Broom Kid

NeverarGreat said:

It feels odd to go from Kylo on the destroyer to down on the planet with no establishing shots in between.

I agree. The technical work is good, but from a storytelling pov this basically just adds another location to the already fairly large list of locations (EXT: Space, INT: Star Destroyer, EXT: Forest, EXT: Ruins, INT: Ship, EXT: Space) being blipped through in about 3 min before Kylo is actually on his way to do what the crawl says he’s doing.

However, the crawl is a big improvement. The only thing that feels very strange to me is to mention that Leia is ‘ailing’ right before playing up the strength of the Resistance.

How about something like this?

The Galaxy is divided. All across the stars,
good people stand for their freedom, and are
cruelly struck down by the tyrannical FIRST ORDER.

GENERAL LEIA ORGANA, her health failing,
sends heroes of THE RESISTANCE
in her stead, recruiting thousands of new
rebels for the ultimate fight.

Meanwhile, SUPREME LEADER KYLO REN searches
for the source of his former master’s dark
power, to win this final war once and for all…

I don’t think that’s THE solution, but maybe there’s an idea or a direction in there that might be useful? Use (or ignore) as needed 😃

Pretty sure that video was subsequently derided for being mostly inaccurate?

The whole “4K Era” is riddled with these sorts of problems. The tech was sorta rushed into place, and gimmicked to hell and back as it got introduced, and as such you have a ton of people who don’t really know what it is, what it can do, and how it does it.

But they all seem to have various ideas on how it gets done WRONG, haha. If anything, the primary lesson most people seem to have learned from the 4K era is that most everything isn’t even MADE in 4K. It’s gotta be sort of disillusioning to spend all that money on all those “Ks” only to find out you weren’t able to really tell the difference between 2 and 4k the whole time - and still can’t.

disclaimer said:

Across various 4K bluray rips I saw, they don’t look anyhow better. It’s what it is.

I honestly think a lot of that has to do with how confused and weird the whole UHD thing is on a tech level. There’s no standardized “HDR” format, and the need for an “HDR” format doesn’t even honestly make that much sense, especially not when you see how it’s been applied.

Most consumers didn’t even really understand the benefits of what 1080p were offering, or how to appreciate them correctly, before the industry started running 4K at them. For a lot of people, 1080p = “motion smoothing on, icy blue colors and 16x9 at all costs” and that’s what “HD” was.

And then for 4k they added something like 3 different “HDR” formats, none of which seem to have anything to do with making stuff look better, just louder. And accuracy to what it looked like when it was shot is completely out the window, and nobody has a standardized way to get the picture info back to what it was supposed to look like before these artificially pumped-up grades were applied, so everything becomes a guessing game of “is this what it’s supposed to look like” on a player-to-player basis.

4K didn’t need to be the unnecessary mess that it currently is, and I think a huge part of why the format won’t ever take off is due to that mess. You can’t reliably put a disc into a player and have it look the way the directors and cinematographers intended it to look when they made it, and that sucks.

Maybe when this coronavirus basically relegates movie theaters to nothing more than blockbuster theme park rides (Disney will probably own all exhibition in five years and LITERALLY make them theme parks for Marvel, Star Wars, Disney, and Pixar releases) someone will figure out how to make the cheap 4K smart TVs we’re all buying (because they’re the only option available anymore) reliably display a standardized image that looks great and takes advantage of the resolution AND the color gamut without dealing with competing and incompatible formats.

That’s the first I’ve seen of it. I’m pretty sure it isn’t happening, and that’s probably a mistaken product placeholder that won’t ever get filled?

Home 3D’s been dead for years now, speaking of niches within niches. I can’t believe there are 3D conversions of all the movies done or pressed up on a commercially available disc there.

I was asking about the blu-ray only Skywalker Saga sets, not the 4K ones.

We know the 4K UHDs included in the 4K set are the '19 transfers
We know the blu-rays included in the 4K set are the '19 transfers
We know the single-film blu-ray discs are the '11 transfers (old stock released months ago)

What we don’t know is if the blu-ray only version of the 9-film Skywalker Saga set contains the '19 transfers or not.

