CT Star Wars Digital Release- Even More Changes?

To be honest I am more interested in the 'new' bonus features. I already own the series on every platform available so that does not excite me too much. I am however, up for more features and documentaries they can throw at it. I

 

Don't forget the rock in front of R2. He really wanted to have the rock there, but technology wasn't able to allow for them to move a rock.

 

A fine troll thread. Cool, cool.

 

This is the shot I was referring to:

 

Are we now freezing frames to nitpick a 5 second sequence to point out slight color differentials?

 

I don't believe this at all, but...

http://badassdigest.com/2015/04/09/the-digital-edition-of-star-wars-could-make-a-major-change/

 

Frankly the desire for the release of unaltered kills me. I find it unwatchable just as much as I cringe at the new Krayt call. I think like fans like Adywan have the formula down for what WE want if changes are to be made. Lucas made said changes because he sees it as HIS art, incomplete. Fans view the films differently.

 

It's cool and all that they've reverted back to the "Han shoots first" version of the scene, but I've always been baffled at the negative reception to it being altered in the first place. Let me clarify, I've been baffled by why people seem to hate it so much. Most of the complaints hinge on "It destroys Han's character arc," but it really doesn't, at all. My whole issue with it is, it looks awful and it was completely unnecessary, and the cut to both gunslingers shooting at each other kills the energy of the scene. But regardless, it's not even in my top five worst changes. All things considered, it seems like a much smaller alteration than, say, removing the unnecessary Jabba scene from A New Hope.

 

I just tweeted at Devin Faraci (and he did retweet me and respond), that his sources may think they discovered a new change that actually isn't.

In the 2011 bluray edition, Lucas essentially changed it back CLOSER to what it was originally, although still not all the way back. In the 2011 version, both characters fire their guns SIMULTANEOUSLY. My guess is his sources saw this and forgot that change was made by Lucas himself in 2011 and thought it looked close enough to the original, that it has been changed back for this digital release specifically.

Also Devin tweeted back at me that he had a source say there are "tweaks" plural, but wouldn't say what they were. Frankly, I find this hard to believe given the rampant sentiment to release the unaltered cuts let alone to stop tinkering with the most current versions. Since Lucas no longer is involved, it would seem far fetched to me that other people in charge of working on this release (most of which are likely OT fanboys who want the unaltered versions back) would do more tweaking. That seems to be something that would be strictly a George thing anyways.

 

Who's to say George hadn't been tinkering with them since after the Blu-Rays were burned, and before he jumped ship?

 

Good point.

 

All I can say about this is if there really are more changes that were made by George and not a third party, then I'll be fairly pissed because I'm not able to stream or download digital movies, or whatever people do with that stuff

 

We cut to live footage of Devin Faraci, and the idiot staff at Bad Ass Digest:

 

Of course it doesn't but to their minds it does because in their character arc he is this cold-blooded killer and then he's all warm-blooded hero at the end.

Complete nonsense of course but there it is.

Obviously Lucas thought it was necessary due to too many people not being able to understand the scene and taking something character wise away from it that is not there but visuals over-ride subtitled dialogue.

Could be. The 97 and 04 versions simply don't look good. That is the problem with them to me. I've said many times the whole scene needed to be reworked to it's original form before the Jabba dialogue was inserted (Han's line and Greedo's subtitles) so that it's still Han only shooting but the intent of the scene is now crystal clearer than it already is. As you say the BD version is virtually both shooting at the same time though in freeze frame Greedo's shot does start first.

Thing is that George didn't do the digital releases while he owned Lucasfilm since the BD's came out in 11. I don't think it is that far-fetched to think that before leaving that George could very well have done a few tweaks for the digital releases which is his tradition before releasing them on a new platform.

Each time the movies come out from 97 into theatres then 04 on DVD then 11 on BD Lucas made changes. The digital Yoda work was done as a warm up to ROTS but wasn't released in that form for almost a decade. So maybe he did a few more tweaks for digital?

If there are I doubt it will be anything but a few tweaks. Nothing major and they will be available on the first Disney distributed releases once the FOX deal runs out.

