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TM2 Dinobot

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Y'know the DVD unaltered releases from some years back now, are they not entirely unaltered then?

Oh, and very well put Dino.

I think they are unaltered, but the quality blows. Lucas et al. threw that bone to fans wanting the originals, but it looked like a bad VHS transfer. Probably by design, since Lucas has such disdain for the originals apparently and doesn't think it is worth his time to give the fans what they want in the quality they want. Watchable on a smaller, old school television. But pretty unwatchable on an HDTV. The "despecialized" Harmy versions are essentially remastered, high def. versions of the original films (or, pretty close anyway).

I originally bought the official unaltered DVD versions, was disappointed as all hell with the quality, then obtained the Harmy ones.

I would love to have the new Blu Ray ones. I only have the older version he did as DVDs, and they only seem to play on my PS3.

Edited by karamazov80
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Oh gosh ! A starwars anime based on a starwars game like the old republic or something would be AWSOME ! Not deformed clone wars. I hope they make a anime starwars based on a Star Wars game...

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Ive seen the clip now, and I would watch that on a regular basis it looks great, very old school anime air too it.

As for Mr Lucas and the course he has taken with his franchise. His need to revamp the series every couple of years seems to be just a need to make cash, it seems to have stopped being about retaining control over his baby and has become just his cash cow. Not that I blame him. If I had managed to develop a property as successful as Star Wars I might be apt to milk it as far as I could as well. Revamping the effects so the original trilogy looked more seamless to the prequels was something I could accept but the need to tinker and change dialogue, music and FX alters further and further the movie I first saw that did capture my imagination when I was a kid back in 77-78. To that end I do wish he would just stop. The books, comics and cartoons that offer a view into the expanded universe used to be under a tight reign by Lucas or so I was led to believe, I think today that hold has loosened to the point of those things being nothing more than fan fiction and that I can do with out for the most part. All this is just my humble view, Im glad star wars continues with such active life instead of being a half forgotten cult classic item but i do think there is great value in the original three films in the form they were released.

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Not at all a fan of Clone Wars; they can take that atrocity and shove it. And that's not coming from an old fan, that's someone born in 1993.

Truth be told, i don't care about the Clone Wars. The idea that they were this big spectacle was good enough for me, and moving on from there was fine. I mean, it's sort of like World War I; we all recognize it happened, it was big for the time, but it wound up trounced by what would follow and the only real power it has is in name of being the first World War. I didn't need a full, in-depth look of the Clone Wars, and it didn't live up to my expectations.

The Animated series just makes it worse; never asked to hear more, and they treat it like it can be dragged on forever. The wars have to end at some point, Asoka has to die, and so on, but the writers act like it's a new canon that can go on forever. Between that and the blocky animation style, i cannot sit myself in front of it.

I'd much rather see what happens following Revenge of the Sith to A New Hope. THAT is the continuous story that i want to have adapted; Empire following the hostile takeover, Ben Kenobi's life, the early days of Darth Vader, the rise of Han Solo and the smugglers, etc.

The only reason i see Clone Wars being chosen is Jedi being alive; "the more lightsabers, the better." I don't agree with that at all.

TL;DR, /NERD-RANT.

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My biggest problem with Clone Wars is that, aside from the story itself making little sense, we're expected to believe that the first Republic war in 1000 years takes place on an intergalactic scale and is wrapped up in less than 3 years? The American Civil War didn't last that long! A far more belivable solution would have been to open up the new movie right in the middle of the Clone Wars, where you don't have a clue who the good guys/bad guys are because its been raging for so long. But children have short attention spans, and they had to shove CW into real life timeline between episodes II and III, and you can't have humans die. It has to be robots. Because killing people is bad. It's not like this is called Star Wars. Oh, wait.

Sorry, wen't off on a rant there. While I'm wishing, I want a pony. :/

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A far more belivable solution would have been to open up the new movie right in the middle of the Clone Wars, where you don't have a clue who the good guys/bad guys are because its been raging for so long.

