The Obligatory Special Edition Hate Thread

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Hayden being a ghost isn't stupid. HAYDEN is stupid, but it's much stupider to think the Force can make you look like you would have looked if you hadn't had all your limbs cut off, your face scarred, and your hair burnt away. He DID look like Hayden before he sold his soul. He NEVER looked like a middle aged man with hair. So the young Anakin thing makes much more sense.

That is actually a good point, well done.

Dare I say that I been pissed ever since RotJ first came out with the idea of Anakin Skywalking being allowed to enter "Jedi Valhalla" with the others.

Throwing the Emperor over the side may have been selfless in order to save Luke.  On the other hand, it could have been selfish because there were so many other times that Vader could have saved lives - the destruction of Alderaan, for a big example, hunting down the Jedi - and he did nothing to stop any of it.  Only when it was HIS son getting fried did Vader finally do something.

Didn't need Vader to burn in Jedi Hell....but his getting to join Ben and Yoda....   

Is Lucas trying to tell us that you can be a miserable, nasty, murdering, serial killing son of a bitch your whole life and because you repent at the last minute, all of it doesn't matter?  Great message.

[Nunyerbiz]

Hayden being a ghost isn't stupid. HAYDEN is stupid, but it's much stupider to think the Force can make you look like you would have looked if you hadn't had all your limbs cut off, your face scarred, and your hair burnt away. He DID look like Hayden before he sold his soul. He NEVER looked like a middle aged man with hair. So the young Anakin thing makes much more sense.

That is actually a good point, well done.

Dare I say that I been pissed ever since RotJ first came out with the idea of Anakin Skywalking being allowed to enter "Jedi Valhalla" with the others.

Throwing the Emperor over the side may have been selfless in order to save Luke.  On the other hand, it could have been selfish because there were so many other times that Vader could have saved lives - the destruction of Alderaan, for a big example, hunting down the Jedi - and he did nothing to stop any of it.  Only when it was HIS son getting fried did Vader finally do something.

Didn't need Vader to burn in Jedi Hell....but his getting to join Ben and Yoda....   

Is Lucas trying to tell us that you can be a miserable, nasty, murdering, serial killing son of a bitch your whole life and because you repent at the last minute, all of it doesn't matter?  Great message.

Yea, you're right... he should have had Vader fuck Luke with his lightsaber while the Emperor watched... cuz ya know, Vader can't be redeemed either way. That would have been much more uplifting.

[Tripe]

Is Lucas trying to tell us that you can be a miserable, nasty, murdering, serial killing son of a bitch your whole life and because you repent at the last minute, all of it doesn't matter?  Great message.

Though, to be honest, that is sort of the message of one of Jesus' most famous stories:

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Hayden being a ghost isn't stupid. HAYDEN is stupid, but it's much stupider to think the Force can make you look like you would have looked if you hadn't had all your limbs cut off, your face scarred, and your hair burnt away. He DID look like Hayden before he sold his soul. He NEVER looked like a middle aged man with hair. So the young Anakin thing makes much more sense.

That is actually a good point, well done.

Dare I say that I been pissed ever since RotJ first came out with the idea of Anakin Skywalking being allowed to enter "Jedi Valhalla" with the others.

Throwing the Emperor over the side may have been selfless in order to save Luke.  On the other hand, it could have been selfish because there were so many other times that Vader could have saved lives - the destruction of Alderaan, for a big example, hunting down the Jedi - and he did nothing to stop any of it.  Only when it was HIS son getting fried did Vader finally do something.

Didn't need Vader to burn in Jedi Hell....but his getting to join Ben and Yoda....   

Is Lucas trying to tell us that you can be a miserable, nasty, murdering, serial killing son of a bitch your whole life and because you repent at the last minute, all of it doesn't matter?  Great message.

Yea, you're right... he should have had Vader fuck Luke with his lightsaber while the Emperor watched... cuz ya know, Vader can't be redeemed either way. That would have been much more uplifting.

