Topic of the Week: The Iterators

Boardgames
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To me this isn’t an iteration. It’s got La Granja vibes to me of combining a ton of favourite mechanics and they list them at the back of the book/online so the inspiration is transparent. A chimera rather than a twisted clone. They feel very different to me despite the similarities.

In general I’m down with people jumping off from the ideas of others. Few things are genuinely original and I think open source is often a good thing with ideas. If I’ll use a pattern in software why should I be grumpy when a game designer does something similar? Also music sees great works come from being inspired by other musicians. there’s a world around us full of similar cross pollinations, choose your own favourite. While originality should be savoured for being rare it’s not the day by day staple of our lives. Most often a fresh blend, a polished version or an honest passionate re-rendering is worthwhile for your time. Also that (maybe) Picasso quote

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I feel like this topic is doomed to segue to George Lucas.

Anyone gotten in on the edits?

If you aren’t familiar, this is how it started. Someone, after seeing The Phantom Menace, released “The Phantom Edit” shortly after the DVD was released and by all accounts greatly improved the movie. This same person did The Phantom Re-edit and Attack of the Phantom (episode II). Upon leaving Revenge of the Sith, this editor is rumored to have said “well, can’t fix that one.” Which I think is accurate, the edits have greatly improved Eps I and II but no one can really make III work because the material isn’t there. Post-editing, Sith went from being the best of the trilogy to the weak spot.

This launched an entire subculture of Star Wars editing. Possibly creating, or at least exploding, the broader culture of fans re-editing movies that didn’t turn out right. One editor (MagnoliaFan) went so far as to insert garbled alien language over the Nemoidians and Jar Jar Binks, replacing their dialogue with subtitles, to completely overhaul their characters and parts of the story.

For me, I’ve settled on Bronto’s edits of Episodes I and II. Ep I hasn’t changed much since The Phantom Edit, but there have been little tweaks and a lot of polish in execution and Bronto kind of sits on top of that mountain of past work. His Ep II really reworks the story to emphasize, and make work, the romance storyline.

I don’t have an Episode III yet. Bronto cuts so much that Anakin’s turn doesn’t make any sense. There’s a Hal9000 edit and I don’t know if it works. Someone named L8wrtr did a crazy deep cut of it to entirely rework the story - I need to review it (someday when greater priorities are all settled). People say L8wrtr made a more logical story but the resulting presentation is chopped and jumpy.

OT pivots to George’s own iterating. It goes all the way back to the beginning, when he inserted A New Hope and then Episode IV at the beginning of Star Wars - originally those weren’t there. Sensible, though, I think we can all get behind retitling things once it turned into a series. Then of course came 1997 Special Editions, which made people grumble but generally fine (Jedi Rocks excepted). Then came the post-PT dvd revisions and things got ugly. I think the big problem here is that, unlike Ridley Scott, Lucas a) doesn’t have a sense anymore of what people want from his story, and b) tries to erase the existence of the prior versions. Contrast to Blade Runner where there are 3-5 versions out there and usually all come in the same box.

A gentleman named Harmy created the “despecialized” editions, which took the best available source (bluray, laserdisc) for each scene and knit it together pretty well to create a pre-1997 version of the OT with modern picture quality.

A gentleman named Adywan, in the UK, has gone about 243 steps further and is creating the revisited versions. In which he is straight up making models, filming sequences, digitally animating puppet’s blinking, on and on. And killing it. Lord knows how long he’s been at this, though. He did ANH, DVD quality, and then ESB, HD. He’s now re-doing ANH in HD and then on to ROTJ. I think he has plans for the PT as well but we’ll probably all be dead by then.

Anyway, for me, A New Hope and Empire are both Adywan versions, and I have the despecialized ROTJ.

Anyone else ventured down this rabbit hole? Or have strong opinions about Star Wars revisions?

Fun fact: OriginalTrilogy.com (linked regarding Harmy) was my first forum, back in the early 00’s. My experience there is what led me to seek this out when I needed it.

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I’d heard of the despecialised versions and those are definitely what I want, but it sounds like I need to check out the new guy who went beyond them!

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I got lucky as there was a brief period where there was a two disc DVD combo for each of the OT films that contained one disc with the remastered special edition and the other had the original, unaltered film. Even better, they were cheap at Fry’s Electronics (miss that place), so probably cost me $30ish for all three.

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I have those 2-disc editions.
I will never watch the revised versions, I suspect.

(Or, indeed, Return of the Jedi, now our kids have seen it, but the merits or otherwise of the various Star Wars films is a whole different thing…)

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That’s what I have as well. But essentially, Lucas transferred the old VHS discs onto DVD and sold them as a DVD edition. Which means I can play them, but… (like, I think they are literally 4:3 letterbox and you have to adjust the tv settings…)

The despecialized editions are the same, frame-by-frame, but properly remastered for picture and sound quality. I recommend them.

Adywan’s are, for the most part, faithful to the pre-97 versions of the film. He does additional remastering not just to make the picture crisp but to correct Lucasfilm’s errors (sound channels to the wrong speakers, miscolored lightsabers, etc). His additions are only to special effects and as a militant purist in this area I wasn’t bothered by anything*. The battle of the death star in A New Hope is really something else as he has reworked the dogfighting.

*He did put the Mustafar music over the Vader/Obi Wan duel on the Death Star. Most everyone hated that, as the fiery volcano music was a mismatch for the subdued suspense of the scene. That’s being reverted in his next take. He also ported the Imperial March into the initial Death Star reveal, which didn’t bother me but bothered enough people that that will be gone as well.

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Oh gosh, just another interesting scenario onthis topic.

Ascension > Star Realms / Colony Wars > Shards of Infinity > SR Frontiers > SW Deckbuilding

Lot to say on that three team melange but I imagine nothing anyone doesn’t already know. Just an interesting case of cross development.

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