Just forget the words and sing along

Sunday, September 26, 2004

God, sometimes I really wonder why I call myself a geek.

I've never really delved into the "Which is better: Star Trek or Star Wars?" debate. I love both. I enjoy both. Many of my friends enjoy both. I figured that they happily co-exist to a lot of geeks.

But then....

I was surfing at TrekWeb, one of my favourite Star Trek websites, and I curiously poked my nose in at one of the hottest debates in their message board right now.

This debate all started when some Trekkie noticed this statistic: The Star Wars Trilogy DVD boxed set sold more copies in its first day than Star Trek Nemesis has in the entire year and a few months it's been available. This Trekkie then goes on to ask, quite seriously, "How does a 30-year old movie made by some tiny independent production company manage to sell more than the newest, best Star Trek movie, which has a worldwide conglomerate behind it?" He then proceeded to berate Star Trek fans for allowing this affront to Star Trek to happen.

And things just went downhill from there.

I...I...really don't know what to say to that.

Moving on, I've been noticing some rather pointless changes in The Star Wars Trilogy on DVD. Single lines have been changed, and I've only noticed because the new lines are very poorly dubbed in.

The first change I noticed was in The Empire Strikes Back. I was just skipping through the film trying to hear Boba Fett's new voice. It's the scene right after when Han Solo gets frozen in carbonite. As they begin to reset the freezing chamber, an imperial soldier walks up to Darth Vader to notify Vader that Luke is coming to Bespin. In the original and special edition, the soldier says....

"We've detected a ship on sensors. X-Wing class."

In the new DVD edition....

"Skywalker's landed, sir."

The second change was in A New Hope. Yes, I finally got to watch the whole thing after the company left today. This is the infamous cantina scene, in which Luke is accosted by Ponda Baba and Dr. Evizan, only to have Obi-Wan break it up by hacking off Ponda Baba's arm. In the original and special edition, Dr. Evizan taunts Luke with this:

"He doesn't like your face. I don't like your face."

New DVD edition:

"He doesn't like you. I don't like you."

As I said, I wouldn't have noticed these changes if it weren't for the fact that these new lines are poorly dubbed in. It's like it lapses into a Godzilla movie for a brief second.

It's just a change that strikes me as odd. I'll have to check some Star Wars sites and see who else has noticed this.

Next Issue...Babylon 5 Sucks!

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