Why do I fucking bother talking to you people?

[Nunyerbiz]

Does that mean you're going to stop?

But seriously... lay out a better redemption button-up for the end. Sure, what we got is a pretty transparent and convenient Christian allegory... But if your hanging your hat on the idea that Vader only did the right thing because it was his son... and for no other possible reason or personal epiphany or regret over years of past actions, than we just view the movie differently.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Does that mean you're going to stop?

But seriously... lay out a better redemption button-up for the end. Sure, what we got is a pretty transparent and convenient Christian allegory... But if your hanging your hat on the idea that Vader only did the right thing because it was his son... and for no other possible reason or personal epiphany or regret over years of past actions, than we just view the movie differently.

Well, you know, if you go by the prequels Anakin wasn't to bright about putting 2 and 2 together, and assuming he had some brain damage while he was mostly dead after being burned up then D Vader was even less bright, then maybe it just took him a few movies for his half dead brain to realise "hey, if my kids are alive that must mean my wife was still alive when I left her, and hey, the emperor lied to me about me killing her, oh look now he's killing my son, maybe I should do something about that, hey, maybe I should have done this a long time ago...". 

So it was a really, really slow path to redemption...

Later,
Marty

[dalem]

Like what? Direction? Direction is all they needed to "work with"? They had a rich fantasy universe and historical movies to draw from. It's not the director's job to motivate them. If they weren't motivated by the script and the characters, they're sucky actors. The director's job is to approve the shots and shoot the actors until he gets what he wants. And as far as anybody knows, Lucas got what he wanted. Now, if they signed up without reading any scripts from the guy who hadn't written a script in 17 years and then didn't find anything to "work with" in the scripts, they're the only ones to blame.

The actors in the original trilogy had even less to work with, and they did just fine.

Natalie Portman is cute and little else. End of story.

Well, from what I've read and seen in interviews, commentaries, outtakes, etc., George's direction commands consist of "more" and "faster".  Dunno if it's true, dunno squat about acting, but assuming it's hard I can believe you'd get some pretty flat performances out of some actors.  And others, not.  I think Ewen McGregor does a great young Obi-wan from start to finish and looks like he's having a blast the whole time.

-dale

[dalem]

Dare I say that I been pissed ever since RotJ first came out with the idea of Anakin Skywalking being allowed to enter "Jedi Valhalla" with the others.

Throwing the Emperor over the side may have been selfless in order to save Luke.  On the other hand, it could have been selfish because there were so many other times that Vader could have saved lives - the destruction of Alderaan, for a big example, hunting down the Jedi - and he did nothing to stop any of it.  Only when it was HIS son getting fried did Vader finally do something.

Didn't need Vader to burn in Jedi Hell....but his getting to join Ben and Yoda....   

Is Lucas trying to tell us that you can be a miserable, nasty, murdering, serial killing son of a bitch your whole life and because you repent at the last minute, all of it doesn't matter?  Great message.

In one of the many geeky, un-getting-laid pissed-off conversations me and a buddy used to have about ROTJ, he said to me "I could have even been okay with it if Vader had tossed the old fruit over the railing then turned to Luke and said 'Now, my son, we stretch our billowing sacks over the galaxy together!'"

-dale

[eegah]

Watching the trilogy on Spike TV today (unriffed, since I'm out-of-town and don't have access to my riffed versions) motivated me to find this thread. In between the flamewar posts, it seems that there is some, but not complete, agreement on the goodness/badness of most of the Special Edition changes (good: Death Star fight scenes, Cloud City; bad: added cgi-whimsy, Han-Greedo, song changes, Han on Jabba's tail; bad but possibly explainable: Hayden ghost). I liked the mustache on the Mona Lisa analogy, although a better one may be taking a classic album, say "Dark Side of the Moon", and inserting a few of Pink Floyd's worst songs ever in between the others. Sure, the good parts are there, and you can make an effort to ignore the bad parts, but you've messed with the thing as a whole. Or, maybe better, a classic song that has been redone by the original band recently (like some of the songs available on Rock Band). It's the same song, with the same lyrics, done by the same people, but the differences make it not as good, or at least not what you fell in love with.

[eegah]

Watching the trilogy on Spike TV today (unriffed, since I'm out-of-town and don't have access to my riffed versions) motivated me to find this thread. In between the flamewar posts, it seems that there is some, but not complete, agreement on the goodness/badness of most of the Special Edition changes (good: Death Star fight scenes, Cloud City; bad: added cgi-whimsy, Han-Greedo, song changes, Han on Jabba's tail; bad but possibly explainable: Hayden ghost). I liked the mustache on the Mona Lisa analogy, although a better one may be taking a classic album, say "Dark Side of the Moon", and inserting a few of Pink Floyd's worst songs ever in between the others. Sure, the good parts are there, and you can make an effort to ignore the bad parts, but you've messed with the thing as a whole. Or, maybe better, a classic song that has been redone by the original band recently (like some of the songs available on Rock Band). It's the same song, with the same lyrics, done by the same people, but the differences make it not as good, or at least not what you fell in love with.

Not quite; on that album you could just skip the bad songs.  It's more like inserting 20 seconds of Yanni into the middle of, say, "Wish You Were Here."

Perhaps. Although, Yanni is more subdued than Pink Floyd and since the Special Editions were the opposite, maybe a bit of Gwar in the middle would be better.

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Watching the trilogy on Spike TV today (unriffed, since I'm out-of-town and don't have access to my riffed versions) motivated me to find this thread. In between the flamewar posts, it seems that there is some, but not complete, agreement on the goodness/badness of most of the Special Edition changes (good: Death Star fight scenes, Cloud City; bad: added cgi-whimsy, Han-Greedo, song changes, Han on Jabba's tail; bad but possibly explainable: Hayden ghost). I liked the mustache on the Mona Lisa analogy, although a better one may be taking a classic album, say "Dark Side of the Moon", and inserting a few of Pink Floyd's worst songs ever in between the others. Sure, the good parts are there, and you can make an effort to ignore the bad parts, but you've messed with the thing as a whole. Or, maybe better, a classic song that has been redone by the original band recently (like some of the songs available on Rock Band). It's the same song, with the same lyrics, done by the same people, but the differences make it not as good, or at least not what you fell in love with.

Not quite; on that album you could just skip the bad songs.  It's more like inserting 20 seconds of Yanni into the middle of, say, "Wish You Were Here."

Perhaps. Although, Yanni is more subdued than Pink Floyd and since the Special Editions were the opposite, maybe a bit of Gwar in the middle would be better.

[SJP]

You know what I just realized: the whole stepping on the tail thing was because there was simply no way around Han circling Jabba would work without him doing that.

Except...all you need to do is put in an insert cut of something else for about 5 seconds, say, a newly created shot of Boba Fett or another bounty hunter standing off to one side.  Then cut back when Han is in front of Jabba again, like he just paced in front of him.
Either that, or go into Return of the Jedi and replace Jabba with a CGI version of the Irish guy that originally played him.  Either way works for me.   

[SJP]

You know what I just realized: the whole stepping on the tail thing was because there was simply no way around Han circling Jabba would work without him doing that.

They made a big point of that in the SE documentary that aired on Fox in '97.

Yes, I did see that too, though on an old CD-Rom disc that came with a Lucasarts game collection (still got it somewhere)...my realization is that they could have saved millions of dollars by cutting away from that moment instead of animating a whole Jabba reaction.

[Thrifty]

I've lost track.  Do Star Wars fans actually like Star Wars?  Or is it some kind of ironic turn of phrase?  Because I swear I hear more complaining about the series from its fans than from casual viewers of the general public.  I can't recall the last time a Star Wars fan said anything good about Star Wars.

[MrTorso]

I love this info graphic: