Jedi Rocks vs. Lapti Nek

[Sandor 796]

Ok, I'll be honest from the start: I don't like either song.

However, since Jedi Rocks is the only piece of released music from the Star Wars saga that wasn't composed by Williams I've started comparing it to Lapti Nek these past days. And in the process I've come to enjoy Lapti Nek a whole lot more (still is an annoying song, but still...).

Jedi Rocks starts out "ok", but goes nowhere. Lapti Nek feels like a complete song (though it was chopped down in the film edit).

Which one do you like more, and why?

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

Both are mediocre, but I guess Lapti Nek takes the edge for not being shoved in my face the way Jedi Rocks is. As a standalone listen, neither gets me particularly excited.

[Jeshopk 8]

Lapti Nek was very sleazy, as it was intended. It helped describe Jabba's palace, moved the story along. Jedi Rocks sounded like GE Smith and the Saturday Night Live Band performing with the Muppets, which is just fucking mindblowingly heinous to put in a Star Wars film. Stops the story dead in its tracks.

[Nick Parker 3,040]

A comparable poll:

"Which would you rather crush your hand with?"

A rock

A hammer

That being said, "Lapti Nek" is a guilty pleasure of mine. I cannot say the same of "Jedi Rocks".

[Ollie 1,059]

"Jedi Rocks" is one of the most embarrassing moments in the Star Wars series. Thank god Williams had nothing to do with it.

Lapki Nek isn't the best either but at least it fit the film much better and it was kept short and simple.

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

Lapti Nek

Jedi Rocks on the other hand is completely terrible. Even the alien voices sound way too over-the-top for Star Wars.

[Bowie 45]

Lapti Nek. And it's good quality music and a lot of fun, despite the knee-jerk/groupthink/elitist reaction some of you might have.

[John Crichton 4]

A comparable poll:

"Which would you rather crush your hand with?"

A rock

A hammer

I can't top that, and won't try.

[Jay 37,309]

Lapti Nek, obviously

Why wasn't this done as a poll??

[Henry B 50]

Lapti Nek. And it's good quality music and a lot of fun, despite the knee-jerk/groupthink/elitist reaction some of you might have.

It's pretty much 80s workout video music. Wait, I forgot: it IS workout music. What kind of crime lord would listen to that? Especially a fat one like Jabba. Working out is probably the last thing he wants to hear about. By the way, no need to defend your idol; Lapti Nek was written by his son, Joseph. Both Lapti Nek and Jedi Rocks are catchy, kinda okay songs but it's a disgrace that there was a need for them to be written in the first place.

"I thought [it] would be funny [to have a musical number] in the middle of a Star Wars film."

Moron.

[Ollie 1,059]

"I thought [it] would be funny [to have a musical number] in the middle of a Star Wars film."

Moron.

He had it right with the Cantina Band in Star Wars.

Of course this is the man who put a night club in AOTC that had big screen monitors on the wall and one of them featured droids playing football.

[Henry B 50]

Cantina Band... I don't think of it as a musical number, just source music that's briefly highlighted. Same for Lapti Nek, but at least Williams made Cantina Band sound otherworldly. Also, Cantina Band has a narrative function as it sets the tone for the happenings in the bar, playing into Luke's nervousness around all those weird aliens. Jedi Rocks has no purpose whatsoever, unless its purpose was to make me kill myself. Well done, Lucas, well done.

[BurgaFlippinMan 7]

Lapti Nek is way less bad.

Forget Greedo shooting first, the abominable CG Jabba in SW and all the other 'crimes' of the SE, nothing tops Jedi Rocks in terms of sheer awfulness.

[Diego 21]

Lapti Nek by far, with very, very few exceptions everything that was added to the Special Editions or the DVDs suck and make the movies worse.

[BurgaFlippinMan 7]

To be honest I didn't really mind the CG X-Wings of SW....I didn't find them obnoxious.

[Ollie 1,059]

Problem is, there was nothing wrong with the originals.

[JoeinAR 1,949]

exactly

[Diego 21]

Yeah, the X-Wings are allright, specially if compared to the other crap that was added, but even then they went the lazy way and I believe every CG X-Wing has R2-D2 in them. Still prefer the original version though.

[BurgaFlippinMan 7]

Problem is, there was nothing wrong with the originals.

