Adywan Cut and Its Possible Impact on Future Star Wars Releases

Okay, I am betting most of us here have seen the Adywan cut of "Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope" and it was incredible. I prefer his "purist edition" myself, but either one he has done things Lucas film has yet to do. The new print is stellar, new effects are brilliant, and overall it has made it so I will never watch my 2004 edition again. I now feel I have an Episode IV that truly fits into the saga.

Problem is it may be too good. He listened to fans and gave them what they wanted. Something Lucas has not thought to do. He has big shoes to fill for his next release. Will he be able to do better than Adywan. I wonder if he will do all of Adywans changes and then some.

What did you guys think of the Adywan cut? Are you satisfied with it? Does it make you feel like you have a definitive version of the film?

 

Can we gear this more towards the saga rather than just ANH (or the OT)

 

but Lucas' mission is not (and I don't feel should be) about giving the fans what they want. artists create what they want to see and ultimately create for themselves and nobody else. if people like it, great for the artist - they make a few dollars. but the truth is, the only people in the film industry who make what they think an audience wants to see are the number-crunching, demographic-studying producers and studio-heads who are ONLY interested in making money. thats why you get 14 teen romcoms every month. i actually feel Lucas pandered too much to fans wishes after TPM and included some weak elements that weren't required (Jango & Boba Fett for example).

for me, if Lucas wants it adywan's way, then he should do it or hire adywan to do it on his behalf. but he shouldn't do it just to bow to a majority request. we don't own star wars and never will. its not ours to tamper with. now, I don't have a problem with fanedits, and occassionally do my own - http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=jitterbugbhoy&view=videos - with plenty more in the pipeline. but they shouldn't become official versions, even if they do improve certain aspects.

 

Seems pretty saga-related to me - it's just that Adywan hasn't finished his cuts of the other films yet so ANH is all there is to talk about right now. But the concept of going in in detail and changing or fixing all the little problems with effects, continuity, etc. That relates to the whole saga (changing the originals, even more than before, to match the prequels?)

For me, I'd be very curious to see what Lucas and ILM would/could do if they took the chance to go back and re-re-re-revisit the films. I'd love to see all the matte lines fixed, colors restored to what they should be, etc. But I don't really need any new scenes added and I'm not sure how I feel about adding things like planetary surfaces when they weren't visible before (Alderaan, the gas giant Endor?) or more star destroyers or stuff like that. I suppose I am looking at the films as two different things. They are sources for what we know of the Star Wars universe, and in that capacity, anything added contributes to our "knowledge" so it could be a good thing. But they are also FILMS, and though I'm not a professional filmmaker, I know about creativity and making things (I'm a painter). Adding things where they weren't before, or getting rid of things, changes not just those scenes but the ways they interact with each other and such. I know Lucas says the films were more abandoned than finished but to some degree, they are works of art, cinema. I'd love to see some things restored, cleaned up, clarified, etc, but I have to balance that with viewing the films as pieces of art.

(?not to mention that I simply prefer the aesthetic of the classic films to the prequels ? contrast the colors of the originals (before the DVD release) to those of the prequels; there is a difference. Though TPM is pretty similar.)

Now, as Lucas has demonstrated a willingness to change the films, I could definitely see more changes being made. But he has also said that the films are finished, so that might count as a strike against the possibility of yet another edit (though he has been known to change his mind/revise his statements before). And I don?t know if he has the patience to go through and fix every little thing, the way that a fan would (if things weren?t fixed for the special edition or for the DVDs, they must have been missed twice, I suppose my reasoning goes). Since the existence of a website full of original trilogy fans helped make the case that there was a market for original trilogy DVDs (however underwhelming they are), if Adywan?s cut becomes well-known (even more than it is), the people at Lucasfilm might take notice.

Then again, I don?t see them re-editing TPM because of The Phantom Edit.

 

So how could one re-edit parts of the OT to make it match the PT better. Are there any lines that could/should be cut? Or any sequences re-edited?

For example, we're currently debating whether Leia knew her mother. ROTJ could be edited to the following

Leia, do you remember your mother? Your real mother?
Just a little bit
What do you remember?
Just images really. Feelings.
I have no memory of my mother.

That would clear up the issue of whether she actually remembered her being kind but sad.

 

I don't really get the appeal of Revisited and I don't think it will impact Lucas' decisions. It feels like the fans are way more into this than he is. The 97/04 changes were more part of the prequel push that is over now. Any future changes will either be minimal or will be tailored to doing a 3D version ("now the TIE fighters fly right in your face!"), just as the 97 version was tailored to include the then-current gimmick of CGI dinosaurs. He's pushing 70 I can't imagine he wants to keep doing this to the same 3 movies, spending time and money catering to such a narrow group of the audience.

 

"Obi-Wan once thought as you did" should be augmented to "She once thought as you did."

Aside from preserving the internal logic of the narrative, such a change would reinforce the idea that the Luke of ROTJ is very much his mother's son.

 

But Vader's line makes perfect sense if you want it to. It follows Luke's line "come with me" so people have assumed Vader was referring to a similar previous attempt at turning Anakin back from the dark side. But thats clearly a misconception. The giveaway is Vader's next line - "you dont know the power of the dark side." It is clearly this line which refers to how Anakin viewed Obi-Wan. Vader is inferring that, just like Obi-Wan, Luke fails to understand the dark side and therefore justifying why he cannot turn back - "Obi Wan once thought as you do", i.e. without proper understanding. That bit works fine. A change isn't needed in my opinion.

 

I dislike Revisited mainly for the re-edit of the Kenobi home scene, and the butchered climax. That said, the Mos Eisley segment in Revisited is extremely well done, and I prefer it to the SE cut. Will it influence future Lucas releases/tinkerings? I seriously doubt it. Like BLC noted, Lucas is probably done with tweaking the OT.

 

For a "Purist" version, there are flaws indeed. The big two that spring to mind are the re-edited Obi-Wan scene, and the inclusion of Battle of the Heroes. Sometimes a lack of music is infinitely more powerful than the best of scores. The Death Star duel is one of those moments.

But it's an excellent edition of the film to have on my shelf.

 

Dude. You win.

 

Agreed. However, even without that approach, the line still works if interpreted in the usual way. Anakin knows that Obi-Wan once thought that way because Padme implied as much.

 

sorry if it seemed a long-winded, over-emphasised justification. as i recall, it had been a LONG day.

 

lol. no, I was agreeing with you. Never thought of it that way before.

 

well, its like a lot of these perceived errors in continuity. they're only considered errors because of the misconceived ideas we lodged in our own heads between 1983 and 1999, due to the non-linear way the films were released. we had a lot of blanks to fill in and therefore made assumptions which were later proven not to be. there are countless criticisms of perceived flaws in the continuity due to this - when the truth is, all it needs is a little analysis and shift in focus (such as the above line) to make it all make sense. there's only one or two lines which dont make any sense that i would remove from future releases (the "your father wanted you to have this" i would edit to be "I wanted you to have this" and I would possibly alter the crawl for ESB and remove Vader's "i'm sure skywalker is with them", though even then I also like the idea that Vader is playing dumb with the Emperor - trouble is, a lot of people wont neccessarily get that as theres no other real exposition on vader's motive for doing so).

 

I'm not sure they are really misconceptions in the simple sense. When the classic trilogy was released, we interpreted each film/line a certain way, in the context that seemed to be given. Those assumptions still make sense, if you are watching the films in release-order.

When Lucas was making the PT, one of his stated goals was to change the way everyone thought of the classics. Certain things were surely planned since the 1980s, but by his own admission, nearly all of these involved parts of episode 3. I would not be at all surprised if some plot hooks and expectations set up in the classics were deliberately subverted in the process of writing the PT.