UPDATE: Well gang, I got spoofed again. It looks like Greedo still shoots first in A New Hope, as confirmed by Garth Franklin of Dark Horizons who lives in Australia and thus in tomorrow. This is a bummer. I had a source confirm to me that there are tweaks, but I guess this isn't one of them! My apologies for any undue hope I caused

 

You're on the Internet right now, so I don't see why you couldn't stream. Personally, I couldn't be happier with streaming and digitized versions of all my Blurays on a NAS in my home. It clears up soooo much space on wall and stuff. No more getting up to switch discs or anything. Every movie a click/swipe/tap away and just an unobstructed screen.

I see that the streaming version is up. Trying to decide whether to get it. If there are changes, I want to see them, but another part of me expects a 4K version release in the foreseeable future for streaming as well.

ITA: Ah screw it. Impulse buy time. I want to see the Greedo scene and see for myself.

 

I don't agree, this is the reason that Lucas gives over the fuss over the change but I don't know who he has been talking to. It seems that Lucas is the one who thinks that Han shooting first makes him a "cold-blooded killer"
Neither I nor anyone I know when ANH was first shown thought Han was "a cold-blooded killer."
Greedo had a gun and was basically threatening to kill Han. Han simply shoot Greedo before he could make good on his threat. Simple.

Why there was a fuss is because;
a) In 1997 the scene looked bad. And Greedo became an incredibly lousy shot.
b) In 1997 Greedo clearly shoots first and then Han shoots back. The implication from the scene is that Han WAITED for Greedo to shoot before shooting back. Given what Lucas said at the time the idea seemed to be that if Han had shoot first then that would make him a bad guy and bad guys don't become heroes at the end. That is what some objected to. It would be stupid for Han to wait for Greedo to shoot before he uses deadly force.
c) Lucas tried to deflect the issue by arguing that Greedo ALWAY did shoot first. That they tried to film Greedo shooting first back in 1977 but there were technical problems. However both the script and the novelization don't support this argument. And Gary Kurtz also disagrees.
Another reason why people didn't like this.

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Lucas changed it because he said that in 1977, Greedo really did shoot first and Han always did shoot second. It just wasn't clear because of technical issues.

Again, I don't know who Lucas had been talking to but the scene was very clear to me.
Greedo has a gun and plans to kill Han and Han simply shoots Greedo before Greedo can do anything. It doesn't make Han "cold-blooded" because he was clearly threatened and his life was on the line. Plus later in the film Han shoots several people before they can shoot at him.
Plus you don't need subtitles, Greedo is clearly holding a gun and pointing it at Han. The threat to Han's life is obvious.

As it is now, both shoot about at the same time. But Greedo still misses a target right in front of him.
So Han shoots when it becomes clear that Greedo means to kill him, not Greedo actually shooting him. But this makes the change at best pointless. And Greedo is still a very lousy shot.

Original version is still better.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor

 

Deleted

 

The script didn't say Kenobi dies until Lucas made it so then those changes were all incorporated into the script and novel and comic. It's starts and ends with Lucas not the script he wrote. It's not sacrosanct.

Thousands of thoughts went through Lucas' mind each and every day. It's more than entirely possible that he did want there to be a double shot and for whatever reason it didn't get done. Gary Kurtz seems like a nice guy and decent producer but he should have been fired after ANH and Lucas thought of letting him go but out of loyalty gave him another chance. It didn't pay off on TESB and so he was finally removed. To think that Kurtz knew every idea that passed through Lucas' mind about how things should be done just doesn't work at all.

We know that he wanted that Jabba scene but couldn't get it the way he wanted it so it got cut, he was constantly adjusting and changing things.

Obviously in the end something got him to change the scene just like he put Jabba into the SE. He talks about his personal position to the reaction that he got from people being something that was so against what he wanted people to take from that scene that he felt he needed to change it. Personally I think it more than likely that he thought people would be able to read the scene as it's presented but the reaction of many took him so by surprise that he found it utterly perplexing.

For we fans who watch it over and over and over again it was (to most of us it seems) but he was talking to people that see it only once in a while and maybe a few times total and their impression seems to be different.

If the current version was the original and it was changed you'd almost certainly say the exact same thing don't you think?

