Star Wars DVD special edition... what did they cut in the bar?

[Deja Q]

I gathered Han doesn't "shoot first". :eyes: (ONLY HAN SHOOTS, GET OVER IT LUCAS!!)

And what about the scene where Obi Wan slices off the arm of a nasty critter, wanted in 12 systems for crimes? :D I hope that wasn't bleeped either...

The original isn't half-bad, now that I'm watching it again.

If only they kept the alien text conversion dialogue on screen than under the letterboxing bar below...

[Frank Cannon]

1. I only remember the heinous re-editing of the Greedo scene

That is probably the biggest tragedy in film history. That was the one scene that made kids around the world in July, 1977, gasp in collective amazement and say, "Wow, don't mess with that Han Solo guy!" And then a brain-damaged Lucas and his sycophantic minions went and RUINED THAT SCENE...for no comprehensible reason whatsoever.

I really, really want to hate George Lucas, but he was the one who gave us Star Wars in the first place. So I can only pity him and assume his insanity of the last 20 years or so is based on greed, a brain tumor, or some combination of the two.

[Deja Q]

2. Star Wars is a rehash

OTOH, it gave us a revitalized Star Trek franchise (the paramount execs wanting something sci-fi and there was their discarded Trek), Blake's 7, and a lot more...

Unfortunately most of Star Wars had to do with glossy effects over plot. Fortunately, the Kirk movies brought back decent plotlines in sci-fi movies...

[Frank Cannon]

3. Star Wars was a rehash of a lot of movies that had gone before

Westerns, WWII movies, "buddy" comedies, you name it...Star Wars took the best from a lot of movies. But then it added some back too.

In the very opening of Star Wars, when that HUGE rebel blockade runner appears on the screen, firing laser bolts at the MIND-SHATTERINGLY GIGANTIC Imperial Star Destroyer coming right up behind it...it was almost bowel loosening. I had never really seen anything like that back in July, 1977 (in the best theater I could find in rural Idaho). NO ONE had ever seen anything like that at the time. And so I will always appreciate George Lucas for giving me that experience and for kicking off greater heights of sci-fi/fantasy cinema. But for Lucas's own subsequent creative bankruptcy, I can only pity the "poor" guy.

[TheMightyFavog]

5. My Documentary prof says

Star wars was better when it was a Western. (he hates sci-fi, unlike my media law prof, who has Sci-Fi channel on in his offce constantly.

[mikeytherat]

10. Worst re-edit ever!

Not only was it done poorly (Greedo, two feet away and aiming at Han's head MISSES him), it ruined the development of Han's character.

I couldn't believe Lucas did that, and I'm glad I've still got the unblemished laserdisc version!

mikey_the_rat

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

19. Yeah it would've been cool if there was "Original" and "Lame-o" options on

the DVD.

But apparently Lucas felt strongly that the Han character, being a good guy, couldn't be the one who shot first (the question then arises, why the hell did you write and shoot it that way back in the day, dude?), hence the edit.

It illustrates that Lucas didn't use to be a complete lame hack, but he has become one over time.

[Squatch]

13. How did they change the scene?

the only scene I remember is Han Solo actually *dodging* Greedo's blaster shot while returning his own into Greedo's gut.

[Frank Cannon]

17. In the ORIGINAL film, Han is sitting with Greedo at the table...

calmly. Greedo has a gun on Han and is talking about how happy he is to have found him and how he's looking forward to turning him in to Jabba the Hutt. Han, meanwhile, is unholstering his gun under the table. Greedo says he's been waiting a long time for this moment. Han says, "Yeah, I'll bet you have," then suddenly frags Greedo in a cloud of blaster smoke. The whole cantina goes quiet, Han gets up calmly, tosses the bartender a coin, and says, "Sorry about the mess."

This scene establishes Han Solo as a cynical rogue who's not opposed to just murdering someone if it will save his a$$. It makes his character arc through the first three films all the more effective, because we eventually see that he becomes a truly good guy.

Lucas ruined the scene with his re-edit. Now Han only fires when fired upon, and not only do we see that he's a straight-up guy from the very beginning, but we see that the big bad bounty hunter who has caught Han is an inept idiot who can't hit a point-blank target from 4 feet away. Aside from the narrative travesty this creates, the effect just LOOKS stupid.

[Rabrrrrrr]

20. Yeah, Greedo the bouny hunter, from 2 feet away,

hits a point on the wall about 3 feet from Han.

Though, if one reads the books, one finds out that Greedo was actually on his first bounty hunt trying to get some money for food for his family. Which doesn't explain how Han knew his name and who he was working for, but what the hell, the books aren't canonical anyway.

But yeah, it's a totally fucking awful edit and changes Han's character so much as to not even be interesting.

[Bassic]

23. I never understood why he redid that.

Fucking retard.

[nytemare]

4. Wasn't there a scene added with Jabba the Hut?

Or is that just on the DVD?