 

Like what? I'm curious, because I've always thought the OT seemed vague as a general rule about What Happened Before.


Concrete things I can remember offhand-from the movies, mind you, not the novels, which featured a pretty good amount of widening of the topic:


The Clone Wars: Anakin and Obi-Wan fought in them. Obi-Wan, at least, served Bail Organa in some capacity which was undefined.


Darth Vader: Helped the Empire hunt down and destroy the Jedi. Was also Luke's father, and the powers of the Emperor played a role in turning him.


The Emperor: Practically nothing.

Luke & Leia's mother: Was 'kind and sad'-implying Leia knew her to some extent.

The Jedi Order: The defenders of peace and justice in the galaxy. That they fought in the clone wars can be implied, as Anakin and Obi-Wan fought in them as Jedi Knights, and at least Obi-Wan was a general in the war.

The formation of the Empire: Again, nothing really.




So, really, I don't see a whole lot of stuff to form strong impressions or opinions about. The ANH and ROTJ novels offer a good deal of additional material about the various prequel-era happenings, but not that much, from what I remember.

 

You're right, there isn't a lot to inform inferences, which is precisely why it was easy to surprise viewers with things they didn't expect. Take, say, the Clone Wars. All we know is that Obi-Wan and Anakin fought in them, and the Jedi were involved somehow. We also have, in the same film, a large group of bad guys, who are so uniform that their heights must match (aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?), and who Ben has experience with (only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise). In the next film, we have a very popular character in Stormtrooper-like armor working with the Empire, whose backstory involved being a member of a group of warriors killed off by the Jedi in the Clone Wars (according to the novelization - I can't pin this idea directly to Lucas at this time but there may be more quotes out there. It's worth noting that Lucas did use parts of this backstory in episode 2).

Those facts, in themselves, only mean what they say. But taken together, I think people can be excused for getting the impression that the stormtroopers were the clones (and in fact this idea is, so some extent, preserved). Since the Jedi are good and the Stormies are clones and bad, the thinking goes, the Clone Wars must have been about the Jedi fighting against the clones/Stormtroopers. I know it came as a pretty big surprise to me that the clones were the soldiers of the Old Republic. Given that, again, Lucas has said that most of his pre-existing ideas for the prequels pertained to episode 3, it could be that he came up with the idea of having the clones be "the good guys" while writing episode 2, as a way to purposely change the way fans saw the classic films.

I could be totally wrong on that particular case, but I think the point works. Certain facts were presented in the classic films, and viewers made inferences based partially on those facts. Lucas must have been aware of which inferences would be most likely - either because he planned them that way at the time, because they hit him while thinking about the story (the same way they might occur to anyone), or because they were so widespread among the fans - and he could either confirm or subvert those ideas when it came time to actually make the prequels.

So the fan-made inferences are technically misconceptions, but usually logical and understandable ones, and ones that Lucas himself may have played on in the making of the prequel trilogy.

 

As vague as they may have been, fans (and sometimes authors of the EU) naturally filled in the blanks and made assumptions given the information we had at the time. We've spoken about the idea that Obi Wan tried to turn Anakin back from the dark side (something we now know he never really did with any conviction) but there were others too that have been endlessly seized upon on these boards by PT bashers:

* Yoda and Yoda alone was responsible for Obi-Wan's training
* Padme took Leia to Alderaan and raised her for a brief period
* Owen and Anakin lived together like regular brothers, with Obi-Wan taking Anakin away, much like he later did with Luke.
* That the force is pretty much a mystical entity, completely without scientific logic and justification
* Obi-Wan directly discovered Anakin
* Obi-Wan would have never known about or previously met R2 and 3P0
* Obi-Wan was not aware of Luke having a twin sister until ESB.
* Vader knew his children had been born and was waiting to find them.

