To clarify - I’m not criticizing, mocking, or denigrating their efforts in getting ESB out - I’m making more of a Murphy’s Law sort of joke about it. Of course the best one is the one that circumstances are conspiring to keep from us until last.
Just spitballing: would using the 2020 UHD and 4K77/4K83 to target a 1080p release (much like current DeSpec uses 1080p sources to target a 720p release) be a viable option here?
It leaves ESB sort of out in the cold until 4K80 gets finished, I guess. It’s kind of funny that the movie typically considered to be the best Star Wars movie is the one that’s taking the longest to get finished. Such is the way of things. The way of the Force…
They’re absolutely going to appear w/ less compression and at a higher bit-rate on physical media next year. Whether people want to put their projects on pause for that, that’s a pretty big question.
mapet318 said:
The best comparison will come if/when the DRM gets cracked and the original source streams become available.
I wonder if the source streams will even be accessible, though. I know that for Netflix offline downloads, the copy you download isn’t the source stream, it’s a still-heavily-compressed downloadable version. I wonder if that’s what people will be able to save to their hard drives on Disney+ as well.
either way, the source will be made available sooner rather than later when the UHDs are officially released sometime next year.
I’m still sort of marveling/laughing at the fact we live in a Maclunkey world now.
I’m certain we’ll have webrips in HD by the end of the day. If they’re not up at certain pirate-based outposts already.
It’s weird to see a SE presentation look so… filmic. It honestly looks like 4K77 more than the BluRay.
IIRC the Lowry/Reliance scan was made from the Special Edition negatives, and then had the 2011 blu-ray changes applied to it (as well as the MacLunkey and other minor fixes) before being finished. So if it looks more filmic, it’s probably due to that.
Since anyone with a Disney+ subscription can now stream the movies in 4k hdr whenever they want, I have to wonder if Disney isn’t planning on restoring the OOT to include in the UHD disc package just so they can give fans a selling point other than simply “the same exact thing you can stream on D+ … but with better compression and on a disc!”
We’re speculating on that very thing in the Star Wars Legacy thread right now, haha.
I’m curious how the other films fare. DNR on TPM? Teal tint on AOTC? Wipe or hard cut in ROTS?
Oh hey, the DNR on TPM question is a good one. I haven’t seen anything about that yet anywhere (obviously I’m not able to do my own lookthru here at work. I have JUST enough time to hawk a couple messageboards inbetween doing my actual job, LOL)
Has anyone managed to confirm the erasing of matte boxes around ships and stabilization of matte paintings/background VFX elements?
Considering both blu-ray and 4K UHD are formats that are essentially “collectors only” purchases at this point (kind of like a better, more idealized Laser Disc really) I think that best case scenario is worth holding onto at least a tiny measure of hope? I’m sure it’ll get crushed by this time next year, haha. But the only people really buying physical media anymore are collectors and/or people who care that the image quality is as good as it can be. And both of those audience bases are really small compared to the general audience who has no problem w/ streaming quality, so you’ve gotta provide something a little extra to make that purchase seem “necessary.”
apparently Maclunkey is huttese for “this is the end for you”
Mine too!
Isn’t ‘Art’ just some guy’s name…?
That doesn’t account for the idea that mattes have stabilized and gate weave has been eliminated, though. I think if they went to the trouble to accurately (and finally!) color correct all the lightsabers and re-do them while restoring for 4K, they probably (and finally!) erased all the garbage mattes and stabilized the image, too.
David: upthread I linked to someone screencapping Pablo’s tweets.
My nitpicky addition to these conversations: The 2011 blu-ray release isn’t a Special Edition. The only Special Edition came out in 1997. Everything else since then is just a version of Star Wars. It’s easier to simply delineate any version by year than it is to continue calling them all “Special Editions.”
At this point, the name is a complete misnomer. There’s nothing “special” about them - the only one that’s actually special is the 1997 one, because it got a theatrical re-release under that title.
I think the entire concept of artistic expression as you define it is meaningless, because by that definition any form of expression is art, hence nothing is art. It’s like those schools, where a student can’t fail, and everyone gets a passing grade. Anyone calls themselves an artist these days, effectively putting themselves in the leagues of a Mozart, Beethoven, Leonardo DaVinci, Stanley Kubrick, Oscar Wilde, etc, etc. It’s preposterous in my view. Making a painting doesn’t automatically make you an artist in my book, just like being able to count to ten doesn’t make you a Math Professor.
Don’t know what else to say. The question isn’t Art or Not Art. it’s Good Art or Bad Art.
Beethoven and The Prodigy are both musical artists. Daniel Johnston and Mozart. The Chainsmokers and Vivaldi. Skrillex and Johnny Cash. The entire concept of artistic expression as I defined it is how it’s defined. That doesn’t make it meaningless. Art has meaning, even the crappiest art. And that’s where your argument about it being like a “crappy school where nobody can fail” falls apart, because being Crappy Art is BAD. Yes, you tried to express yourself via artistic intent, and you did it terribly. That’s not a good thing. You made bad art and it reflects poorly on you. “Being an artist” doesn’t shield you from having made crappy art. It didn’t protect Mapplethorpe. Or John Waters.
