The Empire Strikes Back Theatrical Version on DVD

[Tin Lunchbox]

I watched The Empire Strikes Back, the version described as "original
theatrical" on the DVD set box. It's a six-DVD set of the first three
Star Wars saga movies (the set is dated 2008) and the "remastered" and
tweaked and somewhat changed versions are also included.

It's really striking just how great a movie Empire is. Those
characters, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia and the rest
and Darth Vader himself even are still developing. (By contrast in the
next sequel, Return of the Jedi, I found their interactions and banter
becoming a bit formulaic.) On the story side, there is just so much
going on in Empire, so many sights to see, from the ice planet Hoth to
swampy Dagobah to Lando Calrissian's Cloud City. And then Luke's
pitched light sabre battle with Darth Vader, followed by Vader's
dramatic revelation?! By now, it's become so well-known, but the
impact of that at the time must have been incredible.

George Lucas has expressed what he regards as his creative prerogative
to continually revise and tweak his Star Wars movies. I don't know
about that, I imagine the studio that actually owns the rights might
want a say. But in practice what Lucas does is infernally annoying in
my view. I skipped his revision of Empire for now, but the flaw is his
approach is no doubt most bitterly and symbolically shown [SPOILER] in
his change of the original Star Wars movie, in which bounty hunter
Greedo now shoots and misses Han Solo at point blank range, and Han
shoots second. What this does of course is sanitize the Han Solo
character. Previously he was a space rogue with no particular scruples
when his life is threatened, even verbally (as Greedo did in the
original). Now he's got to be a white knight from square one.
Atrocious.

It's funny because you know I like the concept of "Director's Cuts" in
general, particularly when it's just a question of going back and
adding or removing stuff that was originally prepared and then
ill-advisedly left out or put in for one reason or another. I like
Director's Cuts a lot. But what Lucas does is different, he's making
changes that really deviate from the original in profound ways (or
sometimes irritating ways, with CGI creatures from a Hollywood era 25
years later being inserted in frames, for example).

So I chose to watch the original theatrical version, and man it was
great. True that the transfer could have been better, and I read a
reviewer who felt the sound could have been improved. And that's a
technique I'd appreciate, you know, perhaps to apply some filter to
eliminate some overexposure or something in the original. I watched a
side-by-side comparison online video of a scene in which Leia's
profile is glowing perhaps a bit too much, and then some filter is
evidently applied and it's a bit more restrained and photorealistic
and really a little sharper. I think I like that. You know if you can
tastefully process this stuff to look better, to be more hi-def, or to
go for that Blu-Ray transfer. I'm sympathetic to modest use of
computerized filters and so forth for that, at least depending on
results, and I recognize there's some artistic license involved there.
I don't think I'm any sort of "purist" or philosophically resistant to
change in a general sense.

At any rate, it was really a celebration to watch The Empire Strikes
Back. It's an incredible film, beyond compare of any other Star Wars
film except perhaps the original. Just blowing away the later trilogy
in every non-technology respect in my view. I'm not saying it's
perfect and you'll find an hokey or redundant line in there at various
points. But on the whole? Wow.

TiN[]BoX