Re: In response to your response to my response to your response...

Posted by Indiana Joe from ppp-s250-n181-as2.nerdc.ufl.edu on April 06, 2000 at 23:19:26:

In Reply to: In response to your response to my response... posted by California Mike on April 05, 2000 at 02:27:46:

:
: : American Graffiti isn’t the only one; Radioland Murders is available, as well. Several Young Indy tapes were released _concurrently_ with the three feature films, and have are available now, but have just been out a couple of months. Further ones will come, but one can’t expect them to release 25 tapes in a series all at the same time. Think of every TV series that’s every had any substantial number of episodes - did Paramount release all the Star Trek episodes at once? No. Did Rhino release all the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes at once? No. What TV show with any appreciable number of episodes _ever_ got released all at once?

: ------------------
: Errr...when you say something is going to be released soon, a year and a half (with no release date in sight) is not soon. Don't lie.
: Oh, how could I forget radioland murders...that is almost my favorite film, after Indy I, II, and III, star wars, and my home videotape of ice melting.

DON’T YOU DARE SUGGEST I LIE. Where in my post did I lie - for that matter, where in my post did I actually say it was going to be released soon? Also, where do you get this “year and a half” figure - it’s been roughly half a year since the initial batch was released; I haven’t seen anything to indicate the others are a year away. I was just saying that it hadn’t been very long yet since the first batch was released, so it’s not unreasonable for the second batch to not be out yet.

I didn’t say Radioland Murders was great, or even good - it’s my least favorite Lucas creation, in fact. I merely pointed out that it was available, contrary to the implied claim that American Graffiti is the sole representative of Lucas’ creative output on DVD.
: ----------------
: : As far as secrecy regarding release dates goes, there probably _isn’t_ a secret; I’d bet it’s just because the exact date for the next release hasn’t been decided yet. You can’t expect them to give a date when they don’t know it yet, can you?
: -------------------
: Errr...that's a load of garbage. there hasn't even been a press release saying "We're working on dvd, we have no idea when they'll be released".
: Can you say "leave people in the dark so they'll buy the vhs copy, since it will be discontinued soon and they have no idea if dvd will ever come".

Lucas apparently _did_ say at a press conference not long ago that Indy DVDs are forthcoming; he didn’t elaborate, though, and there hasn’t been any info since. That said, I’m still confident it will happen in less than two years; if you don’t want to buy the tapes because you intend to get the DVDs, why not just do that, then (not buy the tapes)? You’ll have more money, and you’ll have time to enjoy other things - no, I’m not being sarcastic; I really think one’s appreciation of the films will be enhanced if one doesn’t watch them _all_ the time.
: ----------------
: : By the time The Phantom Menace hits DVD, the current VHS collector’s edition will be long since unavailable. Furthermore, the DVD will almost certainly have a _lot_ more stuff on it than the VHS collector’s edition.
: -----------
: Yeah... sure. Hopefully Luca$ is busy editing out jar jar binks. If this is what he's doing, why not release info about it? The only reason is to boost vhs sales.

Why would he do it to boost sales of one medium when it comes at the expense of _all_ sales of another? Even assuming Lucas is in it only for the money, it wouldn’t make sense - the same number of people who will buy VHS tapes would buy one version or the other, and some of them would buy both, and a tiny number of people who embrace DVD but refuse to touch VHS would buy the DVD when they otherwise wouldn’t buy any version at all; in other words, a lot more copies of the film would be sold overall.

: You mentioned that duel is available. That's good, I actually really like that movie. Still, why does it seem that spielberg and luca$ are in cahoots about dvd releases?

Probably because they _are_ close friends and run their businesses in fairly similar ways, and because Spielberg was publicly reluctant to release _any_ of his films on DVD, and that rubbed off on Lucas. Perhaps one reason Lucas hasn’t released the Indy films on DVD is because Spielberg doesn’t want them on the format yet; Lucas could release them anyway since he owns the character, but if Spielberg is really that keen to keep all his “A-list” resumé material off DVD for now (and Indy would certainly be included in that, I think we all agree), I doubt Lucas would risk alienating Spielberg just to have Indy DVDs available when there are already tapes.
: -----------------

: : I’m not any happier about the flood of Star Wars merchandise than you are - I think it cheapens the films to have so much junk lining the shelves of every store. I don’t know how delaying DVD releases constitutes a “marketing fiasco,” though - the release of the films to a given video format is more than a mere marketing issue, it’s a creative one. Personally, I’m glad that Lucas apparently wants to take the time to handle the DVD releases the right way from the beginning, rather than rushing them to market now and then turning out progressively more lavish, extras-laden editions every couple of years or so.
: ---------------
: first off, let me laugh at your proposition that luca$ wouldn't enjoy turning out progressively more lavish extra laden editions every few years. Just look at toy shelves, or at the last two or three years of star wars marketing.