Thats just a few that I can remember. Now there may not have been a grand plan regarding whether these were intended to be part of the backstory (not much will confirm or deny it) but we certainly jumpd to conclusions on all of the above, however certain it may have seemed from the information we had presented to us in the OT. As I say, the only one that really can't be cohesively justified is Obi-Wan's line to Luke "your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough" which we'll just have to rationalise as a white lie or a sweetener to get Luke more curious about becoming a Jedi. Then again, a simple edit could easily make this line "I wanted you to have this..."

 

That said, the intended viewing order for the films is now 1-6, which Lucas has stated.

Yes but I think this was more in general terms. He wanted to take what people thought was a simple story about Luke Skywalker, about good vs evil, and show them that it was actually the story of his father, and of how the lines between good and evil can become very easily blurred - about what drives a good person to do bad things and how that person was redeemed. This was certainly not how we viewed the OT until the last act of ROTJ ... and to many casual viewers, considered to be little more than an add-on to the core story.

More likely that they were unconciously subverted in all honesty. But thats another debate. How much analysis we do of Lucas' world compared to how much he does himself may differ quite a bit. But I don't mind if these things have been deliberately, accidentally or unconciously subverted, or even if they were part of the grand plan from the very start. As long as we can make sense of them in the context of watching the films 1-6, I don't mind.

 

well again, you can make perfect sense of that one. obviously at the time of making the films the line was conceived to make the audience think luke might die - to add tension to the fight with vader. then they had to work out who yoda was talking about before rotj was released. although we as an audience concluded it was leia he was talking about from his follow up revelation to luke - "there is another skywalker" - you can better rationalise in the context of the now completed saga that Yoda was actually talking about Anakin/Vader. perhaps Yoda still has faith that anakin/vader might yet turn back and destroy the emperor (as he ultimately did). i prefer to follow this line of thought. it works very well with the eventual conclusion.

but even if you dont go with this and prefer to think yoda is talking about leia, its hardly as if he's informing kenobi of her existence for the first time. you can logically theorise he's merely reminding obi-wan of her existence. up until that point they've put all their eggs in one basket and its not so hard to believe that obi wan may have ruled leia out long ago as being too much in the mould of her adoptive parents to suddenly become a jedi.

 

The problem with the Adywan's cut is that it is tailored to satisfy the fans (not all fans of course) and ignores Lucas' vision to some extent. For example, Han shooting first, this is the classic fans versus Lucas issue. Forr example, Adywan's edit sets forth the fan position of Han shooting first, ignoring Lucas' take that Han Solo was not a mercenary. I agree that 2004 DVD scene looks odd and out of place and the original scene flows much better. However a true "fix" in a future edition should not be replacing the old scene but to completely redo the scene, remove the weird frame jump, etc., so that Lucas' vision is fulfilled.

who knows what is Adywan's take on TPM, in his edit he might just give the fans exactly what they want and completely remove Jar Jar, ignoring Lucas intent for Jar Jar beyond the comedic aspects of the character.

Lucas therefore will more likely ignore Adywan's cut in any future "tweaking"of the saga, he is going to tweak the films to enhance his vision. He might of course place some stuff to please the fans, but only if it doesn't contradict with his own interpretation of the story.

 

You know, I like the story of Moby Dick. I just really dislike certain parts of. Melville needed an editor with an iron fist because we don't need three chapters on the rigging of the ship and 20 pages of the use of whale blubber. Just get to the revenging and the killing and the obsession, thank you. But, I don't feel like I need to rip those pages out of my copy of Moby Dick, and then share them with the world and say, "see, this is what Moby Dick should have been. Melville didn't know what he was doing." Moby Dick was Melville's story to tell, for good or bad. I feel the same way with the Star Wars films. I might not like the Ewoks, but I'm not going to presume that I know better than Lucas how to put the films together to tell the story he wanted to tell.

 

couldn't agree more. well... except i quite like the ewoks