h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Egads, no! I was never lucky enough to have a jawa. One Bespin Guard (with the permanently bent saluting arm), a Hoth Han Solo, and a few Ewoks, but NEVER a jawa.

i'm glad to hear that. you'd probably have killed yourself if you had a jawa, and found out years later how much it was worth -

i have this 3" aunt beru figure that got mislabelled as anakin skywalker. i wonder how much it's worth now... or how much it'll be worth in twenty years' time.

(speaking of ewoks, have you seen the special edition of 'roj'? they'd extended the final celebration scene a bit - which was good - but they also replaced that really cute ewok celebration song with that bit of sad instrumental music, which i thought just totally ruined the mood of things . oh, and i have the lyrics to that ewok song, would you like it?)

I actually have the four CD set of the orginal film scores with some alternate takes. It has the Ewok celebration sung in english. Quite nice.

All in all I think the Special Editions both added and subtracted from the original films. On one hand, the plots were more fleshed out and holes were filled in. On the other hand, I'm not a fan of CGI when puppets and human could work as well or better.

Jabba was better as a puppet in Ep.6 than as a CGI in Ep.4: SE (Granted he was probably a better CGI than the heavyset, middleaged actor who originally shot the part). Puppets and real props look... well... real. CGI is not yet good enough to fool the human eye to making it feel real.

Take one of the final shots in Ep.2. A Clone troopers helmet then panning back to ranks of clone troopers... not offense to G.L., but if you're going to do a closeup USE A REAL HELMET! All in all Ep.2 felt too much like a cartoon to me (and that was with limited Jar-Jar).

I only hope they use real snakes, and not CGI, for the next Indiana Jones movie. That would truely be a travesty.

using cgi snakes for indy jones - shudders - they're actually going to make that? is harrison ford still going to be indy?

i know a lot of people weren't happy with the special edition re-release. i personally felt that george lucas overdid things a little too much. you know how, when you go back to a finished project and you think, 'hey, a little more could go in here', more often than not you end up ruining things? i know that, having more resources in the 90s, he wanted to introduce more creature diversity and all, but it felt so - artificial. and yes, those cgi characters move too smoothly to be convincing. give me a frank oz puppet yoda any day. (except for that lightsaber scene - that was cool)

Ford is signed to play Indy... Should be interesting.

CGI characters not only move too smoothly, but they seem almost gooey, like they're joints aren't really there (which, of course they aren't).

The muppets used in Jedi just seemed so real and believable, and because they were actually, physically there, the actors had something to play off of and interact with. That makes for a better performance on the humans' parts as well.

i agree wholeheartedly with you! somehow, that jerky movement you tend to get with puppets makes it easier for people to believe they're real. of course they tried to fake that with jar-jar, and look at what happened!

a lot of star warsians i know are still in denial where the prequels are concerned - they're trying to pretend they don't exist. we've sort of all made a pact to ignore all prequel books (novelisations and expanded universe), although we're still definitely going to see the third movie to see what happens (well, we can pretty much guess, but still).

Have you read "Splinter of the Mind's Eye" by Alan Dean Foster? It was written in the early eighties to fill in part of the gap between the movies.

With all of Lucas's desire to keep a tight control on timeline, so as not to cause timeline problems, I'm interested to see how Ep.3 fills in the gaps about the rise of Vader and how it agrees with this story. Should be interesting.

yeah, i've read 'splinter'. (i have practically all the books except for the children's jedi knight books and galaxy of fear) not the best, but not the worst either - that one by steve perry about the black sun criminal organisation was by far the worst of the lot.

"With all of Lucas's desire to keep a tight control on timeline, so as not to cause timeline problems, I'm interested to see how Ep.3 fills in the gaps about the rise of Vader and how it agrees with this (splinter) story." - have you read the bounty hunter books? (the boba fett books - mandalorian armour, slave ship, hard merchandise) apparently lucas wasn't sufficiently interested to keep a tight control on timeline and story continuity to have *his* own story conform to what was set. i dread to see what he'll do this time...