Like any “future SE” shots, these ones always tend to catch my eye. I’m not sure if I’m imagining things, but these shots of R2 tend to look really soft compared to their surrounding shots and the rest of the scene as a whole.

I first thought this with the 2004 HDTV preservation, lining it up against the blu-ray. Easy to shrug off because it’s a bit lower quality than the disc, of course. But other shots don’t really seem that soft when compared directly.

But it seems, to me at least, this way on film as well. Is it possible that there’s something weird with these shots? Blown up from a larger frame, or shot separately from the rest of the scene? There have been numerous other cases (some pointed out by Mr. Verta, for example) where we had previously just assumed changes were made because “why the hell not?”, and there turned out to be a plausible technical snag that they may well have been trying to cover.

Or maybe I’m just imagining things. 😃