and this and Empire hold some nostalgic value for me.

That said, I think Lucas is both arrogant and ungrateful to essentially refuse to put out something that most of his remaining fan base have been begging him for. As I said in an earlier post, even Disney and others are past pulling this shit of making films permanently unavailable. E.T. is apparently available (not that I'd care to know) both an original and gun free version. In all cases, the makers of the film have had the dignity to actually allow the consumer to buy what they want to buy--what they originally saw in the theatre.

Lucas is alone in this, and it really doesn't matter how long ago he made the fucked up versions, they're still fucked up and inferior to the original.

The blu rays are the 1997 editions. Thats 13 years ago. Everyone is still talking like it happened yesterday. 13 years is a long time. I've been married, divorced, fathererd a child, lost a child, owned 3 houses, lost 3 houses, raked up $50,000 in credit card debt and done more than 4000 posts on this forum since that time.

It's long enough to say I really don't care any more beyond a few gruff posts. It's the best I can really muster---It's hard to care too much about a couple movies I might only watch a few more times.

[neorichieb1971]

Well you know, if you go to a bank for a loan and they say "no". You might bitch about it for about 3 weeks.

If 13 years later you ask for the same loan and its still "no", you might want another 3 weeks to prosper over the last 13 years of why its still "no". Would you watch the movies more times in the future if it were the original cut? Probaby not.

What you really have to ask yourself is if Lucas has a sense of duty to his fans? If other companies did have that sense, I'm sure Lucas would too. The fact is, he has far too much money to spend on his own visions but not alot to spend on yours. He has made that painfully clear many many times.

Forum goers should know Disney's deal by now. They give a movie a year of shelf life and take it off again for at least 5-10 years. Sleeping Beauty is now OOP on bluray, Pinocchio is getting the axe in a month or so.

I don't know if its of any relevance, but Aliens just got the SW treatment. Apparently its uprezzed, de-grained, super dupered and all sorts. Apparently the new blu ray this year is going to make it look like Avatar. You can thank Lucas for that.. Well, it makes me smile.

[CMoon]

What you really have to ask yourself is if Lucas has a sense of duty to his fans? If other companies did have that sense, I'm sure Lucas would too.

You mean, like this:



No, Lucas just sucks.

[CMoon]

...or they'll be a super-duper edition later

[Ed Oscuro]

Apparently its uprezzed, de-grained, super dupered and all sorts. Apparently the new blu ray this year is going to make it look like Avatar. You can thank Lucas for that..
What the bleeding hell does Lucas have to do with Aliens getting a re-release? (Lucas doesn't own Fox, which is handling the re-release, so I'm not sure what you mean here really.)

At best he owns ILM, bought for with money other people made him, doing work that would have been done had he not come along. High praise!

Well, it makes me smile.

Feels good man (fighting dumb quotes with dumb quotes?)

[neorichieb1971]

Directors like Cameron and Lucas work with their own people and their own tools, but they share their trade secrets as well.

There are only one or two other directors (Ridley being one) who sign off their own work, Peter Jackson being another (LOTR not counted because Warner didn't give him creative control).

SW was one of the biggest restores ever done, if you believe that SW and Aliens restores have nothing in common at all I think your very short sighted. I have no factual evidence to support this claim, but Hollywood is a small place. Techniques that were used to restore SW were almost definitely used by Cameron on Aliens. ILM's influences are almost everywhere these days.

Besides, I've never seen a movie de-grained with good results. Cameron reckons Aliens looks better than it did in 1986.

Watch this vid at 05:30 onwards.

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=5007

Its also worth to note camerons visions of having different cuts from the cinema all the way down to DVD. Surely this is Lucas's vision as well.

[dan76]

I don't really know what you're arguing about. This thread is titled "that bitch Lucas announces Star Wars on Blu Rayz" - which basically means that Lucas (the twat pedant) is releasing yet another version of star wars (which will no doubt have more tweaks to correct the 1997 versions) to make a ton of cash (because he knows he can) - and that it somehow fits in with an artistic vision (which it doesn't - he's a businessman). He is completely unaware that each step he takes away from the original films he is making them worse. That's the irony here. By improving them he is ruining them. It's an opinion a lot of people have but he just won't see it. That's why it's annoying - but also really funny.

An example: on one of the dvd commentaries he says that a man in a rubber suit is no more real than a CGI character. This is his defense against complaints about CGI looking fake. What he somehow fails to realise is that a man in a suit is photographically real - it's actually there on set. That's why when done badly it looks like... a man in a suit - when done well, it's Chewbacca or Jabba. So it is just as real as the other actors, the set etc.

This whole Lucas thing has to be one of the greatest arguments for "artists" not being the best interpreters of their own work. He just doesn't get it.

[E. Randy Dupre]

For somebody who wouldn't ever talk about Lucas, rich, you're not doing very well at not talking about him.

Lorne Lanning used that excuse for the Oddworld series, and that's why it ended, I think.

Nah, while Lanning definitely has made comments about the limitations of videogames technology before - to which the only sensible answer is "well, make something else instead" - the slow death of the Oddworld games (until the recent rumours of a rebirth) is something he puts down to the way the industry functions. He has a point, although the fact that his games weren't anything like as amazing as he's always claimed might have something to do with it, too.

[GaijinPunch]

I don't really know what you're arguing about. This thread is titled "that bitch Lucas announces Star Wars on Blu Rayz" -

It's the best subject title in Shmups history!

[Ed Oscuro]

Richie, I'll stop wasting time here and get to the point. First, I still don't see what the point of your original post was other than to say "look at me, I have a life and I'm better than all of you." Great, just great. I don't obsess over SW at all (I only read about it now and then because the drama is the stuff of entertainment) but it's clear you don't know what you're talking about. I'll admit, I didn't know the history of ILM as well as I thought, but everything you are suggesting set off BS alarms in my mind, so I did ten minutes of research.

Lucas's relationship to ILM's success is like that of a CEO who creates a division within his own company to fulfill a specific need. Lucas needed special effects, so he recruited talent for ILM - John Dykstra who in turn brought along some college kids. George Lucas first tried to get the man responsible for much of 2001: A Space Odyssey's optical effects on board. Since those times, for Lucas, the special effects process seems to consist mostly of attending brainstorming conferences and talking with people about how cool it would be to do X, standing by an effects compositor's shoulder at their workstation and describing how pod racers should sound, and ordering more pod races into THX 1138 rereleases. I'm not going to say he doesn't understand how the effects system works, but there's also no evidence that he was actually involved setting up the programming language used for the Trench Run wireframe sequence (a rumor, that I can't run to ground, says that language was the basis of the Bally Astrocade's BASIC...hard to say) or in designing or even controlling the computer-controlled camera used for the trench run sequence itself.

More unusual is your claim that ILM is behind the restoration of Star Wars. It didn't sound right at all, since ILM does special effects and not restoration. I looked it up, and it's not true - it was done by the Lowry Company, which is an independent company which was running long before (at least since 1971) ILM was set up.

Even assuming that ILM was doing restorations, they do their work for a fee. This idea you have about "trade secrets" being shared kind of ignores the fact that Hollywood effects houses generally work for hire, going back and forth to different projects, and that a lot of the equipment is standard, and the basic techniques being used are usually published first by academics in publications like the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Quarterly. (Not to diss ILM, which has to add an artistic perspective to that work.)

This is why I say that Lucas, while he takes a lot of crap that he shouldn't have, also gets some misplaced praise by people who seem to think that Hollywood is fundamentally still a one-man show.

For somebody who wouldn't ever talk about Lucas, rich, you're not doing very well at not talking about him.

Lorne Lanning used that excuse for the Oddworld series, and that's why it ended, I think.

Nah, while Lanning definitely has made comments about the limitations of videogames technology before - to which the only sensible answer is "well, make something else instead" - the slow death of the Oddworld games (until the recent rumours of a rebirth) is something he puts down to the way the industry functions. He has a point, although the fact that his games weren't anything like as amazing as he's always claimed might have something to do with it, too.

I think Lanning & Co. were pretty successful on most fronts related to gaming, at least on the only one of their games I've played: their last one. Considering how much stuff there is to pay attention to compared to film, they did an amazing job. I got Oddworld: Stranger sometime after its release, and the game was very striking. From that time period, the only other games I felt came close visually were Myst Online (Uru) and maybe the Resident Evil remake on GameCube. The streaming technology (resulting in five second, or shorter, load screens) was another great edge over other stuff. Where the game got bogged down was in its plot arc (spend hours earning a bunch of money for stuff...whoops, just kidding, now you're an ugly buck naked thing - sure, it was essential to what they were doing with the theme but still felt shitty as a player, and you never really had a fun period of being built up to compensate for it), combat (meh, though the live ammo was hilarious), and the way levels were laid out (I recall some very close calls due to poorly planned checkpoints - I almost fucked up my game deleting old ones after the game put a checkpoint in a spot that was pretty damn close to unwinnable with a timer counting down).

[neorichieb1971]

I've heard of Lowry before. They did all the James Bond Blu ray restores amongst many many high profile movies that needed a clean up. They also did Indiana Jones which has yet to be released. I take back my argument on the ILM thing if you've taken the trouble to research that i'm mistaken. I believed with ILM, THX, Lucasarts, Lucasfilm and Skywalker Ranch he had just everything in house. Why he hasn't bought Lowry is beyond me.


ILM's first special effect was the escape pod in EP4 (5 minutes into the movie) as explained on the original Laserdisc special features.

As for Lucas adding new content.. I doubt its because he wants to ruin it or sell the movie again based on 30 seconds of extra footage. More likely blu ray is making it feasible since he will make another $100,000,000. I doubt Lucas has much to do these days, he spends more time coming to shmups to see what the latest giz is on the SW franchise