It was assumed they would be those '19 transfers, right up until yesterday’s confusing tweets and “confirmations” that haven’t been followed up on, so far as I can find.

No one’s arguing that Disney’s decisions are somehow more appealing, just that everyone should be pretty used to this by now, especially here.

No one’s saying “why are you frustrated” because everyone’s frustrated. We all know why.

Anyway, has anyone heard whether or not that blu-ray only Skywalker Saga set DEFINITELY has the 19 transfers, and not the 11?

I’m still not getting it, but it’d be nice to have the weird question from yesterday cleared up. It seems to me like people are confusing the single-disc blu-only release from months ago (which was a 2011-stock-clearing-exercise) as being part of the big push coming on Tuesday (which is newly produced product).

Octorox said:

According to thedigitalbits TPM is a new scan which was also used for the 3D re-release (there’s still a lot of DNR in an attempt to blend the film elements and digital scenes) and AOTC and ROTS are based on the old 2K masters (they were shot in 1080p but mastered in 2K) but with additional upscaling and “film look” processing to bring them to 4K. The grades are also slightly different.

The Blu-Rays included in the new set are downscales of the new 4K master, not the same as the old blu-rays.

Thanks for the clarification!

Now the only question is whether or not buying the blu-ray only Skywalker Saga set means you get these 2019 transfers, or (presumably?) new artwork placed on the top of the 2011 Fox discs (?)

I wonder if the confusion is coming from people buying blu-ray only single disc versions, which ARE the 2011 discs just re-packaged, and have been on shelves for awhile now. From what I understand, the artwork for the new 4K single-disc releases is the exact same as the blu-ray only single-disc releases that preceded them, so maybe THAT’S where the confusion is coming in?

I think Dom and I were specifically referencing the PT, not the OT.

I think it was a bad idea.

It’s funny going back and watching trailer reactions now. Honestly, it was funny then: People were excited and psyched and all that. And then Palpatine starts laughing and you can almost literally SEE question marks popping out all over everyone’s face. And not in a “oh wow, what, that’s awesome” way, but a “what the… what? WHY” sort of way.

And then the bland-as-hell, blockbuster-basic “The Rise of BLANK” title scheme comes up with the word “Skywalker” filled in and really… that was probably the first sign this wasn’t going to go the way we thought.

Really! I thought I’d heard there were noticeable color grading differences at the least?

I think it’s also worth remembering some people will want the best possible presentation of the Prequels, and even though the D+ versions aren’t as different - they’re still a better transfer than the 2011 blus, correct?

But yes, when it comes to this place and starwarstrilogy.com - it’s probably much more likely that these sets’ quality is only of note in regards to its utility for making better fan restorations. My interest in the set was primarily for the opportunity to get really good extras, and once it became clear that opportunity was going to be completely ignored, I lost all interest in the set.

BUT: for those who don’t really mind the changes to the OT, and who enjoy the PT, these blu-rays are right up their alley because the '19 versions are as good as all six films have looked on (officially released) HD.

adywan said:

Because they are a better transfer than the crap 2011 versions

This exactly.

Granted, we’re talking about niches of niches here (people who prefer physical media, prefer that physical media to be blu-ray, and people who care what version of Star Wars it is they own on physical blu-ray) but just in case you’re a Star Wars fan who wants an official release to look as good as possible and isn’t interested in either Disney+ or piracy - these blu-rays are the answer.

It honestly makes zero sense that Disney would go to the trouble of pressing up blu-rays with the new transfer (and new artwork) for the 4K releases, especially after clearing all the old stock with the most recent blu-ray release, only to put out a new blu-ray box-set and blu-ray only release with newly pressed discs that still contain the old transfers.

I mean, I know everything having to do with Star Wars’ home video releases has never really made any sense for a very long time now, but this really doesn’t make any sense, just from a production standpoint. The whole reason there was a re-release on blu-ray was to clear the old stock, get it repackaged, and put in warehouses and on shelves.

