star wars prequels: most embarrassing and hacky attempt at fan-service and plot resolution

somehow in the midst of all of the weird technical and direction choices, the fact that Anakin runs off and kills a shitload of people mid-prequel series and no one is really the wiser still stands out as an odd choice

(extremely pedant voice) strictly speaking Hoth is also a desert, like Antarctica

hmm yes

In retrospect, Jabba on Tattooine makes zero sense. Why would a creature composed entirely of mucous membrane hang out on a planet covered with sand, why.

What, was the salt planet full?

he drew the short straw when it came to dividing up hutt criminal territory

it's like the member of the mob who runs a couple outfits in like, vermont

can't I come hang out in an actual city? no, sorry man, you gotta make the maple syrup protection money

I don't mind them going back to Tattoine in Jedi to sort of bring the OT full circle. But it should've been left alone after that.

empire has the best environments.

Easily the most well designed and beautiful of all the films. Up there with best of any SF/fantasy in that respect.

Jabba actually spent most of his weekends on his golf planet.

Isn't there an outtake in New Hope with Jabba on Tatoine? But no, it doesn't really make sense.

xp irl lol

Fred: yes altho at that stage jabba is just a human doofus, possibly just passing through mos eisley and taking the chance to hassle han solo. very odd, bad scene, wisely cut, then later slathered over with CGI to put slug-jabba in, for the 1997 special edition.

That was worse than anything in the prequels.

https://media.giphy.com/media/b0ZFy6vNVveeI/giphy.gif

eurgh

'97 jabba looks like the dancing baby from ally mcbeal

also, is jabba yelping in that clip because Han is stepping on his slug tail?

Well, we can at least applaud the breathtaking craft involved in making the newly-inserted Jabba a dead ringer for the version we'd seen previously.

iirc they digitally added some weird skip-jump thing to han's motion so he would step over the tail but i have also avoided watching that scene again for many years. have hatewatched the redone song at jedi's palace more recently and it might be the nadir of lucas's entire directorial career.

also, is jabba yelping in that clip because Han is stepping on his slug tail?

― porg and bess (voodoo chili), Thursday, December 14, 2017 9:18 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes. it was a way for lucas to account for the spatial difference between jabba the human actor and jabba the cgi slug. iirc had lucas not included the tail stepping han would've stepped right through the surface of jabba

obv even as a lover of the prequels i think the special editions are a travesty, any artist should know better

i just did a forum dive on this tail stepping thing in a fit of pique and people seem to have been divided at the time on whether it's dumb or badass that han brazenly steps on the tail of one of the ostensibly scariest gangsters in the galaxy

I sometimes wonder if Lucas is too embarrassed to admit that tried to incorporate the tone of Spaceballs into the prequel trilogy because he forgot that it wasn't an actual Star Wars movie.

Apart from the terrible execution I hate the SE Jabba scene for ruining the mystery of Jabba. It's way better if you hear his voice in hushed tones and have no idea he's a massive space slug till the final movie.

tbh i like the fat 70s space pirate Jabba. they should have kept him in and had him be a new bounty hunter or something. otm on him looking like the dancing baby.gif

i think the prequels were heavily influenced by the work done on the Rebel Assault games. these were CD-ROM showcase games that were on-rails and were the first filmed new Star Wars footage since the Ewok movies. in the 90s they worked out the groundbreaking digital movie making techniques invented for the prequels and now used for everything with a superhero or Star War in it.

to make the games they used original props and costumes as well as experimenting with digital video & new blue screen techniques. they created cgi digital backgrounds for some scenes and superimposed the actors just as they did with the prequels. not saying it was the same team but that they probably used all the technology and documentation created by a sister company (Lucasarts>Lucasfilm) to do the SE and prequels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnA380gHqSM

i just did a forum dive on this tail stepping thing in a fit of pique and people seem to have been divided at the time on whether it's dumb or badass that han brazenly steps on the tail of one of the ostensibly scariest gangsters in the galaxy

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, December 14, 2017 8:28 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

to someone who never saw the original versions it completely undercuts the whole Jabba reveal in Return of the Jedi, which is pretty good. how does he go from a comedy slug to a fearsome evil gangster? a question that should never have been asked.

i think also the CGI addition of stormtroopers on Tatooine ineptly riding around on Tauntauns (i think?) while looking for the droids is just as bad.

i think also the CGI addition of stormtroopers on Tatooine ineptly riding around on Tauntauns (i think?) while looking for the droids is just as bad.

― omar little, Thursday, December 14, 2017 11:05 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this sucks too. basically all of the changes suck. having a bunch of bullshit in the windows of cloud city really interrupts the visual continuity of empire

banthas. those are banthas. tauntauns live on hoth.

i guess blending and upgrading some of the practical effects probably didn't suck very much but it's been a v long time since i watched the special editions

i watched the despecialized editions last month and i really love that those exist even though i have my own issues with them. it was a really interesting experience bc i don't think i've ever seen a version of the original trilogy that lucas hadn't somehow fucked with (my first star wars vhs box was the release that he added "episode iv: a new hope" to iirc)

oh nm i just looked it up and the "episode iv" appellation occurred much earlier, in a theatrical rerelease

Manny Banthas?

they were riding dewbacks iirc

Yeah, those were dewbacks, and there's only one in the un-specialized OT. One of my favorite SW toys as a kid because he just had a little hinged flap in his back to stick a stormtrooper's legs in.

i gave my friend a VHS box set of the untouched original trilogy in the '90s. I wonder if the tapes still play.

I love these old commercials.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg3U3rjoGW4

morbs when i was home last Xmas we watched the original SW on VHS, i had the widescreen untampered-with trilogy boxset (which still goes for a decent amount on eBay iirc.) still played nicely.

whoa really?

I need to check, think I reclaimed at least the original VHS special edition release, might have been dumb and gotten rid of the originals because I had pan&scan

sick bastards can't believe they cut off the top and bottom of the movies like that

kind of, as the name implies sometimes they'd use the left/right side and then move across the frame during scenes

or in some really weird moments, distort a scene to get everything in frame

wait, I read that sideways

less letterbox, very rude

the worst movie i've ever seen for distortion on VHS was Die Hard

imagine when movies were broadcast on TV that way, and you had no other option

god i still remember when WGN would air nothing but colorized versions of White Heat and The Maltese Falcon, as if it was the way they were meant to be seen.

Now imagine when the latest Star War was simply narrated through a paper megaphone by a vaudevillian in shortpants.

Shorty Lucas

oh man, I have never seen a colorized Maltese Falcon and I just involuntarily cringed at the idea

Not only was Cornelius Evazan a doctor (?!), but his cosmetic surgery shop was across the street from a restaurant called ADMIRAL SNACKBAR?!

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Admiral_Snackbar

― reggae mike love (polyphonic), Thursday, 14 December 2017 00:37 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i kind of love the tone-deaf completionism of this, like if someone decided we needed to compile thorough histories of all the gag shops in the simpsons

https://s21.postimg.org/aatah6w8n/1941_The_Maltese_Falcon_57m27s.jpg

sorry mh

The arc of Palpatine ascending to power by duping possibly the dumbest Senate ever was fun

that’s even more ridiculously funny than I could have hoped xp

Should've voted for Palpatine's face, only decided now. I assumed as a kid sitting around bathed in the hideous power of the dark side made him that way, no it was um, to get sympathy from the Senate? Or something? Way more powerful as I imagined.