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It is hard to believe, but Star Wars 1313 was set to release June 2013. It was 95% done. Disney canned it. The other star wars game, canned. Clone wars canned. The star wars tv show, canned. The comics in danger of being canned. Several other star wars related entities/projects in Disney's crosshairs. The future movies wont have any tie in to the famailiar characters & each movie will be a stand alone. Lucas & other divisions closed & people fired by Disney. It truely sounds like a thought out systamatic destruction in order to rewrite Disney as the Star Wars "creator" for generations in the future.....WTF Disney?

Destroying?

Or taking a franchise that has been struggling for years to do anything worthwhile, and redesigning it to be profitable?

Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Yeah, I like the idea of a Star Wars that is taking a new direction and isn't constantly referencing past material I would like to think there's more to this setting than just relying on nostalgia.

I really don't know what to make of the whole situation now that Star Wars is in Disney's pocket.


I've just long since become more invested in Song of Fire and Ice and my Warhammers.

No.

Star Wars is worth several billion dollars of revenue. Disney can always be trusted to take the route of best monetary gain.

 insaniak wrote:
Or taking a franchise that has been struggling for years to do anything worthwhile, and redesigning it to be profitable?

Guess you never saw Clone Wars...

We will see how it turns out.

Aside from Clone Wars, the latest star wars stuff has been kinda meh. Lucas Arts wasn't putting out many games worth mentioning, way more flops than successes.

Disney may change it, but it is going to save it.

Hanlon's Razor...

Also does anyone hope that Disney releases the original trilogy without all that unnecessary bs that was added in in the DVD and Blu-Ray versions?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Or taking a franchise that has been struggling for years to do anything worthwhile, and redesigning it to be profitable?

Guess you never saw Clone Wars...

I didn't say they hadn't done anything good... just that they were struggling to do so. Clone Wars is their one high point in recent years.

I liked that stuff.

Although it would be nice to have a theatrical re-release as it appeared in theaters. Just to make the collection complete of course

Cheesecat wrote:Also does anyone hope that Disney releases the original trilogy without all that unnecessary bs that was added in in the DVD and Blu-Ray versions?

Allegedly, it's impossible due to improper storage of the originals.

I'm not sure I necessarily believe that, but it is possible. That's why the best transfer to date of the un-fethed-with version was the crappy letterbox Laserdisc version.

Of course it isn't impossible. Storage of the negatives in a sad excuse.

And 1313 was never planned for June of this year. More like fall of 14...maybe. Ergo, it was hardly 95% complete. Probably more like 30-40%.

I watched a few of the Clone Wars with my son. They were decent, but hardly Justice League Unlimited. Still, it was hella better than Attack of the Clones, the moment at which I ceased being a SW fan. Disney is going to make money. That is why they bought it.

I hope they use Patton Oswalt's scriptment for the movie.

Nothing prevents them from editing out the added stuff from a digital version.

Grey Templar wrote:Nothing prevents them from editing out the added stuff from a digital version.

Some guy has been doing it one his own for years. I think he's almost finished Empire right now. I can't remember the name of the project, but it's out there. Can anyone else remember the name of those redone transfers without the extra crap?

http://www.youtube.com/user/adywanuk?feature=

Here's his youtube page

No idea where you go for the final product though

No, of course they're not intentionally destroying the franchise. It would be incredibly stupid to pay huge amounts of money and then deliberately damage your expensive new investment. More likely the canceled projects were just more mediocre-at-best milkings of the cash cow, and Disney put them out of their misery so that they could make a fresh start.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Lucas Arts wasn't putting out many games worth mentioning, way more flops than successes.

Any games worth mentioning. For years they've just been a publisher and brand name with most/all of the successful games being done by other companies. All Disney has really done is kill off the redundant publisher and move to licensing the games directly to the people doing the real work.

 azazel the cat wrote:
Allegedly, it's impossible due to improper storage of the originals.

Apparently this is a blatant lie. The original film was stored poorly and needed a lot of restoration work for the special edition version (so despite all the horrible changes we can be thankful that it did at least save the film before it was too late), but supposedly there are still undamaged copies from the original theater versions. Not technically the original film, but enough to make a re-release that would be just as good. So we can hope that Disney will see the obvious profits to be made and overrule Lucas' weird obsession with pretending that he never changed anything.


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 azazel the cat wrote:
Can anyone else remember the name of those redone transfers without the extra crap?