By “editions” I’m clearly speaking of different video releases. There have been no fewer than four letterboxed laserdisc releases of the three films of the “classic trilogy” domestically alone: there were the first widescreen discs of the individual films, when letterboxing was taking off and the THX video program hadn’t started yet; there was the 1993 “Star Wars Trilogy: The Definitive Collection,” featuring scads of extras plus all three films on nine discs in CAV format; there were the individual, CLV versions of the three films, minus all the extras but with new interviews two years later to go with the VHS release of the THX remasters (good for people who prefer CLV to CAV because they’re more interested in just watching the films than scanning through extras and special features, and don’t want to switch sides every half hour or less, but don’t want to get the old original individual editions when the THX transfers for the “Definitive Collection” look so much better; also good for the interviews); and then the boxed set of the “Special Edition”. The original releases are superfluous now, but at the time they represented the finest versions of the Star Wars films that had ever existed on video; each of the others is still desirable even to someone who has the others, because they all offer something the others don’t. Each of these versions was justifiable at the time, but since there were _four_ separate releases of the films, it gave the impression that Lucas was putting out a new, more desirable version every so often to force people to upgrade. The only way to avoid this, though, would have been to release the individual CLV editions and the big CAV boxed set at the same time, which would have resulted in fewer releases time-wise. Lucas probably wants to avoid ever having a supposedly “definitive” video release of Star Wars ever made irrelevant again by better technology available later (not to mention future films to be released, which would make any collector’s sets of the “complete series” as it now stands incomplete); since he obviously can’t release a complete set of all six films now because two of them don’t exist yet, he’s decided to wait until he can - hence, no DVDs. The VHS tapes come out because no one harbors any illusions about them being the best possible presentation, and therefore they’re not intended as lasting keepsakes / library editions the way the laserdiscs were once meant to be, and the way the DVDs will be (until the debut of the next home video format ;-).

Incidentally, it took five years for the original film to come out on video at all because at first Lucas didn’t think the format could do it any justice; I personally agree with that wholeheartedly, and as I mention at the end of this post, I wish none of them were available in _any_ format, even though I’ll get them if they are.

: As for creative issues....the phantom menace fouled up its good creative decisions (the young emperor, darth maul, young obi-wan) with some of THE WORST CREATIVE DECISIONS ever made (turning the force into symbiotic bacteria, jar jar binks, mannequin skywalker's casting, jar jar binks, etc.). The whole purpose of dvd with the phantom menace is so you can skip to the chapters that are awesome.

All of that’s arguable. I myself am uneasy with the whole midi-chlorian thing, but so little was said about it that we still don’t really know what the deal is with them; it could turn out to be that the Jedi don’t fully understand their significance either, and that they just look for them as an indicator of ability in the Force, which could still remain the mythical, mystical entity we’ve always envisioned it to be. I’m not saying this is the case, but I hope so, and there’s still room for it to be. Jar Jar? He’s not my favorite, either, but I think it’s just because he’s so far removed from Boba Fett, the Empire, etc., that all the people who are interested in Star Wars for all the “cool” stuff just can’t possibly appreciate that _kind_ of character. I did notice that when I saw the film again late in its release, when the hardcore fans had all gotten their fill and the audience was mostly made up of “regular people”, he got a much better reception - and really, they’re the people that he - and all of Star Wars - was really made for, not a bunch of geeks. As far as Jake Lloyd goes, again, the merits of his performance are debatable; it may be a bit raw, but it sure as hell isn’t the worst performance I’ve ever seen in a movie, not by a long shot. People give dull or lame or bad performances in films all the time; it’s obviously not something the filmmakers _try_ to get, it just happens. Even if you think he’s really bad - and again, that isn’t universally agreed-upon - it’s possible that he just really came through in auditions in a way that he couldn’t onscreen, and that it wasn’t obvious until shooting was too far along for the part to be recast. I certainly agree that Lucas didn’t stumble across the magic mix of actors he got for the roles in the original, but hey, that’s hard, and I think he didn’t do too badly with this one.

