Indy BluRay pushed off til 2010, what does that mean for SW?

They are probably not on dvd because the last scans done were done for dvd.

Lucas has to pay money to have the negatives rescanned at a higher resolution than 1080, which is what the dvds were done at for star wars and indy.

Sure they were able to have HD broadcasts but the current masters are not at blu ray quality.

But is not this the same george lucas that made the nonsensical assertion years ago that dvd was as good as film?

Because Lucas says it must be true.  If any other individual said it you would doubt their sanity, expecially a director who has worked with film.

4k is the lowest exceptable point when scanning 35mm film and much higher resolution scans are being done today.  So a 1080 master downcompressed to 480i certianly does not past muster when compared against even a theatrical print much less a first or second generation master or the negative itself.

I shot first already quoted it as his sig but i will copy lucas claim here for all to see and read just how much of an ass it makes him sound.

"The other versions will disappear. Even the 35 million tapes of Star Wars out there won't last more than 30 or 40 years. A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD version [of the Special Edition], and you'll be able to project it on a 20' by 40' screen with perfect quality. I think it's the director's prerogative, not the studio's to go back and reinvent a movie."

Nobody and no theater in their right mind projects a film from a dvd on the big screen.  This is where Lucas is just totally off base.

Blu Ray does not come close to film resolution. Much less dvd.

Adopting HD video while wise in terms of cost especially when you are financing your own films the art is actually taking a step back.  The star wars film made in the seventies resolves so much more image physically than episode III its not even funny.

The negatives are rotting in a vault someplace because he has now convinced himself analog is evil and digital is better.  When those master prints and negatives are the only archival source of the movies.  He can claim all he wants that a old HD scan done years ago is archival, but i am not buying it.

Only recently has the state of the art gotten there.  And they for years did not have the tech or the power available to fully capture vistavison photography.

Years ago Lucas said i believe in a book where interviewed by ebert that the 70mm prints of the originals with the six track mag track were the definitive presentation of the films.  Even talking about how the best prints were the technicolor ones and they would be good for all time.  He claimed the films were preserved.  Only years later when the 20th anniversary was on the horizon for star wars did they find the negatives were not handled or stored properly and the stock used eastman kodak was completely faded.

As for the Indy blu rays if raiders is the same as the Hd broadcast with the single added cgi shot i'm not buying it even years down the line when i have an HDTV and blu ray player.  Especially if the masters look like utter shit because of the heavy dnr applied by Lowry, you can count me out unless a proper restoration and new scan is carried out.  Any half assing it like Paramount recently did with star trek and no money for Lucas ever until he does right by the films.

Most importantly that carries over to the original star wars trilogy needing a godfather level restoration.  Only something like that and only the original versions will i ever buy.

There are also consequently no film prints of the 2004 versions and i don't believe the cgi on the special edition or the 2oo4 are even film level resolution.  The original effects don't stick out like a sore thumb because they were not rendered digital video done on a computer they were real special effects shot physically and optically composited.

I don't know why they didn't do the special editions in the full resolution of the negatives? They could have then just compressed it to fit a dvd then as home video mediums come and go gradually make each release less compressed. It would have saved work and MADE ALOT OF PEOPLE HAPPY. George is supposed to be some genius a true pioneer of film quality yet he thinks DVD is as good as video will ever get. or as gary kurtz explained George's attitude towards film "Good Enough" GEORGE THIS ISN'T A FIFTH GRADE SCIENCE PROJECT. It is something many people enjoy. Hell, we built you ranch show some courtesy and give us a high quality version of those wonderful films that made you a household name instead of "that guy who directed American Graffiti"

Something tells me people will wait years and these blu rays will be direct dumps of the previous masters as broadcast in HD on cable.

Bare bones most likely too with the fucked up colors and sound and the matte lines and garbage mattes and lightsabers unfixed.

You will end up with quality slighly better than the television broadcasts because of less compression and probably a lot less artifacting.  But who will pay for and wait years for something when they can already get it free albeit illegally.

If it was not for that one changed shot in the raiders broadcast i believe the HD versions of INDY could be nearly perfect.  No sound issues or color problems.  All they have to do is dial down the dnr.

Even the non changed shots in HD for THX 1138 and American Graffiti looked beautiful.  The fine grain in evidence which is harder to see on the dvd.  But on star wars even in the HD broadcast to me looks like they applied too much dnr in some shots. Although the grain has not been completely smoothed away.  It is no gout sitaution of dnr, but the colors on the gout were mostly correct.

skyjedi2005 said:

Years ago Lucas said i believe in a book where interviewed by ebert that the 70mm prints of the originals with the six track mag track were the definitive presentation of the films.  Even talking about how the best prints were the technicolor ones and they would be good for all time.  He claimed the films were preserved.  Only years later when the 20th anniversary was on the horizon for star wars did they find the negatives were not handled or stored properly and the stock used eastman kodak was completely faded.

Considering all the "revisionist history" we've been subject to from Lucas over the years, sometimes I wonder if this wasn't just another bullshit line to justify why they made the SE's in the first place.

Well, whether it was real or not, you can't deny that it wasn't a marketing wet dream to not only be able to unveil these new-fangled Special Editions, but to claim they existed because of some messianistic effort to save the film stock from death.

Anchorhead said:

As far as Star Wars on Blu-ray is concerned, since I'm only interested in one film, and it happens to be the one that Lucas dislikes - I'm not holding my breath.

Very interested in this idea that Lucas dislikes the first Star Wars... would you care to elaborate, Anchorhead?  I was under the impression that the only one he really disliked was ESB, and that the first was a sentimental favorite (the last part is an assumption on my part).

bkev said:

Anchorhead said:

As far as Star Wars on Blu-ray is concerned, since I'm only interested in one film, and it happens to be the one that Lucas dislikes - I'm not holding my breath.

Very interested in this idea that Lucas dislikes the first Star Wars... would you care to elaborate, Anchorhead?  I was under the impression that the only one he really disliked was ESB, and that the first was a sentimental favorite (the last part is an assumption on my part).

Anchorhead was referring to ESB. When he said 'Star Wars on Blu-Ray', he meant it in the general sense.

You assume automatically that the one film he's interested in is ESB Davnes.  He's a fan of the original Star Wars :p - which is understandable.

I think he saw at least TPM, but I could be wrong about that.

As for his statement, it could be referring to either the fact that he referred to the original version as 25% complete and wholly unsatisfied with it (it also being the SE with the most changes), or it could be the fact that nearly all of its plot elements have been retconned by the future films.

Or could it be because star wars was the first of the original trilogy that was destroyed to make the super unspecial edition.

Don't worry anchorhead will never buy the blu ray for star wars if it ever is released because it will be the 2004 edition, or perhaps the 3D version with further changes.  Who knows Lucas never will consider the films finished and will continue to tweak them until he passes from this world.

To me if time is so short and precious why is he wasting time recutting his old film's instead of shooting new ones.   And i mean new original films not rehashes of the star wars or indiana jones series.

How long until we are tormented by Special editions of the indiana jones trilogy.  If he can replace a single shot without telling anyone and replace it with cgi what is stopping him from doing what he did to star wars trilogy from 1997-2004.

Lucas as far as i'm concerned can do as many personal fanedits of crystal skull because i hate that movie, or do that to the prequels.  But he has ruined the only good movies he ever made.

The funny thing is these bizarre edits Lucas does for his own personal gratfication are sold in stores to the general public and have replaced the real movies.