The fact that the O-neg no longer conforms to the original 1977 version of Star Wars is a technicality that Lucasfilm has been twisting into confusing people that "the original version doesn't exist anymore" as in "the original version has been destroyed and is not coming back" which is clearly absurd. See they didn't say that, a lot of us just assumed that's what he meant by it.
Originally posted by: zombie84Aside from the fact that an O-neg scan is by no means the only source of a high-res telecine (in fact only rarely is the O-neg used for releases), various private collectors and public institutions have undertaken preservation efforts, and it has been well documented as well that not only are the original negatives and interpositives still preserved in the LFL archives, but that Lucas himself personally owns specially-made high quality prints, and even lent these to the laboratories who restored the SE as reference guides. So you are saying that because third parties are claming Lucas is just a button press away from making a nice anamorphic transfer, that he is the one lying about it? They have been up front about having prints beyond the negative altered to make the SE versions, but they are saying that they are all in pretty bad shape, and would take a lot of restoration work to make them suitable for a new anamorphic transfer. I appreciate the motives for which Lucas -could- be lying, but again I am not willing to judge him a liar on the say so of some anonamous third party who claims to have inside info.
Originally posted by: zombie84
Why didn't they make a new transfer for this release? Because they didn't have to. As can be seen--and the dvds are currently in Amazon.com's top ten sales--they could get just as much money from us by not spending a cent. This way we buy both these and the eventually-released restored versions. If he happens to release them again in a better resolution.Originally posted by: zombie84
Obviously this has nothing to do with personal preference or artistic vision of Lucas, otherwise he would not be releasing them.
Well of course, Lucas' "preference" is the SE version, obviously. To me it's pretty clear he did this release of the O-OT on DVD just for people like us.
Originally posted by: zombie84And besides that, the whole thing was schemed up by Jim Ward, not Lucas himself, who isn't usually too involved with his companies sales. Its simply about getting money from people.
By selling people what they have been asking for for years. To me that's a pretty good way of making money.
2001 was the first year of Lucasfilm dvd and they had TPM. 2002 had AOTC. 2003 had Indy trilogy. 2004 had the SE. 2005 had another release of teh SE which didn't do too good but it was okay because they also had ROTS. Now they need something else so they throw a LD transfer of the OOT and they have another huge dvd sale. Next year will have the saga box set, which i feel probably wont sell very well unless they include the OOT in a restored form.
