I was super hyped for this movie as a kid. Think I had a coloring book or storybook and everything. I don’t recall loving the actual movie, but I’m interested for nostalgia’s sake!
Sent a donation to the Paypal link 😃
The discrepancy in the running time is likely just they show the movie with a built in intermission.
Studios are usually happy to let mistakes live on in movies. Disney would only ever touch these if there were reasons to censor it or something. It’s really only the filmmaker who cares to fix things. Though in some instances I can see a restoration team painting out wires or fixing matte lines like with The Wizard of Oz or something.
The Return of Return of the Jedi (2013 30th Anniversary Documentary Short) is online, unless there’s a longer version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd8k4MI0a-s
My external HD with ALL my preservation work, including the current captures of the SE 97 Laserdiscs (JP and US) just crashed. I lost everything.
I need now a couple of weeks to find the money and buy a new HD, then restart the complete capture process (all disks had been captured 3 times each, then manually detelecined)…
Sorry for this unforeseen delay, I’m pretty desperate.
Sorry to hear. I wouldn’t mind donating a bit if you need help. Let me know.
The one i downloaded has black bars on all sides . I thought it rather strange to be honest. Not sure if i screwed something up. It won’t display in 16:9 i have to watch it full frame to get the image to fit my laptop.
It was really strange like a letterboxed edition. I haven’t seen anything like that since the Gout DVDs.
The picture quality is much better than the Reivex or however it was spelled.
Maybe VLC Is the problem as to why it won’t display like an anamorphic film.
I like that it has 3 audio selections. The Laserdisc audio, DTS theatrical or optical audio from the print.
Edit: looks like it was just VLC its doing the same thing for 16mm Empire Strikes back.
I’m really going to have to get another software but MPC is no longer updated.
The scan features the whole image from the print, so it includes things that weren’t meant to be projected. The footage from 1977 is wider (an aspect ratio of 2.50:1) and the special edition changes feature black matting on the right of the frame. These would’ve been cropped to the proper aspect ratio when shown in theaters.
Hi ShiftyEyes,
I did get the copy of the 2000 release.
Currently, I have finished capturing the original US version (in 3 passes) and the JP 2000 version (in 3 passes also), from my HLD-X0 via the comb filter of an ADV-7842 card.
I plan to now capture the PAL (UK and FR) versions from an LDV-4300D.
When everything is captured, I will then be able to offer an “ultimate” version with a mix of the PAL and NTSC ("PANuP) versions.
Cheers
Sounds great, thanks for the update!
Thanks Schorman, your opinion is, as always, valuable!
I feel the same about US and original Japanese, but I don’t have (yet) the 2000 re-release. I’ll get it in a couple of days.
Hello, any update on this? Did you ever get your copy of the 2000 re-release? A bit of a 1997 SE junkie myself. 😃
I’m not the biggest fan of ROTJ myself. I find much of it rather dull. The whole Jabba opening is far too drawn out for me. They really didn’t need to spend 35 minutes on all of this.
I don’t hate the Ewoks. They’re just boring. Another 30 minutes wasted.
I liked Luke in ESB but he’s kind of an emo fascist in this? I get what they’re going for with the Vader parallels, but the haircut is awful and the black costume doesn’t really suit Mark either.
Leia and Han are mostly lost in this. Han becomes a bumbling idiot for most of it and seems to play most of the comic relief. Harrison’s sleep walking through this performance. Leia is mostly passive and withdrawn after the Jabba stuff. She seems to have taken a backseat in the Rebel Alliance. Shouldn’t she be right up there with Mon Monthma and Ackbar? They didn’t even tell her Han signed up for the Endor moon mission? And Lando seems to have been promoted over her?
Don’t care for the rehashed Death Star plot. But at this point, Lucas just needed to end things in a tidy way. Lazy, but it works.
The movie mostly limps along until the climax which starts at about the 90 minute mark. From there, it’s pretty great.