 

Didn't see this posted anywhere - Disney has removed the Fox fanfare from 5 of the 6 movies on the digital downloads. They replaced it with an edited section from the end of the ESB credits.
http://www.businessinsider.com/new-star-wars-opening-removes-20th-century-fox-2015-4

 

Blimey, i grew up with the original versions of these films on betamax and vhs, i hate most of the new changes, i bought the 2004 dvd versions mainly for the dolby digital soundtracks and then the blu ray versions for the dts hd tracks and 1080p presentations.
Looking at some of the colour gradings vs the original releases, its glaringly obvious the colours are all over the shop but i would agree i needed to see them side by side to notice.
The SE editions will always be just that to me 'special editions' canon or not the original theatrical releases will always be my favourites.
Jabbas palace dance scene was bad enough but when playing the bluray of jedi and hearing vaders nooooo i nearly launched the tv out the window. I cant even...

 

Kind of a bummer, but I guess it couldn't really be helped.

 

Because I have a very weak connection limited to 30 GB of use per month

 

Well...that's all kinds of terrible. Maybe it's just my familiarity with the "new" music in its original form, but it's nails-on-a-chalkboard grating... the missing bit is so glaring! Terrible audio edit.

 

If you did also happen to get ROTJ, please share with this thread whether or not they changed the Jedi Temple shot at the end of ROTJ. kthnx

 

Except a lot of stuff that are in the script differ from the film. Both script and novel have Vader drinking from a cup in the DS conference scene. He didn't do that in the film.
Luke's X-wing was blue five, not red five.
Three thugs assault Luke in the cantina, not two.
Etc.
So there is little reason to think that the script was altered to reflect how the scene wound up and not as it was intended.

Except that this isn't what Lucas claimed. He said that they filmed it with Greedo shooting first several times but they couldn't get the squibs to work. And in the end they had to shoot what wound up in the film. This is something that a producer would be aware of. Squibs have to get made, two guns that can fire have to be used etc. Also, about the gun, from what I've read the gun the actor in the Greedo suit had was such a gun that couldn't fire, it was just a prop.
Also the work print had Han being the only shooter from what I recall.

Yes but the Jabba scene was in the script and the novelization so as I said above, Lucas didn't bother to alter it to fit the finished film

Since Lucas changed other things like this;

Source Imdb.

The reason might be censorship on Lucas part. That Lucas thinks that Han shooting first makes him a bad guy and we can't have that, so he must shoot in self-defense instead. Given what Lucas said at the time, that might be what he was thinking.
I know that is what some people objected to.

But ignoring all that and just take the scene and these two version.
Version 1) Greedo has a gun and threatens Han's life. But Han get his gun ready and shoots Greedo before he can make good on his threat.
Version 2) Same as above but Greedo gets of a shot at about the same time as Han but he misses.

What is the difference? Han shooting isn't prompted by Greedo shooting, he would have fired anyway. The only difference is that Greedo is a terrible shot.
In what way is this better? Greedo is already plenty dumb by letting Han keep one hand under the table but now he can't aim as well?
The change is at best pointless.

And this applies if we assume that it was intended to be shot this way.
What does Greedo shooting first do? It shows that he is a lousy shot, is that needed?
If Han holds his fire until Greedo shoots at him, then he is a moron. If him shooting has nothing to do with Greedo shooting then why not have him be the only one to shoot? The reason is the same.
By having Greedo shot and miss at point blank range, it doesn't add anything to Han, he is just very lucky that Greedo has such terrible aim.
In short, it adds nothing and only makes Greedo even more incompetent and Han is alive only due to luck.

Han being the only shooter makes the best sense. Han has been getting his gun ready and when it becomes clear that Greedo isn't listening to reason and intends to kill Han, Han shoots him before he can make good on his threat. Better in every way. Greedo is stupid but not totally incompetent.
And Han shows that he won't wait for people to try and kill him before shooting first.

The novelization says this;

Nothing at all indicates that Greedo fired a shot, he wanted to Han outside and then kill him.
And it said something about Han as well. Some of the other patrons knew what Han could do and done before presumably.

No, I saw ANH once in 1978 and then didn't see it again until a couple years later. And I still had no problem figuring this scene out. And I was eight at the time. And my friends at school, most of whom also had seen the film once or maybe twice, they also understood this scene fine.
Again I wonder who Lucas had been talking to.

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Ahh falling back on that old argument eh?
Do you like the new version just because it is new? Or because Lucas prefers it?
You don't need to answer, I just showed why this is a bad argument.

I gave my reasons and they had nothing to with which was the first one.
Greedo being an unbelievable lousy shot, it adds nothing to Han and that the new scene looked bad. Had it been like that from the start I would not have liked it.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface