Star Wars Blu Ray Impressions — Page 2

Okay, so some impressions. I'm in Europe and picked up the set when it was released here on Monday, just to get any potential question of how I obtained it out of the way.

I haven't really gotten around to watching the movies yet, and who knows when I might, but I have watched most of the bonus features, and I'm left with only one singular emotion. Disappointment.  There are 2 reasons I'm disappointed. Firstly, the very vast majority of the content is presented in SD. On the archival discs the material is presented in a pretty tiny window with huge painted mattes around it.

 Secondly, and more importantly, perhaps, is that the content that is there is not very interesting. The interviews that are presented are all taken from various behind-the-scenes documentaries that have been on previous dvd-releases. As for the deleted scenes, they are a bit of a mixed bag. I will agree with the people who have announced them as underwhelming. It's been a long time since I watched any of the prequal-dvds, but I don't remember any of the deleted scenes for those movies on there, so I guess that's something. On the other hand, they presented in very poor SD quality, from what looks like workprint VHS with animatics standing in for visual effects. The deleted scenes from the original trilogy are all over the place. Some are faded black & white, some are crisp black & white, some are fuzzy colour shots. None have been cleaned up in any way. They are scratchy and dirty.

The only good thing I possibly could say is that the new documentaries on the last disc are in HD.

Oh, also, the alternate audio commentaries seem to be resembled mostly from what was left over from the main commentary. As in, because they edited several people who gave full commentaries together to one track, there was obviously a lot left over, and that seems to have been put in the new alternate ones. I watched some of ESB and most of the track is Kershner announcing what's going on.

I'm kind of annoyed that the US set doesn't have disc art. It was bad enough when the studios started cheaping out on DVD disc art but now even Blu-Rays are lacking. Universal is the worst, I almost considered buying the UK Back to the Future Blu-Ray set until I ended up finding the US set really cheap at Target.

Well, I've seen one of them so far which is TPM. I have to say it is greatly improved over the previous DVD version. The colours are closer to what I remember at the theater and the sound is phenomenal - it sounded like stuff was flying past me in my room! But I can see also the problems with DNR which at times does stand out pretty obvious but I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as Predator's Ultimate Edition blu-ray DNR at all.

I haven't seen the others and to be fair I'm not really inclined to. The only one I might check out for the 1080p resolution and HD sound is ROTS since that one was quite good on DVD already.

It's a shame they couldn't do the same colour grading for the OT like they did for TPM. That really does boggle my mind a bit - how Lucas can get the prequels to look spot on colour wise but not the OT - is he beyond caring for the OT now? I really hoped they would fix ROTJ colour problems (I still think it looks the worst of OT in terms of colour) especially the forest scenes having too much blue hue over the greens.

I don't understand why so many of the deleted scenes for the OT are in black and white. Can anyone explain this?

They are taken from a workprint (rough cut), which was in black and white.

It may be that they lost the negatives for those select scenes, or couldn't be bothered (Isn't it just the extended cantina? Even the b/w Luke-treadmill scene from Behind the Magic is now in colour).

digitalfreaknyc said:

I don't understand why so many of the deleted scenes for the OT are in black and white. Can anyone explain this?

  From the POV of fanedits, and possible extended editions, could these be colorized, Ted Turner style?

TheBoost said:

digitalfreaknyc said:

I don't understand why so many of the deleted scenes for the OT are in black and white. Can anyone explain this?

  From the POV of fanedits, and possible extended editions, could these be colorized, Ted Turner style?

Anything in black and white can be colourized, but I'm not even sure that such software is available to consumers. Modern colourization techniques, like what Ray Harryhausen did to his films, are quite impressive but there may be some proprietary software and a lot of by-hand work involved.

My Little Boy and I just got through TPM & AOTC, we are about to start ROTS, but the one thing I do like is the lightsaber fights, just love the sound, and the bass, even though some of the battles are corny LOL, but just love these weapons.

I just watched a load of deleted scenes on Youtube (they will probably be removed in the next few days).  Some were interesting, but nothing was really overwhelming.  It is always cool to see deleted scenes from a movie you have seen a zillion times, but I always watch these once and never watch them again.

So another reason why I'm glad I didn't buy this set!  Thanks Youtube!

Maybe Katie Lucas tweet should have been:

"The haters will hate and complain, and instead of buying this overpriced set just for the deleted scenes, they watched them for free on Youtube."

Is anyone having a problem with AOTC? During the part where Anakin finds Shimi, there is a momentary glitch on mine where the picture goes all blocky and pixelated for a second. I've tried it on another player and it seems to be the disc rather than my player.

It's not a huge disruption but it's not something I'd expect from a product I paid $80 for.

Nien Nunb said:

Is anyone having a problem with AOTC? During the part where Anakin finds Shimi, there is a momentary glitch on mine where the picture goes all blocky and pixelated for a second. I've tried it on another player and it seems to be the disc rather than my player.

It's not a huge disruption but it's not something I'd expect from a product I paid $80 for.

Sounds like a bad pressing. Return/exchange it.

dark_jedi said:

My Little Boy and I just got through TPM & AOTC, we are about to start ROTS, but the one thing I do like is the lightsaber fights, just love the sound, and the bass, even though some of the battles are corny LOL, but just love these weapons.

Yeah, while the picture has its share of flaws for those two films, the audio is pretty cool. Great range and a lot of punch in those mixes.

I've also watched TPM and AOTC. For all the flaws of those films, I enjoyed them for what they are.

I think TPM looks pretty good, actually. I've only owned it on VHS, so I never got to see the LD presentation or the alledgedly horrendous DVD. The BD is quite a step up from that. I'm just glad they took some measures to ensure a certain level of visual consistency between the prequels, even if that includes DNR. The film just never looked that great in the first place, so I can't see what the fuss is all about.

Also, CG Yoda may be the most welcome change to the saga so far. Let's hope Lucas doesn't read that; the puppet in the OT was a nice piece of work, but his TPM counterpart came off as a senile muppet.

AOTC looks fantastic, but it's hardly any quantum leap given the DVD was crystal clear to begin with. In a sense, it's a little disappointing that there's no real "WOW"-experience to be found here, but the disc delivers. It just goes to show how crisp the picture was in the first place.

Tonight, I'll probably be watching ROTS. Given that this also looked spectacular on DVD, I'm not really expecting any surprises. Other than the fact that I am excited to see this on my 42" screen for - as far as I recall - the first time. And then, of course, it's onwards to the not-so-original trilogy. Even with the latest changes in mind (only Vader's "NOOOOO" bothers me that much), I have a feeling it can only be better than the 2004 DVDs.

Pasted from the main Blu-ray topic: