The Official Boycott Star Wars Bluray thread

It would be fun if Lucas' motive for these changes was to outrage people so much that it provoked laws into place that forbid editing of classic movies...

Not bloody likely, though. Bah, I'm grasping at straws..
 
Only reason I've preordered the blu ray trilogy is the add on disc and the possiblity to may identify more things propwise.

Artistically he ruined them.
 
Solo4114 said:
... if he hummed a few bars of whatever had popped into his head for John Williams and then said "Now take that and adapt it for an orchestra."
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This is sort of what John Williams did do with Herbert Spencer ( the guy who DID write all the orchestral parts)! It's strange how film score orchestration is considered kind of like catering is. No one cares who orchestrated Williams' piano compositions for SW, in the same way no one cares who did the catering. Indeed many people are oblivious to the fact that Williams did not do the orchestration. That never seemed fair to me, especially since classical composers are judged massively on their ability to orchestrate.
 
micdavis said:
And which version of the original do you save? The 70mm version, the scope 35, the flat 35 for TV, the 16mm version with the mono soundtrack?

There are at least five versions I've seen.

Now who gets to decide.
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Well, the 16mm and flat 35 for TV can be ignored for a start.

The 70mm will do. I don't give a fig about the differences between the various '77 releases. I probably wouldn't even notice them. From what I can gather, the differences are minute and don't cause any meaningful variation in the quality of the art. So long as a '77 release is saved, that's what counts, because what we're after is pure, unsullied '77 texture, and all the versions will give us that.
 
Colin Droidmilk said:
This is sort of what John Williams did do with Herbert Spencer ( the guy who DID write all the orchestral parts)! It's strange how film score orchestration is considered kind of like catering is. No one cares who orchestrated Williams' piano compositions for SW, in the same way no one cares who did the catering. Indeed many people are oblivious to the fact that Williams did not do the orchestration. That never seemed fair to me, especially since classical composers are judged massively on their ability to orchestrate.
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I never knew that. I thought Williams did the arrangements and everything.

But that gets back at what I'm saying -- collaborative efforts raise complicated ethical/moral issues with respect to art. And the debate about which individual has the ethical/moral right to muck about with the product also neatly sidesteps the whole issue of whether such a right ought exist in the first place with respect to the audience's relationship with the art.


The thing I keep coming back to with Lucas' revisions -- and the thing that, I think, makes many of the other revised versions of films out there less objectionable, is the fact that those other versions don't seem to actively try to suppress and replace the historical versions. Like, nobody cares that Coppola did Apocalypse Now: Redux because it's PURELY offered as a curio and does not replace the historical version (which in my opinion is genuinely better). With Lucas, you can't GET the non-mucked-with editions done in a resolution that's fit for modern TVs and modern media devices. The LD rips are lower resolution than DVDs, and there's no blu-ray option for anything that isn't the SE.

I find it interesting that Lucas appears to treat STar Wars as a perpetual project now. I can't tell whether he makes his changes for pure marketing purposes, out of boredom/whimsy, or because he genuinely believes that they're improvements when he makes them.

I mean, even if you set aside some of the "big deal" changes (IE: Greedo getting off a shot), it doesn't make a ton of sense that he'd spend his money on things like....putting rocks in front of R2, changing the Obi-Wan scream again, adding eyelids to Ewoks, embiggening Jabba's door, etc. Honestly? These are the things he thinks are worth fixing, while other technical issues like consistent color timing and black levels remain unaddressed?

I mean, are THESE the artistic licenses we're supposed to be protecting? Is THIS the artistic integrity that must not be abused?
 
So how's the boycott going?

Any progress? LFL in financial collapse yet? It's been a week?

Yeah, that's what I thought.
 
Colin Droidmilk said:
Of course. They're simply not interested in such issues, in the same way that most people have no clue who built the Acropolis or when or why it's important. But Pericles' achievement is logged and understood by historians. Lucas is making it increasingly difficult for film historians to log his achievement. The fact that the historical aspect has no interest for the masses is irrelevant, since it's an issue for historians of film.
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Well said. The ignorance of the majority should not be allowed to dictate our cultural heritage.