More importantly, though, none of that has any relevance to this conversation. Whether or not Lucas is still a good creative force and whether he’s sold out are two separate topics. Even if he made a horrible film worthy of being on MST3K, he obviously didn’t _want_ to; he simply tried and failed to make something good. That could make him a poor artist, but it doesn’t make money his sole motivation.

: As for the creative aspect of putting something on vhs...well, vhs looks like crap. If you don't agree then you either don't watch dvd regularly, or your dvd player sucks. I can't imagine a good argument why you should ever release something on vhs and not dvd...unless it is a marketing ploy. I can't help but think some weird undercurrent is influencing luca$'s and spielberg's decisions.

I wasn’t speaking about the creative aspect of putting something on VHS; I was speaking about the creative aspect of _not_ putting it on something else until he feels it’s ready. The thing with VHS is that it’s _so_ far below the standard of quality achievable with other formats that it almost doesn’t count as something you have to worry about getting right; it also is such a hugely popular format that it simply can’t be denied to the market in that format (Fox probably wants some kind of video release as well, remember). Those two facts = guaranteed VHS release, even when there isn’t one for DVD or laserdisc. I’m not happy about it, believe me - I _am_ aware that DVD looks a _lot_ better than VHS (and so do laserdisc, Beta, Hi-8, etc.), and think that the premier video release of the first episode of Star Wars ought to be available in _some_ format other than what is literally the worst one available, but that’s the way it breaks down given the economic and creative realities that exist. In a way, it’s just as well, since by keeping the film from DVD for the time being it’ll retain its interest longer; I personally wish that _none_ of the Star Wars films had _ever_ been released in _any_ home video format, but that’s not the way I felt when I was twelve or thirteen; it took me years of overwatching the films and losing the magic for me to realize that if a film is popular enough to be viably rereleased every so many years, that’s really the best way for it to live on, not through video.

- IJ

P.S. - If, like me, you feel you _must_ have a better-than-VHS edition of The Phantom Menace (even if you’re not as in love with it as I am), you should be aware that there _is_ a laserdisc edition for Japan, which will play in American laserdisc players. The difficulty is in finding a way to get it here, and then of course it’ll be quite expensive as it’s an import. I intend to try for it myself. Good luck if you do as well, and I hope you enjoy the next two Star Wars episodes more; I also hope we eventually get terrific Indy DVDs, including all the Young Indy material. :)

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: : 
: : : American Graffiti isn’t the only one; Radioland Murders is available, as well. Several Young Indy tapes were released _concurrently_ with the three feature films, and have are available now, but have just been out a couple of months. Further ones will come, but one can’t expect them to release 25 tapes in a series all at the same time. Think of every TV series that’s every had any substantial number of episodes - did Paramount release all the Star Trek episodes at once? No. Did Rhino release all the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes at once? No. What TV show with any appreciable number of episodes _ever_ got released all at once?

: : ------------------
: : Errr...when you say something is going to be released soon, a year and a half (with no release date in sight) is not soon.  Don't lie.  
: : Oh, how could I forget radioland murders...that is almost my favorite film, after Indy I, II, and III, star wars, and my home videotape of ice melting.

: DON’T YOU DARE SUGGEST I LIE. Where in my post did I lie - for that matter, where in my post did I actually say it was going to be released soon? Also, where do you get this “year and a half” figure - it’s been roughly half a year since the initial batch was released; I haven’t seen anything to indicate the others are a year away. I was just saying that it hadn’t been very long yet since the first batch was released, so it’s not unreasonable for the second batch to not be out yet.

: I didn’t say Radioland Murders was great, or even good - it’s my least favorite Lucas creation, in fact. I merely pointed out that it was available, contrary to the implied claim that American Graffiti is the sole representative of Lucas’ creative output on DVD.
: : ----------------
: : : As far as secrecy regarding release dates goes, there probably _isn’t_ a secret; I’d bet it’s just because the exact date for the next release hasn’t been decided yet. You can’t expect them to give a date when they don’t know it yet, can you?
: : -------------------
: : Errr...that's a load of garbage. there hasn't even been a press release saying "We're working on dvd, we have no idea when they'll be released". 
: : Can you say "leave people in the dark so they'll buy the vhs copy, since it will be discontinued soon and they have no idea if dvd will ever come".

