George Lucas should screen this cut of the film at Sodankylä Film Festival in Finland.
That way, he could be feted by the most dedicated of the film buffs. AND experience the Aurora Borealis. Localised entirely on the geographic region he is in.
If the original trilogy is anything to go by, George Lucas desperately needs a good editor. I can’t imagine a longer cut will be anything but worse than what we got…
The “special director’s anniversary editions” or whatever the hell they were called were the worst bullshit insult to those of us that grew up with the original trilogy. Fuck you, George Lucas.
Literally his first wife. One reason why New Hope and Empire Strikes Back were so good. Once Lucas got divorced, his screenwriting fell off a cliff.
Also, incidentally, Carrie Fisher became an acclaimed script doctor towards the end of her career. She was rewriting a bunch of her own dialog in Return of the Jedi. She fixed up the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s “Hook”. Sister Act, Lethal Weapon 3, Scream 3, Coyote Ugly, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith are also on her resume. She patched up the first Austin Powers movie and saved Mike Myers from himself.
For it to work, he needs to keep his mystery. Like, I don’t want to see him collect his laundry. But basically just him going round the galaxy mercilessly hunting down and murdering the crap out of Jedis.
The cheese is why the prequels are fun to watch though! We’ve all worked through our collective trauma about how trashy the prequels are, now we’re ready for good ol fashioned hate watching.
I’m not sure “we’ve all worked though” it, but I’m glad I’m not the only one with this perspective. I tried to explain “rage watching” the prequels to a non Star Wars fan not long ago and they looked at me like I had 3 heads.
You can destroy the negatives with extra processing but you can’t destroy the prints. Lucas has original prints and if he didn’t he had the millions to acquire them. If fans did it, Lucas could have.
The rumor I heard decades ago (so a mountain-sized grain of salt) was that he didn’t want to admit he fucked up the originals when making the specialized editions, and just acted like he didn’t want to release remastered theatrical versions. He was also fiercely defensive of the specialized versions, saying that they were closer to his “vision” than the originals.
Master negatives can create higher resolutions than what you get from the prints. The fan-made versions did a ton of upscaling from the best quality digital versions they could find.
The negative is 35mm like the print. There is technically a generational loss between negative and print but that’s far far below the resolution of a 480p DVD when Lucas claimed he couldn’t release the original. 35mm film print is higher resolution than 4k. The 4k77 version does not use upscaling.
Lucas had just re-released the Specialized editions in the theaters, and they did very well. There’s no way they go through the effort of remastering the originals without releasing them to theaters.
I don’t remember where exactly I found it, but search for “Phantom Menace Anti-Cheese fanedit” or some variation thereof. I originally found the full thing on Youtube, but I would not be surprised if it has been taken down. That was many years ago.
In hindsight, all of media used to have this “meh, close enough” attitude about it: Vinyl LPs, audiotape, broadcast TV, film, iffy projectors at the local theater, AM radio, it all had limitations well within the range of human perception. Plus, everything the consumer got was a lossy copy of something else. Everything had noise, and everything cost some amount of fidelity no matter what you did. In light of this, “authenticity” is really a No True Scotsman argument, where we argue forever about intent, the optimal fidelity for the time, and what one would have experienced.
Come to think of it, an easy approximation for a time machine is to buy some aviator frames, smear some Vasaline on the lenses, and stuff your ears with some cotton.
In light of this, “authenticity” is really a No True Scotsman argument,
4k77 isn’t a no true Scotsman because it is a scan of a print that was played in theaters. If you digitally scanned a photo of the Mona Lisa, it would be a more authentic copy than a Photoshopped version that removed the brush strokes and replaced the blurred background with new high detailed images.
smear some Vasaline on the lenses, and stuff your ears with some cotton.
Had you watched movies in theaters before 2013? Film projectors were fine. The sound quality was fine. A movie filmed and projected in 35mm film was higher quality than the 1080p digital version of Phantom that was in theaters in 1999.
It’s got several of them, and that’s the only redeeming quality.
I re-watched it recently, and was reminded just how bad it was. I only saw The Phantom Menace in the theatre, and the disappointment kept me away from the releases of the next two installments - money well saved.
I also grew up with the prequels and yes, RotS was leagues ahead of them but it’s not just that. It has its issues, but I firmly believe it is a really good movie. I also grew up with prequels and saw both Episode 2 and 3 in theatres. But while the first two were quite cringey with some good parts, RotS was just good and stood up the test of time. More than I can say bout New Hope tbh.
I don’t have any concrete reasons why I think this. I don’t mind if a movie is slow - if anything it may be too fast when I think about it? Going from place to place, not really fleshing out much. As a kid I also found it the least interesting due to the lack of lightsaber fights.
Ironically, I’ve found the writing fairly poor and cringey as well tbh.
I also saw it in theatres, and while I wouldn’t call it a breath of fresh air per se, but it was definitely the least bad of the prequels. This is gonna get me down voted to hell, but that 45 minute lightsaber battle at the end was 44 minutes too long in my opinion.
I think the resentment from fans came out of a feeling of missed potential. What people wanted was what they eventually put into the Clone Wars series: space adventures, complex characters, and the subtle corruption of a great hero.
What we got wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great. There was cheesy dialogue, convoluted storylines, and one-dimensional characters. Star Wars, like a lot of franchise films, benefits from the association with the wider universe. We, the fans, fill in gaps and references to backstory with the things we know without it appearing on the screen. But it also suffers from the comparison and expectations we have.
Take the reveal of Vader/birth of the twins at the end. Seeing Vader rise from the table, and hearing James Earl Jones’ voice for the “first” time was genuinely cool because we have all seen the original trilogy. The interspersed delivery scene draws parallels between Luke and Leia being born with Vader being born.
Taken in a vacuum, if you had no idea who Vader was, it would all seem a bit silly, because “Darth Vader” was actually “born” several scenes ago when he killed Mace Windu and then mass-murdered a school full of children.
At the same time, we know what Vader looks and sounds like. Drawing out the reveal feels slightly overdramatic. Then you get the whole “she’s lost the will to live” and that “Noooooo!” and people are rolling from laughter instead of wiping away tears.
That’s like the whole movie. Anything good or bad is made simultaneously better and worse by association. How you view the movie depends on how that association makes you feel. If you love Star Wars and want to love the Prequels, you will.
Aside from the logical inconsistencies, the plot holes, the (still) bad writing, the over-utilization of green screen that makes the whole production soulless and artificial, and the infamous “NOOOOOOO!” scene, it’s a great movie!
Everything cool about them is despite George Lucas not because of him. Sure the battles are cool, the CGI scenes are cool, but the prequels were wayyyyyy too much a direct implementation of what Lucas thought was going to be good to ever have been good lol.
The original Star Wars movies were better because Lucas wasn’t famous yet and had to actually listen to the people around him.
Don’t get me wrong, the original trilogy is the best by far. I was just the right age to enjoy the prequels when they came out, so maybe it’s the nostalgia talking. I rewatch them every few years and enjoy them every time.
Honestly, I’d rather just ditch the terrible plots of both movies and just go have fun in Star Wars Battlefront playing with all the cool hovertanks and robots.
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