That’s honestly enough. Trying to levy the charge that The Force Awakens isn’t really art AT ALL just doesn’t make any sense, and is a pretty huge overreaction, as is the decision to try and disqualify its status AS art in response. It’s obviously art. It’s okay if you don’t like it and think that it’s bad. You don’t have to go as far as you do. It’s a massively unneccessary step to take in order to make the criticisms you’re making.
The idea that Transformers and Rembrandt have to occupy the same rarified air doesn’t really make any sense. I don’t know why you’d do that. That’s a restriction you’re placing on art’s possibilities, not an actual artistic restriction. Star Wars and Tartovsky’s Solaris probably shouldn’t be on the same shelf either. The Statue of Liberty and Mad Max Fury Road don’t really go together. They’re both legitimate forms of artistic expression, though. Low art is still art. And people can make bad low art, but that doesn’t mean it’s not art. There’s no point in trying to disqualify it as art before you criticize it. You can just criticize it for what it is: Bad art.
I still have my faintest of faint “recreated Original Versions as a bonus feature on the box set” hopes holding on.
Essentially - a Disney-created “despecialized edition.”
It’s been confirmed that these are the 4K restorations done by Reliance in 2012, before Lucas sold the company, intended to be the base from which a 3D re-release series would be created.
Entirely new 4K scan & color grade. NOT the blu-rays from 2011 as previously reported.
I’m really curious how big a help these UHD versions are going to be for fan-restoration purposes next year.
Re: Joefavs’ “internal consistency” note - I’ve also heard that a lot of the background plates & matte paintings have been “locked down” so to speak? They didn’t replace them, obviously, but they definitely tried to make sure they blend better? They’re stabilized at the very least?
**edit
Looks like Lucasfilm employees on twitter have confirmed these are the Reliance 4K restorations from 2012, overseen by Lucas and created for the unfinished 3D re-release plan.
I’m simply arguing, that I don’t agree with the idea of the designation art being automatically attached to a movie like a toy in a box of cereal, simply because people put effort into it.
This is what I was trying to get at earlier. It’s more than enough to call something bad art. Loads of bad art exists. But there’s no real point in trying to disqualify bad art AS art simply because you don’t like it. That’s just being unfair and irrational. Manos: The Hands of Fate is a work of art. It’s a work of exceedingly, shockingly POOR art, but it’s an artistic expression. I understand the inclination to hyperbolically try and strip it of its legitimacy if you dislike it, i.e. every person who has ever looked at a Jackson Pollock and said “this isn’t art my 3 year old can do this hahaha” but that’s not how art (or the Force) works.
Art’s very definition isn’t like prizes at the bottom of a crackerjack box at all. And you don’t need to go so far as to attempt re-defining art (and the nature of artistic expression) simply because a movie didn’t work on you the way you’d hoped it would.
Further: The notion of “originality” being a key aspect of artistic validity is vastly overrated. Sure, it’s wonderful when it’s present, and I appreciate its presence quite a bit, especially when the execution is realizing the potential of the newness. But the definition of “art” isn’t reserved only for “new” things, and honestly, I’d go so far as to say “originality” as people try to describe it (i.e. “something nobody’s ever seen or tried before”) is not only limiting, but a hugely unrealistic expectation to hold over any work of art as a baseline. The large preponderance of art - not just film, or television, but book, painting, music, etc. is mostly unoriginal by those criteria - and that includes Star Wars, which is mostly pastiche of pre-existing art. You could argue the pastiche is “new” but even then I don’t think that argument holds, and the most strikingly “original” aspect of it was almost entirely technical in nature. The tech was advanced to serve the art - but the art itself wasn’t really “original.”
Nor does it need to be. It’s just another example of retroactively boxing in artistic expression in order to redefine other works in relation to it, and find those other works to be wanting. It’s not very generous, and isn’t doing any favors to art, or to the movies you love.
You don’t have to disqualify something from being art in order to dislike it. You can just dislike it. Intensely even. But it’s still art. Just bad art.
FWIW: only the 1997 Special Edition is actually a “special edition”
Everything else is just a new alteration. It’s honestly way more accurate and understandable to delineate by year of release (04, 06, 11, and now 19) than it is to just say “SE”
Also, considering what they’ve upped to Disney+, I think it’s a good bet these versions will be issued on 4K UHD next year, and that’s probably when people are going to get to really dig into how it looks, because I would imagine even for households with fine enough internet to pull down a real 4K file, the compression on Disney’s side is going to be considerable enough to make trying to do accurate side-by-side comparisons pretty difficult.
edit: LOL, Dre JUST said the same thing one post up. I should just stop.
edit: LOL, for some reason the forum zipped me past a whole page of conversation where I thought I was getting in way earlier in the discussion than I actually did. Apologies.
Wow, so are these the 4K restorations Reliance did then? The color grading is improved (thank the maker) but Greedo is still Greedo-ing.
What in the worlllld
