zombie84 said:
Yes, the 2004 release was done in 1080. It was scanned in 1080, new footage was integrated and it was color corrected in-house at Lucasfilm, then sent to Lowry for clean up.
I don't think Lucas will ever re-do it. Why would he? The prequels were done in 1080 as well (except Episode I). If ROTS had its effects done in 2k then they are higher resolution than the actual film. And either case, who gives a flying fuck, Lucas can dick around with his special editions until he dies for all I care. Re-doing it in 2k is almost pointless because there isn't much difference; 8K is becoming the new standard, but I guarantee you no Special Edition will ever be in 8K.
Also, why would going to the negs be counter-intuitive? Today you wouldn't re-conform the physical negative, you would do a DI, just like the 2004 special edition doesn't actually exist physically on the negative. If Lucasfilm ever got serious about the original film it would be easy to make a restoration from the negs.
re: the resolution,
hmmm, I guess if it's gonna look good enough up there on the big screen then it doesn't really matter if it's 1080 or 2K. This isn't the first time I've raised the question of what resolution the "masters" for AOTC and ROTS are. I'm similarly confused over Cameron's Avatar, since that was shot in 1080 but "mastered" at 2K. Maybe that's only done at the very end of the equation, i.e. the digital intermediate for the 35mm and digital prints. At the end of the day, the resolution of the visual effects doesn't matter so much as how convincing/photorealistic they are.
I think I can now stop being so hung up on this issue of resolution.
re: the negs,
That's not so much what worries me. What worries me is them not getting it 100% accurate to how the film was originally conformed. I guess what they could do is use a print from '77 for reference (the quality wouldn't matter) and then match up the high-quality negs to make sure everything's there.
It's just that for whatever reason I think it would be smarter to just take the best quality IP they have. Maybe I'm just thinking too much about that Blade Runner set and how they used IP's for the older versions and the o-neg for the final version.