Your thoughts on "SW: The Phantom Menace - The Ultimate Edition"

What did you think of "The Ultimate Edition"? Did you enjoy the added music? Or did you want more than what was given?

I admit, I was worried about not liking it when I got it for my Birthday a few weeks ago. The complaints were pretty bad, after all. But to my surprise, I loved it! Just having "Anakin is Free" and "Qui-Gon and Darth Maul Meet" on disc made it a great listening experience for me. And sure, the cuts on the "Battle of Naboo" music bothered me a bit, but it's a problem with the film and not the music. As for the "missing music"... well, it would've been nice to have some alternate cues like in the Superman re-release, but it's no big deal.

 

I think that music companies (and pretty much a lot of companies in general) are pretty fast to use the words "Ultimate" and "Super-duper" and the like, these days. I mean, look at it: Terminator: THe Ultimate edition, and a lot of other things. "Ultimate" must be the hot catchword of teh industry these days, eh?

Anyway it is blatantly obvious (at least to me), the UE is NOT the Ultimate TPM soundtrack. THe "Ultimate" would have all the alternate cues, cuts, etc. and this did not have them. Personally, since this didn't even have any extra tracks or the uncut music, I think it was a little too much for Sony to call it the "Ultimate Edition". I didn't get it.

--Mr. P

 

They should have included music that was written for the film, but didn't make it into the final cut of the film.

 

TheGatherer,
Like they did in the OT SE releases? Well, I would have liked it still, but it would have made it no different IMO.

BTW, I love it. Love it, love it, love it!

~Sithman~

 

Loved it. Don't know what everyone was whining about because it's great!!

 

Should have been the Comlete Edition rather than the Ultimate Edition.

Love the Duel of The Fates with cuts from the characters speaking.

 

I love the fact that I finally own all that previously unreleased music but the arrangements were of course a bit sloppy, especially in the final battle.

 

http://cgi.theforce.net/theforce/tfn.cgi?storyID=8449

 

Nothing short of awesome!

 

I was afraid it was going to be bad, so I crossed it off my Christmas List. Then when I bought it myself I was blown away. Especially by the Dialogue version of DotF.

 

I didn't care much for the music video DOTF..only bad part of the whole thing, IMO.

 

I actually liked the dialogue version of DOTF, though it's not my favorite part of the UE soundtrack. But as far as score tracks with added dialogue go, this is definitely better than "Can you read my mind?" from the Superman soundtrack.

 

Personally, I found all the dialogue to be more than a little distracting.
But purely listening to a sabre duel is a little..unusual.

 

I thought it was great and that the review on TFN was one of the worst reviews I've read..I just remember a thread popping up about that review and dying off shortly, so hopefully not too many people read it, but..uh..

I'm aimlessly griping, aren't I.

I apologize. Anyway, I thought the soundtrack was great. I still pop it in from time to time.

peace,
Fatboy

 

It would have been great, if it actually included Williams' original recordings (like the SE CDs) instead of the edited mess that appeared in the film.

Oh well...

 

The Battle of Naboo was a sloppy thing to listen to. The edits were far too distracting for me to appreciate it. I wanted to hear John Williams' version of the battle, not what it sounds like after the film editor's picked, ripped, and chopped it up like some kind of musical jigsaw puzzle.

 

You know...none of the ROTJ soundtracks, including the special edition, has that groovy little number they play in Jabba's palace while Chewie's being led away and again when R2 is serving drinks.

Some things just may never end up on a soundtrack...maybe its time we just accept that.....

Then again maybe not. I WANT MY ALTERNATE CUES!!!!!!!

 

The tapes for that piece of source music could not be found when the SE 2CD set was being compiled.

 

Mr. K,

Well, maybe some people *like* jigsaw puzzles. :-D

~Sithman~

 

I thought it was all right. But why so many repeated sections of music?

 

There were lots of repeated sections in the OT of the basic themes as well, ewingpilot..

 

No, I mean not the themes, or "motiffs" but just plain dubbed sections of tape on different tracks. It got annyoying hearing exactly the same thing twice.

 

Oh, you mean like 'Qui-Gon's noble end' being present when Anakin is in the podrace?

 

My disappointment with and anger towards it were chiefly derived from Sony's advertising, which promoted it as, "Every note JW wrote for the film." It's not. There's even stuff on the original soundtrack that's not on the UE because it was cut from the film. I was expecting what RCA did for the OT SEs.

Still, disappointment aside, what I think of the UE is mixed. There's a lot of good music in there that's faithful to what JW composed, especially some great material from the Coruscant sequences that weren't to be found on the original soundtrack. But the heavy editing of sequences like the pod race and the final battle really annoy me. If they had even just released the original version of those sequences as supplemental material on the discs rather than another DOTF (which there was more than enough room for), I would have LOVED the UE. But, ultimately, I look upon it as a missed opportunity.

I know Sony Classical lost a lot of money with the original soundtrack because they had to pay so much for the rights to release it in the first place, and releasing the UE as is was the cheapest way for them to make back some of the money they lost, but I still wish they had gone just that one extra, tiny step. I think they would have sold more copies and made more money, to be honest. A lot of the bad reviews would have gone the other way, and some people who maybe decided to pass it up wouldn't have done so.

 

Another problem facing the UE was the fact that the SE soundtracks for the OT set the standard for what SW music fans expect from a "complete" release. Of course, the UE was not like the SE releases at all. I wouldn't say that it made for a worse album, but it did show some ignorance on Sony's part- especially when they so boldly boasted it would be "every note composed".