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krpalmerPutting “Part One” in a title might seem to suggest future instalments, and yet some time has passed since Rick Worley made his first “How to Watch Star Wars” video. The appearance of a “Part 1.1” video from him not that many months ago did interest me. Then, I did manage to start noticing comments he was working on “Part Two,” long promised to address the Special Editions and after. He mentioned having quite a lot of material to work with, but I do have to admit a question or two crossed my mind about whether he could be quite as original and invigorating as in his previous videos, or whether it would amount to “you think this; I think this.” Still, the announcement the new video was ready (a few days past the day a good many people nudge each other and wink while bringing up “the Fourth,” which might be somewhat appropriate) did raise my interest anew.
There can be the temptation to shock mixed company by saying that in the fullness of time my attention and appreciation turned to some palpable degree towards George Lucas’s lower-numbered Star Wars movies, and therefore away from the higher-numbered ones. (The problem is supposing instant retaliation from portions of that mixed company based on evidence provided by people who might see this first, and not supposing myself articulate enough to respond.) However, I do wonder if some part of this is because I’ve wound up betwixt and between when it comes to the older movies. The “controversial changes” really don’t seem to bother me (even if sometimes I think “it’s not that hard to avert your eyes for a moment” and at other times I wonder whether even a “this is why we can’t have nice things” approach can work), and there are revisions I indeed prefer to the older effects such that finding “old versions” and putting them on a pedestal doesn’t appeal to me. At the same time, though, I fear I’m stuck with a sense certain extended sequences, with interpolated and looped bits of the soundtrack, still don’t “sound right.” That might have come from having managed to get soundtrack CDs in the year of the Special Editions. It’s easier to listen to music than to watch a movie, and maybe that’s stuck “how things are supposed to sound” in my head.
For all of the three hours and forty minutes of Worley’s “Part Two,” however, the material that went into it does include some interesting things. A first part establishing “the movies certain people were exposed to in their impressionable years on home video weren’t ‘the only version there’d been’” includes audio from 1977 stereo and mono mixes. I’d seen references before to two different people voicing Aunt Beru’s lines in the different mixes, but this was the first time I’d heard the “mono voice.” The stereo mix was made first and didn’t include some mono elements that wound up in later versions, but it did happen to be the version on home video in those crucial years.
As for “George Lucas isn’t the only person to revise their work over time,” Worley points out in his video’s second part multiple movie cuts from Charlie Chaplin, Stanley Kubrick, and Francis Ford Coppola. He mentions TV series and novels being revised to align them over their length (and just happens to bring up things he’s made other videos about). I’d been aware of J.R.R. Tolkien revising The Hobbit; to mention perhaps less impressive names not mentioned in the video, I’d also noticed E.E. “Doc” Smith had rewritten The Skylark of Space to change “interstellar travel starting from 1920s technology” to “interstellar travel starting from 1950s technology” (and eventually managed to see that older version), happened on a version of The Foundation Trilogy that revised some terminology, and know Robert A. Heinlein revised some of his earlier works (although I’ve only seen some of those older examples). A third part of the video does get to “you may insist this change is fatal, but I’ll argue it makes sense.” In the mood to accept Worley’s points, though, I wound up thinking it worked for me.
I do have to admit that with older material included in the video and a sense some of it might not have been wrapped up in sanctimonious prologues, I got to thinking “if he can find it, I can find it.” It didn’t take that much work, or that much slogging past the familiar indignation of others, to find certain sources. (However, there is the question of whether you can only get the source that includes the mono mix by downloading thirty-eight gigabytes of data...) I at least hope this is different from a low ebb many years ago when I managed to download DVD images sourced from old laserdiscs (in “anamorphic widescreen” where certain “bonus DVDs” that showed up a few years later were attacked for not being that); before I’d done much more than spot-check the discs (and realise just how obvious the matte lines looked on a cathode-ray tube TV) I’d managed to find a saving remnant of positive fans and gone on to buy the “trilogy DVD box.” I am a bit conscious now of having stuck with the Blu-Rays I’d purchased an HDTV for and not bought the “4K” discs with their less saturated colours; a “4K” TV really does seem more resolution than I think I require. In any case, Worley did promise another instalment in this series even if I wonder how long it might take to show up.