Not the ones you're thinking of, which have a bunch of extra stuff from the recent "official" edits on top of the creator's own additions. They might be an enjoyable fan project, but they're not a substitute for the original versions of the films.

1313 looked all set to wind up as another derivative TPS cover shooter in a saturated market.

Getting away from the original characters is, in my opinion, the best decision Disney could possibly make - though I don't think they're making it. We get it. The Skywalker family was important for 30 years. Time to tell new stories, though.

They ought to get Avellone to write it.

They could have some nostalgic throwbacks. Have Luke be in the movies as an old man etc...

But the story should have little to do with the originals. A new enemy, a new threat, new heroes, etc...

Peregrine wrote:

 azazel the cat wrote:
Allegedly, it's impossible due to improper storage of the originals.

Apparently this is a blatant lie. The original film was stored poorly and needed a lot of restoration work for the special edition version (so despite all the horrible changes we can be thankful that it did at least save the film before it was too late), but supposedly there are still undamaged copies from the original theater versions. Not technically the original film, but enough to make a re-release that would be just as good. So we can hope that Disney will see the obvious profits to be made and overrule Lucas' weird obsession with pretending that he never changed anything.

Yeah, that's what I've kinda figured. I have a difficult time believing that there's not enough of the originals left to release with a decent transfer, but then, I've never actually been to Skywalker Ranch. This is pretty much the reason I've always kept my VHS tapes of the proper, unwrecked version. Where we first meet Jabba in his palace as sleazy royalty, not skulking about a cargo bay; and where Han shot first, goddamnit.

Peregine wrote:

 azazel the cat wrote:
Can anyone else remember the name of those redone transfers without the extra crap?

Not the ones you're thinking of, which have a bunch of extra stuff from the recent "official" edits on top of the creator's own additions. They might be an enjoyable fan project, but they're not a substitute for the original versions of the films.

I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that the extra crap (as mentioned above) was removed and the only additions of the creator's were things that really should've been there in the first place, like a blaster shot hitting the guy that runs out the door on Hoth, as opposed to the original wherein the guy simple drops for no apparent reason. I don't remember the creator adding in anything untoward; certainly not on the levels of the crap Lucas threw in.

Meh, I like the special editions.

I've never really understood all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the changes Lucas made. They're his movies, if he wants to alter them to better suit his personal vision of what they should have looked like, that's his choice.

Sure, some of it was uneccessary. Some of it is a little cringe-worthy (like CGI-bendo-Han in the altered altered Cantina scene). And some of it really does make a huge positive difference, like the new and improved Cloud City interiors.

But it's ultimately all just window dressing. They're still Star Wars.

 azazel the cat wrote:
I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that the extra crap (as mentioned above) was removed and the only additions of the creator's were things that really should've been there in the first place, like a blaster shot hitting the guy that runs out the door on Hoth, as opposed to the original wherein the guy simple drops for no apparent reason. I don't remember the creator adding in anything untoward; certainly not on the levels of the crap Lucas threw in.

Nope. He's added a bunch of extra stuff that he thinks should have been in it. For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKNrK53uA84 . Note how it uses all the special edition CGI, on top of his own clumsy editing to add in completely new (and pointless) fan-made dogfight scenes, new special effects, etc. Some people might like it as an alternate fan movie, but it's not at all the 1977 version.

Oh, and why the VHS tapes when they released DVDs of the original versions (just not at full HD quality)? Did the re-release actually include some of the later edits?

 insaniak wrote:
I've never really understood all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the changes Lucas made.

IMO it's two problems:

1) Lucas' delusional claims that he didn't change things. For example, his claim that Han never shot first and it was all just a misunderstanding. It's fine if you want to change something in your own work, but don't blatantly lie about it when anyone who wants to can go look at the original version and see that you're lying.

2) The reluctance to release the original versions. The original movies still have historical value (especially all the old special effects work that was dumped in favor of CGI), and it's really frustrating that Lucas has so far been doing pretty much everything he can to make them disappear. I don't care if there's an updated version (which I can ignore), I just want to be able to have a full-quality copy of the original versions.

Your best chance to see the originals was when they were first release 8)....dang I'm old

 Peregrine wrote:
2) The reluctance to release the original versions. The original movies still have historical value (especially all the old special effects work that was dumped in favor of CGI), and it's really frustrating that Lucas has so far been doing pretty much everything he can to make them disappear. I don't care if there's an updated version (which I can ignore), I just want to be able to have a full-quality copy of the original versions.