Anything being pressed up for this set, and put in new packaging, pretty much has to be the new transfers being put on new discs, with new on-disc art, etc.

We probably won’t find out for sure until someone gets a new blu-ray only version of this Skywalker Saga box-set and posts a video or writes a description themselves.

“A New Hope” has always sounded like a title that literally took all of 3 seconds worth of thought before being added to the film. I never liked it, just for aesthetic reasons alone. I’d probably be okay with a revisionist/retconned title, if it was a GOOD TITLE. A New Hope is just bland. The only other title in the series that suffers from that sort of rote-ness is “The Rise of Skywalker.”

I don’t understand my ranking either. I didn’t enter those numbers, it was counting backwards from 10-1.

I think maybe the board software auto corrected it?

yes, that’s exactly what happens. I went in to edit it and the order was correct. Just had to change from a parentheses to a hyphen.

StarkillerAG said:

Both are soft. Once you look past the technobabble, Star Trek has almost no scientific accuracy.

Vulcans alone are pretty much magic space elves. They can literally read your mind and TRANSFER THEIR SOULS by touching your head and reciting a mantra. And that’s before you get into stuff like “slingshotting around the sun” and Warp 10 salamanders.

I love Star Trek to death but the pretentiousness its hardcore fans have exhibited regarding how “serious” and “important” it is has always rubbed me wrong. Star Trek is hopeful, and idealistic, but it’s also very often dumb as rocks and silly as shit.

Just like hardcore Star Wars fans need it to be the epitome of meaningful, epic myth ALL THE TIME, and anything that suggests it’s more bad than good (and more superficial than meaningful) will set them off, Star Trek fans need it to be super-smart and intellectual ALL THE TIME, and anyone who reminds them it’s more bad than good (and more dumb than smart) just shorts them out.

I disagree, I think Williams’ score as presented across both the For Your Consideration and Official Soundtracks, is one of the best things he’s done in a while! I think I’d still place the Episode 7 soundtrack above it, but Episode 9’s music is stronger than basically every Prequel’s soundtrack, and I’d argue it’s stronger than Return of the Jedi’s as well. He’s doing a lot with that music, and even setting aside the musicality of the new themes, he’s got a lot of interesting underscore that isn’t tied to themes or motifs in this soundtrack. Not just repeated string rhythms and the sort of “basic action music” he’s kind of automatically turned out ever since his Harry Potter days (there’s a lot of it in his Prequel scores, too), but complex, interesting musical movements that aren’t connected to pre-existing thematic material. He hasn’t really done that to this extent on a Star Wars movie since Empire Strikes Back, and it was really exciting to hear.

Since this is the internet, and we rank things here:

11 - Attack of the Clones
10 - Return of the Jedi
9 - Rogue One
8 - The Last Jedi
7 - Revenge of the Sith
6 - Solo
5 - The Rise of Skywalker
4 - The Phantom Menace
3 - The Force Awakens
2 - Star Wars
1 - The Empire Strikes Back

And to echo Outbound Flight - even though Attack of the Clones is at the bottom of this list, “Bottom of this list” is A-tier soundtrack. S-tier stops at #6, and A-tier starts at #7.

IIRC this is what happened last time? I could have sworn this is now standard operating procedure industry wide. When they update/upgrade the file, that change propagates across to your library, because what you own isn’t the movie, it’s the license to play it.

I’m pretty sure this isn’t a Lucasfilm thing, but a movie studios thing.

DominicCobb said:

Here’s the thing about the opening, I get what you’re all saying. My thought is I’d like to see it in action. I can see why cutting out scene jumping would improve the pacing even though it’s reducing the runtime. I’m just not entirely confident that’d for sure be the case without seeing it first.

Of course! Any idea is really only proven valuable and worthy under testing in the first place. All these ideas are good ideas but good ideas can sometimes fail out once put into practice. Hell, that’s kind of the story of this movie, and almost any movie being worked on in this section of the board.

