Chefelf.com Night Life: darthwader - Viewing Profile

As far as the new Indiana Jones movie, I think this is much more an attempt to woo the fans of the earlier ones, rather than looking toward captivating 10-year-olds. In everything I've come across, there's a strong thread of capturing/mimicking the look of the older movies. George is probably just happy to be able revisit some familiar ground era-wise (a la "American Grafitti"), and let Spielberg hold the reins.

Thanks, sorry about the delay in replying. Well, this is how much of a rock I've been living under; I didn't even realize that Lucas actually DID release the theatrical versions on DVD as a "bonus disc" in 2006! Needless to say, I got 'em. In the commentary over the "fixed" versions, you can hear Lucas drone on and on about how limiting it was to have no CGI, all but admit he made things up as he went along, or indulged in repeated last-minute decisions based solely on whim, then turn around and also repeat the mantra of "I had all of this written out beforehand". My all-time favorite comment? (while discussing the inspiration behind Bespin:)
"...a gas planet, like Venus!..."

He really is in some strange Howard Hughes/Michael Jackson-like state of unreality now, isn't he?

PS I also remember reading "Splinter", and the Han Solo books too.

First of all, nice to see a site/forum like this, I've enjoyed reading everything I've stumbled across so far. Second, while I appreciate some of the clean-up, etc. done on ANH (which to me will always be just plain ol' "Star Wars"), crap like new CGI in the cantina scene, ring-alicious explosions, and so forth only served as a big fat message of, "Hey, what was good enough for you in 1977 is laughable now, get with it!" I remember the Marvel comic book having this skinny alien substituting for what was later depicted as Jabba- although it was interesting to see that those shots used by the Marvel artists actually did exist, CGIJabba pissed me off. (Taking my friends to see ROTJ was my 10th b-day present, it just happened to be in the theatre at the same time; you can imagine I never forgot what Jabba 'REALLY' looked like!)
Dewbacks... I had had some of the old "baseball cards", one of which showed the Dewback-mounted stormtrooper- and I could never figure out why I didn't remember it from the movie, heh. I'm sure if I had held onto those cards, somebody somewhere would have paid me for them, but most of them ended up with Stretch Armstrong's red corn-syrup innards glueing them to the bottom of a toy-chest (shrug)
Anyway... yes, in the original ANH, R2's panels were black in some scenes due to blue-screen issues- and while it's nice to see things like that fixed, to me Georgie L. just got too damn carried away with ensuring HIS WILL (rather than the memories of those who directly or indirectly swelled his wallet to Death Star-like proportions) carried the day. Here's a personal nitpick- why was the whole "Kenobi rescuing Luke/Krayt Dragon noise" scene altered? Yeah, OK, the sound was also used elsewhere in the film as propulsive SFX- but at least the original (as I remember it) actually gave a somewhat reasonable excuse for the Tusken Raiders to be freaked out to the point of "getting the hell out of Dodge", and also gave credence to the idea of Ben Kenobi being the kind of someone you just left alone, if you were a simple moisture farmer.
All right, I'm obviously ranting/babbling away; I don't utterly hate the prequels, and I realize not everyone was necessarily a kid, or even alive, when the first movie came out- but: is it so bad to want to see the same movie that I saw in the theatre as a little kid, without more than cosmetic "fixes", and without having to scour Ebay or some other such nonsense, for some ridiculously overpriced VHS cassette? Thanks, George. Thanks for "fixing" everything.
OK, I'm done now. .. And how are you?
;-)