This topic is just wonderful if you read all of the messages in the Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy voice.
Worst.post.ever.
As far as I’m concerned, this isn’t even a Lucas question. I want to know who did that. Lucas is not the one color-correcting and cleaning up the DVD versions, so who was it over at ILM that decided to color that saber green in that scene? Had they never seen the movie before? Did they do it as a joke and nobody caught it? Were they testing to see if anyone was paying attention? Did they just like green? Did they hit the wrong button for days and days?
It’s consistently green throughout the scene. It’s not a one-time “oops!” error, that’s something that multiple people must have seen multiple times, and for some reason nobody caught it. The DVDs are actually pretty great cleanup jobs as far as picture quality goes, but I am absolutely mystified as to how things like those sabers managed to get through the base level workforce, never mind Lucas. With the attention to detail required to get some of the stunning results in that 2004 version, how did someone not notice they’d totally borked up the lightsaber effects?
I’m going with the laziness theory. As in “Oh, did we make a mistake with Luke’s saber color? Who cares, there is no time to fix it and the nerds will buy it anyway”
Also, IIRC the image cleaning and color correction in the DVDs was done with a new automatic software ILM was trying to sell at the time or something like that. For some reason, it had the secondary effect of oversaturating the image palette of the movies, burning primary colors all over the place. There are fan edits that try to fix it with manual color correction, but it’s a very labor intensive process.
Bonus link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWRs0ZD8ay4
That’s why I specified the 1997 SE, in which no such heresy had yet occurred.
That’s why I specified the 1997 SE, in which no such heresy had yet occurred.
There is Jedi Rocks to complain about, yes, but we all skip that scene anyway, which partly existed in the original anyway. The net effect is far outweighed by the improvements needed for the many unfinished special effects on Tatooine.
Apart from the green lightsaber in the 2004 SEs & the morally reprehensible replacement of Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christiansen, there are also a number of awful audio replacements. It is here that Empire has suffered more than any of the films. The 1997 SE already saw the replacement of ‘You’re lucky you don’t taste very good’ by ‘You were lucky to get out of there’ & ‘Bring my shuttle’ by ‘Alert my Star Destroyer to prepare for my arrival’. The 2004 SE additionally rewrote the Vader/Palpatine dialogue on the SSD, and worst of all, it replaced the excellent original voice of Boba Fett with a phoned in performance by the awful voice of Jango Fett. ‘Distasteful’ is not a strong enough word. As ‘Jedi’ is a recognized religion, we may truly use the word ‘blasphemy’ here to express our disgust.
Morally reprehensible? Seriously?
You, you must be almost 30… have you ever kissed a girl?
People get really weird about changes to these movies. And this is me talking.
Hyperbolic nerds are hyperbolic.
I think it’s because it messes with our cherished childhood of these movies, and the fact that we never thought they were broken and in need of fixing.
My childhood is in the past. Whatever is done to the movies changes nothing about that. Certainly many of the effects were broken and could be improved. I for one wish they’d replaced the tauntauns, which I thought looked awful even in 1980.
The SEs fixed tons of effects problems, many of which nobody even notices because they’re so well done they’re seamless. The final battle in the original film is much better, the perspective down the detention block hallway is fixed, the arrival of the Falcon and departure of the strike force from Yavin IV is vastly improved, cardboard cutouts in the award ceremony were replaced by real actors, the dianoga blinks and looks less like a puppet for doing so, the snowspeeder cockpits are fully opaque, the Falcon and Slave 1 leaving the garbage trail is a much clearer shot, Cloud City looks better inside and out, the lighting on the Falcon’s top hatch is fixed (or at least explained), the rancor scene is cleaned up to an incredible degree, the disappearing TIE fighters in Jedi no longer disappear, the color-matching on the speeder bikes is improved greatly, CGI rope now holds Han to the skiff rather than what previously appeared to be either telekinetic powers or very strong toes, Ian McDiarmid now plays the Emperor in all his appearances…the list goes on and on.
The problem is when Lucas messes with the story or content, as is the case with Han/Greedo or Han/Jabba, or when he screws with the pacing of the films, like the Star Destroyer arrival in Empire and the needless music video in Jedi. If the SEs had truly just been about updating the visuals and fixing minor mistakes with modern tech, they’d be hailed as a great decision. But he had to go and mess with the story. I don’t like it, but at the same time, despite my great love for and attachment to Star Wars, they certainly don’t damage my memories of the films or my enjoyment of Star Wars as a whole. My complaints mainly stem from confusion over why a creative person would so haphazardly tinker with scenes that don’t need help.
I’m mostly with Matt on this one. I love the new stuff at the end of Star Wars, I even liked the “Han runs into a trooper garrison” on the Death Star part, since only with repeated viewings was it clear that Han chased them to a dead-end and the troopers now had no choice but to turn and shoot at him. This made it an easy gag to follow on the first viewing, and was still perfect with Harrison Ford’s reaction.
However, all the additions and superfluous changes leave me cold. Hell, I even go so far as to hate the cantina scene, since I think even 70’s masks look better than the shitty CGI they replaced stuff with. Just compare Greedo to Jar Jar and you’ll see what I mean.
Part of the problem is that many of the major additions to the SE simply didn’t age well. The CG cantina patrons, Jabba, and the Mos Eisley exterior scenes in particular look substantially worse than the 1977 in-camera effects, because 1997 CG wasn’t all that great at simulating organic elements. The unmoving dewbacks in the original were kind of obviously a failed effect, but the awful CG stormtrooper riding the less-than-convincing CG dewback doesn’t improve that scene one bit. Didn’t even look good in 1997 let alone in 2011.
Edit: Typing out those dates reminds me…the Special Edition of ANH was sort of the 20th anniversary celebration for the original film. We’re getting awfully close to the 20th anniversary of the Special Edition. Yeesh.
I wholeheartedly agree with Matt’s post.
There was no need in Empire to show Vader flying from Cloud City to his Super Star Destroyer. The line: “Bring me my shuttle” was more than enough exposition for the audience that Vader wants to leave and explains how he magically appears on the bridges of his ship a few minutes later.
Looking over that video, I feel like part of what they did more highlights the differences in modern day color correcting than a total crap on the original films. The original film look had more detail but was much flatter. Color correct trends now tend to favor more contrast and using color to accentuate the mood (at least the sessions I’ve been in).
So the fact that they crushed the blacks didn’t surprise me. In the sessions I’ve been in, the colorist starts by doing that, often without being asked. It’s just assumed. Going with the “blue snow” didn’t really strike me as making the snow blue, just trying to get a colder vibe with the color instead of just being so literal and flat. Again, not saying I thought it was better or worse, but I wasn’t surprised by the changes (except for making the light saber green).
Couldn’t he have just used the Force, anyway?
I checked my ESB dvd, and somehow, in modern players and flat screens doesn’t look as bad as I remember, but the actors still look sometimes like overtanned lobsters.
I don’t know if the color oversaturation was done on purpose or just collateral damage of the image processing they did for the DVD release. In any case it looks bad.
Instead of the wide range of tones of the same color one would expect, there are blobs of basic colors all over the place. It doesn’t look like color is used to set the mood of the scenes, it’s simply saturated.
I don’t know if “crushing blacks” in color editing is typical today. Pure black is actually rare in nature, and “black” surfaces are actually many variations of grey. I guess it’s done to set a point of reference for the colorist.
So to George, Star Wars fans were the rebound girl who he hate fucked instead of going to therapy.
The seamlessly fixed effects are entirely outweighed for me by the jarring CG additions.
Leave aside the changes to content (Han/Greedo, etc.) entirely, and I’ll still take the original versions over the updated ones. The originals may suffer from the limitations of the effects technology of the day, but they suffer consistently. The aliens may obviously be people in rubber suits, but I neither notice nor care while I’m watching. Add in a new CG alien, however, and suddenly everything is off–the two different types of effects technology don’t match each other, and they both look worse for it.
Only because you remember the old version. They don’t mesh because you know it’s different. A crappy looking rubber alien is no better or worse than a crappy looking CG alien. CG bitching is just hatred of the new. Effects have always been obviously effects even at the best of times. Greedo doesn’t look at all like a convincing creature anymore than the CG elephant thing does. CG sarlaac doesn’t look any less real than the obvious rancor puppet. CG Jar Jar is no less distracting than the stiff men-in-suits Gammorrean guards who clearly can’t see where the hell they’re going. I don’t see how the practical effects are somehow more consistently unconvincing when they’re all using completely different techniques. Stop-motion, men-in-suits, puppets, miniatures, motion-control models, CG…all different tools. You can easily tell which one is being used at any time, and there’s nothing unique about CG in that regard.
The unnecessary changes are the issue, not the CG. If all the alterations had been done with practical effects, they’d be just as bad.