I went straight to the bonus disc too. Watched everything except Empire of Dreams (which I saw in the edited format on A&E), and the posters. Most were good, especially the character development mini-doc. Anyone else notice just how old and frail Ralph McQuarrie is looking? The lightsaber special was okay, but went on a little long. The Episode III preview was a little disappointing. 10 minutes of building the suit for Vader, and then a brief shot of Hayden wearing it. At least the practice sessions between Ewan and Hayden for their big fight scene looked okay.
Then I went to ANH. They fixed a few things which were impressive improvements. Vader's saber color after he kills Obi-Wan, the Landspeeder as it enters Mos Eisley, Jabba, and even the Greedo/Han confrontation looks way better.
However, why would they not fix the mistake that shows R5-D4 behind R2 in the next shot after R5 already blew his stack? One of the shots of the TIE Fighters attacking the Falcon after it escapes from the DS still shows the box around it from the layering process. And what is up with that new Krayt Dragon howl Obi-Wan gives?
I then went to watch ANH again with the commentary. It was so boring I actually fell asleep halfway through - now I have to watch it again. It would have been nice if the commentary had been all four people sitting in a room interacting with each other. Instead, it appears as if they simply took quotes from everyone, and inserted them into the appropriate spots.
Lucas sounded disninterested for the most part, and I can't tell how many times in the first half hour he mentioned that this was taken from the Droids perspective, or that the story revolved around the droids...no, it revolved around Luke...no itrevolved around Vader....no the first half hour intercut between Leia's and Luke's stories. Very disorganized on Lucas' part, and he seems to contradict himself way too many times. Not good.
On the plus side, Carrie Fisher as always is refreshing to hear talk about it, and Ben Burtt had some of the most interesting behind-the-scenes comments. In the first half of the movie, at least, Dennis Muren barely said anything.
Tonight, it's on to Empire and Jedi.
Barada
I'll have to watch a whole movie sometime.