who is buying star wars dvds?

[DARTHMADLER]

VADER: Yes Palpatine, I knew he was my son all along.
PALPATINE: ......what!?!

[PoolMan]

Better yet:

PALPATINE: Dude, SERIOUSLY?!?

[Head Mutant]

Dude, where's my Star Destroyer?

[pfrsue]

Man, someone was totally trippin' on their midichlorians.

[DARTHMADLER]

Or even better still:

PALPATINE: REALLY?
VADER: No, not really.

[PoolMan]

Palpatine: DOYOOOOOOOO!
Vader: WAAAAAAH!

This episode of Madler and PoolMan's Inside Jokes brought to you by 7-Up: Now with no Orlando Jones whatsoever!

[Rocksteady]

Are they realesing the Star wars films sepratley on DVD.

[Al]

Nope. Like the Indy movies, they're only available together.

I finally finished watching my trilogy on Sunday and have only one complaint about his further tinkerings.

SLIGHT SPOILER

Replacing Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christianson as the ghostly Anakin Skywalker in ROtJ just leaves me feeling empty inside (there's a still in the IGN review for those interested). Not that I have any particular attachment to Shaw, but it's just a little jarring and leaves a funny taste in my mouth. It just doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to me, unless he was to replace Alec Guiness with Ewan McGregor. I dunno, maybe he has a brilliant explanation on the commentary track.

END SPOILER

Overall, I'm pretty okay with his changes. The Greedo firing first thing doesn't bug me as much as it does some people, and Lucas actually offers a pretty satisfying explanation in this week's Entertainment Weekly. I, too, like the new Emperor/Vader dialogue in ESB, and in general am pretty conciliatory about the new stuff. Except the music video in Jabba's Palace. Making the characters more mobile is one thing, but the original song is way more fun. And the Ewok song. Gotta have the Ewok song.

Al

[PoolMan]

<harsh dork-out>

So Madler and I finally got around to watching A New Hope from the new DVD set (we've already watched ESB and RotJ). We noticed something really, really interesting.

GEORGE LUCAS LOVES HIS COLOURS BRIGHT.

I don't know why on earth they did this, but the most notable change we could find in the new release of Ep 4 is the fact that EVERY single object with a coloured light on it is suddenly 18 times more vibrant. Distractingly so. The hatch from the escape pod the droids ride? Bright blue. The interior lighting on the Millenium Falcon? Green, for some reason. Every blaster shot washes the screen in pink (not red, pink). The Death Star control room is absolutely COVERED in all these bright lamps that are just way overcoloured. The only thing that wasn't consistently coloured was Luke's lightsaber... it goes from green to white to blue over the course of the movie, which confused the heck out of me. And almost every tactical/technical display that used to be in white is now in bright colours... EXCEPT the Death Star plans in the Rebel meeting... it's still Atari-grade white graphics. Baffling.

And for whatever reason, the effects they used in the escape from the Death Star where all the TIE fighters are attacking, and Han and Luke are in the gun turrets, were terrible. If you've been watching the space battles closely, you might remember oddly coloured rectangles surrounding the fighters where they were edited into the scene. They were mostly gone in the 1999 release of the Special Editions. Well, for whatever reason, they're back. As the TIEs fly around, there's these awful discoloured rectangles of space surrounding them, enough to get a "what the hell?" out of both of us at the same time. So very strange. Must be George's much-vaunted "original vision".

The scene with Jabba is MUCH better. Jabba looks a fair bit more like his RotJ counterpart, and Solo walking over his tail looks more realistic. They even toned down Jabba's cartoony response. Fett still mugs for the camera, though.

Oh. And the Greedo scene is still awful. Improved over the SE, but still awful. Should have been left as it originally was.

</harsh dork-out>

[DARTHMADLER]

Just because the technology is there, doesn't mean you have to use it.

Although it's funny that he applied it where it wasn't really necessary and left it where it could have been improved.

In order of improvement:
ESB - minimal but effective
RotJ - Moderate and mostly annoying
ANH - Excessive and mostly useless

I love the fact that my favourite was the least tinkere with. Anyone elses thoughts?

[MrHat]

I bought them hoping that you got a sneak peak at Jarjar being boiled in oil or roasted alive.