I am fan-boy, hear me rant!
9-24-4
OK, it only took a few days, I give up, I give in, the new movies are actually pretty good.
I only made it through Ep.4 and 5 last night (I'm exhausted!) but I have to admit, the changes are minor and only help to enhance the visual experience. No plot changes, a few clarifications, nothing major.
You all knew it would happen as I am very predictable, but I have already come around to the new movies. Although I still don't see the NEED to swap Anakins, I can see why it was done.
Isn't that just my way of doing things? Any changes to the 'norm' and I run around like the world is coming to an end squawking like a seagull. Then, after ACTUALLY looking at whatever it was that changed, realizing that it really wasn't so bad.....
OK, the rant is over, I have seen past my purist emotions and can now enjoy the movies. Sorry for the interruption, we now return you to the regularly scheduled crap.
"But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother"
9-23-4
I watched them all again last night with the VHS running in the background to compare. (Teresa says I'm a lunatic, I say I'm just devoted)
There are a lot more enhancements than I noticed the first time.
Simple things like closed hallways becoming glass hallways with LOTS of activity going on in the background. Barely noticible because we focus on the fighting going on in the foreground. Subway/train cars passing by, again in the background, on Bespin. Etc, etc, etc.
Very striking visual effects. But I still don't care for the Anakin swap...
9-22-4
Tired this morning. I stayed up all night watching all 3 of the new Star Wars DVDs.
I have been counting down the days/hours since the release date was announced. I am such a fan-boy when it comes to Star Wars. Unfortunately, there has been a problem.
Star Wars has succumbed to the 'Highlander Syndrome'. Highlander was one of my favorite movies and had a large cult following. Sure there were some plot holes and questions; but all movies have them. Then they made Highlander 2 to explain some of these questions and it was so bad it ruined H1 for me. They've since gone on to make H3, H4 and a TV series. In the end, "there should be only one".
I am such a devout fan of Ep.4 and 5 that Ep.1 and 2 can be forgiven.
Ep.6(Jedi) has always been tepid, if I can ignore the fact that it's a freakin Muppet movie and only focus on the 'Star Wars' aspects, it's still a good movie.
All the new scenes are there. All the new enhancements are there. It really is very stunning. Dangerous for the purist, but for the most part it worked out alright. Greedo still shoots first but now Han shoots back at almost the same time. They smoothed out Han Solo "staggering" over Jabba's tail at docking bay 94. They changed Boba Fett's voice. They fixed the 'vest' problem before Han gets frozen. On a good note, they left the stormtrooper hitting his head when he enters the Death Star control room.
I understand how lines like "Bring my shuttle" become "Alert my star destroyer to prepare for my arrival".
I don't understand why, when R2D2 was spit out by the swamp monster, the line "You're lucky you don't taste very good" was changed to "You were lucky to get out of there".
Little lines like that were changed throughout the films. There are a handfull of movies that I can quote all the way through without the movie running. Now that all the lines are changing, I can't do that to SW anymore. I guess that makes me a little LESS annoying??? For me, this is almost like going back and re-writing the dialog for the first hour of Full Metal Jacket!
They change the whole meaning of some parts like when the emperor tells Vader about Luke. We now see that this is when Vader/Anakin himself learns he has a son?
Most of it is acceptable throughout 4, 5 and most of 6. The problem is when we get to the end of 6.
End of the film, fireworks in the Ewok village have been augmented to include fireworks on other planets (Naboo and Coruscant) OK. We get to the final scene where Luke looks over and sees the spirits of Ben, Yoda and Anakin.
THEY TOOK OUT SEBASTIAN SHAW AND INSERTED HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN!!!!!
I had to re-wind it since it was 3:30am, but sure enough, they took out the original actor that probably had 2 minutes of total screen time and put in the actor from Ep.2 and 3.
I didn't have much of a problem when they replaced the actor who played the Emperor with Ian McDiarmid since it wasn't very noticeable. The Anakin change-out rubbed me the wrong way because it was a VERY noticeable change of a major frame of the series. It's the goodbye scene where the whole series ties together and we fade to the credits.
Why did they change it? Well, I just don't know. I can only come up with a couple of reasons.
1, He wanted to tie all 6 movies together.
If that's the case, why leave Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan? Why not replace him with Ewan McGregor? The spirit image of Yoda was also the 'older' Yoda. Why not use the 'younger' Yoda puppet from Ep1, and 2? No, that excuse won't work
2, He wanted to show the 'good' side of Anakin in his spirit form. If so, what was wrong with the original guy? Vader's final scene was his redemption. Luke says something like, "I have to save you father" and the unmasked Vader/Anakin responds, "You already have, You were right about me, tell your sister you were right". He smiles and we understand that he has returned from the 'Dark Side' and all is well. When we see his spirit form, he is not the crusty, white, circus freak but a smiling, normal, middle-aged guy in Jedi robes, further showing a 'good' Anakin, aged at the same rate Ben and Yoda had aged.
The younger Anakin next to the older Yoda and Ben only causes more questions rather than answering any. So no, that excuse won't fly either.
I'm out of ideas. He wants to make more $$$ by issuing the originals un-altered in a few years? I don't know.
The only answer that fits is that in Ep.3, Anakin becomes Vader while still young enough that the picture of the middle-aged 'spirit man' was causing George to lose sleep over it. He though we were too stupid to accept the aging process. Maybe Anakin's spirit growth was stunted when he crossed over to the 'Dark Side'?
There were SO many other plot concerns that should have been addressed before this one.
One example; why is it that C3PO doesn't remember Princess Leia? During the opening battle one of the first lines he says is, "There'll be no escape for the Princess this time". He knows who she is and knows that she has had run-ins in the past that she has escaped from. He has a history with her. He makes it to Luke without a memory wipe (or he wouldn't remember his last master was Captain Antilles) and when the "help me Obi-Wan Kenobi" message is displayed, he says he doesn't know her, that she 'may have been a passenger on their last voyage, someone of some importance'. If he were simply hiding his knowledge of her from a new master that might betray her to the Empire, then he shouldn't have said she was someone of some importance.
Just one example of which there are so many throughout the movies. I've got many, many more. There is no way Lucas can tidy them all up in Ep.3 and I wasn't expecting him to. If he was making changes to clean them up, he should have gotten more of them. He made us wait long enough...
Doesn't he understand that these are no longer his movies? They are mine! MINE, MINE, MINE!!! I was such a Star Wars nerd, I still am. My childhood was completely intertwined with Star Wars, and now he's gone back and re-written some of it. I feel like he's working for the Ministry Of Truth in 1984, re-writing the past to sync-up with Big Brother's predictions. I used to know everything about each of these movies. I was king of all things Star Wars. Now I feel like I no longer know these movies.
STOP MONKEYING WITH MY MEMORIES GEORGE!!!
Re-makes of old, good movies are one of my pet-peeves and that is what has happened here. There are enough changes to almost classify them as remakes.
Oh well, it really is a shame that I've waited so long (since I first heard of DVDs) to get these movies and now that I have them, I'll probably shelf them and turn back to my old pre-enhancement VHS versions. I'm sure there are others like me out there and others that love the changes. I haven't read any of them yet. I'm also sure I'll calm down and give in to Lucas' vision but I'll tell you one thing;
Episode III had better be [expletive deleted] OUTSTANDING to save this series or I'll just have to give up and admit that I WAS a fan a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
OK, the rant is over, back to page 1