Star Wars: The Original Trilogy

1. Empire Strikes Back
2. Star Wars
3. Return of The Jedi
4. Revenge of The Sith
5. Phantom Menace
6. Attack of The Clones

ESB and Star Wars are outstanding on every level.

The dialogue for the prequels especially AOTC is worse than pre-school and the "romance" between Portman and Christiansen is just nauseating. PM is awful but the lightsaber duel makes it bearable.

Phantom Menace at least reaches a high nostalgic level for me so I'd rank it above the other two prequels for that alone. As for the originals, I can't call it - they're all about as good as each other in my opinion.

1. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
2. A NEW HOPE
3. RETURN OF THE JEDI
4. THE PHANTOM MENACE
5. ATTACK OF THE CLONES
6. REVENGE OF THE SITH

The first two are basically tied. JEDI is a notch lower. MENACE at least feels like a movie, and looks more realistic than what came after. CLONES, I think, had a decent concept of trying to be a mystery and a thriller. But Lucas is not capable of pulling that off. SITH? That's where everything truly falls apart for me. It looks like a fecking cartoon to boot.

To be more accurate.

- A NEW HOPE / THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
- RETURN OF THE JEDI
- THE PHANTOM MENACE
- ATTACK OF THE CLONES / REVENGE OF THE SITH

So the series basically gets worse with each new film. To me.

The covers for the Blu-Ray sets are universally horrible. The Complete Saga is basically a picture of kid Anakin with a mostly transparent Luke (tells you which trilogy he gives a damn about), while the Prequel Trilogy box gets a massive pic of CGI Yoda and the OT gets a massive headshot of Vader (with smaller headshot of Obi-Wan and the Emperor, because Fuck any OT character who wasn't in the PT, right?).

Anyways, I'm happy enough with my DVD set, even if I am watching a LaserDisc port essentially.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

The Complete Saga is basically a picture of kid Anakin with a mostly transparent Luke (tells you which trilogy he gives a damn about)

That thought occurred to me as well. Not only transparent but with his back facing us. What the hell is that supposed to suggest other than that to Lucas the OT is merely a distant memory (and cash cow)?

I always figured the six film set would basically have one half of the cover made up of major characters of the PT (Obi-Wan, Anakin, Padme and the Palpatine) and the other with characters of the OT (Luke, Han, Leia and Vader). Maybe with R2 and 3PO fitting somewhere, no other side characters like Jabba. I mean come on, Jimmy Smits featured on the PT cover makes me laugh. Didn't that guy have like five minutes worth of screentime?

the cover looking like this perhaps in terms of prequel/original

Something like that, but obviously with less side characters.

I am a bit surprised Jar Jar wasn't included in real PT cover, Lucas always included him in anything as a "fuck you" to angry nerds.

The fact that Luke, Han and Leia aren't on the OT cover and that only Luke is vaguely featured on the Complete Saga cover is kinda a big fuck you.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

The fact that Luke, Han and Leia aren't on the OT cover and that only Luke is vaguely featured on the Complete Saga cover is kinda a big fuck you.

Well they are on the cover, they're just so small they don't pop out on the cover especially with Obi-Wan and the Emperor getting the most emphasis. Still, a "fuck you" to the OT nonetheless.

It's always amusing watching any LucasFilm approved doc that begins with his voice narration expressing how awful it was working on the OT accompanied by somber Williams music, "I had been so frustrated with the fact that I couldn't do a lot of the things I imagined. I was stuck with rubber puppets I was stuck with people wearing rubber masks. And it was very limited in how I could tell a story."

Thanks to the incredible tool known as CGI we could finally see George's vision truly realized with a CGI alien camel fart loudly causing Jar Jar to overtly express "PEEEEYEEEWSA!!" Incredible, how was the world able to stand those inferior works of his he made in the 70s? Only George Lucas at the time knew that audiences had no idea what they were missing.

I know! I'd buy the whole thing if it wasn't for the fact that when he got the CGI the stories didn't get any better. Yes, we could finally go to Coruscant, and maybe if we could've done that in Jedi as originally planned we wouldn't have to have the second Death Star battle (which while cool, was a little repetitive of the first movie) -- but wait! Ridley Scott did LA 2019 in Blade Runner and what Lucas finally did with Coruscant wasn't much different -- so I have a hard time believing that Lucasfilm couldn't've footed that bill anyway.

