CT Will Disney Re-Release Theatrical Cut Of The Original Trilogy?

I'd say this is very close to the truth. After ESB, he was burning out, with his marriage collapsing. Boba Fett was apparently meant to be the big villain of VI, with Luke confronting the Emperor sometime in VII-IX, but by the early '80s, he wanted to close off that obligation, and so telescoped VI-IX into ROTJ. They were still considering a possible ST down the line, but ROTJ was satisfactory as an ending if it came to that.

So, absolutely, the OT was designed to stand on its own. In '83, he really had no immediate interest in making more Star Wars films and had no need to, since the story was complete as-is.

 

If that's the case then Boba Fett's unceremonious sendoff takes on a wall breaking meta character. Metaphoric as well, maybe.

 

This had been gone over so many times. For whatever reason some people don't want to accept the differences. I don't know why.

He doesn't look that that at all (meaning the Sith scarred Anakin) and unlike Yoda and Obi-Wan his body doesn't disappear. We see a healed Anakin in Jedi robes that didn't exist. Never mind why robes would go into the Force anyway (Obi-Wan's didn't and Yoda's did.) Obviously Obi-Wan should be naked and Anakin should be invisible? I guess since he left his body behind!

Even if Lucas had used a 45 year old as ghost Anakin or a 22 year old then they would still have been replaced anyway. If HC had been aged up to look 40 or so it still wouldn't matter.

It's the same old, same old "Luke didn't scream before so I want that scream out!"

Now of course if Luke had always screamed and then it was taken out it would be:

"Luke screamed before so I want that scream back in!"

We know what Anakin looks like. He doesn't look like a man at least as old as or even older than Obi-Wan.

It's hard to know what exactly what some people want. They can accept that the actual Anakin would be healed in his Force spirit form as seen in 1983 and that his actual body didn't go into the Force in the same way that the others did but the idea that he would be seen as the Anakin who existed before he went to the Dark Side seems impossible for them to conceive. It's not a physical form. It's even called most often a Force ghost.

It's Anakin's Force ghost not Vader's.

If that is true then they were never that important in the first place.

I don't even know how the "actual" original versions could ever be done. I don't even know what that means. The "actual" original versions would indicate that such a thing is possible. It is not really. The actual original O-Negs for example were NOT the movies that were seen in theaters. Those got changed to the inter-pos stage with primitive photo-chemical color timing. If they actually could do then what they can do now they wouldn't have looked that way in the first place.

I understand the reverence that some fans have for the "originals" as it were. The problem is that what exactly the "originals" were is something that 99% of the audience doesn't at all think about.

For all but a few an official release like the Despecialized Editions would be entirely satisfactory.

If the official LD on DVD releases had been anamorphic with 5.1 sound and good quality picture like the version one DE's I think that would take care of the vast majority of complainers.

 

Get some new material.

So, people are either morons or incapable of processing information? Gotcha.

And now you can start the story by seeing all that happen and then see how Luke has to catch up to what he didn't all know about.

What do you want her to do, dance a jig naked? So the only way to enjoy the movies is to be blown away by "I am your father"? That's really a shallow view of the films. Course, somebody who starts with the OT first, has no clue about the twist and isn't blown away, what then?

The Force might have been explained better in TPM, if it was made first. But Obi-wan explaining it to Luke would still be there, if he were going with the same idea that Luke wasn't aware of the Force and all there was to know about the Jedi. If Lucas had made it I-VI, with all the same trappings of those scripts, then yes, the Sith would still speak of Anakin as separate from Vader since ROTS plays that same angle. And yes, the idea of Luke not being told the truth until Vader does so, would still be in place if Lucas keeps the idea of Luke not knowing from the outset.

That's not what I was saying at all. And no, they were only made to be seen in the order they were made by the generation who saw them that way first. Our generation. The ones from 1977 until 2005. He's intended them for the next generation. 2006 on through to the present and beyond. And now that we have the ST, with carries on the numbering, newer generations will be given the option unless someone else does it for them.

Sure it does, he's a Mutant that tells Erik and Charles to "go **** yourself". Then you go to his solo film and learn who he is.

You watch it as "First Class", "X-Men Origins: Wolverine", "X-Men", "X-2: X-Men United", "The Last Stand", "The Wolverine", "Days Of Future Past", "Apocalypse" and "Deadpool". In fact, I just talked about this last month after seeing "Apocalypse", as I did a viewing in that order.

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...pse-next-legion-wolverine-3.31296307/page-196

Well, fortunately, there's "Alien: Covenant" which is coming next. And we see different ships between the Prometheus, the Covenant and the Nostormo.

Sure it is, because newcommers won't expect Ash to be an android, much less violent since David wasn't violent.

That's a big if. People might be interested despite how weak the two crossover films were.

Again, a big if. "Enterprise" isn't the first show to have a weak first season and still keep its audience to go on to be a big show.

I waited just as you did and while I didn't read that magazine, I did believe that he was going to make the PT and lo and behold, he finally said so in 1993.

I'm not saying that the OT didn't work on its own before the PT came along, nor that it doesn't work on its own now with it out there. What I'm saying is that when Lucas chose to open the story up with the ideas of telling the backstory, he was essentially telling us with episode numbers being added. Even when he was hesitating about telling those stories, he was opening that door to an order to watch them in. As to what he said...

If you see them in order it completely twists things about. A lot of the tricks of IV, V and VI no longer exist. The real struggle of the twins to save their father becomes apparent, whereas it didn't exist at all the first time [audiences saw Episodes IV, V and VI]. Now Darth Vader is a tragic character who's lost everything. He's basically a bitter old man in a suit.

"I am your father" was a real shock. Now it's a real reward. Finally, the son knows what we already know.

It's a really different suspense structure. Part of the fun for me was completely flipping upside down the dramatic track of the original movies. If you watch them the way it was released, IV, V, VI, I, II, III - you get one kind of movie. If you watch I through VI you get a completely different movie. One or two generations have seen it one way, and the next generations will see it in a completely different way.

It's an extremely modern, almost interactive movie making. You take blocks and move them around, and you come out with different emotional states."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith.

So he saw something that was interesting and unique and that it could work that way, as much as it did the other way. Anyway, my point is that it doesn't hurt to let people see it the I-IX, if they are given a choice.

 

But why do that when you can just watch the OT? As I said, the PT is literally just the backstory to the OT. The PT is not really even necessary to watch. It would be different if the PT added more than they subtracted from the OT. Why sit through six hours of three films that are, let's face it, not very well regarded, when we can just get to the heart of the story in ANH, and learn all the interesting events of the PT slowly throughout the OT?

 

Because some people would like to actually see the backstory, rather than have it being told to them or just rely only on that. After the OT came out, people wanted more "Star Wars". Not just to see what happened next, but what happened before then. "Star Wars" fans wanted to see Anakin and Obi-wan as young Jedi, fighting in the Clone Wars and having all kinds of adventures. They wanted to see the fall of the Jedi and the rise of the Empire. They wanted to see who Luke and Leia's mother was and what she was about.

The point of watching all six films was that Lucas was creating a narrative experience of following Anakin Skywalker from his beginning to his end.

"It's a downer, the saving grace is that if you watch the other three movies, then you know everything ends happily ever after. Nevertheless, I now have to make a movie that works by itself but which also works with this six-hour movie and this overall twelve-hour movie. I'll have two six-hour trilogies, and the two will beat against each other: One's the fall, one's the redemption. They have different tonalities but it's meant to be one experience of twelve hours."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith, page 62.

The two Star Wars trilogies share many characters but have different structures. Instead of telling another heroic coming-of-age story, Lucas has crafted the prequels a historical drama, at whose center is Anakin Skywalker. His story is tragic; that of the Republic-turned-Empire, uncomfortably familiar. Anakin begins as a nine-year-old boy who is physically enslaved. He ends the prequel saga a spiritual and mental slave to the Emperor, who is his metaphorical if not biological father....

But the end of Revenge of the Sith is not the end of Anakin, whose story really closes when it merges with those of his children, Luke and Leia, in Return of the Jedi.

"It really has to do with learning," Lucas says, "Children teach you compassion. They teach you to love unconditionally. Anakin can't be redeemed for all the pain and suffering he's caused. He doesn't right the wrongs, but he stops the horror. The end of the Saga is simply Anakin saying, I care about this person, regardless of what it means to me. I will throw away everything that I have, everything that I've grown to love- primarily the Emperor- and throw away my life, to save this person. And I'm doing it because he has faith in me; he loves me despite all the horrible things I've done. I broke his mother's heart, but he still cares about me, and I can't let that die. Anakin is very different in the end. The thing of it is: The prophecy was right. Anakin was the chosen one, and he does bring balance to the Force. He takes the one ounce of good still left in him and destroys the Emperor out of compassion for his son."

Anakin Skywalker's final confrontation with the Emperor occurs during Luke's final confrontation with the Emperor, which compliments his father's dealings with the same man many years earlier. Indeed, the life of the father and the life of the son are commentaries on each other.

"The Star Wars saga is like a symphony, which has recurring themes," he adds, "You have one theme orchestrated in a particular way and place, which then comes back orchestrated as a minor theme somewhere else. There are these little threads running through things that are constantly turning events on their head. You see two people confronting the same things, with different ends. It's a rhythm. I like the idea of seeing something from a different perspective. An advantage I have in this particular situation is that I have literally twelve hours to tell a story. It has the epic quality of following one person from the time he's nine years old to the time he dies. It's Anakin's story, but obviously there are many other characters in that story- his children, his best friend- and their stories carry through. So this isn't just a tune- it's a symphony. When you do it as a symphony, I think it actually becomes beautiful."

--George Lucas, The Making Of Revenge Of The Sith; page 221.


For me, I like to see a story that has a complete journey. Take the "X-Men" films. It wasn't planned out the way that it was, but now we have a huge storyline across multiple films. We have nine films in a universe, eight of which are strongly connected together. We have the journey of Charles Xavier and James Logan Howlett. Both together and separately. There are individual stories with certain characters. Ones who connect to both characters, but also stand individually with each character. Two of those films aren't that great, but I can sit through them because I do enjoy them and it is interesting to see the evolution of those characters to where they reach a climax. So I like seeing Anakin's journey, because I like the PT as much as I do the OT. "Rogue One" looks interesting to me and if it is good, I'll be including that as part of my Saga viewing. Same with the Han Solo films.

But let me ask, would you still feel this way if the films had turned out different?

 

But the OT on its own was a complete journey. We follow Luke from being an everyday person in ANH to a full fledged Jedi in ROTJ. But then Lucas decided to take the OT and make it part of this whole "Tragedy of Darth Vader" saga, which I feel just doesn't work for a number of reasons.

 

I do think that the potential was there for three great movies that only enriched the OT. But it's a tricky thing to pull off, and it really required something like the story group we have now. Had Lucas produced them with real writers brainstorming the story, we might have gotten three films that made everyone very happy with a chronological viewing.

 

Lol what are you going on about now? Naked Obi-Wan? What?

Shaw Anakin is not that difficult to make sense of. He looks like this just before he dies:

Then, when he returns as a ghost, his injuries are healed. So what's the problem? You think it's inconsistent to have his injuries be healed? Well what exactly would it be inconsistent with? We haven't seen anything to indicate that it's not possible. It's a ghost, after all. Ghosts are mysterious and can do amazing things like disappear, reappear, teleport, and grow in size. So it's not that much of a stretch to see his injuries healed and think "Oh neat, Force ghosts can manifest as their injury-free selves. That George Lucas guy is so creative!"

Also, this is not about "accepting differences". Because remember, your original assertion was that the "[Shaw] Anakin [ghost] makes no sense" for "the general audience". My point is that this statement is incorrect; they would have no problem making sense of the Shaw Anakin ghost. If anything, Hayden Anakin makes less sense since every other ghost before him appears the same age as when they died.