Mic, the point isn't to bring down Lucasfilm. I WANT to support Lucas. The man has brought me a lot of joy. The point is to register our displeasure. Like when Star Trek TOS was going to be cancelled, fans protested and saved it. Or fan support getting Serenity made. I've said it a dozen times: PROTEST CAN WORK.
 
Solo4114 said:
I find it interesting that Lucas appears to treat STar Wars as a perpetual project now. I can't tell whether he makes his changes for pure marketing purposes, out of boredom/whimsy, or because he genuinely believes that they're improvements when he makes them.
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Lucas' 'perpetual project' as you rightly call it, while destructive to his films, is conceptually quite interesting. Conceptual art would love it. The work is never finished, never presented to the audience for a final judgement, yet that audience is experiencing the work constantly, for decades! This is a curious paradox and a strange re-ordering of the usual dynamic of: artist presents piece, audience judges, piece takes its place in history and freezes. It's the kind of thing contemporary art critics get the hots for. Lucas should submit his entire SW revising enterprise to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Not the movies, obviously, but his activity. They'd eat it up, lol...(they've eaten worse up, God knows.)
 
Maybe we should get a petition together or something, like Mic said. With the intraweb and that, maybe we could get thousands of signatures and that, like they do for saving the whales and stuff. And we'd word it nice, like. Nothing hostile or angry, just, "hey Mr. L, we respect your right to pursue your vision, but a lot of us would just like the old films we grew up with too, imagine how you'd feel if all your beloved Flash Gordon serials were under threat etc. etc."
 
Colin Droidmilk said:
Lucas' 'perpetual project' as you rightly call it, while destructive to his films, is conceptually quite interesting. Conceptual art would love it. The work is never finished, never presented to the audience for a final judgement, yet that audience is experiencing the work constantly, for decades! This is a curious paradox and a strange re-ordering of the usual dynamic of: artist presents piece, audience judges, piece takes its place in history and freezes. It's the kind of thing contemporary art critics get the hots for. Lucas should submit his entire SW revising enterprise to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Not the movies, obviously, but his activity. They'd eat it up, lol...(they've eaten worse up, God knows.)
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Yeah, I have to admit, as a concept, it's pretty intriguing. Wasn't that the idea that Disney had for Fantasia, originally? An ever-evolving collection of musical pieces set to animation (or vice versa). It's a neat concept, but it doesn't do much for folks who "imprint" with a certain version of the piece.

Colin Droidmilk said:
Maybe we should get a petition together or something, like Mic said. With the intraweb and that, maybe we could get thousands of signatures and that, like they do for saving the whales and stuff. And we'd word it nice, like. Nothing hostile or angry, just, "hey Mr. L, we respect your right to pursue your vision, but a lot of us would just like the old films we grew up with too, imagine how you'd feel if all your beloved Flash Gordon serials were under threat etc. etc."
Click to expand...

Honestly, I don't think there's much point. He can't NOT know at this point that there is a contingent out there that dislikes the modified versions and wants something approaching the unaltered versions set for the most current generation of media players. He knows, at least, that there's a market out there for them, as evidenced by the 2006 LD rip release. Whether that was done to combat ebay piracy or to fill the market void, either way, he knows there's a market for them. He just doesn't care to cater to that market.

In a way, the 2006 "DVD" release was pretty ingenious. It gave the public what it was already purchasing, thereby cutting down on ebay piracy, while simultaneously denying the public a version of the films that could be easily ported to hi-def picture and sound quality. Now, unless people are working off of actual film prints or somehow cobbling together shots from mixed versions of different resolutions, I don't know how someone would piece together the "theatrical" version and distribute it to the general public. And you'd have to figure that if they tried, LFL's legal dept. would be all over them like stink on...rice. In essence, he headed off the threat of large scale piracy by essentially releasing a version that's a technological generation behind the then-current generation, and which now can't effectively be used to fill a void for the current technological generation.

Anyway, at best, I think a petition would raise his awareness...but I think he's already aware of the market for them. He just doesn't care.
 
I stole this from FB so apologies if its been posted already. Just thought it was the right mixture of funny and truth.

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I don't know that I will boycott but to me this is like colorizing Casablanca and Gone with the Wind ... Leave it alone!!!
 
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