Artistically, ROTJ also looks rather flat and ugly compared to Empire. I’ve read this may have been due to a change in film stock and budget saving practices?
Great work!
I like the 4K77 and 4K83 versions. There’s a purity to the presentation there. It feels tactile and welcoming. And I think Sanjuro’s colors look real nice. Shoot, I even enjoy the heck out of the ESB Grindhouse despite all the noise and damage. The Blu-rays and 4K Blu-rays often look far too managed and manipulated - and not particularly well. Harmy’s and the D+ versions are very impressive. But they’re built on those Blu-rays and 4K Blu-rays so their flaws are often baked in, and with all the tricks used to “despecialize” them, it can feel like I’m watching a magic trick. I keep wondering how they pulled it off. I’ve been largely watching 4K content for a few years now, so Harmy’s in 720p doesn’t really cut it. I’m happy he’s working on a 4K version, but the D+ versions basically serve the same purpose. And if I want to watch the real original versions, I can just watch 4K77, 4K83 and hopefully 4K80 soon.
DrDre, I see the images you have in your shot by shot color correction of 4K83 thread are much more colorful and vibrant than your reel by reel color correction. Just curious what the differences are and with regards to accuracy/methodology.
He talks about it briefly here:
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/4K83-reel-by-reel-color-grading/id/73014/page/1#1327510
And I hope he never corrects his typo about people watching ROTJ “on the bog screen”, because it just cracks me up to imagine people watching it while sitting on the toilet.
Thanks!
Very impressive work on this. Is Version 3 still being worked on? I was a bit disappointed that the V2 version I have still still seems to have the rather garish 2004 colors. I saw there was a post about color correction back in October.
DrDre, I see the images you have in your shot by shot color correction of 4K83 thread are much more colorful and vibrant than your reel by reel color correction. Just curious what the differences are and with regards to accuracy/methodology.
Interesting. I forgot about these versions. I even recently made a custom Blu-ray using the TB version. Turns out I have a DVD copy of the “flunk” version. Looks pretty good and I like the colors.
Seems there was some considerable noise reduction applied to the master for the '97 SE, resulting in a motion blurring type appearance.
Just got the 4k box set delivered. My god is this release seriously f**ked up. Why the hell is the HDR so damn dark, especially when you compare it to the Blu-Ray? But that’s not the thing thats really pissing me off with this release. No, it’s the special features that they class as “legacy features”. Who the hell was given the task of compiling these? An idiot? For a start features like TPM’s " The Beginning" , instead of using the 16:9 anamorphic master, they present this as 4:3 letterbox. So a small bloody picture surrounded by huge black bars all around the TV screen . And its a jaggedy mess . The version on the original DVD is better quality. (view the pictures full size because you can’t really see the difference in the shrunk preview here).
(Pictures are taken on my phone direct from the TV)
The TPM deleted scenes seem to be 16:9 anamorphic ( only checked 2 so far)
I then checked the ROTJ bonus features. First one i checked was the "revenge " teaser. Correct ratio but still DVD quality. Then onto the Revenge release trailer. WTF? Morons at work once again. Some idiot forgot to encode this with the 16:9 flag, so now its presented in 4:3 with all its squashed glory
And that’s just the features i have checked so far
I was really hoping that these bonus features ported over from the old DVDs would be slightly better quality due to compression. I never expected them to be worse. Waste of bloody money. I only purchased the UHD box set for the features and EP 9, as i will never watch the prequels. I wish i’d gone with my original plan and cancelled the box set when i ordered months ago and waited for the individual episodes to be released on UHD over here.
