I love technical stuff like this, that was a great read. I guess I wont look forward to a DVD version of the true original in my life time though.

That unicorn in Blade Runner Dir Cut blew it for me. Looked like a corny outtake from Legend (which against all logic I think is a good tv movie). It dragged the plot even further from the book imo.

On the toy front, Ertl made a version of the Spinner, which can be found on ebay occasionally. I know there have been some garage kits of the Spinner, and I think I recall seeing a killer full die-cast version from Japan years ago. Not sure why Warner Bros (?) keeps so tight on that license.

Star Wars toys are everywhere and vary in quality and sanity.

When you're dealing with licensing a property from a big studio like WB or Paramount or whoever, they won't even bother with you unless you can guarantee at the very minimum $10-15,000 in licensing fees for them, and even then it's hard to get them to bother. If you can do that selling collectibles for a property like Blade Runner, more power to you.

ERTL did three or four die-cast cars in conjunction with the movie, and I'm pretty sure all of those kits of the cars and the gun that have turned up over the years have been unlicensed. I don't know who made the Spinner that came with the DVD suitcase set.

Medicom did a couple of Spinner toys but they weren't Blade Runner ones. The car was used in Back to the Future II, so they got the license for that and packaged the toys with Marty, Einstein, etc. I think they just called it "Future Car." There are a couple of places on the internet that have decals to make it look like the police Spinner.

bumping up color or sound is one thing. Adding digitized characters is whole nuther. What is the Greedo argument? Han shot first originally? Now he's got to be politically correct? Some rogue pirate... I read part of the restoration article and it talked about the original negative being no good. Why not grab one of the films from the 300 movie theaters it was shown in? What's the difference between a master neg. and a film neg.? Never mind this is all greek to me. Or should i say GEEK.

That was th intent. Most agree with you, plus it adds depth to Han to have him start out all "doing anything to survive" and violent then have him simmer down cause' of the princess. But fuck it, Lucas remembered those types of little things in stories are stupid and CGI is more important.

I'm starting to feel sorry for George. All this Lucas bashing is blasphemy. I watched the trailer for "The People v. George Lucas" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aoc3roT81nU

Yeah in hindsight maybe Jedi wasn't as good as the rest. I dunno. It was my favorite. As a kid, nothing happened in Empire... Luke dressed in black with a green saber? hells yes!


The prequels suck. Who cares they were for kids.

(did the kids even like them??? I really don't know the answer to that.)

Dude, ROTJ remains my favorite and the people who argue Kevin Smith's weak ass "Clerks" points about muppets and Ewoks can suck it I love Empire, it's a better movie, but "better" doesn't = "favorite" at all.

George needs bashing, screw it, everyone does! All artists need the critisism. He needs it MOST of all because he just can't stop screwing up his own stuff. Make something. Leave it. Make something NEW! Stop messing with the old stuff. I get the need and drive to always improve vissions etc but even if it was making them better it has to be driving him insane, it's like he can't stop touching the past like a creepy uncle! He needs to let it go and just walk away. If people wanna see the oldies, give it to them, and if you want to show off the newbies, toss that out there too. It's not like he's losing money at this point. Let it all hang out George!

hee hee.

Agree on all counts EXCEPT ROTJ being my favorite - Empire is. But ROTJ is my second favorite. Luke is just so whiny in Star Wars that he's almost unbearable. I realize that was the intention, and that without that we wouldn't see his growth, but my god I just wanna smack the shit outta him.

I agree NT about the whine. George Lucas re-working the classics is like Secret Base asking us to mail the toys back so they can re-paint them...

Actually, I think Lucas and Secret Base (et al) are more alike than we realize. They keep offering the same product over and over again...

And when they try something new it's terrible!

Or cut off his hand, that shut him up.

Actually I do have a few SB figures I wouldn't mind a repaint on. Not a bad idea.

As with all art, once it's set free in the world, people make up their own minds and develop their own mythologies around it (*see anything by picasso, marcel duchamp, minor threat, gary gygax etc). Lucas worked a bit too hard to control his own myths in the 2nd set of films, was also banking on Jar Jar Binks being a good idea (road to hell is paved with good intentions...). Personally, if I was a kid & was making the connection that CN Clone Wars is this vast storyline leading up to movie 3, showing the depth to which the jedi & subsequently Darth Vader are manipulated into destroying themselves, it would be pretty devastating. While I like Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars better than the new CG series, it's all still fairly tight story-telling.

But does it make ROTS any better? Makes it a bit more desperate. Does it make the original 3 any better? Hmmmm not really. Fills in that part where Luke says to Ben "You fought in the Clone Wars!?", & explains where the Jedi went I guess.

Empire is my fav film because it's got the most complex character development, best spfx, and it wasn't directed by Lucas. To me it's the most 'adult' in that it's intelligent, darker, uncompromising... if you're into that sort of thing. By ROTJ, I think Lucas realized he needed to rope it back to his original vision as a swashbuckling matinee.

Re: Blade Runner. Thanks for filling us in on the toy marketing. My knowledge is limited. I think we should all be grateful that Warner hasn't taken steps to make Blade Runner a franchise of movies. Maybe it was good that Ford was working Indiana Jones & Star Wars at the same time. If only Robocop had stopped after the 1st.

People tend to forget though that Return of the Jedi wasn't directed by Lucas either it was by someone else as well.

Anyway..here's a really interesting article over some of the changes that happened in ROTJ. The producer had one vision which seems kind of cool and Lucas obviously had another.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocom ... z-wer.html

Or for the short version.
We had an outline and George changed everything in it," Kurtz said. “Instead of bittersweet and poignant he wanted a euphoric ending with everybody happy. The original idea was that they would recover [the kidnapped] Han Solo in the early part of the story and that he would then die in the middle part of the film in a raid on an Imperial base. George then decided he didn’t want any of the principals killed. By that time there were really big toy sales and that was a reason.”
The discussed ending of the film that Kurtz favored presented the rebel forces in tatters, Leia grappling with her new duties as queen and Luke walking off alone “like Clint Eastwood in the spaghetti westerns,” as Kurtz put it.

Crystal Kurtz said that ending would have been a more emotionally nuanced finale to an epic adventure than the forest celebration of the Ewoks that essentially ended the trilogy with a teddy bear luau.
He was especially disdainful of the Lucas idea of a second Death Star, which he felt would be too derivative of the 1977 film. “So we agreed that I should probably leave.”