Disc
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Star Wars Episode II, DVD, "Widescreen Collection" Bootleg, China 2002
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A proper bootleg! Recorded off a cinema screen with a camcorder, this bootleg features the theatrical edit of Episode II, never released commercially. Who says bootlegs aren't useful? The VOB-files on the disc are dated May 25th 2002, the movie premiered in cinemas May 16th. (The official release on DVD was Dec. 11th 2002, incidentally.)
The disc opens with an intro for Licence to Kill. "Welcome to Licence to Kill Special Edition DVD", a woman's voice says. Nice. Then you get the Star Wars title receeding into the starfield, which segues into a motion menu giving you the option to choose English or Chinese. This gives you "Play Movie" and "Scerrn select" (Chapter) menus in their respective languages. The image is in non-anamorphic widescreen. It is reasonably sharp, though the geometry is somewhat skewed, and highlights are blown out. There is some slight flickering too. The movie plays out in full, including the opening Fox fanfare, but you get just 30 seconds of the end credits. The framerate is 25fps, so this is a PAL-format DVD. The audio is encoded in Dolby Digital 2.0 and sounds very clear, not having any of the hollow characteristics of an in-auditorium recording. From the high quality aspects of this Camcording, I suspect they had access to a private screening and direct feed from the sound system. Included on the disc is a single, Chinese subtitle track. Although the cover art and disc art are different, the actual files are identical to this bootleg. The below screenshots are from that release. |
Licence to Kill intro
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Menu intro
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Language select menu
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English main menu
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English chapter menu
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Chinese main menu
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Chinese chapter menu
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Fox fanfare
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A long time ago...
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Title card
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Opening crawl
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Subtitles
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Subtitles
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No "To be angry is to be human" dialogue
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Subtitles
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Anakin doesn't reach for Padme's hand
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End credits (30 seconds only)
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