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LotR/Hobbit Extended Editions vs Star Wars Special Editions


King Mark

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I'd never fallen asleep in a theater until I saw the first Lord of the Rings. At least it had a trailer for Attack of the Clones in front of it!

Like a colossal environmental hazard warning waking you up.

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I've always wondered if level-headed people in charge at 20th Century Fox could have actually prevented Lucas from altering the films, especially the original. Clearly, Lucas didn't pay for the original film himself. Fox did. Could they have stopped him from changing them around? When did he become owner of everything who can do whatever the fuck he wants?

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They probably knew they stood to make a boatload of money by re-releasing the movies in theater for the kids of the generation that grew up with the original version. Why would they say no to a sure thing? Artistic integrity of the unedited version wasn't profitable, and George would have sold them on letting him try out technology that he'd later use on his prequels. They needed to re-release the movies to build and gauge hype for the prequels.

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You could edit a pretty damn enjoyable film(s) out of the three Hobbit films, by removing some of the fat. It'd be harder to do that with the prequels.

That's one helluva point right there. I've recently been asking myself what really separates the Hobbit films from the SW prequels. You may have just nailed it on the head. PJ's got a lot of excess going on, no question, but there's still a good bit of substance at the heart of the thing, a solid story with characters and situations worth seeing. I believe you could actually cut it down from three films to two, and have what we should've been given from the start.

The problem with the prequels, on the other hand, isn't excess—though with all the CGI crap piled on the screen, it's easy to think that. It's actually the opposite, though. It's anemia. There is quite literally nothing there. If you were to try to cut the "fat" out of the prequels, you would wind up with nothing. There is no story. There are no characters. There's nothing of substance at the heart of those films. If you attempted to remove everything that was an unnecessary addition, at the first cut the whole thing would turn to dust and dissipate into thin air. It's all an illusion.

So the only modification I'd make to your statement above is that it wouldn't be "harder"; it would be impossible.

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"If someone talks about expanded versions of Lord Of The Rings, The Abyss or what ever no body panics because it's all "part of the plan". However, when someone mentions the Special Editions for the Star Wars Trilogy everyone loses their minds!"

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You could edit a pretty damn enjoyable film(s) out of the three Hobbit films, by removing some of the fat. It'd be harder to do that with the prequels.

That's one helluva point right there. I've recently been asking myself what really separates the Hobbit films from the SW prequels. You may have just nailed it on the head. PJ's got a lot of excess going on, no question, but there's still a good bit of substance at the heart of the thing, a solid story with characters and situations worth seeing. I believe you could actually cut it down from three films to two, and have what we should've been given from the start.

The problem with the prequels, on the other hand, isn't excess—though with all the CGI crap piled on the screen, it's easy to think that. It's actually the opposite, though. It's anemia. There is quite literally nothing there. If you were to try to cut the "fat" out of the prequels, you would wind up with nothing. There is no story. There are no characters. There's nothing of substance at the heart of those films. If you attempted to remove everything that was an unnecessary addition, at the first cut the whole thing would turn to dust and dissipate into thin air. It's all an illusion.

So the only modification I'd make to your statement above is that it wouldn't be "harder"; it would be impossible.

Also, one can talk about the lighthearted, sometimes silly, nature of the Hobbit films, but, save for naked dwarves and a few burps, it doesn't become tasteless. That's also what differentiates the Hobbit from the prequels, and the prequels from the originals, that the Hobbit and the SW originals don't take themselves as freaking serious as the SW prequels.

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Also, one can talk about the lighthearted, sometimes silly, nature of the Hobbit films, but, save for naked dwarves and a few burps, it doesn't become tasteless. That's also what differentiates the Hobbit from the prequels, and the prequels from the originals, that the Hobbit and the SW originals don't take themselves as freaking serious as the SW prequels.

The SW originals were always freaking serious for me. The jokes are also more mature than the prequels.

The hobbit films are several steps below even the prequels. They often felt like a parody of a real LOTR movie (bunny and radagast animal scenes, fake environment and CGI, dwarf jokes, Alfrid a character even worse than JarJar, the ridiculous completely unfunny laketown mayor, Super Mario Legolas, Batman Legolas, Dwarf forges sequence where all physical laws were discarded...)

