I am not a hater of the Special Editions at all. In general, I firmly believe they are net positives.
I'm all for cleaning up the image, the sound, the effects, goofs/mistakes etc etc...just making the films overall more pristine and of a higher audio/visual quality and consistency.
What I DON'T care for is ultimately arbitrary 'creative changes'. Greedo shooting first, there isn't much of a point.
I'm not one of these over-reacting 'It changes Han Solo's entire arc!' people...but ultimately having Greedo shoot first is just a pointless decision that creates problems and issues where there weren't any.
Adding in a scene with Jabba the Hutt...you're adding minutes to the film that ruin the pacing of the film. Bloating the runtime with a scene where many of Jabba's lines are essentially repackaged versions of Greedo's lines.
And Jedi Rocks is the ultimate form of that. It is a lower quality, more grating, and LONGER version of the song that throws off the pacing of the films. Sure, we get a few extra shots of Boba Fett(those could easily have been cut into the sequence of the original song)...but ultimately it is just more fluff that derails the film.
The original version is ultimately rather unobtrusive, the new version is grating and outright hurts the film.
I hope that in time....perhaps we can get a version of these films that EMBRACES all of the positive changes to the films that genuinely help them hold up to modern standards of image/sound/presentation.
But also a version of the films that are willing to let go of and reverse the extraneous and unnecessary changes that certainly don't help and arguably hinder the films.
Lucasfilm needs to have the vision to invest in creating a sort of 'final' version of these films. All of the good, none of the bad....and I feel that they should be presented alongside the untouched original versions.
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Leklor
8 years ago
I'm with you on most of this, the only thing I tend to differ here is the Han Shot First thing.
I don't give a *beep*
While the edit is poorly done, the fuss is ridiculous.
Han shoots litteraly less than a second after Greedo in the Blu-ray, he was going to shoot anyways, first or not.
And it is kind of weird to expect Greedo, even as the *beep* bounty hunter ever not to shoot first when his mark is clearly mocking him and making it clear he doesn't take him seriously at all.
My point being: They shot at the same time. Han's arc isn't changed in anything in my eyes.
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Chrispy_G
8 years ago
Yeah, I agree, it doesn't change the character a bit. I just have a hard time imagining that even someone as incompetent as Greedo can miss from that distance...and the technical execution of that moment is quite poor, as well.
It is a moment that is ultimately a little irksome, nothing else...and it really shouldn't be in there. It is not some defining, altering, ruining moment some make it out to be...but it doesn't really bring anything positive to the table.
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