You're just splitting hairs now. The only real difference between what people saw in theaters and the original negative is generational grain and some color timing differences. But color timing also varied between different types of prints. For example, there were Technicolor prints and LPP (I think?) prints for the original Star Wars and they varied in terms of their overall picture quality, grain levels, saturation, and color timing. For that aspect of things, I'd say the correct approach is to "do their best" since there was a lot of variation between prints. Verta's Legacy would be a good option though since it was created from many different types prints that people did actually see in theaters.

There you go talking about the casuals again as if that somehow bolsters your argument. This isn't about them. 99% of the audience wouldn't think about any of the discussions going on in this forum. So let's just leave the casuals where they belong: in the back of our minds as an afterthought.

Fans of the originals aren't complainers. They're simply fans of movies that they love and want to see them released in an official capacity. But yeah, I agree, a Despecialized-tier release would probably satisfy most. Although, if Lucasfilm did create such a release from print scans and whatever is left of the negative, then they'd have the ability to release it not only on DVD like you suggest, but also on Bluray in glorious high definition. And that's really where these classics belong: on the best medium with the best possible audio/video presentation.

 

I was eight when I first saw ROTJ, and Shaw's ghost made sense. It still makes sense. What doesn't make sense is Anakin de-ageing to his mid-20s while Yoda and Obi-Wan are still looking as old as ever.

 

Yeah, I remember being a kid when the 2004 DVD's came out, and ROTJ was the first one my family watched. When the ending came up, and Christensen replaced Shaw as Anakin, I remember thinking "Why is young Anakin here? That doesn't make much sense".

 

Disney should probably insert Ewan McGregor, full beard, into the Endor scene alongside Hayden Christiansen so that it has more continuity than it does now. That will help me understand what exactly is going on. We know that Ewan McGregor and a very small Mark Hamill had a great deal of chemistry in the handful of scenes they had at the end of ROTS. And then have Liam Neeson show up, off to the side a little distance, for, he was never on the Council.

 

You mean like this?


But for it to truly be the last moment we see Anakin as good, it should look something like this:

ANNIE: I'm a ghost! Yippeeee!
YODA: Told you I did, Master Kenobi. Taught him this ghost technique we should have not! Now, put up with this little twerp, we must.
OBI-WAN: Oh come on, he's not that bad.
ANNIE: I'll try turning invisible, that's a neat trick! Woaaaaa!
OBI-WAN: I'm sorry Master Yoda. Plz forgive me. Plz.

 

My personal favourite. Ooooohhh yeeeahhhhhh!

 

No young Ewan McGregor, but someone got Liam Neeson and Samuel L. Jackson in their for you. Enjoy!

 

I think it's most logical, that the ghosts of Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Yoda would appear to Luke, as Luke remembers them. He is afterall the only one who can see them. So, having Anakin appear as his younger self really makes no sense to me.

 

Lucas insertion of Hayden as a force ghost was just his desperate attempt to the tie the trilogies visually because it wasn't working on a narrative level. Young Anakin never made sense, and it actually contradicts and misses the point of ROTJ.

The point of ROTJ is that there is just a 'smidge' of good left in Anakin, somewhere buried deep down in him that only Luke believes. If Anakin truly died on Mustafar as Lucas states, then there would be no good left in him in the OT. It is old Anakin/Vader that is conflicted all throughout ROTJ as even The Emperor calls him on it. It is old Anakin that decides to save his son and throw the Emperor down the chute.

When you see Young Anakin as a force ghost it totally negates what he did in ROTJ, because Sebastian Shaw aged Anakin is the one who saved Luke, and that is the moral of the movie, the trilogy, or the saga.

 

A "desperate attempt to tie the trilogies together." Both trilogies are interwoven on many, many levels. You think this singular shot was what Lucas was banking on? What a joke. "Aged" Anakin doesn't mean anything. The shred of Anakin that was good, was what remained of his younger self. There was always doubt in Anakin, which is why he couldn't kill Obi-Wan on Mustafar. Think how easily Anakin bested Dooku, and how easily Dooku bested Obi-Wan. There was conflict in Anakin from Mustafar onward. All of Vader's experience means nothing in terms of his redemption. It isn't Vader throwing the emperor over the side. It's the piece of him that is still Anakin Skywalker, who has been buried underneath the mantel of Vader for decades. The force ghost change makes perfect narrative sense, which is why Lucas did it. Lucas always makes the logical choice.

