joefavs

Anchorhead said:

I’m aware of the spatial difference. My point was how the same vehicle could be in several places and abandoned by different companies, yet still be salvaged and used.

Different companies makes plenty of sense, but it could really even be the same company. In the first Knights of the Old Republic game, the Tatooine sandcrawlers were shown being operated by the Czerka Corporation, which had a presence on plenty of other planets throughout the series. If one mining company goes bust in this universe, that could potentially leave identical sandcrawlers on any number of planets where they had business.

I’ve been watching the PT in fits and starts over the past couple days, 20 or 30 minutes here and there when I need a break from writing papers. Anyway, I’m now into ROTS, so I’ve got an idea of how each looks. I’d say TPM is the worst-looking; the color’s a definite improvement but it suffers from that same weird DNR waxiness as the blu-ray. AOTC is probably most-improved, the quality of the upscaling is impressive and the HDR does a reasonably effective job of selling the green screen environments. ROTS doesn’t look too different from the blu-ray through a 4K player. The HDR is nice but doesn’t really transform the look of the movie like it does in Clones, and the upscaling doesn’t look any better or worse to me than what my 4K disc player does to the blu-ray on the fly.

I’m not basing this on any sort of BTS info, but from the moment I heard the TLJ score I’ve suspected that Williams went back to the ol’ “Rite of Spring” well for the Finn vs. Phasma fight.

Williams:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOXXNLKVA90&t=1m20s

Stravinsky (quicker tempo, I know, but perhaps they slowed it down for the temp):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HVF40mWIlM

NeverarGreat said:

joefavs said:

But… then you’re skipping the best one.

Exactly. Star Wars is too good for the Saga as it currently stands.

I reread your original post and I get what you’re saying, but… damn. Thoroughly at-odds with my “let the trilogies be trilogies” philosophy, but you do you, I guess.

But… then you’re skipping the best one. You don’t watch ANH because of how well it does or doesn’t work as plot-bearing architecture, you watch it because it’s a joyous and life-affirming experience, without which the whole enterprise would be that much poorer.

I’m increasingly of the opinion that these reworked viewing orders are more trouble than they’re worth. There was an argument for it in the days before the ST when a release-order viewing was a bummer because it ended with the PT, but now that there’s another act, I think there’s less reason to break up trilogies. And if we really want to get heretical, I think it would probably be fine for someone with no SW experience who wants to get in on the fun of TROS to skip right to the ST if they’re pressed for time; TFA is pretty much designed to be a secondary entry point.

But yeah. Ideally OT first, and ST is a fine way in as well, but I don’t think the prequels would be terribly compelling to someone not already invested in that world. And in my opinion, which is probably worth less now than it was before I said I support the decision to start with TFA, you shouldn’t go slicing up the trilogies. Experience them each as their own thing.

As for R1 and Solo, I’d honestly save them for later if I was trying to get someone caught up on the Skywalker saga before December. I think they work better the longer you’ve spent in that world, and they’re not directly relevant to what’s going on in the saga, so put a pin in that. You’ve got eight movies to watch as it is. Consider them a nice little treat waiting in the future.

In Legends, the Sandcrawlers were abandoned on Tatooine by a mining corporation and the Jawas refurbished them. I have no idea if there’s a canon backstory yet.

Just noticed that the placeholder card for Solo says that it will be available in DolbyVision (the 4K disc only has HDR10). I can’t imagine they’d print another run of discs so soon, so I’m guessing D+ will be the only place to see Solo in DV for the foreseeable future.

What’s the deal with the red-eyed Jawas? I know that their action figures refer to them as “Offworld Jawas”, but I thought we were on Tatooine? It’s a minor quibble, but I was a little bothered by the apparent arbitrariness of it.

EDIT: Never mind, the desert planet on the show is Arvala-7. If anyone said its name I must have missed it, and then assumed it was Tatooine because of how it looked from space.

Herzog agrees that the baby Yoda puppet is remarkable: in an interview he described it as “heartbreakingly beautiful,” and at some point during filming when Filoni and Favreau tried to shoot an extra take of a scene with baby Yoda without the puppet so that they’d have the option to use CGI, Herzog called them “cowards” and accused them of having no faith in their own creation (I saw this in a screenshot from a magazine article on Reddit, I’m having trouble tracking it down again).

Is my mind playing tricks on me or does the main title sound a little fuller/richer in TFA? Could they have remixed the score?

I’m also noticing a lot more obvious grain than on the blu-ray.

IIRC, at least one of them also has a totally misaligned mask/hood as well.

Someone asked about the compositing in the rancor scene a little while ago, and I don’t know if they got an answer, but I’m at that scene now and can give my two cents. I’m not sure if the compositing itself is new or the same as the 97 or the 04, but the color is definitely tweaked (beyond the general tint improvements) to make the composited rancor bits match the wide shots of the puppet more closely.

Also, there were plenty of witnesses at Jabba’s palace. Assuming this is set after the Battle of Jakku, this is at least a couple years after that.

