Harmy's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Despecialized Edition HD - V2.0 - MKV & AVCHD (Released) — Page 35

Pheran said:

I'm pretty familiar with the Star Wars SE and the various ridiculous changes it contains. In the case of Star Wars, Harmy's release is the clear choice to watch. But then I thought about TESB and realized that I'm not nearly as familiar with the SE. In fact I'm not even sure I've ever watched it. I know there are less changes than in Star Wars.

So, here's a curious question - do you feel that there are "showstopper" changes (like Greedo shooting first or the awful CGI Jabba) in the Blu-ray TESB SE that mandate watching Harmy's version? Or is it more just a preference for seeing the original theatrical version of the film?

PS: This question is not meant to detract from the amazing work Harmy is doing, it's great that he has made an original version available for us to view.

The Special Edition of ESB is the most watchable SE, if that's what you mean.  It's actually, taken as a whole, still a good movie after the alterations, unlike the others (ANH:SE is mediocre due to the trainwreck moments like the ones you mention).

That said, the theatrical is better, and there's still no necessity for the SE to even exist, and it's still being used in the Lucasfilm bait-and-switch campaign, so that's enough of a mandate for me.

Joel, the changes you mention actually irk me no end, but for the added shots of Vader returning to his Star Destroyer, I kind of all lump of them together in discussion as being the “Hyperspace” scene. Call me a nit-picker, but the breaks in pacing and sloppy music editing totally ruins the climax of the film for me.

I also have to say that while I did like the way the Cloud City interiors looked in the Special Edition, when I saw the original again for the first time in a while, I think many of the shots are better composed in the original version. The splashes of color in the revision are often more distracting than they should be in a compositional sense. If the film had been shot with that color scheme in the first place, the component shots wouldn't have been framed or blocked the way they are in the film.

The more explicit Wampa at the beginning is okay… it definitely makes it a lot clearer what's happening in the cave when Luke wakes up, but as others have pointed out, the disorienting footage of the original has a certain terrifying quality that's a bit lost here.

The 2004 revised dialogue between Vader and the Emperor is another area that feels like nails on the chalkboard to me, because it doesn't make any &#$%ing sense. The film had established in the opening crawl that Vader had been obsessively scouring the galaxy looking for Luke, the idea that Palpatine would “reveal” his probable parentage at this point is silly.

Overall, Empire is the least offensive of the Special Editions, but several of the changes are really annoying, and even the ones that could be argued are improvements don't really bring that much to the film. But as with the other Special Editions, I don't find any of the advantages worth the disadvantages.

My take on it, anyway. 

CatBus said:

That said, the theatrical is better, and there's still no necessity for the SE to even exist, and it's still being used in the Lucasfilm bait-and-switch campaign, so that's enough of a mandate for me.

I have to say, I prefer hearing the restored Williams music instead of the constant tracked intro of The Imperial March and having the Han Solo and The Princess theme as Boba Fett escapes out of sync as in the theatrical (where it ends way to early.

The music changes to SE: TESB are bad and I don't like the change(s) to the Wampa scene either.  Also, the color timing is HORRIBLE on the 2004 SE for Empire (Vader's lightsaber is PINK in the SE for God's sake ugh).

Also, Vader expresses an effeminate "Oooh" when Luke topples him over during the duel instead of the "Argh".  Instead of "Bring my ship", he now says "Prepare my starship for my arrival".  

Here are the "Han Shot Second"/Dewback level atrocities: 

- No more chimp/Clive Revill Emperor: His performance and the original image was spectacular and had such a mysterious, cryptic impact...Ian McDiarmid gives a very cheesy, uninspired, hackneyed performance in the re-do and, as has been previously mentioned, the revised dialogue Prequalizes affairs and simply doesn't make much sense.

ALSO...(why has this not been mentioned?!?)

Boba Fett's voice is changed to be that of Temuara Morrison's (Jango's).  It's lame and the original voice actor was far FAR superior.  

So, okay, maybe ESB is the lesser of three evils when it comes to the Special Editions, but it's still a travesty.  

Stay with the original. 

:)

Star Wars Purist said:

The music changes to SE: TESB are bad.