EDIT: Just checked “Anatomy of a Dewback” & ROTS’s “Within a Minute” features and both are 4:3 , jaggedy mess letterbox, the same as “The Beginning” . But ROTS’s “The journey” is 16:9 anamorphic but still suffers with the interlacing jaggedy mess issues
EDIT #2: Ripped the TPM bonus disc to the hard drive to see if it was an issue with my Sony UHD Bluray player but, no, the problems lie within the way they have been encoded. Even deinterlacing/ pulldown removal, the jaggies are still present. One interesting thing i didn’t spot before though is that it has the complete Theatrical version of the Pod Race in 1080p. I don’t remember this being available before
I noticed this as well. The deleted scenes from the prequel DVDs are an inconsistent mess too. Some are 4x3 letterboxed & jagged, some are squashed, and some look fine.
The preview clips look great!
Some of the heavier DNR still looks a bit too waxy even with the grain, but this is overall a great improvement.
Here’s some test footage from TPM.
https://mega.nz/#!qLxAzCYb!0WnWHc9JtCHjiQIYMe1NZ00JCbKKGfI5C3OkwFXYT8g
This doesn’t have the sharpening/deblocking filter on it as that is a shot by shot process and is VERY resource intensive, and so is reserved for screenshots for now.
I redid the grading again: added a little blue and pink, desaturated the colors a bit. Increased grain and added a bit of flicker.
Much like the previous screenshots, these are first dips into working from the new 4K Blu-ray, so feedback is very much welcome.
I did look at the trailer posted earlier, and I did end up creating a look nearly identical, but I thought it looked too blue and desaturated and was really wondering if that was an accurate color corrected view of the trailer print. Still I pushed a little bit closer to what the colors looked like there, but still kept warmth.
Hey now! That test clip looks really good to me, and the grain is really satisfying.
I guess it depends on what you’re after. If you want a darker, noisier film print look, the test clip does a good job at that. But it has a slightly grungy look to it.
I’d personally prefer something more like a brand new, pristine 4K digital remaster like Sony would release on 4K Blu-ray. A little brighter (as you’ve already adjusted) and maybe take the noise/flicker down just a touch.
How come the opening crawl says that Luke Skywalker is the leader of a group of freedom fighters? He only gets lost and abandons them whenever he feels like it.
I don’t read any of the expanded universe stuff or the tie-in novels or comics, so these are just thoughts/questions I had while watching the 4K blu-ray of ROTJ earlier today.
Was Leia demoted within the Rebel Alliance or something? She’s seen barking orders in ESB. In ROTJ, she has no clue what’s going on and that Han was put in command of leading the assault on the shield generator. Somehow known traitors, gamblers, mercenaries and smugglers were advanced within the Rebel ranks ahead of her. Is she considered a general at this time?
What kind of training did Luke get between ESB and ROTJ? I’ve heard some say he could’ve easily visited Yoda to finish his training between the films, but it’s clear that this is his first time speaking to Yoda and Obi-Wan since the events of ESB. Maybe he did some practice and learned how to build a lightsaber, but is that all you need to be a Jedi?
Obi-Wan is pretty sure Luke has to straight up murder Darth Vader. He’s pretty upset when Luke tells him he can’t.
I’ve always loved The Empire Strikes Back the best even when I watched the trilogy for the first time as a kid.
I saw the first movie on TV back around 1997 without really knowing it was a trilogy. This was around the time of the SE theatrical release in January '97. I think WPIX 11 was taking advantage of the new SE version by playing the original version on a weeknight. I’d already seen some pop cultural references to Star Wars so I was a bit disappointed by what I saw. I was confused by the Episode 4 crawl. Was I missing Episodes 1-3? It was kind of long but also didn’t really go anywhere, and I’d thought I’d seen stills from scenes that wasn’t in it. I thought Darth Vader was supposed to have a bigger role. And wasn’t there supposed to be more lightsaber stuff? And to be honest, it felt a little stuffy and slow-paced for an 8-year-old kid in 1997.