Yes, the part of Star Wars that is unbelievable is that the Clones War was too short. :tongue:

I do agree with the point you were making. I actually thought the PT was pretty close to being good, and RotS actually was good. If we're going to do the whole coulda-shoulda-woulda thing, I would have combined elements of TPM and AotC. TPM would have stayed largely like it was, but Anakin would have been a teenage Jedi padawan (follwing Jedi knight Obi-Wan and Master Qui Gon on a mission), not an annoying kid, and when they end up on Tatooine, he's just visiting or something, not being rescued. Instead of rallying the Gungan and Naboo forces, THAT is when the Clones would have been unleashed. Obi-Wan and Qui Gon can still fight Darth Maul, and a more appropriately aged Anakin still gets to prove his piloting skills. Then skip 1-2 years for AotC, right in the middle of the Clone Wars. General Greivous is out there kicking ass, and Chancellor Palpatine is slowly suspending various rights in the name of the war effort. A few Jedi (including the arrogant and politically savvy Count Dooku) begin to suspect that the whole thing may have been orchestrated and task Obi-Wan with some espionage to uncover the truth about the Clones, etc. Meanwhile someone on the inside is trying to assassinate Padme, so Anakin gets sent to protect her. Everything comes to a head on Geonosis, where we learn that Dooku has betrayed the Jedi, etc, and is behind the assassination attempts. Geonosis battle ensues, pretty much as in AotC, but featuring General Grievous tearing up some Jedi before making his escape. As it ends, the Jedi begin to realize that the betrayal is so much deeper and that regardless of the war's outcome, they might be screwed either way. RotS can stay exactly like it was.

I've always felt that TPM and AotC were sooo close to being great, but they felt like rough drafts of the movies they should have been. Truth be told, though, I still enjoy them.

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Frankly, I don't care at all what Lucas does in the EU (which includes the prequels in my mind). I just ignore all of it, anyway. But his unwillingness to allow fans to enjoy what they enjoyed as a kid in an official manner is very lame.

Edited by karamazov80
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I have honestly thought for some time that the whole prequel trilogy would have been significantly better if Anakin had been 5-10 years older. Straight away, it all seems far more tolerable

... kudos turtle.

Cheers Dino and k, it does seem I do own those unaltered dvds. While the quality isn't great, yeah, it does feel pretty good having a copy. I know I have the special editiona on DVD as well... tempted by the blu-rays but worried they'll be a mess, and I'm really not keen on putting another penny in George's pockets... A DEWBACK IN EVERY SCENE!!! and all that.

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I will continue to go on as the one board member who loves the Clonewars, to be honest, i may love it more than any of the films (except Empire). I think the writing is great, the character designs are awesome, the actors are all amazing, the animation is top notch. I cant wait for season 5 and i hope it goes for another few seasons and then a movie to end it

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I guess if anime is your thing, this fan video is the Star Wars for you. It's impressive but not my cup of tea. Add some John Williams and Ben Burtt and you've got something even better.

As for The Clone Wars, I became enamored with the notion of an animated series with Cartoon Network's first micro series. Genndy Tartakovsky's character design threw me at first and I couldn't figure out how he was going to tell a decent story in under three minutes but I was quickly hooked. It became the best part of the prequel era.

When I heard of a half-hour ongoing series, it seemed like a no-brainer given the popularity of its predecessor. After the announcement that it would be CG, I expected them to leverage the existing models built for the prequels. Dave Filoni, recently from Avatar: The Last Airbender seemed like a good choice as showrunner. But when I saw the character designs, something seemed off but somehow familiar. I'm embarrassed to admit that it took me about a year to realize that the look of the show was an homage to Ralph McQuarrie. Every frame looked like one of his gouache paintings, from the intentional brushstrokes to the exaggerated style of his character designs.

I took my daughters to see the theatrical release and honestly wasn't that impressed though my girls loved it and couldn't wait for the TV show. We've been watching it ever since and it continues to surprise me. Anyone saying "Humans can't die, it has to be robots" simply isn't watching the show. People die surprisingly frequently via a variety of means, from murder to suicide and everything in between. There are things happening in this series that other networks wouldn't allow on Saturday mornings.

I will say that the show is inconsistent and, at times, downright tedious. There are some perfectly forgettable episodes that don't seem to serve to further the overall story but they do offer a bit of distraction and maybe even some character development. Speaking of which, I didn't expect to care so much about clones. They've gone through an awful lot of trouble to develop clone characters and then kill them off. Despite knowing these are all essentially the Red Shirts of the Star Wars Universe, you can get attached to key clones and miss them when they're killed.

The bottom line is that Star Wars seems to be better off in the hands of fans-- no, not fans, STUDENTS than in the hands of its creator. I stopped being a fan of the Star Wars movies after walking out of the theatre in 1983. Return of the Jedi was a big letdown for me. It seemed like a remake, with a bigger Cantina scene up front and a bigger Death Star scene in the end opposite another pivotal lightsabre battle. Unlike The Empire Strikes Back, which felt like a more mature continuation of the story with a love triangle, a murderous Vader and almost no aliens, Episode VI felt retarded, as if the saga had jumped off the kiddie train tracks with Episode V and Lucas was correcting it.