 

Some of them are.

Harmy said:

I'm still hoping for a more detailed explanation about PSB as a reference - I know Ady is using it as a pretty literal reference (although he is taking some liberties but I think he believes those to then be different from theatrical color timing) and I'd like to know if there's some proof beyond "it looks like it's not faded" that the PSB is the closest color reference. You know, I'd really like to know whether I can trust PSB the same way as I did with the IB print for Star Wars - i.e. not keeping 100% perfectly faithful to it but keeping very close to it. Because at first glance PSB looks a bit wrong to me in some scenes but it could be for the same reason the IB print did look wrong but in the end we accepted it as a good reference and got used to those colors, even though they were differnt from what we were used to watching on discolored video releases. But in the case of the IB print, that was conclusively proved to be non fade material, plus there were several of them and the colours were the same (or close enough) on each of them - is there any such empirical evidence of the PSB colors being similarly correct?

As with Star Wars there's no 100% "correct" or "accurate" , I've seen the IB Technicolor timing myself and even that supposed bulletproof source look off in many scenes but if you know what to look for I guess it beats everything out there, imo all these should only serve as a guide, not as a bluprint. In no way does Puggo Strikes Back represent an theatrical "accurate" color timing of ESB if I have to voice my opinion, it looks very good sometimes, but even as one who just speak as a layman in the field, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that there's too much blue in many sequences. Not an attack on Puggo's and Ady's work, I absolutely love it, but I think it's quite obvious where it is too much - you have quite severe levels of blue in it in some scenes, to the point where it actually starts to show up in skintones and even hair, some scenes are so cold/blue they almost starts to take on a black & white quality for the lack of a better description. Harmy, if you follow this print religiously, you're only doing your project a disservice imo.

The only official ones that can give some guidance are the GOUT (perhaps the '80's P&S for some particular clues) and '97SE, the latter was tweaked in certain scenes but is otherwise pretty true to its origin. The biggest offender when it comes to these clusterfucks of transfers is the heavily manipulated contrast levels, for that I think the '97SE broadcasts can be an excellent reference for you. It's mostly brightened in the re-comps, and when it comes to ESB, the GOUT is actually worse in terms of DVNR-smear compared to the '97 broadcasts. I saw there was some discussion of the establishing shot of the Imperial fleet some pages back, my suggestion would be for you to use the '97SE source instead to overcome its problems there if possible. Higher res, no clipped whites or crushed blacks, original fx except the dissolve which I assume you would recreate anyway. But I guess there's bad compression artifacts to deal with instead.

No proof. Just my thoughts on it...

FWIW: I agree with msycamore.

je7ome said:

So I forget where I learned this, and you guys may know this better than I do, but apparently, despite the changes being more subtle, the Empire Strikes Back Special Edition actually has the most changed scenes of the trilogy.  Just a funny little thing that I wasn't expecting.

For the 1997 Special Edition

Star Wars Number of Significant Video Changes: 11.30%

The Empire Strikes Back Number of Significant Video Changes: 18.24%

Return of the Jedi Number of Significant Video Changes: 8.33%

Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtjXdIjRQo5NdDJORXlfTDBIN0NaQXlWMk51Q2tOR0E

lucasdroid said:

What about using photos from the set as reference?

Photos from the set often have different lighting and do not have any sort of color grading applied. They're incredibly inaccurate to the look of the actual film at times.

Is there going to be a v2.0 of ESB?

Star Wars v2.1 looks wonderful, great work Harmy!

Yes, but it will take time.

So, I have another anniversary surprise for you guys. It is very much work in progress but it should be interesting nonetheless:

http://uloz.to/xWkAanQT/hoth-test-mkv

Nice!  Is this your first color correction pass?  What did you settle on as a reference(-ish)?  Whatever it is, I like it!

Color boosted GOUT.

But I guess I should really have made it a comparison. I think I'll still do that.

http://uloz.to/xu6kskTd/hoth-test-compar-mkv

OK, here's the comparison video. The color correction is just a temporary, one setting for the whole clip kind of deal but you'll see there's much more going on here than just color correction.