^I wasn’t sure how much of that was already in the SE, since I haven’t seen it in a while. I know the extra klaxon isn’t new to this release, is there anything else?

As someone without strong feelings about color “accuracy” with regard to previous releases who just wants stuff to look good on his TV, I’m digging the hell out of the DolbyVision treatment.

Does anyone here have an Atmos setup? I’m loving the picture, and the new mixes sound fine through the 2.0 setup I’ve got in my tiny apartment, but i’m curious to know how the full experience is.

I only noticed for the first time yesterday when I watched the Disney+ version of ANH that the entire time Luke is trying to talk Han into flying with the Rebellion at Yavin, C-3PO and Chewbacca are chatting calmly in the background.

canofhumdingers said:

I LOVED IG-11! His personality is perfect and the way they made him move is flipping spectacular! He moves with this jerky, “1980’s theme park animatronic” style motion; but is still quick, precise, and deadly. It’s amazingly cool to watch and puts IG-88 from ESB into a whole new perspective! Kinda sad he got his head blown apart… but I suspect he’ll be back again. There’s no way they invested that much money in his animation to have him offed in the first episode.

My theory is that if (when) he shows up again, he’ll be a good deal stranger. I can definitely see them making him kind of unhinged and weird post-getting shot in the head. Or maybe I just really want to see Taika Waititi play it that way and it’s clouding my judgement.

I honestly find that the “MacClunkey” shot makes it easier to ignore Han’s weird digital neck jerk. Something about what it does to the rhythm of the scene sells it as a gunfight better than before. Obviously I’d prefer they’d reverted it to the original version, but this kind of works for me on some strange, goofy level.

I’d also like to say that I’m frankly astounded and heartened by the medium-positive reaction to the new color grade on this forum. I fully expected to come here to say “hey, this is kind of cool!” and be met with wall-to-wall negativity.

Just got home and I’m taking a look at the rest of the movies now. I imagine this has already been noted, but I’m just realizing that while the Fox fanfare remains for all of them, the green-to-gold Lucasfilm logo animation has been swapped out for the silver Disney-era version.

EDIT: Anyone know how to turn off subs? ESB defaults to English subtitles for some reason and I’m nto seeing any way to toggle it during playback.

EDIT2: I toggled closed captioning on and off a few times in the TV menu and they eventually went away. Weird.

DominicCobb said:

I’m curious how the other films fare. DNR on TPM? Teal tint on AOTC? Wipe or hard cut in ROTS?

I watched the first ten minutes of Clones to see what the upscale looked like. At a glance it’s a little more muted and has richer shadows/depth than the BD, which tracks with the HDR. Since I’ve already watched the PT for my TROS lead-up I probably won’t want to watch any of them all the way through for at least six months, but what I saw seemed like an improvement.

Fang Zei said:

Mocata said:

Han Solo IRL said:

https://abload.de/img/benvaderp8ktk.png

https://abload.de/img/lukefalconcrjkm.png

https://streamable.com/nit5m

Jeez. Everyone is waiting for some miraculous OOT release and they’re doing THIS?

…Wait is Vader’s red/green suit control button been changed to red/blue like in ESB? Weird thing to notice… but y’know.

Since anyone with a Disney+ subscription can now stream the movies in 4k hdr whenever they want, I have to wonder if Disney isn’t planning on restoring the OOT to include in the UHD disc package just so they can give fans a selling point other than simply “the same exact thing you can stream on D+ … but with better compression and on a disc!”

I know I’m certainly going to wait for a steep price drop before even thinking about the disc set if it only includes the D+ cuts. I’d have probably bought it pretty soon after release of D+ had had the 2011 versions, but now I’m in no rush. So thank you Disney, I guess?

Broom Kid said:

Has anyone managed to confirm the erasing of matte boxes around ships and stabilization of matte paintings/background VFX elements?

That certainly appeared to be the case when I watched ANH in full this morning, but I didn’t get all forensic about it. Played at normal speed, I saw no matte boxes and found it legitimately difficult to find the edges of matte paintings.

I’m honestly a little bummed out to learn that Pablo kept some people unblocked. I’m one of the good ones, damn it!

Broom Kid said:

Re: Joefavs’ “internal consistency” note - I’ve also heard that a lot of the background plates & matte paintings have been “locked down” so to speak? They didn’t replace them, obviously, but they definitely tried to make sure they blend better? They’re stabilized at the very least?

I noticed the same thing, particularly when Ben was shutting down the tractor beam. The garbage mattes are also gone from the TIE fighter attack, and a lot of the CG on Tatooine doesn’t pop quite so much. Across the board, everything seems to blend better than it has in the past.

Well, I just finished ANH and I liked it. As someone who was raised on the 1997 SE tapes, I’m more version-agnostic than most here, and my main issue with the 2011 Blu-Ray was less about it being the SE and more about the fact that they looked like they were held together with scotch tape, spit, and good intentions. I can’t speak to this blurry reel in ROTJ yet, but ANH looks a lot more polished and internally consistent than it has in the last couple releases, and I can see myself revisiting this when doing full-saga watch-throughs in the future.