Star Wars Episode II DVD Release on Nov. 12

Nerftoe writes "The DVD and home video of hit movie "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones" will land on retail shelves on Nov. 12, the movie's backers at Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox said on Thursday. Lucasfilm and Fox have put together a two-disc DVD set that features six hours of additional material including a documentary about the movie made by Lucas and the movie's other filmmakers and eight scenes that never made it into the movie."

Comments

Let's hope it's not....

[bucklesl]

eight scenes of Jar Jar that never made it into the movie

shudder

Re:Let's hope it's not....

[Lord_Slepnir]

eight scenes of Jar Jar that never made it into the movie

Look on the bright side....some of those can be death scenes of Jar Jar

Scene 1: Anakin and Obi-Wan fighting Druku, Anakin has just gotten his arm chopped off. Suddenly, by the launch bay doors, a shadow appears...and out comes Jar Jar. He exclaims "NOOOSA yousa cannot hurt massa Anakin". Druku then throws his lightsabre at Jar Jar, severing both of his ears. As Jar Jar bends to pick them up, Druku picks him up by his neck and brings him 20 feet into the air. Jar Jar is then flipped and dropped head first. His brains form an elequant star pattern.

Scene 2: The Gungans have joined the clone army in the final battle scene, with Jar Jar at their head. His mount trips, and he goes flying forward, and accidently falls in the middle of a wagon of catapult ammo. As he clambers up, he trips over the back, causing it to break. Hits the dirt hard, and when he looks up, the Boombas have fallen out and are rolling at him. One hits his head, and it explodes, causing an elequent star pattern in the dirt.

Can you think of more? Post them!

Re:Let's hope it's not....

[daeley]

Hey, you made a cool portmanteau! Eloquent + elegant = elequent. :)

Scene 3: Jar Jar sees Anakin diving out of the air car and stands up in his own car to watch... leaning too far over, of course, briefly catching his foot in the seat belt, then plummeting several hundred feet to become a vaguely Gungan-shaped, somewhat star-patterned hole in the street.

Scene 4: The other ambassador from Naboo, irate and distraught, pushes Jar Jar over the side of their floating senate car when the latter proposes Chancellor Palpatine be given emergency powers. Jar Jar lands, breaking his back, on top of the Wookie delegation, which proceed to break the rest of him. Half of him (Jar) winds up next to the ET cameo. The other half (the other Jar) is shipped to the Geonosian arena for immediate consumption by the reek, acklay, and nexu.

One can but dream.

Re:And he thought he could hold out on us

[Fluid Truth]

I thought it was just eps 4-6 that weren't going to be released for a while. The best reason I heard (not necessarily the most plausible, though ;-) was that he wanted to make the DVDs "special" and he didn't have the time to do them "right" for quite some time. So, instead of putting out one version now, then adding a few things on and putting out a special version, then putting everything in and calling it a Collector's Edition, he's waiting until the Collector's Edition is the only one.

If it's true, I see nothing wrong with it.

MORE scenes?

[sulli]

Can we have fewer scenes - Phantom Edit II? Get rid of all that sappy shit and a real movie emerges.

*cough*

[x mani x]

In other news :), the Lord of the Rings DVD is coming out on tuesday (or monday midnight for some stores).

Initial reviews are saying that it basically kicks all ass, and will be the new reference DVD for home theater-philes. And mind you this isn't the upcoming 4-disc extended version.

Star what? Attack of the what? :)

-Mani

Re:And he thought he could hold out on us

[NanoGator]

The only way he can prevent the DVD from being pirated to death is if it includes tons and tons and tons of stuff on it. There's still value in buying the disc if it has extras that people don't pirate. (Take notes, MPAA)

I think he wants to be able to provide all that with Eps 4-6. It'd take time, and he's focused (well in a PHB sorta way) on Eps 1-3.

50 versions

[RangerSpeedBumpp]

I saw a talk by John Knoll a month ago at the Visual Effects Society in Marin. He pointed out that ILM continued to work on EP2 even after the movie was out in theaters. George continued to send new cuts out the door as new prints were being made. At the time there were 45-50 versions of Star Wars in theaters. Undoubtedly, the version that you get on DVD will be different than those versions. I don't see any major changes, but they'll probably add later versions of shots and some slightly different timing.

This isn't actually a new thing. Kubrick showed a different cut of 2001 in New York than he did in LA when the movie premiered. And of course George continues to revise episodes 4/5/6. The scary thing is that George is considering usign all-digital cinema to dist 'patches' to films. After the film has been running in theaters for several weeks, he can remotely add new sequences and then announce 'all new footage' so that Star Wars fans will have to come back for another viewing.

Re:And he thought he could hold out on us

[Anonvmous Coward]

He's probably waiting until Episode 3 is done so that digitally correct the inconsistencies he's creating in 4-6.

One feature I wish was included..

[Uncle Ira]

Would be an isolted score/sound effects track. Lucas says he made the Star Wars films in the style of silent movies where the score and the visuals worked together. I was surprised (and a little disappointed) that the DVD for TPM did not include an isolated score. I would have preferred that to a 2ch dolby pro-logic audio track.?

And if you're going to have an isolated score, may as well follow the example of the folks at Pixar and make it a combination score/soundFX track. The two really do work together so well that it would be nice to have them highlighted with their own audio track.

Oh well. Maybe in 2006 on the Super Special Deluxe edition box set rerelease...

Re:And he thought he could hold out on us

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

The only way he can prevent the DVD from being pirated to death is if it includes tons and tons and tons of stuff on it.

