September 25, 2006
Episode V & VI
The Empire Strikes Back
Most of the sound problems were fixed or just not noticeable in Empire. The picture also looked much better than ANH. I’m sure most of this is because Lucas had more money for Empire so the quality is naturally better.
My only real complaint about Empire is the Hoth battle. During this sequence some of the visual effects are just terrible. Whenever you are in the cockpit view of a snowspeeder you can see the background right through the ship or person you are suppose to be looking at. Most of this probably isn’t noticeable unless you are looking for it, which I was. However, there was one shot were I could hardly see Luke’s face because of the thing that was behind him. I’m not even sure what it was because it flashed by so quickly. Other than that it was a good transfer.
Return of the Jedi
Once again there were really no major sound issues that I noticed. However, the picture quality wasn’t great. It was very grainy whenever there was a lot of black on the screen or the scene was very dark.
The subtitle’s for Jabba, Bib Fortuna and Boushh are missing just like the Greedo scene from ANH. While it is interesting that it didn’t play with subtitles in the theater I’m not that upset over them missing. After all, I’ve seen Jedi enough that I can fill in all those lines anyway.
Summary
Over all there are a few down sides to this set but I believe it is worth having. At least until we get the remastered version from the late 90’s that fixed all the sound & visual effects. But since that may never happen I’m glad I picked this up.