Then there were the prequels, which I'd be happy to ignore completely if not for the fact that they've managed to undermine the original trilogy. Fans would argue, "So what if you hate the PT? Stick with your OT!" I wish I could but it seems some of the worst parts of the prequels have managed to work their way into the OT. As much as I didn't like ROTJ, having Vader shout "NOOOO!" and replacing Sebastian Shaw's ghostly visage with Hayden Christensen's didn't make it any better. You want to tie the prequels to the sequels? Have Luke and Leia born on Dagobah so it makes sense in TESB when Luke says the place seems familiar. And have Leia born first, not Luke, so that it makes sense when she says she remembers her sad mother. Making the OT worse is not the way to make the PT better, Uncle George.

[/rant]

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another major fail for the trilogy prequels is showing vader at the end of episode three. imho, leaving it a "mystery" to be found out in episode 5 would have been clutch. ani left for dead with the emperor coming for him then the next time we see ani its in a new hope when he storms the blockade runner would have made for a lot better drama overall in the trilogy. sure us old timers know the truth but for kids that started with the prequels this would have made things a lot more suspenseful i think.

Edited by BannersID
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What ever happened to the rumoured live action series, set between Sith and Hope?

Now, I realise the answer is 'it hasn't happened, as least, yet', but does anyone know what the lastest official news was? A definite no no? Can't see it going ahead now, has been too long.

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Special effects budget for the live action show deemed too expensive at this time, so no show. No studio has decided they have deep enough pockets, and the technology that can reduce the costs hasn't come along yet.

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I'm really trying not to have this be the "B!tc# about Star Wars thread". I LOVE Star Wars. Really really really. It says something that I can, and possibly have, written pages on Boba Fett and how horrible clones are, and how Karen Traviss actually made the Clone Wars mildly interesting before she was driven off.

PL, I understand what you're saying, and why you would feel that way, but I disagree. Jedi is my favorite. What you see as a remake, I see as a bookend with ANH. They compliment eachother. Which in itself is an argument for the prequels not to exist. They weren't needed.

Has anyone here seen Red Letter Media's SW reviews? They're brilliant.

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Has anyone here seen Red Letter Media's SW reviews? They're brilliant.

Yeah, they're pretty great -- the serial killer joke gets a bit annoying after a while, but his analysis is very smart, and entertaining. I especially liked the part where he asks people to describe the original trilogy characters and then the prequel ones, and the part about so many of the prequel scenes being people sitting on couches or slowly walking and talking, against some brilliant computer-animated backdrop they don't actually interact with, because of Lucas' comfy little green-screen room.

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My two favorite parts are when he dissects the purpose of lightsaber battles. They aren't about the pretty humming swords, it's the meaning behind them. And also the question of whether the PT needed to be told, and the answer is honestly no. But at this point they exist and there's nothing that can be done about that.

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PL, I understand what you're saying, and why you would feel that way, but I disagree. Jedi is my favorite.

I know this will come off as condescending and I really don't mean it that way but how old were you when you saw ROTJ? For what it's worth, I was 16. I had first seen TESB three years prior and ANH three years before that.

Imagine the Harry Potter films NOT growing up. Actually, imagine Harry and company getting older in the first couple films and then suddenly being recast with 10-year-old kids. That's how disappointed I was when I got to "the payoff" of ROTJ.

MY Han Solo was a rogue anti-hero who didn't hesitate to blast an enemy from under the table before swaggering out of a bar. This was a guy who had grown from disreputable smuggler to hero in the first film alone. Then in TESB, we fell in love with the arrogant lady's man with a shady past and even shadier acquaintances, the guy who managed to sweep a tough princess off her feet. He was tortured as bait and still managed to deck his "old friend" on the chin. I almost didn't recognize the guy in ROTJ. He seemed like a generic character from a sit-com, a parody of the guy from the first two films who was played exclusively for laughs. Williams music even underscored it during one of the Endor scenes. I agree with Harrison Ford; Solo should have died on Tatooine. That would have furthered the story in ways Lucas probably didn't imagine.