This comes back to the movies being his personal vision. If he sees the changes as an improvement, I can certainly understand him not wanting to allow the older (in his mind) inferior version to be widely available.


Having said that, I can understand the frustration when you're specifically looking for the original... I had to resort to buying second hand on eBay when I wanted to buy the original, pre-CGI-d Star Trek Original Series... But still, it's the creator's prerogative to sell any specific version of their work or not.

What I don't get, and it may be because I don't keep up with this stuff, is why the original trilogy DVDs are so hard to get hold of. Altered, unaltered, new edition, whatever...every time I go, "Hey, I haven't seen the Original Trilogy in a while, I should hop on Amazon and order it," it's always $200 and only being sold through the Marketplace by some sketch-ass place like JD's Semi-Adult Video Emporium in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Peregrine wrote:Oh, and why the VHS tapes when they released DVDs of the original versions (just not at full HD quality)? Did the re-release actually include some of the later edits?

The original versions were never released on DVD; only the re-imagined versions where Han shoots second and *shudder* Sebastian Shaw was digitally replaced with Hayden Christensen during the Ewok jamboree. They may have even been letterboxed; but that part I cannot recall for certain.

EDIT: And they have ugly photoshopped "artwork" on them, rather than the totally sweet Brothers Hildebrandt artwork from the originals.

 azazel the cat wrote:
The original versions were never released on DVD; only the re-imagined versions where Han shoots second and *shudder* Sebastian Shaw was digitally replaced with Hayden Christensen during the Ewok jamboree.

Nope. They released DVDs of the original theatrical versions, complete with Han shooting first, 1970s special effects, etc. The only problem with them is that they were taken from a lower-quality source and aren't full DVD-resolution copies made from the original film.

Edit: this is what I'm talking about: http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Two-Disc-Widescreen-Theatrical/dp/B000FQJAIW .

Peregrine wrote:

 azazel the cat wrote:
The original versions were never released on DVD; only the re-imagined versions where Han shoots second and *shudder* Sebastian Shaw was digitally replaced with Hayden Christensen during the Ewok jamboree.

Nope. They released DVDs of the original theatrical versions, complete with Han shooting first, 1970s special effects, etc. The only problem with them is that they were taken from a lower-quality source and aren't full DVD-resolution copies made from the original film.

Oh, those. Yeah, those are the letterbox versions direct from the old Laserdiscs. If I remember correctly, an additional problem was the letterboxing format was used prior to widescreen TVs, so the black horizontal bars will appear even on a modern widescreen TV, thus meaning the film must be viewed in a 1.33:1 ratio, only to then be a very small picture, but in its original aspect ratio.

Basically, it's an aggravating mess, and that doesn't even touch on how grainy the Laserdisc transfer was.

EDIT: Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about, too: each film had two version. One was Lucas' perverted monstrosity of his "re-imagining"; and the other was a letterbox recording that basically can't be viewed on a modern widescreen television.

 azazel the cat wrote:
Oh, those. Yeah, those are the letterbox versions direct from the old Laserdiscs. If I remember correctly, an additional problem was the letterboxing format was used prior to widescreen TVs, so the black horizontal bars will appear even on a modern widescreen TV, thus meaning the film must be viewed in a 1.33:1 ratio, only to then be a very small picture, but in its original aspect ratio.

Basically, it's an aggravating mess, and that doesn't even touch on how grainy the Laserdisc transfer was.

Yeah, that's what I mean about taking it from an inferior source. But at least it's better than hoarding the old VHS tapes (at least for watching, not collector value). And hopefully now that Disney is in charge they can tell Lucas to STFU and stop getting in the way of profit and release a proper version.

Peregrine wrote:

 azazel the cat wrote:
Oh, those. Yeah, those are the letterbox versions direct from the old Laserdiscs. If I remember correctly, an additional problem was the letterboxing format was used prior to widescreen TVs, so the black horizontal bars will appear even on a modern widescreen TV, thus meaning the film must be viewed in a 1.33:1 ratio, only to then be a very small picture, but in its original aspect ratio.

Basically, it's an aggravating mess, and that doesn't even touch on how grainy the Laserdisc transfer was.

Yeah, that's what I mean about taking it from an inferior source. But at least it's better than hoarding the old VHS tapes (at least for watching, not collector value).

Honestly, it's really not. I've owned the laserdisc version, and it looked far worse than the first remastered VHS transfer. Mind you, I haven't actually watched it for a very long time anyway, but the option is still there for me until some noble video nerd grants my wishes.