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Just as with the anniversary of the Star Wars Special Edition, I've spent a little time thinking back to the tenth anniversary of the Empire Strikes Back Special Edition. I even found my old university day planner from then and checked it out. We were getting close to midterm exams by then, but my residence college organised another big trip to the downtown movie theatre, and I was part of it again. This time, I was interested in my first chance to see The Empire Strikes Back at the movies ever. I'm in a narrow yet somehow intriguing bracket where TESB was pretty much part of an incomplete saga from the start for me, but I had managed to "pre-experience" the movie through the storybooks and comic book adaptation and novelisation before I finally saw it on videotape (to be convinced, for a brief instant in between the main title flashing on screen and the episode title appearing, that my family had somehow rented the wrong movie).
The trailer for the Return of the Jedi Special Edition was, again, a perfect lead-in to the experience, although I got a slight kick out of how it still used the old release date; it seemed perfect proof of just how well the Special Editions were doing for themselves. (However, that extra week of release did let TESB drop from the number one spot in box-office receipts...) I can suppose, though, that I was somehow a little ambiguous at all the connotations packed into the usual proclamations about how TESB was "the best Star Wars movie ever!", and spent time contemplating whether the movie slowed down in the middle. After having been surprised by the Biggs scene cut back into the Star Wars Special Edition, I was also watching for comparable revisions that I hadn't heard about before. Darth Vader returning to his Star Destroyer seemed to fit there, although in some ways that scene still throws me off somehow. However, I can at least suspect that this comes more from listening to the soundtrack than from any deep-rooted memory of watching the previous version on videotape.
Beyond decade-old memories, I've also been wondering in recent days if we'll somehow be surprised this year with a "thirtieth anniversary" set that includes all the movies in one box. I can suppose, of course, that there may be plans to wait for one high-definition format or another to gain a greater foothold... but I have to admit that, whenever and however a new release shows up, I'll be waiting with just a little anxiety for what it'll be like. A disc full of "deleted scenes" fixed up with new special effects interests me. The thought of those very same scenes being cut into a new "standard version" of the movies leaves me worried that somehow I finally won't agree with things in the end, and I'll wind up just like those people who toss out grousing everywhere they can... Of course, maybe I worry too much. During the leadup to the DVD release, I heard a rumour that there would be a scene added to The Empire Strikes Back showing the Rebel cold-weather soldiers battling snowtroopers on foot. I was interested enough to believe it, thinking that it came from a reputable source, but then I started worrying about whether I'd like whatever music could be found to go over top of it, and whether it would somehow interfere with the drive of the whole battle... and as it turned out, I made a special effort to watch the beginning of TESB the very day I got the DVDs, to find there was no such scene at all. Nor do I think I'm incapable of accepting any changes whatsoever from "the way I remember things"; I can imagine further rotoscope work on the lightsabre effects in the original Star Wars and replacing the somewhat "off-model" puppet of Yoda in The Phantom Menace with a new computer-generated version, as in the extras of the Revenge of the Sith DVD, if with the awareness that this might amount to creating some "personal" vision to outweigh and overwhelm anything that actually results. With all of that, though, I can think that an interesting extra would be the "theatrical version" of TPM. It would "preserve the puppetry" for those who care... and, just perhaps, demonstrate to a few that there could have been motives to releasing the Vintage Editions other than giving people the only version of Star Wars they could bring themselves to watch.
The trailer for the Return of the Jedi Special Edition was, again, a perfect lead-in to the experience, although I got a slight kick out of how it still used the old release date; it seemed perfect proof of just how well the Special Editions were doing for themselves. (However, that extra week of release did let TESB drop from the number one spot in box-office receipts...) I can suppose, though, that I was somehow a little ambiguous at all the connotations packed into the usual proclamations about how TESB was "the best Star Wars movie ever!", and spent time contemplating whether the movie slowed down in the middle. After having been surprised by the Biggs scene cut back into the Star Wars Special Edition, I was also watching for comparable revisions that I hadn't heard about before. Darth Vader returning to his Star Destroyer seemed to fit there, although in some ways that scene still throws me off somehow. However, I can at least suspect that this comes more from listening to the soundtrack than from any deep-rooted memory of watching the previous version on videotape.
Beyond decade-old memories, I've also been wondering in recent days if we'll somehow be surprised this year with a "thirtieth anniversary" set that includes all the movies in one box. I can suppose, of course, that there may be plans to wait for one high-definition format or another to gain a greater foothold... but I have to admit that, whenever and however a new release shows up, I'll be waiting with just a little anxiety for what it'll be like. A disc full of "deleted scenes" fixed up with new special effects interests me. The thought of those very same scenes being cut into a new "standard version" of the movies leaves me worried that somehow I finally won't agree with things in the end, and I'll wind up just like those people who toss out grousing everywhere they can... Of course, maybe I worry too much. During the leadup to the DVD release, I heard a rumour that there would be a scene added to The Empire Strikes Back showing the Rebel cold-weather soldiers battling snowtroopers on foot. I was interested enough to believe it, thinking that it came from a reputable source, but then I started worrying about whether I'd like whatever music could be found to go over top of it, and whether it would somehow interfere with the drive of the whole battle... and as it turned out, I made a special effort to watch the beginning of TESB the very day I got the DVDs, to find there was no such scene at all. Nor do I think I'm incapable of accepting any changes whatsoever from "the way I remember things"; I can imagine further rotoscope work on the lightsabre effects in the original Star Wars and replacing the somewhat "off-model" puppet of Yoda in The Phantom Menace with a new computer-generated version, as in the extras of the Revenge of the Sith DVD, if with the awareness that this might amount to creating some "personal" vision to outweigh and overwhelm anything that actually results. With all of that, though, I can think that an interesting extra would be the "theatrical version" of TPM. It would "preserve the puppetry" for those who care... and, just perhaps, demonstrate to a few that there could have been motives to releasing the Vintage Editions other than giving people the only version of Star Wars they could bring themselves to watch.