But I really do think the last line of your scroll as written in the OP really lends itself very, very well to the tilt down, nebula, Kylo jumps into frame, and we follow him from there. We’re literally finishing the sentence ended by the preceding ellipses in that case. Hopefully it works in practice, but if not, there’s a lot of very creative problem-solvers here, too.

Also, I like the idea of, if you’re going to use tracked/older music, finding alternate variations on that music as performed by other orchestras. It kind of neutralizes the sort of “pulled out of it” aspect that tracked music can lend to an edit. “Oh, that’s just music from X movie” becomes “hey…wow, wait a minute.”

Also, I believe someone’s posted a version of the Death Star duel that has the concert version of Duel of the Fates mixed in and it works REALLY well. I can’t remember where I saw it here though. Maybe there are alternate performances of it that could work just as well, or maybe better due to it not being so immediately recognizable to fans.

I do think you could go straight from the crawl, tilt down to the nebula, and then Kylo jumping in. (I know when LFL released that scene early, there’s a cleaner open to that scene than what’s in the movie, so there should be a few more seconds of silence/starfield to use, too. All that wayfinder stuff doesn’t even really matter ultimately, and you get a more direct echo to Return of the Jedi where the movie opens directly on one villain flying to the big villain base, where the big bad resides for the rest of the movie. Poetry, rhyming, yadda yadda, but I think it’s much more clean to pan down from the scroll to the starfield/nebula, and have someone pop in from lightspeed and we track them to the planet. It’s much, much cleaner than what’s happening in the theatrical cut, and once you get rid of the oracle, you might as well get rid of the rest of it, there’s nothing else in those scenes that is “explained” any further than just seeing the weird thing plugged into the ship and realizing it’s steering him. It’s pretty self-explanatory (The theatrical crawl basically sets it up in one line anyway).

Plus I think the big wham of Palpatine being there, ends up having more impact if there’s basically no lead in to it at all. He’s already the first spoken voice in the movie.

I also think that you could end the movie completely wordlessly, and maybe it should end that way. cutting the woman out should be pretty easy, and if the whole scene is wordless, Luke and Leia showing up could be cut together in a way where Rey doesn’t even really see them - you could arrange the scene so that she’s already turned to the sunset or something, and Luke and Leia appear and approve of what she’s done without her really knowing, or acknowledging, that they’re there and have given their blessing. Depending on how the music is mixed and chosen there, it could end up being a little more poetic/poignant that way.

But how is it a “cash grab” now as opposed to Tuesday? I mean, it’s just as much a cash grab THEN, too, isn’t it?

If you think it’s opportunistic you have to point out what opportunity you think is being exploited and how that exploitation is unfairly hurting anything.

It was coming out Tuesday anyway. Not sure how it hurts that it actually came out Friday. Or that it somehow changes a normal release to “making a quick buck.”

The whole world is on pause right now. I have no misconceptions that this is some sort of “gift” or however more gullible people might be framing it. This is still a major corporation selling consumer goods to a large audience. But it’s also not like they’re charging people more to get it early, or being predatory about it. The entertainment industry (sports, tv, films, concerts) is kind of just… stopping. For the sake of hopefully preventing the spread of a deadly disease. Nobody’s really going to theaters. Nobody’s making shows. Movies aren’t coming out. Ballgames aren’t going on.

If that means someone at Disney was like “you know what? Just put it out now. Everyone’s going to be at home for the next month or so regardless, what can it hurt?” then I don’t really have a problem with that.

I typically don’t get digital versions (I’m a physical media man, myself) but I’m curious as to how… robust these files are. I know the streaming versions are compressed down to like, 1/4 to 1/2 the size of a typical blu-ray or UHD presentation (and the quality DOES suffer accordingly) but are the for-sale digital versions to consumers any better than the streaming files, or are they pretty much the exact same files, but now you can directly save them to your hard-drive?

Looks like Disney just made the digital versions available… now.