And/Or charge a reasonable price for it. I'm thinking some of the DVD distributors are starting to clue into this - I've been seeing a few (obviously less famous [They put "Caveman" out on DVD????]) DVD's showingup for $7.99-$9.99 at the local superhypermegamart. That's NEW, not "previously viewed". Heck, that price range seemed just fine for "previously viewed" VHS's a few years ago...

When the price of a typical DVD (new) has dropped down to ~$10 or so (currently seems to be $15-20US for most of them right now) the only people who'll be left pirating will be unemployed small children abusing their parents' broadband connection.

Combined with your point, I'd say that what little real "piracy" there is of DVD's right now (far less than the MPAA claims, I suspect) will dwindle to near nothing in the next couple of years.

Unless, of course, cheap set-top "DivX;)" (or Ogg-Theora?) boxes with TV-out start showing up on the market...and maybe even then.

"Technical" information in the "making of" footage

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

Hopefully, they'll include some technical information about the gadgetry and animatronics they used. I, for one, am eager to find out what they used to build the robots that played Obi-wan, Anakin, Padme, and the rest... :-)

Starwars.com's Official Link has more stuff.

[antdude]

http://starwars.com/episode-ii/news/2002/08/news20 020801.html. It has pictures of both DVD and VHS boxes.

Good News/Bad News

[Brian Knotts]

The good news is that Star Wars IV will finally be relased on DVD.

The bad news is that all Imperial troops will be replaced with ewoks, and all light sabres and other weapons replaced with walkie-talkies.

Re:And he thought he could hold out on us

[inkswamp]

There are times when I think I'm one of the only Star Wars fans out there who isn't stuck in permanent bitch mode.

He's probably waiting until Episode 3 is done so that digitally correct the inconsistencies he's creating in 4-6.

Hmm... you must have the finished script for episode III, so you're absolutely certain that what we view as "inconsistencies" are in fact that. I've seen lists of so-called inconsistencies on the web and very few seem like things that can't be plausibly explained in the length of one more film and certainly nothing that will destroy the whole series.

And anyway, if we're going to lynch George Lucas for it, let's make sure we save enough rope for Tolkien. We'll have to dig him up to do it of course, but remember, he backtracked and fixed problems with his stories too (stories that are being cited as examples of perfection in this very discussion), including a well known revision to The Hobbit to make the Golem scenes work with his later plans.

Artists do these kinds of things. At the very least, reserve your judgment until you've seen all three of the new films.

Re:Episode II DVD checklist

[chazzf]

And your point is?

I loved Evil Dead, although the scene you refer to was in Evil Dead 2, but you should remember that Luke lost his hand in the Empire Strikes Back, five years before Raimi made Dead 2.

All art imitates/copies. It's a natural thing to do. The Fifth Element owes a *lot* to Metropolis, Dune, and the long-standing visuals of Coruscant made long before Episode I.

Your post smacks of one searching desperatly for a stick with which to beat the movie, and I have to wonder why. The movie is the cinematic creation of George Lucas. No one made you see it. If you went and didn't like it, so what? I don't think the trailers were misleading.

Personally, I liked Episode II and found the underlying political undertones interesting. The notion that the Senate is being controlled by moneyed interests ought to play well here, and please note that Lucas had that idea some twenty years ago, so it's not like he's trying to pander to anyone.

Especially not do-nothing grumblers like the loud vocal minority on this site who think much is owed them.

~Chazzf

Outtakes they probably won't show.

[sbaker]

I bet they don't include any of the hilarious out-takes that the Star Wars graphics team showed at SigGraph last week. Things like:

Aniken leaping on his speeder bike (live action) - then being swapped out for a 3D graphic 'stunt double'. When the graphic Aniken zooms off on the bike, a small error in the cloth simulation leaves him naked while his cloak flutters gently (and realistically) to the ground.

So they fixed that problem - but for some reason there is a sign error on the slipstream airflow over the clothing - so his robes flip forward over his head - and he's *still* naked on a speederbike.

Or the shot of Yoda where for some unaccountable reason his clothes appear to be attacking him while he's trying to look fierce for Duku's benefit...

Or the shot of JarJar when an slight oversight caused the cloth simulation on his robes not to be run at all - so his robes are puffed up like a balloon. It looks like he's wearing a crinolin hoop-skirt.

Or the half dozen outtakes of the shot where the big guy in the diner (with four arms) is simultaneously hugging ObiWan and pulling up his pants - but the cloth simulation isn't coping well with the contact forces from his hands or his butt - so his trousers fall down in take after take after take...

Or the animation done by one of the ILM team who is now working on the Incredible Hulk movie - she is doing *ripping* cloth (huh! I wonder why? :-) but since they can't show the 3D Hulk model in public yet, they re-used an existing model. Hence the shot of Yoda ripping his clothes off. Heck, he's green - what more do you want?

Or - well, you get the idea. I guess you had to be there. :-)

Re:And he thought he could hold out on us

[foobar104]

I've had a pet theory for a while, and I'm surprised that nobody else has mentioned it.

I think Lucas is waiting for HD-DVD.

I, for one, would love to see the original trilogy become the reference standard HD-DVDs in 2006 or so. Originals, special editions, I couldn't care less as long as it's 1080/24p with 6-channel sound.

Re:Episode II DVD checklist

[glwtta]

Your post smacks of one searching desperatly for a stick with which to beat the movie, and I have to wonder why.

Me too - awful writing, non-existent plot, atroceous acting, annoying characters, horrible looking CGI, worst dialogue anyone's seen in a long time, etc. You don't really have to search for things to bash the movie for.

Sh*t in a box

[Aqua OS X]

Damn, I knew -someone- would find a way to sell sh*t in a box someday. Go figure, it's go'na be George Lucas. ;)

(I guess this post will drop my good Slashdot karma down a peg.)