I didn’t get to the see the other two until later that year. By this point, I must’ve seen the commercials for the other two movies so I convinced my parents to buy me that gold Special Edition VHS set in August. I loved The Empire Strikes Back. It was more like what I was expecting from the first film. It was more adventurous, more planets and spaceships, there was the fun and snappy dialogue and pacing, a nice and clean aesthetic, all the Force spirituality/mythology stuff with Yoda, Darth Vader being a badass, and a cool lightsaber fight at the end. And it’s the only one I thought Luke seemed like a traditional hero.
Return of the Jedi was fine, but I really didn’t like all the icky Jabba’s palace creatures. I had a strange aversion to slimey creatures and makeup effects at this time (I think I somehow saw Phantom of the Paradise on TV when I was really young and was freaked out by the makeup). And adding some erotic slave girl Leia stuff was perhaps a bit weird for me (now aged 9). Equally aroused and disgusted at the same time. Otherwise, Ewoks were cute. I didn’t like the Palpatine makeup. He reminded my too much of the witch from Snow White, who always scared me as a kid. I didn’t like Luke in this. The bad haircut, black outfit, and emo attitude didn’t work for me. But the space battle and final Luke vs Vader fight were cool.
Oh, and I remember really liking the CGI in the special editions. Really refreshed these old movies and made it feel new and and appealing for kids my age. Lol.
I still feel much the same way. I’m not as opposed the makeup and creature effects. I love the first movie now, much more than I did the first time around. Empire is still the best. I’m mostly bored with ROTJ now. Sail barge, the space battle and the Luke/Vader/Palpatine confrontation are great. But everything else is pretty dull and the other actors/characters are sleepwalking through it. ROTJ also looks so bland visually. Nowadays, I don’t mind the CGI changes so much. Some of them are really needless and I wish they’d at least re-do the terrible 1997 graphics.
That’s not a Disney thing, really - that sort of thing almost never happens at any studio. And if it does, it only happens DECADES later.
Part of the reason “The Beginning” was so remarkable back in 2001 was because people DIDN’T do that for new movies. And Lucasfilm never really did it again, either. And “The Beginning” was still somewhat sanitized.
People love behind-the-scenes drama - but the people who have to still work in the industry once the drama is over don’t love it very much, and they don’t love having a salable version of it available at will for consumers to memorize, either. So those sorts of “warts ‘n’ all” documentaries and tell-alls are for later, when that effect diminished, and there’s a lot of distance accumulated.
it’s not a question of Disney trying to appear squeaky clean, it’s more that nobody wants their dirty laundry from work aired out like that.
The documentary on “The Last Jedi” was refreshingly honest for that sort of thing, and sort of surprising that Disney/Lucasfilm was okay with the “Mark Hamill hates what they’ve done with Luke” narrative. I think it has more to do with Rian Johnson, who seems to be more of an upfront filmmaker who’ll explain his creative process, influences, etc. JJ is a much more guarded filmmaker when it comes to the creative process and also seems more of a company man, even if he may have been frustrated by the experience of Episode 9. But of course it makes sense for Disney to try to sweep any creative difficulties under the rug.
Yeah, I don’t buy this. They defeat the big battle station and that’s it. Darth Vader’s still around. The Emperor is still around. They never try to paint it as more than a momentary victory in a galactic war. Both the Holiday Special and Splinter of the Mind’s Eye are released the following year and the Empire is alive and kicking in both.
It seems I may have been a bit too harsh in my assessment of the 4K remasters on Disney+. I was surprised to see some more generally positive reviews which prompted me to give them another look. And viewing them again in 4K on an Apple TV, they still looked pretty bad. But then I decided to try my other streaming devices. Disney+ doesn’t seem to support 4K on the PS4 Pro yet? And my Nvidia Shield TV would only play these in 4K with HDR10, but they actually look better streaming on the Shield TV. The issues I noticed were still there (DNR, edge enhancement, frozen grain in backgrounds), but it was on the whole a more consistent and even satisfying presentation than what I got from my Apple TV. Just goes to remind me why I hate streaming!
