Disney: No.
Well I’m from Tatooine and I’ve never heard that before.
At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen?
I think I just threw up a little in my mouth….
Why would you want this!!!
It’s been like 15 years since I’ve seen it, but isn’t it the one with all the good memes?
It’s got several of them, and that’s the only redeeming quality.
I re-watched it recently, and was reminded just how bad it was. I only saw The Phantom Menace in the theatre, and the disappointment kept me away from the releases of the next two installments - money well saved.
I know the prequels have been meme’d to hell and are objectively ridiculous, but I’m not too proud to admit that I really like them.
Was it? Or was it just a breath of fresh air after the other two? And yes I did grow up with it, even saw it in theatre.
Aside from the logical inconsistencies, the plot holes, the (still) bad writing, the over-utilization of green screen that makes the whole production soulless and artificial, and the infamous “NOOOOOOO!” scene, it’s a great movie!
I think the resentment from fans came out of a feeling of missed potential. What people wanted was what they eventually put into the Clone Wars series: space adventures, complex characters, and the subtle corruption of a great hero.
What we got wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great. There was cheesy dialogue, convoluted storylines, and one-dimensional characters. Star Wars, like a lot of franchise films, benefits from the association with the wider universe. We, the fans, fill in gaps and references to backstory with the things we know without it appearing on the screen. But it also suffers from the comparison and expectations we have.
Take the reveal of Vader/birth of the twins at the end. Seeing Vader rise from the table, and hearing James Earl Jones’ voice for the “first” time was genuinely cool because we have all seen the original trilogy. The interspersed delivery scene draws parallels between Luke and Leia being born with Vader being born.
Taken in a vacuum, if you had no idea who Vader was, it would all seem a bit silly, because “Darth Vader” was actually “born” several scenes ago when he killed Mace Windu and then mass-murdered a school full of children.
At the same time, we know what Vader looks and sounds like. Drawing out the reveal feels slightly overdramatic. Then you get the whole “she’s lost the will to live” and that “Noooooo!” and people are rolling from laughter instead of wiping away tears.
That’s like the whole movie. Anything good or bad is made simultaneously better and worse by association. How you view the movie depends on how that association makes you feel. If you love Star Wars and want to love the Prequels, you will.
Everything cool about them is despite George Lucas not because of him. Sure the battles are cool, the CGI scenes are cool, but the prequels were wayyyyyy too much a direct implementation of what Lucas thought was going to be good to ever have been good lol.
The original Star Wars movies were better because Lucas wasn’t famous yet and had to actually listen to the people around him.
Don’t get me wrong, the original trilogy is the best by far. I was just the right age to enjoy the prequels when they came out, so maybe it’s the nostalgia talking. I rewatch them every few years and enjoy them every time.
I could watch 4 hours of RotS but no way could I make it through 4 hours of Phantom Menace.
Lucas won’t even let you see the original Star Wars without his CGI additions. Lucas has lied to deflect from being criticized for his decisions.
Harmy and the 4k77 project have illegally done what Lucas refuses to do.
I thought he manually edited the masters, so the original Star Wars without CGI additions no longer exists.
I do love the Harmy Despecialized editions. Also check out the Anti-Cheese edits of the prequels.
The cheese is why the prequels are fun to watch though! We’ve all worked through our collective trauma about how trashy the prequels are, now we’re ready for good ol fashioned hate watching.
You can destroy the negatives with extra processing but you can’t destroy the prints. Lucas has original prints and if he didn’t he had the millions to acquire them. If fans did it, Lucas could have.
The rumor I heard decades ago (so a mountain-sized grain of salt) was that he didn’t want to admit he fucked up the originals when making the specialized editions, and just acted like he didn’t want to release remastered theatrical versions. He was also fiercely defensive of the specialized versions, saying that they were closer to his “vision” than the originals.
Master negatives can create higher resolutions than what you get from the prints. The fan-made versions did a ton of upscaling from the best quality digital versions they could find.
Also check out the Anti-Cheese edits of the prequels.
Why would you want that? People nowadays have no appreciation for theatre…
Because there’s a better movie under that layer of veiled racism and slapstick.
I’ve always loved the Harmy version but recently I watched 4K77 without noise reduction. My god… so much grain!
I loooved the grain. It made me feel like I was a kid again watching it for the first time in the theatre.
In hindsight, all of media used to have this “meh, close enough” attitude about it: Vinyl LPs, audiotape, broadcast TV, film, iffy projectors at the local theater, AM radio, it all had limitations well within the range of human perception. Plus, everything the consumer got was a lossy copy of something else. Everything had noise, and everything cost some amount of fidelity no matter what you did. In light of this, “authenticity” is really a No True Scotsman argument, where we argue forever about intent, the optimal fidelity for the time, and what one would have experienced.
Come to think of it, an easy approximation for a time machine is to buy some aviator frames, smear some Vasaline on the lenses, and stuff your ears with some cotton.
In light of this, “authenticity” is really a No True Scotsman argument,
4k77 isn’t a no true Scotsman because it is a scan of a print that was played in theaters. If you digitally scanned a photo of the Mona Lisa, it would be a more authentic copy than a Photoshopped version that removed the brush strokes and replaced the blurred background with new high detailed images.
smear some Vasaline on the lenses, and stuff your ears with some cotton.
Had you watched movies in theaters before 2013? Film projectors were fine. The sound quality was fine. A movie filmed and projected in 35mm film was higher quality than the 1080p digital version of Phantom that was in theaters in 1999.
Lucas won’t even let you see the original Star Wars without his CGI additions.
My VHS tapes say otherwise.
Sharing is caring!
A New Hope https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QWVH3JajvLZx6IKMf_XXKhAAumwEo3NH/view?usp=sharing
Empire strikes back https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H5b1LmH7FcYVm4qIj7FgMZuOt3Mo4LAy/view?usp=sharing
Return of the jedi https://drive.google.com/file/d/14soyrTUubC02_vImP1aRbtdI_lY1CDqa/view?usp=sharing
It likely was. That and the ego of someone who wanted to be Steve Wozniak but was really a Steve Jobs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmy's_Despecialized_Edition
He’s doing God’s Work.