[democracyindanger]

8. In the Mos Eisley starport

Solo and Chewie are prepping the Falcon and Jabba shows up with some henchmen to hassle Solo. It was a scene they originally shot, and Jabba was a man. They took the human Jabba out, put a CGI Jabba in, and even futzed with it so Solo 'steps' on Jabba's tail. It was awful.

[Frank Cannon]

9. Not to mention that it repeats the dialogue of the Greedo scene...

almost to the letter. There was absolutely no reason to include this scene, other than George Lucas wanted to masturbate with special effects some more.

[Bassic]

24. Bingo.

That is the only possible point of including that scene.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

6. It wasn't so much that they CUT, they added on edit, a scene of

Greedo drawing/shooting first.

If you remember the way the original scene unfolded was Han is stopped on his way out of the bar by Greedo. They sit back down at the table. Some conversation about Han owing Jabba money. Han slowly reaching for his blaster under the table. The conversation ends with Greedo talking about Jabba taking Han's ship as payment, Han says "over my dead body", Greedo says something like that can be arranged and is immediately fried by Han's blaster.

Conversations & music in the bar stop for a moment, then resume just as quickly. Han flips the barkeep a coin and says "Sorry about the mess".

Not only does the edit ruin the original scene, and the way it illustrated Han's character, but it looks stupid.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

7. Also, per an angry fan, one of the aliens was replaced

The wolfman in the cantina always bothered Lucas. I can't fault him for that. Allegedly the "alien" was nothing more than a man in a werewolf mask who was added as filler to the scene. It was a budget and time problem that Lucas always regretted. However, twenty years later he had the perfect idea to fix the scene. Replace the wolfman with a silly-looking dinosaur smoking from a bong! Lucas is so much happier with this brilliant alien that it even survived the 2004 cut of the Special Edition. Why include a familiar alien such as a Mon Calamari or a Sullustan when you can have a Rastafarian Velociraptor in its place?



Thankfully the Cantina scene's music hasn't been inappropriately changed as it was in Jabba's palace in Return of the Jedi (I'll get to that later). I was half expecting to hear The Black Eyed Peas's lyrics -- translated into Huttese -- coming out of the mouths of some dancing, urbanite Rodians.

http://www.chefelf.com/starwars/ep4se_1.php

[kay1864]

11. ITA agree with Frank Cannon

Worst. Edit. Ever. Changed Han Solo from a badass rogue to just another gunfighter in a bar.

AFAIK, the ONLY way to get the original, is in the widescreen VHS set--there is no DVD version with the REAL Han Solo, correct?

[hunter]

12. Am I crazy, or did one version have Princess Leia adjusting her bra?

Underneath Princess Leia's white gowns her undergarments had slipped a little bit... It was in the first Star Wars.

I suppose it could have been an outtake, or someone's parody, but it's a little stray memory in my head I can't track down.

[Rabrrrrrr]

14. I don't think she wears a bra in the first one -

I seem to remember her complaining about it in the commentary, that she couldn't wear a bra.

[hunter]

16. Well maybe she was just adjusting her gown...

Now I'm really distracted.

[Rabrrrrrr]

15. And there's also the adding of Haydn Christiansen at the end of Return

instead of the guy who played Annakin originally, when Yoda and Obi Wan and Annikan show up by the funeral pyre burning Darth Vader, it's now the haydn version of Annakin.

[kay1864]

18. Yep, that scene ticked me off too

I mean, it makes sense that we would see how Yoda and Obi Wan and Anakin looked at the time of their death (or at least as an adult), not how they looked as a teenager/young adult.

[Frank Cannon]

26. No kidding. Why didn't they bring back Ewan McGregor...

and young, digital Yoda? That still would have been completely stupid, but at least it would have been consistent. Now it's just inconsistently stupid.

[scarpa43]

29. Age of the spirits

The explanation that I have seen for adding Hayden as the spirit of Anakin is that that is what Anakin looked like when he died, after that age he was no longer Anakin, he was Darth Vader.

Kind of stretching it for me, to me if you leave the spirit as the older Anakin it shows that there was good in him all along, not just a quick change of heart right before he died.

[Bridget Burke]

21. Which is why Malcolm Reynolds rules....

He has been known to shoot first. And to shove a bad guy into the engine...

Besides, he looks good in tight pants.

[Rabrrrrrr]

22. Is that the Firefly guy?

I love the scene in the Firefly series where the lead guy shoves the idiot into the engine. Fucking hilarious! I about shit my pants when I first saw it, and rewound it probably ten times, laughing my ass off every time.

[Frank Cannon]

25. Have you seen the DVDs? The pilot episode has a couple...

of other moments just like that. Absolutely hilarious. And there's some other priceless "Mal" moments through the rest of the series.

Do NOT mess with Captain Malcolm Reynolds, particularly when he's having a bad day.

[Rabrrrrrr]

27. I've not only seen 'em - I own 'em!

And love 'em! It's really too bad they didn't have more than one season on that show. It deserved a lot more.

[Bridget Burke]

28. Firely didn't even have one whole season before cancellation...

One more reason to hate Fox...