Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Bad news, Star Wars fans. Those of you who have been holding out hope that Disney may want to further capitalize on a galaxy far, far away by restoring the theatrical cuts of the original Star Wars trilogy are about to be sorely disappointed. Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy has officially confirmed that they have no plans on messing with the cuts and intend to leave the movies the way that George Lucas did when he revisited them in the 90s.
[...] While she revealed that there is no agreement in place to keep the Star Wars cuts as they are, she also made it clear that Lucasfilm isn't planning on messing with them.
Source: http://movieweb.com/star-wars-classic-trilogy-disney-wont-alter-restore/
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Disney Will Never Alter or Restore Original Star Wars Trilogy
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(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @09:24PM
In the I/O port.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday April 26 2017, @09:32PM (6 children)
So where is the digitization of the originals?
Oh yeah, pirates did the hard work yet again:
Original 1977 Star Wars 35mm Print Restored and Released Online [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday April 27 2017, @01:08AM
I really enjoyed that version. Greedo doesn't even get off a shot, hah!
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @02:41AM
Hash: SHA256
here's a good starting point:
https://thepiratebay.org/search/star%20wars%20despecialized/0/99/0
fuck you very much, george lucas, we'll just have to do it ourselves. i bet if he ever turns around, he will just squeeze out another turd, nowhere near the quality of the free release (arr!)
~ Anonymous 0x9932FE2729B1D963
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Thursday April 27 2017, @05:43AM (3 children)
Except that the originals aren't as high-quality as George's 90s versions. They did a lot of good work in cleaning up the deteriorated film, and also fixing some of the crappy effects (such as the scene in ESB in the Hoth battle where you can see through Luke's ship). The problem, of course, is that George couldn't leave well enough alone and just present nicely cleaned-up versions of the movies, he had to go add some extra crap that didn't belong (like the scene of Solo talking to a much smaller Jabba), and of course fuck up the Greedo scene.
I think it'd be better if someone just took the 90s redos and made fan edits of them, leaving the good fixes in and cutting out the unnecessary extra scenes and fixing the Greedo scene.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Taibhsear on Thursday April 27 2017, @03:19PM
There's a version online somewhere *cough* called "The Most Watchable Fan Edit" that does just that. Takes all the highest quality versions and spliced things together. I believe a bunch of the old scenes were ripped from laserdisc of all things. I think the only thing that was missed on it was the original voice of Boba Fett (which someone released an updated sound file to splice into it, which I unfortunately haven't been able to get my hands on.).
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday April 27 2017, @06:16PM
So, lots of movies are "pre screened" to test audiences, then major plot points (often the endings) are revised according to audience reactions.
Lucas just extended this practice to use everyone born before 1985 as the test audience for the re-releases.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday April 27 2017, @10:38PM
I don't give a crap about all that. Just process the original film into 8K, 16K or whatever and downsize as needed. I'd rather see the version that made history and cemented the word "blockbuster" than the one with the fancy exploding Death Star and the Jabba scene.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @09:37PM (6 children)
They're gonna remake Star Wars IV, V, and VI staring Caitlyn Jenner as princess Leia and Tom Cruise as Luke Skywalker.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @10:02PM (1 child)
Tom Cruise as Luke Skywalker
I think you meant to say Jaden Smith, the skirt wearing son of will smith. SJW's would rejoice. More bonus points if he were: LGBTQWERTY (what ever the fuck it is now), muslim, mexican or fat.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @10:06PM
I only threw TC in there because he's a shitty over rated actress.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @10:58PM (3 children)
They're gonna remake Star Wars IV, V, and VI staring Caitlyn Jenner as princess Leia and Tom Cruise as Luke Skywalker.
I hear Verne Troyer has a good shot at playing Chewbacca
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:09AM (2 children)
They're gonna remake Star Wars IV, V, and VI staring Caitlyn Jenner as princess Leia and Tom Cruise as Luke Skywalker.
I hear Verne Troyer has a good shot at playing Chewbacca
They should use Ron Jeremy, he's a natural for a wookie.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @02:43AM
Make him a chick (or chick with a dick!) and have a romantic triangle between Luke, Han, and Leia, perhaps with a threesome, before finally identifying as a lesbian and hooking up with Leia before having Leia force conceive lesbian love children as they slowly remove bad prequel references and homologize with the Expanded Universe content.
Hahaha, won't happen because disney needs to ensure all licensable creative IP is in-house, same reason George ignored the expanded universe/shat all over it with the prequels and including characters who had no reason to be in the prequels.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Kromagv0 on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:58PM
No as a hedgehog he would be better cast as an ewok.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday April 26 2017, @09:38PM (12 children)
There is this enormous gap between "will never" and "isn't planning on".
Just remember that the gap between "isn't planning on" and "is working on" is often filled by answering the question: "how much?"
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Wednesday April 26 2017, @09:49PM (2 children)
While I agree it's not equivalent, I also think it's silly for the fans to hold out hopes for this.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday April 26 2017, @10:29PM (1 child)
I a way I'm kinda glad because if they put out a box set of the original trilogy I'd feel obligated to buy it to replace the bootleg DVDs ripped from Laserdisc I have been using for years. And I really do not want to give the Evil Mouse any money I don't really have to.
(Score: 2) by mechanicjay on Wednesday April 26 2017, @11:07PM
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 26 2017, @11:02PM (8 children)
Keep in mind most people who want to buy star wars have it at this point. These 'original editions' would sell 'ok' but may not be worth their time messing with when they can crank out another star wars and rake in 2 billion...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:08AM (7 children)
I bought the VHS set of the original trilogy when it came out, then I bought the enhanced (or whatever it was) VHS set, then the DVD set. Enough is enough. Parts IV, V, and VI were great. Part I was pretty good. Parts II, and III were shitty. I kept fell asleep on part VII. I have no desire to see any more as they ruined the franchise for a money grab.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday April 27 2017, @05:49AM (6 children)
WTF? You must be the only person I've ever seen to say that I was "pretty good" while III was "shitty". Everyone else switches those around. I hated I and II; they were both shitty. I never saw III because of that, and literally everyone I talk to about this tells me that I missed the best of the 3 prequels. I was not "pretty good"; it was a terrible movie with horrible acting and dialog (but not quite as bad there as II), and horribly blatant racist stereotypes to boot. Fantastic visual effects were simply not enough to make up for that (plus it didn't help that it all looked computer-generated, and much too "clean"; one nice thing about the original SW movies is that so much stuff looked used and dirty, like in real life, especially considering it was about a bunch of rebels fighting a war).
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Thursday April 27 2017, @01:13PM (5 children)
I wouldn't say that III was pretty good, but instead was the least shitty. What became clear was that Lucas had forgot completely that Anakin needed to make the transition to Vader so it was just awkward when it did happen. In the prequel trilogy Lucas decided that you could solve everything in post filming even bad dialogue ("From my point of view the Jedi are evil."). So instead of what people were hoping for we got more Howard the Duck [wikipedia.org]
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday April 27 2017, @03:29PM (4 children)
I wouldn't say that III was pretty good, but instead was the least shitty.
Sorry if I wasn't clear, but this is what most other people have told me too, not that it was a fantastic movie by any means.
I did meet one person, however, who absolutely loved the Prequels. She was young when those movies came out though, so maybe that had something to do with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @03:41PM (1 child)
I was a fairly original script which tied in well with the franchise which is why I liked it. II and III just seemed too money graberish and didn't feel like Star Wars any more.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday April 27 2017, @04:20PM
> fairly original script
As Lucas pointed out when VII came out (and could have again for Rogue One), you may hate the prequels, but at least he was striving to imagine different stories on varied planets ...
(Score: 1) by termigator on Thursday April 27 2017, @06:24PM (1 child)
Sounds similar to those that love the first trilogy. I think it hard for folks to separate nostalgia from quality.
IMO, Star Wars is a mediocre movie. The acting is not good, and the story is very simplistic, at the level of a children's book. For its time, it was a visual spectacle, and I think that caused many movie goers to overlook the flaws of the film. As I got older, it was harder to overlook the many deficiencies of the film, and its sequels (but I do agree with others in stating Empire Strikes Back is the best of the bunch, but it is still not a great movie). Stars Wars has not aged well.
With today's audience being more sophisticated wrt special effects, if Stars Wars came out today, it would do poorly. The quality of acting and story of the prequels is on par with the original trilogy, but audiences are less wowed by special effects, so were able to focus more on the acting and story deficiencies of the newer prequels.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday April 27 2017, @06:45PM
I think you're a little harsh.
Star Wars (ep. 4) was a fun movie. It was campy though, which wasn't abnormal in the 70s, and in today's "dark and gritty" environment that doesn't work that well, but it's fun to watch SW even now because it isn't like today's brutal movies. The acting wasn't Oscar-level, but it wasn't horrible. The dialog made sense, it was still believable. It was never meant to be a movie with Brando-level acting and drama, it was meant to be a fun, slightly campy, space opera movie with fantastic (for the day) FX. It succeeded well there. It did help that Lucas's (now ex-)wife and other helpers edited the script and helped keep the story and acting from being too crappy, which didn't happen in the Prequels. I think I even heard that Harrison Ford got into a fight with Lucas over the quality and smashed part of a set because he didn't want his acting career marred by a poor performance because Lucas was too lazy to do proper retakes.
So no, you're not going to get Oscal-level performances out of SW, but the performances and script were still a lot better than the Prequels. And what are you comparing to anyway? Let's compare to some modern FX-laden movies: the Transformers franchise. Is SW really that much worse in terms of story and acting than the Transformers films?
What about the various Marvell superhero movies? I don't think so. (Of course, the Marvell movies are a little hit-and-miss: the first Iron Man, for instance, I thought was fantastic, but it went downhill from there, and the Avengers movies really were paper-thin on plot and acting.) If you're comparing SW to some kind of serious drama with top-rated actors, you're doing it wrong.
The quality of acting and story of the prequels is on par with the original trilogy
This is just blatantly wrong, at least for the acting and dialog. Lucas famously did only single takes in the prequels because he didn't care about acting at all. This didn't happen in the earlier movies because he wasn't surrounded by yes-men then, and he didn't even direct V or VI. The prequels had people convinced that Natalie Portman, of all actors, and Haydn Christensen, were terrible, lousy actors. It takes a really bad director to pull that off. Portman in particular is generally considered an extremely talented actor. This just didn't happen with the original SW movies: Ford went on to have a fantastic acting career, and while Hamill and Fisher had less fantastic careers, they weren't considered to be absolutely horrible actors either.
(Score: 1) by J_Darnley on Wednesday April 26 2017, @11:27PM (3 children)
> leave the movies the way that George Lucas did when he revisited them in the 90s
Don't you mean the '00s? The fucker shopped Hayden Christiansen into the ending of Jedi.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday April 27 2017, @03:28AM (2 children)
Have avoided the recut versions but ok, that is actually a change I can support making. When they originally made Episode VI they had no clue what Anakin would eventually look like so replacing him is basically just a fairly small continuity fix. It doesn't rewrite a major character or anything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:48PM (1 child)
Have avoided the recut versions but ok, that is actually a change I can support making. When they originally made Episode VI they had no clue what Anakin would eventually look like so replacing him is basically just a fairly small continuity fix. It doesn't rewrite a major character or anything.
It still makes no sense as why would his ghost suddenly look like he did 20 years previously rather than how he looked under the mask but without the burn scars?
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday April 27 2017, @09:16PM
I think the idea was to drive home the point that while Obi Wan was omitting very some important details, he wasn't exactly lying when he said Anakin Skywalker died. Anakin died and Darth Vader was born out on that lava flow. In death Anakin/Vader's spirit resumed Anakin's appearance, not Vader's. Assuming you can buy the Force and the other metaphysics of Star Wars it is a defensible position. For example we can assume that when Luke crosses over his ghost will manifest with a whole hand even though it has been a mechanical device for most of his life and the force doesn't manifest through hardware.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by chewbacon on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:37AM (2 children)
HAN SHOT FIRST!
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday April 27 2017, @04:10AM (1 child)
HAN SHOT FIRST - TAKING OUR STAR WARS BACK
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by chewbacon on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:11PM
They changed it because people were too stupid to read between the lines and into the situation. Han knew where that situation was doing: Greedo was going to shoot his ass!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mendax on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:38AM (7 children)
... I know for a fact that Han fired first! I saw the first film in the theater.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Thursday April 27 2017, @12:11PM (5 children)
Disney is like Wizards of the Coast. Showing gray-area ethics positively is not part of the business plan.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Thursday April 27 2017, @01:21PM (3 children)
It seems that Disney is willing to show gray-area ethics [google.com] and I thought Rogue One was better than Force Awakens given the complexity of the characters. Also everyone who needed to die did die.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday April 27 2017, @04:23PM
Followed the Standard Hollywood Code: Good guy who does something evil has to die by the end of the movie (usually after redeeming himself somewhat).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 27 2017, @06:45PM
if force awakens was the one before it, it was the shittiest star wars that i can remember. blatent PC and shit acting and writing. rogue one was back to how star wars was supposed to be as far as i was concerned, although i'm getting so old i have trouble getting into it like i did when i was a kid. to busy being cynical, etc.
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday April 27 2017, @08:48PM
Also everyone who needed to die did die.
Yeah but...
(Score: 1, Troll) by DannyB on Thursday April 27 2017, @01:46PM
What? Are you suggesting that Disney, illusionist of all things pure and whitewashed, would try to make it's racist film Song of the South [wikipedia.org] disappear? Bu, bu, but . . . that movie contains one of Disney's all time biggest hit songs Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah [wikipedia.org] that they have re made and re released through other means to not associate it with the film.
When you visit Disney theme parks, use of technology is visible throughout. But less visible is Disney's horrible treatment of IT workers.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday April 27 2017, @04:38PM
Your memory is playing tricks on you, old man.