CT ANH and Subtitles

I remember watching ANH once, and there were subtitles when Greedo was speaking that alien, so the audience knew what Greedo was saying. It really made the scene make more sense and why Han killed him, since Greedo was planning on killing him. That's why i saw nothing wrong in with Han shooting and Greedo never shooting.

However when watching that classic scene on youtube, the original original ANH, there were no subtitles.

So which version of the movie has subtitles? Or is it something you can choose to add?

 

I remember them being there in every version. The person ripping that scene for that YouTube clip probably just had subtitles turned off on their DVD player. On many DVD players, you can override the default subtitles, in addition to turning them on for additional subtitles ("additional" here being the ones that appear for everything that is said, not just the stuff said in a foreign / alien language which appear by default).

 

Yeah, I've never seen a version of ANH on TV, VHS, or DVD without the subtitles for that scene. Probably just the youtube clip had them removed for some reason.

 

Subtitles exist as a separate file in the case of DVD rips. Most likely the YouTube clip was uploaded without its accompanying subtitle file, possibly by mistake, although I'm not sure if YouTube accepts separate subtitle files anyway.

 

In the theater Greedo's subtitles were/are played on the film image itself, at the bottom of the screen. On DVD the subtitles are present outside the film image, in the black portion of the viewing area on a 4x3 television viewing format.

This actually presents problems for people with widescreen TVs, because when we select the 16x9 widescreen format, the subtitles disappear outside the picture frame! I have to watch Greedo's and Jabba's scenes on a kind of artificially stretched format in order to see all of the picture and the subtitles. I'm hoping this will be changed for the upcoming Blu-rays.

My guess is that the youtuber who uploaded the video had the image in the 16x9 format and so lost the subtitles as I've described.

 

That is very likely the cause. Many DVDs do have a separate subtitle track. Star Wars is one of them, which means you have to specify a subtitle file or none of the subtitles will appear. Others have the subtitles for the small portions of foreign language as part of the original video file. For those DVDs you do not have to select a subtitle track to see the subtitles.

 

I don't really mind the missing subtitles when it comes to Jabba and, I suppose, Greedo; Huttese when Jabba speaks it is more or less like when Michael and Solozzo speak Sicilian in The Godfather; you don't need to know what exactly he's saying. Just the general pronunciation is very confrontative/domineering, IMO, and it fits Jabba's image well.

 

I like Huttese... it actually sounds like a real language.

 

Hold on - Star Wars was shot in something like 2.25:1. So shouldn't it still be letterboxed on a 16:9 screen? Or is the space below the frame on such a screen just too small for subtitles?

 

Yes... there is still some letterbox remaining on my widescreen TV, and the subtitles are all visible.

 

I think we're discussing slightly different scenarios regarding settings on TVs & DVD players. If you have a modern widescreen TV & a DVD player with the output set for a 16:9 TV, all the subtitles should be visible, partly in the black at the bottom, partly over the film. The picture should be letterboxed if set to a 4:3 output, with the subtitles set accordingly.

Older widescreen TVs, however, may require zooming or switching for letterboxed material, in which case some of the subtitles might not be visible, as the TV doesn't 'know' where they are. Also, some DVD players may not have an aspect ratio output setting, in which case the TV may have to be switched, again, possibly cutting out part of the subtitles.