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Force Feature: Special Edition Changes That Were Worth It
Exploring the many worlds of Star Wars, in the imagination and in real life!So I’m going to admit having some conflicting opinions here. First of all, I’m on record as saying that I would have been perfectly happy if the Special Editions of the Original Trilogy never existed. And that’s true.
And I get upset when I hear that quote from Lucas about, “I’m sorry you fell in love with a half-completed movie.” Baaaa-loney! Half-completed? Star Wars and Empire were nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award, how could a half-completed movie pull that off?
But let’s step back from that for a moment. Lucas has said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that the special effects technology wasn’t up to the level he’d hoped for and wanted to achieve. Now, I can kinda understand that. And yet, you have to let go of your creations at some point and let them live in the wild on their own. Right? The movies were surviving on their own merits without any meddling ridiculousness.
And yet…and yet…
We all like the Star Wars movies for lots of different reasons. One of mine, and I’m sure many of you agree with me, are the spaceships. Anything flying, the dogfights in space, that was the height of excitement for me. Coincidentally, I’m not that big a fan of flying in real life, though I don’t avoid it or anything. I think Alanis Morissette might call that “ironic” instead of coincidental, but she’s not an expert on irony, at it turns out.
So yes, spaceships. In Star Wars, aka A New Hope, the extra shot of the Millennium Falcon, shown from the top looking down, blasting out of Docking Bay 94, is wicked fun for me. You almost never get to see the top of the Falcon, so it was fabulous to confirm that my toy – locked in a closet at age 27, but not too old enough to remember – looked just like it should have. If it’s true that Lucas was by then starting to fixate on the merchandising, then thankfully shots like the Millennium Falcon escaping made for better toys in the long run.
Naturally, then, I also like the shots of the Falcon flying through space to Yavin IV, and then arriving in the atmosphere of the lush, green moon. They really are pointless as shots go – really, George, that was one of the reason you had said they were only 25% to 30% complete, as he did for an article for MSNBC in 2004? (Thank you, Wikipedia, for helping me dial up that fact.)
Meanwhile, the Rebel armada, flying in formation on their way to the Death Star, is almost perfect. To me, the colors seem so sharp as to be not believeable. But seeing more X-wings and Y-wings flying around is never a bad thing.
Now, as for The Empire Strikes Back…
My favorite spaceship of the whole saga is the snowspeeder. What’s yours? Join the conversation at Facebook.com/sw7x7. They did some housekeeping in there, not a lot of major stuff. That being said, some of the changes were absolutely pointless. Why did we need a shot of Vader’s shuttle landing back on the Super Star Destroyer Executor? Would the audience have questioned how the heck Vader got onto his ship in the first place? Nope! I’ll answer that, because it’s an easy question. We didn’t need that at all, and were certainly didn’t need an outtake from the start of the Return of the Jedi to be mixed up in there.
Okay, before I start going off on the laundry list of annoyances, let me get back to one other good thing, which was the extra Cloud Car shots on Cloud City, along with all the open windows they CGI’d in for it. That was pretty gorgeous, you gotta admit.
Strangely, Return of the Jedi didn’t have much change at all in the way of spaceships. And I bet there’ve been changes to the Prequel Trilogy, too.
But with those and so many more changes to Star Wars and Empire, shocking as it may seem, I’ve found a bright spot with the spaceships. And it’s an unpopular opinion, so I’m going to ask you to brave the wrath of the Internet and post: What’s your favorite change made in the original trilogy? Please, share it on the blog post at sw7x7.com!
Star Wars Fun Fact
Surprising and little known Star Wars tidbits, sometimes related to today’s Force Feature.What does General Grievous have in common with the robot Bender from Futurama? Aside from their evil natures and snappy attitudes, both of them were voiced by John William DiMaggio, who celebrates a birthday today. And for those of you keeping score at home, the General Grievous he voiced was from the 2003-2005 Clone Wars cartoon, not the 2008-2014 version.
Life on “Tweet”-ooine
A featured dispatch from the Star Wars Twitterverse!Watch #StarWars celebrities take the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge: http://t.co/birLs2LWct pic.twitter.com/hBVXDJAmwY
— Star Wars Fanpedia (@StarWarsFanWiki) August 25, 2014
Star Wars Swag Bag
So many fun, quirky, and awesome ways to bring Star Wars into your daily life!Star Wars Designer Watches – click the pic to see all five styles!
Trivia Time!
Test your knowledge of the Star Wars universe!Yesterday’s answer: Jungle
Today’s question: Why did Luke think R2-D2 wouldn’t run away after he removed his restraining bolt?