: Lucas apparently _did_ say at a press conference not long ago that Indy DVDs are forthcoming; he didn’t elaborate, though, and there hasn’t been any info since. That said, I’m still confident it will happen in less than two years; if you don’t want to buy the tapes because you intend to get the DVDs, why not just do that, then (not buy the tapes)? You’ll have more money, and you’ll have time to enjoy other things - no, I’m not being sarcastic; I really think one’s appreciation of the films will be enhanced if one doesn’t watch them _all_ the time.
: : ----------------
: : : By the time The Phantom Menace hits DVD, the current VHS collector’s edition will be long since unavailable. Furthermore, the DVD will almost certainly have a _lot_ more stuff on it than the VHS collector’s edition.
: : -----------
: : Yeah... sure.  Hopefully Luca$ is busy editing out jar jar binks.  If this is what he's doing, why not release info about it?  The only reason is to boost vhs sales.

: Why would he do it to boost sales of one medium when it comes at the expense of _all_ sales of another? Even assuming Lucas is in it only for the money, it wouldn’t make sense - the same number of people who will buy VHS tapes would buy one version or the other, and some of them would buy both, and a tiny number of people who embrace DVD but refuse to touch VHS would buy the DVD when they otherwise wouldn’t buy any version at all; in other words, a lot more copies of the film would be sold overall.

: : You mentioned that duel is available.  That's good, I actually really like that movie.  Still, why does it seem that spielberg and luca$ are in cahoots about dvd releases?

: Probably because they _are_ close friends and run their businesses in fairly similar ways, and because Spielberg was publicly reluctant to release _any_ of his films on DVD, and that rubbed off on Lucas. Perhaps one reason Lucas hasn’t released the Indy films on DVD is because Spielberg doesn’t want them on the format yet; Lucas could release them anyway since he owns the character, but if Spielberg is really that keen to keep all his “A-list” resumé material off DVD for now (and Indy would certainly be included in that, I think we all agree), I doubt Lucas would risk alienating Spielberg just to have Indy DVDs available when there are already tapes.
: : -----------------

: : : I’m not any happier about the flood of Star Wars merchandise than you are - I think it cheapens the films to have so much junk lining the shelves of every store. I don’t know how delaying DVD releases constitutes a “marketing fiasco,” though - the release of the films to a given video format is more than a mere marketing issue, it’s a creative one. Personally, I’m glad that Lucas apparently wants to take the time to handle the DVD releases the right way from the beginning, rather than rushing them to market now and then turning out progressively more lavish, extras-laden editions every couple of years or so. 
: : ---------------
: : first off, let me laugh at your proposition that luca$ wouldn't enjoy turning out progressively more lavish extra laden editions every few years.  Just look at toy shelves, or at the last two or three years of star wars marketing.

: By “editions” I’m clearly speaking of different video releases. There have been no fewer than four letterboxed laserdisc releases of the three films of the “classic trilogy” domestically alone: there were the first widescreen discs of the individual films, when letterboxing was taking off and the THX video program hadn’t started yet; there was the 1993 “Star Wars Trilogy: The Definitive Collection,” featuring scads of extras plus all three films on nine discs in CAV format; there were the individual, CLV versions of the three films, minus all the extras but with new interviews two years later to go with the VHS release of the THX remasters (good for people who prefer CLV to CAV because they’re more interested in just watching the films than scanning through extras and special features, and don’t want to switch sides every half hour or less, but don’t want to get the old original individual editions when the THX transfers for the “Definitive Collection” look so much better; also good for the interviews); and then the boxed set of the “Special Edition”. The original releases are superfluous now, but at the time they represented the finest versions of the Star Wars films that had ever existed on video; each of the others is still desirable even to someone who has the others, because they all offer something the others don’t. Each of these versions was justifiable at the time, but since there were _four_ separate releases of the films, it gave the impression that Lucas was putting out a new, more desirable version every so often to force people to upgrade. The only way to avoid this, though, would have been to release the individual CLV editions and the big CAV boxed set at the same time, which would have resulted in fewer releases time-wise. Lucas probably wants to avoid ever having a supposedly “definitive” video release of Star Wars ever made irrelevant again by better technology available later (not to mention future films to be released, which would make any collector’s sets of the “complete series” as it now stands incomplete); since he obviously can’t release a complete set of all six films now because two of them don’t exist yet, he’s decided to wait until he can - hence, no DVDs. The VHS tapes come out because no one harbors any illusions about them being the best possible presentation, and therefore they’re not intended as lasting keepsakes / library editions the way the laserdiscs were once meant to be, and the way the DVDs will be (until the debut of the next home video format  ;-).

