Baronlando

Lucas specifically writes in the liner notes only that he has "restored" the movie, which might be a new level of 1984 newspeak even for him. (It's a much more thoughtful and subtle re-working than Star Wars got, but it sort of fumbles near the end zone with the cgi monkees replacing the midgets.)

It looks like the THX1138 director's cut is coming out on blu in september, as part of a wave of classics. It doesn't specify if any of the other classics have a new animated cartoon crab pasted into them, maybe only lucasfilm is classy like that.

http://www.dvdtown.com/news/warner-to-release-several-classics-on-blu-ray-in-2010/7343

How can he possibly know about it if he's in the middle of directing a huge movie all year long? He's not a 12 year old girl checking the web on his iphone 40 times a day.

Maybe it's just built-in obsolescence. Good enough for the time being, but with the potential to be dressed up in new clothes and trotted around like it's a new thing. Like the corpse in Weekend at Bernie's.

I would love it if Scorsese's speech made a dent in Lucas' anti-original stand. But he probably thinks his creative vision is more important, as if that's why the movies were changed in the first place. And these days a lot of fans will back him up, claiming their support for the artist. Meanwhile, they aren't out there preaching that line every time someone wants the original cut of The Warriors or Last of the Mohicans. Because they don't actually care about the artist's vision, they're just a bunch of butthurt warsies who hate it when Lucas and their favorite toys are criticized.

I guess it's only fair though. It's not like Lucas and Spielberg were mentioning Gone with the Wind or Sound of Music back when they were taking out ads trumpeting their own records.

That's the real question: before 2004 they could have done anything they want with it, but did they give Lucas some kind of control in exchange for Lucas paying for the restoration and the new effects? (a pretty expensive proposition for a fairly obscure movie). Warner didn't include the theatrical versions of Big Red One or Pat Garrett when they did those new versions even though they could have, so maybe there's hope. (that the absence of both cuts on the dvd wasn't necessarily an indication of Lucas control)

At least with Lord of the Rings you know you'll have your choice of either version soon enough, by the time Hobbit comes out. With Star Wars (on top of having to beg to get the first versions at all) we have this totally annoying secret mystery of what and when the eventual set will be. Multiple versions? More changes and if so, what are they? Coming out next year? Three years? "Oh, we can't tell you that now! It's a secret, and someday if you're really good, we will bless you with the knowledge."

Maybe it'll just be one of those fondly remembered kids' things, like He-Man or G.I. Joe. Star Wars now isn't pervasive enough with anyone over 12 (and even there the cartoon gets clobbered in the cable ratings by SpongeBob and Hannah Montana) to have that lingering cultural impact it had the first time around.

Is Lucas' health okay? He seemed sort of unwell even just compared to a few years ago.

Lucas was on NPR today and it sounded like he had cooled a little on the whole thing. He said something like "after the first 10 minutes you don't really notice it's 3D".

Question: does the presence of the digital Yoda in Phantom Menace at the star wars concert indicate that a new master has been created for that whole movie? I know the youtube concert clips aren't the best way to judge, but the episode I clips look somehow "better" to me, while the other 5 movies basically look like the current dvds.

Let's not paint ol' Ridley with the same brush!

One of the guys from digital bits claimed that the Indy blu-rays were ready to come out along with Crystal Skull, but at the last minute Spielberg stopped it because he wasn't happy with how they looked.

No, it's a private company. It'll never go public.

Last we heard, Lucas was put off by the sheer per-minute cost of the conversion, especially since he's looking at 12 hours of it. Anybody know if the cost has gone down significantly in the last year or two?

Bingowings said:

The ordering off only really happens on screen after Luke has rescued Han.

 

 

Vader wants to get BACK to Luke after the rescue happens, but he'd been sent "to put them back on schedule" before that. None of those imperial weasels are going to work "secretly" for vader, they're more scared of The Emperor.

Yeah, the movie never says it's been a year, that's just bullshit so they can sell extra junk with the original characters. It's right after Empire. Vader has been temporarily ordered off the Luke thing to supervise the Death Star and he wants to get back to it as soon as the Emperor lets him. But really, The Emperor just wants Luke to come to them since Vader screwed up doing it his way.

The desire to re-edit and fix every flaw always reminds me of this!:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/4101/saturday-night-live-cooking-with-the-anal-rententive-chef

That new book kinda bugs me. Really, GL, really? YOU'RE gonna start lecturing about the details of film history being presented accurately, really? The kids in my building think cgi dinosaurs are a 70s thing!

Why would a dvd of Willow cost millions? And "tiny" lucasfilm? They aren't some scrappy little boutique just trying to scrape by with their adorable handmade craftsmanship, far from it. They're a big company that has done schlocky work for years now, look at the joke that THX has become (the process not the movie). They make money because Star Wars fans have OCD and buy almost anything.

My point was that blu-ray doesn't pose some special risk just to LFL. They aren't holding off until 2011 because they're being cautious about a new format. They know the new format is perfectly viable.

Eh, porno outfits have already managed to put out blu-rays. LFL just love to cultivate that image that everything they have is a special golden treasure that they occasionally deign to sell us if we wait long enough.

Actually, the disc budget at the big studios is so tiny these days, the guys doing  catalog 70s titles like Logan's Run would probably kill for the time and money LFL could lavish on a bare bones Star Wars '77 disc. (compare the Young Indiana Jones dvd sets to any big studio release of a failed 90s tv show)

There must be a good financial reason for Lord of the Rings and Star Trek to follow the "theatrical versions now, special editions later" pattern. I would love to hear the debate at Lucasfilm. Surely somebody over there must be pondering why they don't do the same thing.

Ironically, it seems to me that the original version would be a more desirable starting point in creating a 3D version than the special edition. For example, if we're going to see the death star blow up in super clear 3D, isn't it better to use the original 1st generation finished shot rather than one that went through the computer an extra time in 1996?

? That's totally unrelated to any release of the original versions, though. Read the petition again. Multiple versions like Blade Runner and all that.

http://filmsound.org/starwars/starwars-AQ.htm

Burtt says it's from 77. I don't think they say "star destoyer" in the final cut of the movie but there is pre-Empire material like comics and publicity stuff that use the name.