mathmat

Thank you very much Sulky. I really appreciate it. You're awesome.

Hi. Does anyone know of a website that has the liner notes for the expanded ESB and RofJ CDs? Thanks.

The CGI effects MUST be improved and they can and will be. (Hopefully on the DVD release.) The questions to ask are if 30 years down the road we want new people to have the same type of passion for the Trilogy that we have today, if we want merchandiding of all sorts to continue, and if we want these types of forums to still exist. If not, leave the films alone. Personally, I would love to see the MTVers talking about the originals in 30+ years. But I don't think that's too realistic a thing to hope for. We can't have the best of both worlds. Something has to be traded. Like Lucas I want to see Star Wars remain a prominent part of the public consciousness. And just for the record, even though I'm arguing for the SE I do NOT prefer it to the original. I'm still not sure if I'm even going to buy it. (Luckily I have the originals on laserdisc and was able to use a DVD recorder to make myself same quality DVD-Rs.) But I can definitely see the originals being released on DVD in the next few years due to public outcry, but only for a limited time. And only after everyone has bought the SEs.

Do you think that if the battle scenes and other FX scenes in The Lord of the Rings weren't as amazing and convincing as they were then, regardless of how good the story was, the movies would have been the successes they were?

Have you never eagerly anticipated watching a movie only to be disappointed in the film by its lack of realism?

King Kong and most of those early FX movies are hardly even rented anymore. They are more historical references than anything else. Do we want the Trilogy to become just an historical reference? I'm not saying that will happen for sure, but it's a pretty safe bet.

As we all know, one of the reasons Lucas claims for making the Special Editions is that he wasn't able to make the movies the way he wanted to (due to a lack of technology.) This on its own only holds a little bit of water. But I do, however, believe that there is justification for making the SEs (and even the soon to be released "improved" SEs.) I will also be so bold as to say that the SEs are necessary. Now I'm not saying that I don't like the original versions. They always have been and always will be my favorite movies. I remember in 10th grade going to the local video store about once a month and not just renting Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, but renting a VCR to watch them on. And then there was the day of days, March 28, 1985. (You 30+ people know what I'm talking about.) There's Star Wars, and then there's everything else. When we saw those movies in the theaters and on videotape they were state of the art. However, times change. The special effects of today are simply incomparable to those of 20-25 years ago. My greatest fear is that somewhere down the road some young kid will put the original trilogy into his DVD player and start laughing hysterically as to how "fake" everything looks and come away thinking that what he saw was some kind of joke comedy as opposed to what we all know the Trilogy is. I'm afraid that if we want new generations to embrace the Trilogy the way we all did, the movies will have to look as convincing as any other film out there. It's all about suspension of disbelief. Now don't get me wrong. I'm totally against adding/changing/removing scenes and it would be a travesty among travesties to do anything to the score. But I think we need to put our own selfish desires for the original Trilogy aside and think of the future of the 3 greatest movies of all time.

3 questions: 1.) I was wondering if anybody knows where to find the music, preferably note-for-note, from the double Star Wars and Empire LPs and Jedi single LP on the SE CDs. I have the Polydor CDs as well as the SE CDs and did my own comparison using iTunes. However, since the Polydor Empire CD is missing 7 tracks from the double LP, I don't know where those tracks are on the SE Empire CD. Also I'd like to make sure I didn't make any mistakes. (If anybody wants my comparisons I can possibly email them or post them, though give me a bit of time.) 2.) Besides the missing 7 tracks on the Polydor Empire CD, are the rest of the tracks on the three Polydor CDs identical note-for-note to the corresponding tracks on the three LPs? I ask this because I noticed that "Training of a Jedi Knight" on the double LP has a time listing approximately 10 seconds longer than on the Polydor CD. Also, on the Empire CD from the Anthology Box, "Training of a Jedi Knight" contains about 11 seconds (approx 2:22-2:31) not on the Polydor CD, and "Finale" has about 10 seconds less than on the Polydor CD (approx 1:22-1:33). 3.) Does anyone know why tracks on the SE CDs that should be identical to the corresponding ones on the Polydor CDs often have discrepancies of a few seconds? For example, in "Throne Room/End Title", 5:18 on the Polydor CD corresponds to (approx) 5:21 on the SE CD. This is seen in just about all tracks comparisons. I grew up listening to the Polydor records, so those will always be the "true" Star Wars soundtracks to me. Unfortunately, the Polydor Empire CD is missing 7 tracks and the sound quality of the Polydor CDs isn't as good as the SE CDs. That's why I'm asking these questions. Any help is greatly appreciated.