yoda-sama said:
When I watched the SE of Empire theatrically in '97, the projectionist screwed up at the beginning playing it horribly squished (not sure how multiplex film projectors work, but it was like they didn't put an anamorphic lens on), well through the Star Destroyer flying by and shooting out probe droids. They stopped it, said they'd fix it, which they did, but didn't start the film over, and then refocused it on the fly while we're trying to watch the movie *shakes fist*... Anyway, talk about what seemed like one heck of a weird SE change at first, LOL.
So yeah, perhaps they could show it theatrically a little different than how I remember it from '97...
Oh, and why would you even want them to release it theatrically, they'd just show the crap version we're trying to undo on this site... But in THREE DEEEEE *whooooooooooooaaaaaaa*
Hahaha! This brings back memories of my old projectionist days! Indeed, the projectionist forgot to put in the anamorphic lens. You don't HAVE to stop the film to change lenses, but it might take about 30 seconds to do in which time, the film becomes an unfocused, blurry squished mess. He did the right thing to stop the film.
Also, the projector was probably a platter system, and I can tell you... It is impossible to rewind a film once it's started. Well, I take that back, it's possible but you would have been waiting 30-45 minutes for him/her to unthread the machine, rewind it all back by hand (you'd be amazed at how long a couple minutes of 35mm is!) and thread the machine again.
To give you an idea of the complexity of these machines, here's a film that a good friend of mine shot in the projection booth where we worked. https://vimeo.com/63456596