Nope, not really. Well, they did move a little slowly.....and the new CG ones do blend in with the look rather well and add some dynamism. I think those X-Wings are just about the only thing about the SEs which doesn't actually bother me

[Wojo 2,453]

I don't mind the added snub fighters at the Battle of Yavin. I don't mind the CGI Falcon taking off from Mos Eisley, or the hustle and bustle added to that city. I don't mind the extended wampa attack, or the CGI stuff added to Bespin. But that's about it. I think I dislike everything else.

[Diego 21]

I hate the Bespin Shuttle scenes, those really disrupted and fucked the pace of the movie.

[BurgaFlippinMan 7]

I don't like the CG Falcon taking off. The added Mos Eisley crowd I didn't mind too...until the stupid Jawa falls over. But yea. I don't mind the Bespin windows and the Falcon fly through either. I'd take the shorter Wampa sequence though. I guess the new Jabba's barge wasn't bad either, and I very slightly prefer Victory Celebration over Yub Nub.

[Sandor 796]

LOL I could have known this thread would result in another summing up of all things bad about the Special Editions!

I'll join in then: I think the added Jabba scene is one of the most annoying scenes I've ever seen. It's badly acted and the fact that they had to redo the CGI Jabba merely a few years after the release of the SE just shows that even Lucas felt there was something wrong with the CGI Jabba. It still doesn't work though: the new DVD version of Jabba is just as bad. But besides all of that: the dialogue just goes nowhere. It merely repeats more or less what Han and Greedo had discussed during the scene before it. Lucas (or Gary Kurtz) made the right decision to remove the scene from the original print. Putting it back 20 years later purely to show some new CGI effects hurts the flow of the film tremendously.

Greedo shot first:

I mostly approve of only the matte-line corrections (Rancor), the transparancy corrections (snowspeeders) or the fixing of missing effects (making Vader's white saber at the end of ANH the proper red for example. Just too bad Luke all of a sudden gets a white/green lightsaber aboard the Falcon), and I approve of the new soundmix mostly, but why does Leia's blaster all of a sudden sound like a .44 Magnum or something during the "We got to get across"-scene or is her diaologue mixed out during the "Chewie chokes Lando"-scene? Etc.

Sigh. It's the inconsistancy, the sloppy nature of the SE, that makes me return to the original versions all the time.

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

I hate the new THX color pallet of the DVDs (and Special Editions--basically all versions post-1997). Everything looks very, very wrong and there's really no way to correct it with your monitor ("fixing" one scene will make another look even worse). It's all crushed blacks and boosted colors that look ridiculous. Plus there's a blue tint. They made it look uglier in my opinion.

[Ollie 1,059]

The problem is, you have 1977, 1980 and 1983 films with visuals of that era.

You then add 1997 CGI technology. It sticks out like a sore thumb.

At least the personal who worked on the ST:TMP's Director's Cut had the brains to make the additional effects look the same as a film that was made in 1978.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Yes. While not completely flawless, the new CGI additions in TMP blend in very well.

BTW, I saw a new dvd release of TMP. Apparently the original cut. Glad to see it's finally out there.

[Charlie Brigden 7]

Both are fucking awful. The idea to have a musical number in Jabba's palace is just about what I'd expect from post-ESB Lucas.

[paleo 63]

Whereas I don't like either of them, Lapti Nek fits in Jabba's Palace much better than Jedi Rocks (and is closer to the other source music heard in the Palace and on the sail barge).

As for the SE, the idea of adding new visual effects never really bothered me so much. However, I really wish they

- had put a little more effort into creating the effects, which even for 1997 looked pretty bad already (and are now terribly dated in most cases)

- had been consistent! Why would you exchange the writing with Star Wars letters in some scenes, but not in others? Why do some of the dogfight scenes above the Death Star look now fairly decent, whereas others are bad 70's effects, both being mixed arbitrarily. Why does the same big window in Cloud City shows an outside elevator and buildings in one shot, but then suddenly a translucent glass pattern? Continuity, anyone ?!?

- had not missed so many opportunities, instead adding lots of unnecessary stuff (I mean, shouldn't they have removed the awful "3D" plans of the Death Star in the briefing scene of ANH first? Or fixed that bad AT-ST explosion in RotJ etc. etc.? Instead we get Jedi Rocks...)

- had left Greedo alone!

That said, I really like how they made e.g. cockpits more transparent, removed (some) matte lines and boxes, and improved the sound quality (sadly also not consistently)

[Trent B 337]

I've never really cared for neither source cues. Then again I mostly don't like source cues from any film as a lot of them can be annoying and tend to drive me up the wall.

The only exception I've found that I like source cues is "Like Sea Monkey's" and "Genesis Project" from Superman Returns.

[Nick Parker 3,040]

"Swing, Swing, Swing" is awesome.

[Red 75]

"Lapti Nek" is the less horrible of the two.

[indy4 155]

"Swing, Swing, Swing" is awesome.

[scallenger 481]

Lapti Nek is a MILLION times better than Jedi Rocks! Where I hear Lapti Nek, it is a stupid little song, but it does kind of go with the atmosphere of that part of the film. Strange, weird, and yet kind of fun in a crazy way. But this Jedi Rocks song... it annoys the f*ck out of me! Seriously, it drives me insane! That is one of the major reasons why I can't watch the special edition of Return of the Jedi!

Paleo made some very good points on why the SEs are pointless and complete missed opportunities. I would have loved it if they just removed all of the matte lines and updated the dated explosions and such, but all of this "new" stuff in the background, and adding characters, and changing characters, and messing with Greedo... totally left field and not needed for... well... anyone but George Lucas, apparently!

Best bit of the SEs: removing of the matte lines for the Rancor on the DVD. It looked much more realistic! Tied with the new added shots of the Wampa on Hoth... glad it actually wasn't CG, that they actually made a puppet!

Worst bit of SEs: Jedi Rocks, tied with adding young, prequel Anakin at the end of ROTJ, along with the "galaxy-wide" celebration shots.

[Datameister 2,037]

I'd rather listen to Jedi Rocks...the first part, of it at least. It does change into a totally different song after the "Whoops, uh-oh!"

[Ollie 1,059]

"Swing, Swing, Swing" is awesome.

"Swing, Swing, Swing" is not a source cue. It was composed to follow the action on screen.

[Greg1138 3]

Lapti Nek has a somewhat "alien" quality to the music....suits the atmosphere well for me....Jedi Rocks is fun stuff but doesn't belong in the movie at all....and actually pulls me OUT of the movie more than any other addition to any of the 3 films.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

Jedi Rocks is a super pile of shit. Makes my ears bleed. I don't think I've heard Lapti Nek.

[pixie_twinkle 48]

Well I'll attempt to even things out a little by admitting I prefer Jedi Rocks, but that isn't saying much.

[Datameister 2,037]

By the way, I was just watching the original VHS release of Star Wars (an infrequent activity for me), and my reaction was the same as it's been in the past - the modifications to the end battle aren't bad. (What's bad is Lucas' insistence on not making his film available in its original form.) To my eye, the CGI blends in pretty well with the practical model work, and most of the replaced shots were pretty dated. Again, I'd really like BOTH versions to be available, but I think the updating process itself works just fine in that particular scene.

[bruckhorn 105]

If Lucas has stuck with "cleaning up" the special effects shots, rather than replace and reedit, the fanbase would have been a lot easier on him.

A friend of mine took the old CAV laserdiscs, burned them to DVD, and sent me a copy. I was surprised that he sent me a copy (I didn't know he still had laserdiscs) and chuckled when I read the accompanying note: "Fuck George Lucas."

[Ollie 1,059]

Jedi Rocks is a super pile of shit. Makes my ears bleed. I don't think I've heard Lapti Nek.

Unless you have the 4 disc Anthology or have seen the original Jedi, then no you haven't.

[Datameister 2,037]

You can also hear it by playing the Mos Eisley "hunt" battle in Battlefront II!

[Nick Parker 3,040]

That was actually the first time I (consciously) heard it. I thought to myself, "Sweet Golly Moses, this is not Star Wars music! Is this some kind of glitch!?"

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Aaaahhhh...the memories.

[Datameister 2,037]

Which, I believe, are the key to why so many of you prefer "Lapti Nek."

[Mr. Breathmask 555]

I'd seen the Special Edition many times before seeing the original cut. I'd heard Jedi Rocks many times on the SE soundtrack release, but not Lapti Nek. And still I "prefer" the latter.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Yes it's rubbish.

Yes it has no place in a Star Wars film.

But it kinda puts a smile on my face if I'm in the right mood.

[Koray Savas 2,251]

It sounds like a Michael Jackson song.

[Henry B 50]

You can also hear it by playing the Mos Eisley "hunt" battle in Battlefront II!

Oh, I don't know if that's such a good idea.

[Datameister 2,037]

It's a totally silly but fun battle!