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That's one helluva point right there. I've recently been asking myself what really separates the Hobbit films from the SW prequels. You may have just nailed it on the head. PJ's got a lot of excess going on, no question, but there's still a good bit of substance at the heart of the thing, a solid story with characters and situations worth seeing. I believe you could actually cut it down from three films to two, and have what we should've been given from the start.

That's what I used to think as well, before I saw the third film. But aside from the last 5 or 10 minute, that one seems nearly entirely unsalvagable to me.

On the other hand, the third one is on a similar level as the prequels (at times perhaps even the holiday special), so it's not really a factor in a discussion about the LOTR EEs.

That's also what differentiates the Hobbit from the prequels, and the prequels from the originals, that the Hobbit and the SW originals don't take themselves as freaking serious as the SW prequels.

That's also the root of nearly all of The Hobbit's problems though. It doesn't take itself seriously - meaning it's not just lighthearted, but it's bound to crack a lame joke in the middle of a tense sequence.

As for the SW SEs, I've always defended the general concept of revisiting older works. It's not like Lucas invented it - many artists decades and centuries before him did the same thing. Bruckner was famous for it (mostly out of necessity, when friends kept convincing him that his works were crap and he had to "mainstream" them - although he made sure all the original manuscripts were preserved). Tolkien did it all the time, and as far as I know, the original version of The Hobbit was unavailable until The Annotated Hobbit came out (or at least that was my first opportunity to read the original Gollum chapter). On the other hand, he did turn his rewrite into one of the most brilliant devices in all of literature.

But what it comes down to is: Nearly everything that was changed for the SW SEs was crap. It didn't fit the pacing, it didn't fit the style, it broke the narrative and at times it destroyed elaborate music sequences. And that's a big difference to the other cases.

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If the changes for the Star Wars: Special Edition were mainly a shot of the sandcrawler, extra moisture vaporators, the dewback scene, digital re-compositing, and the CGI additions for the end battle, would we have embraced it?

Empire didn't get much flack, but was pretty much left alone. Most of the 1997 changes to Empire are just inconsequential and overall feel pointless. The worst was easily Luke screaming like the Emperor.

Jedi had more of the baffling alterations that we saw in the original Star Wars, yet all of the weaker elements were left intact, if not made worse.

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I don't mind most of the changes to the Original Trilogy. The only thing I hated though was adding Hayden at the end of ROTJ and Jabba in Star Wars...


Lol... Alfrid worse than Jar-Jar! That's rich.

Dude Alfred is WAY better than Jar-Jar.

Edit: I also hate the "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" that they added for Vader before he saved Luke in ROTJ....

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"George Lucas destroyed the negatives of the original Star Wars trilogy when making the Special Editions in 1997."

Are you sure about that? I thought that myth was debunked.

He would not be able to do that. As Twentieth Century Fox paid for the film, they own it.

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The theatrical versions were just place holders. Work prints that stood in for the true versions Lucas always intended to release. But special effects were not advanced enough and Fox did not want to wait 20 years so they forced Lucas to release them.

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The theatrical versions were just place holders. Work prints that stood in for the true versions Lucas always intended to release. But special effects were not advanced enough and Fox did not want to wait 20 years so they forced Lucas to release them.

Digital technology exploded 20 years after the original film was released. The shock shifted the quality of the saga and everything was laid waste.

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Empire didn't get much flack, but was pretty much left alone. Most of the 1997 changes to Empire are just inconsequential and overall feel pointless. The worst was easily Luke screaming like the Emperor.

The edit that interrupts the Hyperspace buildup is one of the most annoying for me.

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Empire didn't get much flack, but was pretty much left alone. Most of the 1997 changes to Empire are just inconsequential and overall feel pointless. The worst was easily Luke screaming like the Emperor.

The edit that interrupts the Hyperspace buildup is one of the most annoying for me.

Oh ya forgot about that one too and it annoys me as well.

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