Mos Eisley in the OOT and the Special Editions

What exactly do you think makes that more real? Because it seems more like Earth or something? Yet the cantina scene completely takes it away from being Earth at all.

In comparison to the SE version I find it very unreal and as I said that is the one I first saw in 1977.

Well it just would get in the way of the camera like that! Pesky thing!

 

It looks like a real desert town and there are just people on the streets going their way and doing ordinary things instead of unrealistic slapstick scenes which destroy the immersion.

The cantina aliens never bothered me at all. They were funny without being unrealistic imo.

 

The whole point of the way that shot is framed is so that pedestrian traffic in the foreground will obscure our view of the main action as it passes by, adding to the fly-on-the-wall documentary feel.

 

It looked like crap. Regardless whatever the point was.

 

Looks about the same quality as the brachiosaurus from Jurassic Park to me. Which makes sense, since it's a modification of that CGI model.

 

It's not supposed to be an Earth real desert town though. That was why it failed so badly. The point being that Lucas wanted it to look like what it was. A busy spaceport. All the aliens couldn't possibly be there otherwise.

The aliens from all over the galaxy argue against it looking like a sleepy Earth desert town. What it was is unrealistic and less immersive as to what it should have been.

Watching the original again and it's kind of sad looking really.

 

WOW. How realistic!

 

It became the most successful and influential film of all time. That's hardly a failure, even if Lucas had different intentions.

It depends on the viewer I suppose. To me all the slapstick with CGI aliens stick out like a sore thumb, and causes the movie's tone to shift quite dramatically. We just witnessed Luke's aunt and uncle's burning corpses, after which we enter Mos Eisley, a wretched hive of scum and villainy. From the entrance of Mos Eisley, to the interrogation of the stormtroopers, to Luke being scolded by the bar man, to Luke being attacked by Dr. Evazan and Ponda Baba, to Obi-Wan slicing off an arm, etc, etc, the tone in the original is one of tension and danger. I think the original simply flows better, and is better able to convey that feeling, and thus more immersive compared to the final cut. I believe immersion for many people is better achieved through a consistent tone, rather than by adding special effects.

 

A thought about Mos Eisley being busy.

There are two or three ISD's in orbit and they would be trying to capture any ship that leaves.
So wouldn't that reduce traffic somewhat?

Then again, Han seemed surprised when they showed up so word does not seem to have spread about it.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

Sorry but talking about one single point as here wasn't going to change that. If Lucas had been able to make the entrance to Mos Eisley far better or that much worse at the time this one part wouldn't have broken anything.

Now if the cantina had stayed in it's rather pathetic state before Lucas "SE'd" it in additional shooting before release then I think that would be way different in terms of impact. As Hamill said he was all excited but then when he got to the set it rather sucked. I somehow seriously doubt it'd be s iconic if it had stayed that way. The entrance to Mos Eisley was passable but not in line with a place that has hundreds of bays with aliens from all over the galaxy.

I'd say it keeps it right in tone. ANH is easily the funniest of the movies. I daresay if they did a Star Wars movie with that tone now some people would be saying it's getting to a GotG-ized territory.

So then you are against all the outright comedy on the Death Star after they are captured? The humor from the entire sequence from let's get the princess to the shoot-out, the escape, the running through corridors, the trash compactor? Then after they escape and Obi-Wan is gone they are having a grand old time shooting down TIE's.

Obi-Who? Oh that old guy.

 

Star Wars and the Mos Eisley sequence was already iconic long before the SE was released, so I don't really see what you're getting at to be honest.

Tone is not just about what the movie overall conveys, it's about what a scene conveys. You can have a comedic sequence following a suspenseful sequence to break the tension. What generally doesn't work is mixing the two, jerking the audience from one emotion to the other.

No, if you write a sequence with a certain tone, stick to it. If a sequence is supposed to be comedic fine, if a scene is supposed to have tension fine, if a scene is supposed to be dramatic fine. You can have different types of scenes in a movie, and a comedy can have a dramatic scene, like for example the hotel room sequence in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, but you have comedy build towards the drama, and then keep a dramatic tone, until the scene is done. You don't interject what's supposed to be a dramatic scene with some slapstick humour, which only has the consequence of the audience losing immersion, and both the comedy and the drama falling flat, because the tone of the scene is all over the place.

 

Rather like the Jedi rocks scene in ROTJ. The inserted caperings of the inhabitants of mos eisley turn it into who framed roger rabbit for a moment.

 

I hate Jedi Rocks. Lapti Nek was so much better imo.

 

I don't think the integrity of the tone is as threatened as you think it is. You see a robot getting into a violent altercation with another robot and a biker cutting off a dinosaur in traffic and carelessly speeding away as the riders fly off in disarray. This stuff is meant to be amusing yes, but it's nowhere near the Looney-Tunes level of insanity people make it out to be. Setting the tone for a sort of Thieves' Town by showing a montage of semi-humorous degeneracy on the part of the inhabitants is pretty standard stuff.

The new opening establishes Mos Eisley as a slightly whimsical but nonetheless violent and dangerous place, which is exactly in keeping with the tone of the cantina sequence, with its opening montage of goofy-looking aliens getting their drink on set to a diegetic beat played by a butt-headed jazz ensemble wearing black turtlenecks. Mos Eisley is a rough place but it's also supposed to be kind of fun and lively, in a seedy way. It's a pirate hangout.

 

Ironically, Lapti Nek was the exact kind of disco garbage Lucas avoided for the first two movies.

 

Wel for me the nah, nah, ...nah, nah, nah droid reaction borders on slapstick, and doesn't mesh well tonally with the scene, and neither does the Jawa falling from the Ronto. I wouldn't call it offensive, or bad (the only bad change in the scene for me is the ronto blocking the stormtrooper interrogation shot), but I prefer the original, even if I can appreciate the scope of the SE changes.

 

I find it was really suitable and in line with the atmosphere of Jabba's palace unlike Jedi Rocks, which made the scenes lose any sense of danger and alienness.

 

As tech-funk goes it's pretty atypical of the disco "garbage" of the times.

 

We could talk sub genres and sub sub genres till the cows come home. My point is it had a distinct sound that was what Lucas was avoiding when he made the first two movies. He didn't want anything to sound contemporary.

 

Why is the ronto blocking the shot such a sticking point with people? As I pointed out, that's the whole point of the way the shot is framed--so the foreground elements would get in the way of the shot's focus. Before it was just two astromech droids rolling by one after the other, so presumably Lucas just wanted to make the shot more diverse. And the ronto comes by in the beginning of the scene before anything is even happening. Meanwhile, this droid gets in the way after the dialogue has actually started but no one ever complains about it.

 

I think it's obvious. The droid doesn't block the complete shot. Having the Ronto block the complete shot as a big brownish blob, is like having someone wave in front of the camera. It's distracting. Also, why put in the ronto, when the droid already serves that purpose? So, it's an effect that only serves to distract from what's already there.

 

Nah.

 

It's supposed to be distracting. Why else frame the shot that way? It just can't be so distracting that you're not paying attention to the dialogue, which is probably exactly why Lucas has the ronto walk by first, before anything is even happening, rather than replacing the second droid.

 

He didn't put the droid so close that it blocks the entire shot originally. That's the right way to do it. This is the wrong way in my view.

 

Why is it wrong, though? If the entire conceit of the shot is that Mos Eisley is so busy and crowded that the camera is having trouble getting a good view of the action, then having one of the ubiquitous beasts of burden completely ruin the shot with its bulk seems to me like a really good extension of the visual joke.