Star Wars Episode VIII: A New I Sure Hope the Fans Don't Kill Me for All the Changes I Made on Blu-Ray

In only one week people everywhere will be granted the privilege to re-re-purchase the Star Wars saga, when all six episodes are released for the first time on Blu-Ray! Well, all people who have a Blu-Ray player and an HDTV, anyway, and that doesn't include me. But, hey, it's the big news in the nerd-o-spheres, so I've been keeping up with it.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Star Wars re-release without George Lucas making more tweaks and changes to the series, including CGI Yoda in Episode I and Darth Vader yelling "Noooooooo!" when he tosses the Emporer into the reactor shaft at the end of Return of the Jedi.

It goes without saying that fans across the internet are in an uproar. Why change something that so many people hold as a cherished memory, that doesn't really need changing in the first place? I've heard it said that Lucas is an artist, and that an artist is never satisfied with his own work. That is often true, but if that's the case then the artist should also realize that he'll never be satisfied, no matter how much he changes it, so he might as well leave it as it is (especially if so many people like it already).

I don't really mind the changes...most of them. I've no doubt that Vader's yell in Jedi, being as cheesy as it is, will mar the scene. The technical changes, though, like making Ewoks blink, or the enhancements to the special effects in the Special Edition versions from the 90s, don't bother me at all; after all, I'm sure Ewoks would have blinked if they'd had the ability to make them do so when they first filmed the movie. And some changes are essentially necessary to bring the first three movies into continuity with the prequels, like adding Hayden Christensen as a ghost in Jedi.

What bugs me are the changes that seem to be made just for the sake of changing something. For instance, in the Blu-Ray edition of A New Hope, Obi-Wan's yell when he mimics the Krayt Dragon has been changed. Why? There wasn't anything wrong with the old cry. And the new one isn't necessarily better. It's just different. There's no good reason to change it, and yet it was changed. And that bugs me.

Not to the point that I'm going to boycott the Blu-Ray released over it, mind you.

But I really wish that Lucas would limit his changes to technical updates to the special effects, retconning, and fixing goofs that went unnoticed. Those are the sorts of things that just about everyone can agree should be fixed.

Although if Lucas decided to digitally replace Hayden Christensen with someone who could act, well, that'd be a change I could get behind.

OK, so I've already mentioned several of the changes in the Blu-Ray edition of Star Wars, and you may have heard of some of the others already. But there's only so much you can fit in a news story, and most sources don't bother documenting each and every difference in the Blu-Ray release. Hence, I've gone out of my way to find pictures of scenes that have been changed for the Blu-Ray edition on Star Wars, along with the previous versions for comparison, all for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

 

Kudos to whomever made these pictures...I sure don't know who it was.

-Caleb

A Rainy Labor Day

Well, this is exactly what I told myself I wouldn't do when I decided to start blogging again. I've gone and left my blog dormant for almost a month. And now I find myself unsure of what to say, but dead sure I'm going to say it. Ready or not!

The official schedule for my graduation and long-awaited end of my college studies is that I should now be finished in about two years. I'd decided a while back that the year that I'd been telling people I had left was probably not enough time, but I'd still hoped I could be done in a year and a half. Well, I'll be staying a student a little while longer than I'd thought, but it's not all bad. There are actually several positives, including:

• I now won't feel as pressured as I would if I'd had to do all my research and finish my dissertation in only a year.
• Another year as a student means another year to buy Alabama season tickets. This is especially nice since I forgot all about them this year.
• Rebecca's got another couple of years to finish her degree regardless of when I finish, so it looks like the timing will work better this way.
• I won't have to cut my Star Wars role playing campaign short like I'd thought I might.

And I'm sure I could list more, but I won't.

Seattle's Best coffee is NOT the best Seattle has to offer, by the way. I should know.

Just finished Metroid: Other M today. Despite a LOT of negativity from the fans, as well as the game falling short of its expected sales by a few million copies, it's actually a very good game. Now, it's still near the very bottom on my list of Metroid games, but that only shows how good Metroid as a series has been.

An interesting bit about this game: from the very beginning, there have been people calling out the game as "sexist" due to the portrayal of the lead character, who is a woman. I'm very glad to say that this is not at all the case. The claims of sexism are actually due to some bad writing in the game, a clash between the game's portrayal of who the character is and the fans' preconceived ideas about her, and possibly (in some cases) some over-sensitivity on the critics' part.

Oh, and back to my dissertation: I now know what I'm writing about. But, there's little sense in explaining it, since it wouldn't make sense to most anyone reading my blog. We'll just say it's a Corona theorem problem, and leave it at that. But I'm pretty excited to finally know what I'll be researching.

I risk losing readers if I go any further, so I'll go ahead and end this post.

-Caleb