I'm always in favour of a creator's right to his own creation -- I fully support the Final Cut of Blade Runner over the theatrical -- but I'm more sympathetic when its clear the studio or someone else interfered with the vision. No one ever interfered with Lucas' vision for the original Star Wars movies. No studio head said that Han Solo had to be more of a badass and FORCED Lucas to make him shoot Greedo in cold blood -- that was Lucas' choice, at that time. That sort of change is revisionism. It'd be like John Milius saying "y'know, I was in a dark place when I wrote Dirty Harry, and I don't believe those things anymore, so for the new Blu-Ray release I've changed the ending with digitial technology so that he brings Scorpio in by the book and stays a cop." The only time a studio was ever involved with Star Wars was on the first one, and the only way Fox interfered was by not giving him more money for the effects, which does show in the first one, the effects aren't as good as Empire or Jedi. So beefing up the Battle of Yavin with CGI for the 97 Special Edition wasn't all that bad.

But what its come to now is deplorable. Even the ALIEN Blu-ray set had both editions of each movie.

That's why I love Scott, not as a filmmaker but more as a fellow fan who knows that without the original cut building fan support he'd never had the chance to do a Final Cut. His attitude is "I prefer the Final Cut and really dislike the narrated theatrical version, but the latter has its fans so I'll give them a state of the art transfer of that along with my definitive version."

Lucas'?

LucasFilm Exec: "Dude, we gotta counter the laserdisc transfer bootlegs, they're killing our sales."
Lucas: "No, the 2004 editions are the true versions, we can't taint them with the inferior theatricals."
LucasFilm Exec: "Sorry, we're releasing them. It's a necessity."
Lucas: "FINE, but don't spend money on them, use the laserdiscs as transfers for the DVD, and refer to them as "bonus material".

The boxes are crap, but from a design/layout perspective they're still better than the other releases.

Vesper wrote:

The boxes are crap, but from a design/layout perspective they're still better than the other releases.

At least they are, in form, semi-classy paintings instead of the super bad photoshops of the past DVDs, yes.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

while the Prequel Trilogy box gets a massive pic of CGI Yoda.

Speaking of which, I was just thinking that had Yoda appeared in only the PT, and not the OT, he would probably be considered as bad a character as Jar Jar. A little CGI frog that talks incessantly in jumbled up sentences and bounces around with a lightsaber like a toddler whose juice box was spiked with Red Bull? Lucas is bloody lucky we had memories of wise Puppet Yoda to fall back on.

Here's that fan spoof that was made right around when the teaser for SITH was released in late 2004.



While I think its a mixed bag and stupid it's quite amazing how accurate the spoof turned out to be. I wonder if these people got a leaked script or something because it's pretty spot on with the whole deal of Anakin not being seduced by the dark side but rather TRICKED INTO IT LIKE AN IDIOT.

It's really no different than this.

"Hi Anakin, I'm s a Sith Lord. The one you have been chasing for over three years risking your life throughout. The one you've been taught since a child that I and the Sith are devious and not to be trusted. Join me, I can save your wife from dying."
"Okay."

Clear as purple crayon.

Yeah, they're still better than previous covers.

Star Wars original trilogy deleted scenes released online



This small compendium of deleted scenes from the original Star Wars trilogy has been released online to promote the upcoming Blu Ray release of the trilogy:




The Blu-Ray set will contain over 40 hours of bonus material spread over three discs. Star Wars: The Complete Saga is released in the UK on September 12th.

If they're online then I don't have to get the Blu-rays! Excellent!

I'd just rent them anyway. Pretty cool, that Ackbar pilot looks awful.

They cleaned up those scenes quite well.

These films are dead to me.

Are people seriously going to buy a whole new box-set for a few seconds of crappy, never-before-seen footage?

It's pretty clear that Lucas has gone completely shameless in terms of milking this thing dry.

Salomé wrote:

Are people seriously going to buy a whole new box-set for a few seconds of crappy, never-before-seen footage?

It's pretty clear that Lucas has gone completely shameless in terms of milking this thing dry.

I think most buyers will be more interested in the visual and audio improvements than anything else. The deleted scenes are icing on the cake.

Not gonna argue about Lucas milking Star Wars dry, though. Chances are in 4 years he will "miraculously" find the original camera negatives and finally release the theatrical editions remastered. Except that the color timing will be all screwed up, no option for original stereo audio, and it's a DVD exclusive.

Tubes wrote:

Salomé wrote:

Are people seriously going to buy a whole new box-set for a few seconds of crappy, never-before-seen footage?

It's pretty clear that Lucas has gone completely shameless in terms of milking this thing dry.

I think most buyers will be more interested in the visual and audio improvements than anything else. The deleted scenes are icing on the cake.

Not gonna argue about Lucas milking Star Wars dry, though. Chances are in 4 years he will "miraculously" find the original camera negatives and finally release the theatrical editions remastered. Except that the color timing will be all screwed up, no option for original stereo audio, and it's a DVD exclusive.

And Region 3 only, with tie-in trailers for the latest LucasFarts games.

We're about five years away from Lucas literally putting his excrement in cans and selling them to the highest bidder à la Piero Manzoni.