neveronfriday Posted January 9, 2005 Report Posted January 9, 2005 Sign up, if you like. Original Star Wars Trilogy You never know if it'll lead to something one day. Cheers! Quote
.:.impossible Posted January 9, 2005 Report Posted January 9, 2005 I haven't watched it yet, but my brother in law gave me Return of the Jedi on DVD this Christmas. What's different on this version than the original? Quote
neveronfriday Posted January 10, 2005 Author Report Posted January 10, 2005 Quick one (too much work right now) ... The channges are really not that drastic and have built up through the various versions of the films, but some are quite noticeable and, IMHO, get in the way of "suspension of disbelief". Old effects next to CGI, changed voive-overs or dubbing, new scenes altogether, etc. The most hotly-debated one is this one: In "Empire Strikes Back" Anakin's Force ghost is now played by Hayden Christensen instead of Sebastian Shaw. Lucas is apparently trying to bring the old parts into line with the new ones (also by adding to the celebration scenes, etc). Another hotly debated one. The Ewok song has been changed. And, and, and. Like I said: the changes aren't all that major, but my problem is with Lucas constantly tinkering with the films. It's his epic, so he can do with it whatever he likes, but I'm not buying it. It basically comes down to the question of how much the originating artist is allowed to change his original piece of work even after it has become a classic. And we're not talking technical improvements only! Just imagine "Rosebud" would be changed to "Budrose", just because Orson didn't like the word anymore. Brendan Fraser edited in next to Boris Karloff, just to bring it into line with the newer Mummy films, etc. (yeah, I know, different directors). Call it whining and exaggerating if you like, but I don't like this box set and will wait patiently for a newer one which allows me to (largely, since a complete reversal would probably be impossible now ... especially since Lucas absolutely doesn't want to) to watch the original version (if I want to) or the newer one. This is technically possible and has been done countless times (Spielberg's "Close Encounters", for example), so why not here? Cheers! Quote
Alexander Posted January 10, 2005 Report Posted January 10, 2005 I guess I have no problem with an artist reserving the right to return to his earlier work. W.B. Yates and Samuel Coleridge both revisited and "tweaked" some of their most famous poems in later life (Coleridge altered "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" more than 20 years after its original publication). William Faulkner often revised pieces of short fiction when he incorperated them in to novels (one of the most famous examples, "The Bear," is also part of "Go Down Moses" and contains an extra section designed to integrate its action in to the larger piece. Too often this is the version high school students end up reading, and many of them wind up puzzled by the fourth chapter). But in all of these cases, the original work remains for comparisons sake (even if we've accepted that, in the case of Coleridge, the final version remains canonical). Unless some enterprising film scholar goes out of his or her way to preserve the original theatrical cuts of the "Star Wars" films, they will be lost or forgotten. I also have no problem with Lucas's "new" versions of these films on DVD, but I do wish he would ALSO release the theatrical cuts (as Spielberg did with his new version of "E.T."). Quote
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