There can be the temptation to shock mixed company by saying that in the fullness of time my attention and appreciation turned to some palpable degree towards George Lucas’s lower-numbered Star Wars movies, and therefore away from the higher-numbered ones. (The problem is supposing instant retaliation from portions of that mixed company based on evidence provided by people who might see this first, and not supposing myself articulate enough to respond.) However, I do wonder if some part of this is because I’ve wound up betwixt and between when it comes to the older movies. The “controversial changes” really don’t seem to bother me (even if sometimes I think “it’s not that hard to avert your eyes for a moment” and at other times I wonder whether even a “this is why we can’t have nice things” approach can work), and there are revisions I indeed prefer to the older effects such that finding “old versions” and putting them on a pedestal doesn’t appeal to me. At the same time, though, I fear I’m stuck with a sense certain extended sequences, with interpolated and looped bits of the soundtrack, still don’t “sound right.” That might have come from having managed to get soundtrack CDs in the year of the Special Editions. It’s easier to listen to music than to watch a movie, and maybe that’s stuck “how things are supposed to sound” in my head.
For all of the three hours and forty minutes of Worley’s “Part Two,” however, the material that went into it does include some interesting things. A first part establishing “the movies certain people were exposed to in their impressionable years on home video weren’t ‘the only version there’d been’” includes audio from 1977 stereo and mono mixes. I’d seen references before to two different people voicing Aunt Beru’s lines in the different mixes, but this was the first time I’d heard the “mono voice.” The stereo mix was made first and didn’t include some mono elements that wound up in later versions, but it did happen to be the version on home video in those crucial years.
As for “George Lucas isn’t the only person to revise their work over time,” Worley points out in his video’s second part multiple movie cuts from Charlie Chaplin, Stanley Kubrick, and Francis Ford Coppola. He mentions TV series and novels being revised to align them over their length (and just happens to bring up things he’s made other videos about). I’d been aware of J.R.R. Tolkien revising The Hobbit; to mention perhaps less impressive names not mentioned in the video, I’d also noticed E.E. “Doc” Smith had rewritten The Skylark of Space to change “interstellar travel starting from 1920s technology” to “interstellar travel starting from 1950s technology” (and eventually managed to see that older version), happened on a version of The Foundation Trilogy that revised some terminology, and know Robert A. Heinlein revised some of his earlier works (although I’ve only seen some of those older examples). A third part of the video does get to “you may insist this change is fatal, but I’ll argue it makes sense.” In the mood to accept Worley’s points, though, I wound up thinking it worked for me.
I do have to admit that with older material included in the video and a sense some of it might not have been wrapped up in sanctimonious prologues, I got to thinking “if he can find it, I can find it.” It didn’t take that much work, or that much slogging past the familiar indignation of others, to find certain sources. (However, there is the question of whether you can only get the source that includes the mono mix by downloading thirty-eight gigabytes of data...) I at least hope this is different from a low ebb many years ago when I managed to download DVD images sourced from old laserdiscs (in “anamorphic widescreen” where certain “bonus DVDs” that showed up a few years later were attacked for not being that); before I’d done much more than spot-check the discs (and realise just how obvious the matte lines looked on a cathode-ray tube TV) I’d managed to find a saving remnant of positive fans and gone on to buy the “trilogy DVD box.” I am a bit conscious now of having stuck with the Blu-Rays I’d purchased an HDTV for and not bought the “4K” discs with their less saturated colours; a “4K” TV really does seem more resolution than I think I require. In any case, Worley did promise another instalment in this series even if I wonder how long it might take to show up.