Real writers...? Had you said screenwriters that might have made some sense from your point of view. The story of Star Wars has always been Lucas'. He's as real a storyteller as has ever existed. In fact, if you look at story alone, he's by far the highest grossing screen storyteller that has ever existed. For you to say his isn't a "real" story writer is delusional. And why do you even mention the story group? As far as I know they had nothing to do with creating the story to TFA. That abomination is the responsibility of Abrams and Kasdan, two writers who have never created a story worth a damn in their entire careers. Yet I'm sure you'd argue they are "real writers." It's laughable. MI:3? The Big Chill? Hilarious. Any one of Lucas' stories is cherished on a level far above what either of those writers has ever created, or will ever create.

 

Doesn't matter if you think it was handled right or not, it was a story that Lucas came to realize he was moving towards. And so he went that route showing us the story of one person over a lifetime, but also has other characters who play a part in that storyline. Before "The Tragedy Of Darth Vader", there was no real strong narrative. The earliest ideas for the back story was three films that were only loosely connected together. When he started to develop the story further, he found the narrative that would tie them together which only makes sense. Just as the ST is connecting the narrative back to the first six films.

 

I remember the first time I saw the ROTJ ending with Hayden...it made sense back then and still does today.

 

If Lucas believed a young Anakin belonged in the force ghost scene in 1983, he could have easily cast a young actor who looked like Mark Hamill. There is a reason he cast an older Anakin.

 

This is all perfectly fine, however to alter an original work of art to fit with your current interpretation, rather than to make the new pieces fit into the puzzle that you created decades earlier, is what many feel is problematic, especially if the original, and arguably more beloved work of art is supplanted by this new updated storyline. This is the main difference with the earlier retcons, that aside from adding the episode number to the first film, nothing was changed when the next episodes were released. This meant that fans, that enjoyed the original narrative could do so unencumbered by the capricious vision of it's creator. Sadly, since the release of the 1997 SE GL this is no longer the case.

 

It's not.

 

"Storytelling" is not writing, firstly. Lucas can be good at fusing imaginative concepts together and giving them a unique flavour, but he hates the process of writing, and he's said as much in the past.

And yeah, you're wrong about Kasdan. The Big Chill is a favourite of many people of a certain age. Body Heat and Silverado are also great. You're just displaying an ignorance of cinema and pop culture, I'm afraid.

And TFA was brainstormed by the story group, including Kasdan and Abrams but also others. I believe Kiri Hart suggested a lightsaber duel in a snowy forest, for example.

Honestly, the way some of you react to anything even moderately critical, you'd think we were debating religion. Indeed, my own acceptance of my very lukewarm opinion about the PT felt like a move towards apostasy.

He did say "arguably". But it's certainly the more culturally significant.

 

Only a few of the changes were done to link between the trilogies, the rest were issues that he had for years, or had come to him after a while. And regardless of linking them together, Lucas still felt that he didn't need to have two editions out there. Not because they would prefer the earlier versions to the newer ones, but that he just didn't see a need for two. Yes, I know that fans would prefer to have that option. To me, I think it was partially ego, but also partially it was in terms of practicality and a bit economical. If you buy a DVD of ANH with a fully remastered print of the THX edition, the 97 SE and the 04 SE, it becomes a waste because only one will be viewed over the other. In your case, DrDre, you'd prefer the THX edition to watch over and over. I would go for the 04 SE. But neither one of us would watch the other, for our own reasons. To me, that's a waste. Sure, you can argue about having separate copies, but then that confuses people and clogs up the market with unsold copies, or returned copies because someone didn't read the fine print.

Sure, directors like Ridley Scott signed off on multiple copies of his films, but then he didn't have the level of control over them that Lucas did. He would probably prefer just the theatrical versions as he considered those the director's cuts, over all the other edits of "Blade Runner", "Alien" and "Legend" that are out there. Lucas just took it to what he felt was a logical and financial conclusion. Sure, there was a bit of bias behind it, but I can understand that.