PT Prequel fans - Would you be open to Special Editions of the PT...?

To be fair, Vos is in The Phantom Menace, briefly.

 

I really don’t know if there’s much they could change in the PT. If they were to be made, improving some minor CGI background elements or characters would be the only thing I’d want.

Most of the OT changes seem to have been made for the sake of keeping the saga more consistent. Going from Sith to 1977 ANH wouldn’t work in my opinion.

 

Any studio or producer could say the same thing to any director. Should director's have some artistic rights or not? Lucas wrote the story & produced the Indiana Jones films too. Does Spielberg have any right to expect his theatrical cut to be maintained?

What a joke. He told Marquand many times that it was "his movie" & his decisions would stand. With TESB Lucas was barely on set during the production. I feel like we've been here before, but here are some relevant quotes:

Q: "What did you do on this film (TESB) ?"
GL: "I provided the story and technical advice, like, does a robot do this or that? They shipped me the dailies and I looked at them. There were some problems. They were a little over budget, over schedule. That concerned me, because I only had so much money and I was afraid if they used it all up, we wouldn't be able to finish the movie. But I knew they were trying to do the best job they possibly could, and I thought the stuff looked terrific. It's truly Kershner's movie."

Q: "How would you have made the movie differently?"
GL: "Hard to describe. I look at a scene and think, "Gee, I wouldn't have done it that way." A lot of people have told me that The Empire is a better film than Star Wars, so whatever my disagreements were, well, Kershner was right."
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/the-empire-strikes-back-and-so-does-george-lucas

Co-director on TESB. Please! The upshot is Lucas gave no regard to maintaining Kershner & Marquand's theatrical director's cuts of those movies in the best ongoing format. He could've done so & still also released his SE's, but didn't bother. Thereby declaring that the director is just some hired pleb with no artistic rights. So if Disney decide at some point to alter or restore his movies, too bad.

 

I don't want to go in circles about the old argument of "who is the author of a movie", but just to clear up some facts that you got wrong.

-There are NO "Kersher and Marquand's theatrical director's cuts". In Empire, the final cut was done in COLLABORATION between Kershner and Lucas. It was neither 100% what Lucas would've done, nor 100% what Kershner would've done. It was a jointed effort. In Jedi, Marquand did his cut in summer 1982 and then basically left Lucas to completely re-edit the movie the way he wanted.
In both cases, it was Lucas (not Kershner or Marquand or the studio) who owned the final cut privilege, by the way.

-"Lucas was barely on set during Empire" is again wrong. Shooting lasted roughly six months. Lucas was present for two months in total. (just check the Making of book and do the maths: first two weeks of studio shooting in March, a week in May and five weeks towards the end of the shooting, when he realized he had to step in to get the movie finished).


About the interviews you provide, everything has to be taken with a graint of salt: most of the times it's just Lucas being humble and polite (like refusing to go with Kershner to the premier of Empire).

 

So what artistic rights should a director have, if any? It sounds like you're arguing that the edit of the film is paramount. Well plenty of directors take a back seat in the editing process. Fact is it's custom across nearly 100 years of film-making for the director to be one of the the creative leaders on the production. For the completed movie to, at least to a degree be "their" movie. Even if the shooting & editing have all been a collaboration. So wouldn't it have been respectful & courteous for Lucas to recognise this by also having those original cuts made available? Of those movies other people directed?

I'll take your word for that. What it means is that Lucas was absent during two thirds of the shooting, & when he was there his role wasn't as the director or "co-director". So the point still stands.

Better to take his many comments like that at face value. If you start choosing when & when not to include grains of salt you can spin people's words into anything you like.

 

Yes, but only if they recanonize the book of Darth Plagueis as a prequel to TPM

 

*gasp*

How dare you bring up context!

 

I'd be game for them as long as Lucas came back and had some input. I mean, I'd really only like minor improvements here and there, such as cleaning up shot, touch of the effects, etc. Hell, I'd even like to see some deleted scenes to be reinserted into the PT, such as Padme's family in AOTC and the pre-Rebellion group meetings in ROTS.

Now to think of it, haven't we technically gotten SEs of TPM and AOTC?

 

Honestly, the only reason we got Special Editions of the OT was due to it being a testbed for the burgeoning CG technology. Since there hasn't been any corresponding tech leap since the PT was made, there's no reason to update the majority of it, as it was already closer to Lucas' visions in the first place.

 

Kinda on topic here, bear with me...

I am so grateful that Steven Spielberg released a 2-disc 30th Anniversary Ultimate Edition of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.

The first blu ray disc contains all three versions of the film!

1. Original Theatrical Version
2. Special Edition
3. Director's Cut

The second blu ray disc is loaded with special features.

The boxset includes a nice movie poster and on the reverse side, a comparison timeline of the three versions of the film.

This is how you present your classic films to not only your die hard fans, but to the world.

Ridley Scott has also been most generous in presenting the various versions/cuts of his films to his fans.

This is a win win approach, imo. Shows respect to the artistic process, you make lots of money, and the fans are happy, being given the opportunity to watch whatever version of the film they prefer, or all of them.

 

Ridley Scott, Spielberg, etc, are not the ones who decide which versions are released. The studios are. Lucas, being independent and in control of his works (unlike his colleagues) doesn't release the theatrical cuts, not because it won't make money, but because it doesn't represent his vision and he's not to waste time and money on something like that. He doesn't want the version that best represents it to be just one among many. In the end, he doesn't release it because he cares about what's out there as far as his work goes. Scott does too, being baffled as to why would the studio release any version of Blade Runner but the Final Cut, to which the studio replied that there are people who want them all: basically, there's money to be made.

 

Altering the battle droid designs wouldn't make a whole lot of sense for canon IMO. The introduction of the Clone Army necessitated the production of new battle droids which wouldn't have been used by the CIS before the Clone War. It would mess with the sense of design and story progression from AotC to TCW to RotS.

 

The only change that I would make is to the battle of Naboo in TPM. I have always disliked the aesthetic of the Great Grass Plains and the Gungan boomas. I would make this a bit grittier and arm the Gungans with blasters.

 

No, it was unnecessary when the OT had that treatment and it wouldn't help the Prequels in any way.

 

I'm open to anything. I'll have an opinion when it becomes reality and I can judge if it made it better or worse.

 

ST aliens.

 

So you'd take away everything that's unique about the scene.

 

We already saw natives using slingshots in RotJ. It made sense then given the Ewoks' technological standards. The Gunguns on the other hand could build impressive underwater ships. They used powerful energy shields, energy pikes, & made damaging blue exploding ball thingies. They did all of that but it never occurred to them to make a gun? An automatic energy or projectile weapon of any kind? Instead they're clumsily loading exploding balls onto catapults. What the...?

 

Maybe the Gungans feel blasters are uncivilized?

Seriously tho, maybe it's just cultural and ingrained. Wookies prefer bowcasters. Tusken Raiders have their gaderffii, like Jedi use lightsabers. Jabba tortures his enemies with cruel beasts and monsters. Kaminoans freakin' clone you. Bounty hunters disintegrate. The Empire/First Order use superweapons. Bor Gullet knows all?

 

Here's a better idea: how about we leave all the movies alone?

 

Models or not, they have a heavy layer of digital manipulation and sheen over the top of them. I mean analog recordings of real instruments can be filtered and tweaked in mixing until they sound completely fake, and the same principle can come into play with visual effects. Models (real) or not, lots of the prequel work looks fake/overly CG, etc.

 

Create as many versions of the films as they wish to, doesn't bother me.
However, the original theatrical versions should always be available to purchase for home viewing.

Remember all the versions of Metropolis? That's fine, but its great to have the 2010 KINO version of the Complete Metropolis on blu ray.

 

Matte Paintings are Matte paintings. Be it digital or physical, most movies, even fantastic ones, are unable to hide it so it looks quite cheesy regardless.

I understand the complaints about AOTC since it was in a new age of technology. There were technical flaws for pushing the boundaries a little too early. But who else would have done that? Someone had to do it.

AOTC is a weird looking movie no doubt, so I can agree it feels off putting than absorbing films normally. AOTC is Very Ambiguously large, has verbose language in its expressive architecture but indeed is highly attuned to voluble and visual/auditory communication in many ways than one. To me, that is the charm of it. It looks like a movie and acts like a movie unlike any other. This is Star Wars. Or more so, Lucas’s movies.

This is everything!

Though, ROTS definitely has the most “solidity” look when it comes to digital sheen compared to ROTS. Instead of a “wild child” that was AOTC, the next film is mature and much more on the stern side of things.

IMO of as always

 

To be honest, I just don't like that scene and I may be allowing that to cloud my vision. Honestly, it just feels like a series of slapstick jokes which serve to undermine the significance of the battle and the sacrifice of the Gungans.

However, I've been chewing this over today and, upon further reflection, I wouldn't alter the PT. What is canon is canon. I may not like everything, but meddling would bring it's own larger set of problems.

 

If anything I would love to see the first cut of RotS that is supposedly 4 hours.