Then there's the Dark Lord. Vader was a pale shadow of his former bad-ass self. Though he was little more than Tarkin's lackey in the first film, he showed promise toward the end by being the only bad guy to sense the Force in Luke. Vader went relatively apeshit in TESB, killing his own officers as punishment and plotting to overthrow his master by seeking out Luke and attempting to recruit him. But somewhere between TESB and ROTJ, Vader had his balls chopped off. He went from trying to rule the galaxy with his son to handing him over on a silver platter like a tired old man with zero ambition.

Lucas is pretty good at deliberately retarding characters. Just ask Jar Jar. Even though ten years pass between TPM and AOTC, Jar Jar remains unchanged. The VFX guys presented Lucas with some tests of Senator Binks as a more mature, experienced being, less the clumsy buffoon we were introduced to (and many loathed) in Episode I and a bit more regal, befitting his new position. Lucas rejected it wholesale insisting that Jar Jar stay Jar Jar. Then again, aliens are largely set dressing for Lucas so it shouldn't come as a surprise.

And just so I'm not knocking the Saga entirely, there was one redeeming quality to Episode I. The best characterizations in the whole film took place during the pause in the final lightsaber battle. The combatants are forced to stop after being separated by timed force fields. While they wait, each one reveals their individual personality. Obi-Wan stays on his feet, eager to rejoin the fight. His master turns off his weapon and meditates, saving energy and gathering strength while Maul paces like a wild animal, never taking his eyes off his prey. Not a word of dialogue, just decent acting. If only the pod race could have been as enlightening.

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Jedi is your favorite TM2?! That explains a lot. Ewoks are sort of like naked children with fur...

I like Clone Wars. I don't love it, but I do like it. I was always very intrigued by "The Clone Wars" ever since Obi Wan uttered the words to Luke. I could just imagine all the adventure and action that I never got to see. Now I do. Sometimes its slow and seemingly for children, but it is on Cartoon Network. Obi Wan is an awesome character and I am glad I get to see more of his life through even this animated world.

Its not for everyone, but nobody is forcing anyone to watch it. End of that bitch session...

I am an old school SW fan, but even I can enjoy the EU without taking it too seriously.

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My favorite is Jedi. I won't deny that Empire is better, but I still like Jedi the best (Much how I won't deny TDK is better than batman Begins but I like BB better) I loved every moment of the Palace scene, the space fight at the end, the speeder bike. The only three aspects I collect out of SW (to keep my sanity) are Biker Scouts, Boba Fett and Slave Leia, all of which are plentiful in Jedi. I loved the incomplete Death Star, so menacing. Yes, there are some questionable parts, the pacing of the scenes, and Ewoks. Oh jeeze, the Ewoks. Apocalypse Endor please.

As for Han Solo, PL, I see it as a maturing of the character. He went from having nothing to live for but himself to finding a greater purpose in life. Like Flynn Rider in Tangled. But I can understand your points.

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Shane, why does you having seen star wars in the 70s make your sometimes enjoyment of clone wars more poignant? How serious is too serious, and what constitutes just a serious enough?

It is still very much a shame that everyone else imagined the actual Clone Wars to have been a bit spectacular; even ignoring both television series based on the event, what we saw of it in the actual films was so forgettable. Happy to include the prequels as EU, if thats the score.

I know what you mean PL, no clunky tired dialogue there, just talented actors. That scene is one that bothers me though, very probably more than it should... Qui Gon and Maul can casually fight their way all the way down, but Kenobi couldn't sprint through in one go, even with super jedi speed... could have saved his mentor there.

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I did not mean that the show is not serious. What I meant is that, well like anything, if you don't like it, don't hate on it. Just let it go and don't get so serious about it.

I didn't claim to being a SW fan of the 70's, as you say dj87. Afterall, A New Hope was the only film of the "70's" (you callin me old??). Where I was going with my "I'm old school" claim, is that its usually the "old school" guys who are hating on Clone Wars. Not always, but usually. I am lucky in that I saw A New Hope in the theater a few weeks after opening and I saw both Empire and Jedi on opening day. My Mom was great! However, this does not make me more of a SW fan. Never implied that.

I think this animated short is very interesting, but I get distracted by the anime designs and some of the "effects". I have my own issues with anime, not the artists themselves. Its definitely art, but I just don't care for it. To each his own.

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I think that's fair to say that the issues with it being anime can be non-reflective on it being SW. There's a looooooot of Anime I can't stand, but I've always been more interested in the story than what it looks like. Same with comics. Luke sent me a comic one time called Pop something. Weird, strange eclectic artwork that told amazing stories. One of the few issues I kept when I cleaned house.

Speaking of...

Edited by TM2 Dinobot
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