: Incidentally, it took five years for the original film to come out on video at all because at first Lucas didn’t think the format could do it any justice; I personally agree with that wholeheartedly, and as I mention at the end of this post, I wish none of them were available in _any_ format, even though I’ll get them if they are.

: : As for creative issues....the phantom menace fouled up its good creative decisions (the young emperor, darth maul, young obi-wan) with some of THE WORST CREATIVE DECISIONS ever made (turning the force into symbiotic bacteria, jar jar binks, mannequin skywalker's casting, jar jar binks, etc.).  The whole purpose of dvd with the phantom menace is so you can skip to the chapters that are awesome.

: All of that’s arguable. I myself am uneasy with the whole midi-chlorian thing, but so little was said about it that we still don’t really know what the deal is with them; it could turn out to be that the Jedi don’t fully understand their significance either, and that they just look for them as an indicator of ability in the Force, which could still remain the mythical, mystical entity we’ve always envisioned it to be. I’m not saying this is the case, but I hope so, and there’s still room for it to be. Jar Jar? He’s not my favorite, either, but I think it’s just because he’s so far removed from Boba Fett, the Empire, etc., that all the people who are interested in Star Wars for all the “cool” stuff just can’t possibly appreciate that _kind_ of character. I did notice that when I saw the film again late in its release, when the hardcore fans had all gotten their fill and the audience was mostly made up of “regular people”, he got a much better reception - and really, they’re the people that he - and all of Star Wars - was really made for, not a bunch of geeks. As far as Jake Lloyd goes, again, the merits of his performance are debatable; it may be a bit raw, but it sure as hell isn’t the worst performance I’ve ever seen in a movie, not by a long shot. People give dull or lame or bad performances in films all the time; it’s obviously not something the filmmakers _try_ to get, it just happens. Even if you think he’s really bad - and again, that isn’t universally agreed-upon - it’s possible that he just really came through in auditions in a way that he couldn’t onscreen, and that it wasn’t obvious until shooting was too far along for the part to be recast. I certainly agree that Lucas didn’t stumble across the magic mix of actors he got for the roles in the original, but hey, that’s hard, and I think he didn’t do too badly with this one.

: More importantly, though, none of that has any relevance to this conversation. Whether or not Lucas is still a good creative force and whether he’s sold out are two separate topics. Even if he made a horrible film worthy of being on MST3K, he obviously didn’t _want_ to; he simply tried and failed to make something good. That could make him a poor artist, but it doesn’t make money his sole motivation.

: : As for the creative aspect of putting something on vhs...well, vhs looks like crap.  If you don't agree then you either don't watch dvd regularly, or your dvd player sucks.  I can't imagine a good argument why you should ever release something on vhs and not dvd...unless it is a marketing ploy. I can't help but think some weird undercurrent is influencing luca$'s and spielberg's decisions.

: I wasn’t speaking about the creative aspect of putting something on VHS; I was speaking about the creative aspect of _not_ putting it on something else until he feels it’s ready. The thing with VHS is that it’s _so_ far below the standard of quality achievable with other formats that it almost doesn’t count as something you have to worry about getting right; it also is such a hugely popular format that it simply can’t be denied to the market in that format (Fox probably wants some kind of video release as well, remember). Those two facts = guaranteed VHS release, even when there isn’t one for DVD or laserdisc. I’m not happy about it, believe me - I _am_ aware that DVD looks a _lot_ better than VHS (and so do laserdisc, Beta, Hi-8, etc.), and think that the premier video release of the first episode of Star Wars ought to be available in _some_ format other than what is literally the worst one available, but that’s the way it breaks down given the economic and creative realities that exist. In a way, it’s just as well, since by keeping the film from DVD for the time being it’ll retain its interest longer; I personally wish that _none_ of the Star Wars films had _ever_ been released in _any_ home video format, but that’s not the way I felt when I was twelve or thirteen; it took me years of overwatching the films and losing the magic for me to realize that if a film is popular enough to be viably rereleased every so many years, that’s really the best way for it to live on, not through video.

: - IJ

: P.S. - If, like me, you feel you _must_ have a better-than-VHS edition of The Phantom Menace (even if you’re not as in love with it as I am), you should be aware that there _is_ a laserdisc edition for Japan, which will play in American laserdisc players. The difficulty is in finding a way to get it here, and then of course it’ll be quite expensive as it’s an import. I intend to try for it myself. Good luck if you do as well, and I hope you enjoy the next two Star Wars episodes more; I also hope we eventually get terrific Indy DVDs, including all the Young Indy material.   :)

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