CatBus

There was this thread, which covered dialogue differences.

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Definitive-tractor-beam-Close-the-blast-doors-Blast-it-Biggs-Wedge-you-dont-taste-very-good-Noooooo-Preservation-Guide/id/13428

But that’s a pretty easy topic to cover in a few posts. I think the only thing missing from the discussion is the Empire mono mix, which wasn’t discovered until after that thread was done. The Jedi mono mix doesn’t have any dialogue differences, just missing sound effects. And the UHDs, I suppose.

I think it may be possible to do a similar one for pre-97 audio mixes, but there are just so many changes in the SE’s (and changes to the changes, etc) that it’s likely to sprawl.

Okay, I’ve finished syncing the Cantonese dubs, and they’ll be ready do download shortly for those who are interested.

They were 97SE dubs, and I’m no aficionado of the various Special Editions, so I never know which version of the SE I’m syncing until I get to key parts. And every time I hear the Emperor scream when Luke falls into the chasm, I laugh. It is just so ridiculously wrong every single time. And the dubbers rarely if ever dub over the scream, probably because they can’t agree which voice actor should do the yelling. It’s clearly not Luke or Vader, so which dubber would scream? Same with the “No! Nooo!” added to ROTJ – the Thai dub has a completely different actor otherwise not in the scene doing it (which makes it authentic to the English, at least). Who’s yelling? How does it make sense for them to yell as opposed to someone else in the scene? These are really difficult questions, and I don’t envy dubbing outfits trying to make sense of these scenes.

Anyway, although the sound effects were off from the dialog by up to almost half a second, the voice delay was generally consistent within a scene, and I was able to bring the sync back enough that it at least appears that both sound effects and voices are in sync, even if I cheated a bit to make it happen. These may also be the only mono Special Edition dubs we have, but they’re good quality, albeit with pretty compressed dynamics. And they’re despecialized, so there’s no screaming Emperor in ESB anymore.

One more oddity about these dubs: I think these dubs may contain the first line I’ve found that wasn’t dubbed due to the dubbers not realizing it needed to be dubbed (as opposed to being an incomplete/damaged recording of the dub). In ROTJ, when C-3PO is doing story-time with the Ewoks, he says one line in English in the middle of otherwise Ewokese gibberish: “Yes, R2, I was just coming to that.” Well, the gibberish was identical to the English track, but that one line is still in English! So in the next Project Threepio, there will be Cantonese titles-only subtitles to accompany these new dubs, which also subtitle that one line.

Give them a listen. And if you happen to know someone with access to the Mandarin dubs, you know who to contact.

It’s a credit to Lando’s performance that he’s still awesome even with the cape. It’s just one of the lesser fashion crimes, that’s all. Agreed Lando is a huge part of what makes Empire great.

Dek Rollins said:

I’m just gonna keep on enjoying Empire without wincing at anything but Luke’s severed hand.

Well, there’s also Lando’s cape.

GlastoEls said:

Complicated, and only cited for a contrary opinion: https://decider.com/2015/05/04/han-solo-star-wars-secret-feminist/.

Not actually that contrary. The gist of the article is that he likes Leia for who Leia is: her brains, her character, her wit, which doesn’t seem that controversial or complicated. The logical leap is that this somehow makes him a feminist. No, it just means his feelings for her are genuine, that’s all. Love doesn’t make you a feminist, it makes you human.

He harasses her. In the same way a zillion other male heroes throughout literature and film harass their own love interests. Some with genuine feelings of love, some superficial. All of them are normalizing a form of sexual pursuit that’s far too common in real life, and much more insidious than it is usually presented onscreen.

canofhumdingers said:

She’s clearly in control of any situation she’s placed in with any of her “suitors” throught the OT.

Yeah, I wouldn’t go as far as predatory either. But her side of the story is that she plays the sexual harassment game. She’s in control in the sense that she willingly plays along. It’s all just well-meaning banter, it’s even charming. This isn’t just Empire, this is commonplace throughout film in general, and more overt in older films and literature. The man harasses, and the woman, whether she opts to fight back or not, ultimately blushes because harassment is just so flattering. That’s the problem. It’s the storyline in general, not whether Leia can handle herself within that storyline.

Watching it today, there’s some wincing in parts, as with many older films with this type of romance. Not because Empire is particularly bad in this regard – in fact, I’d say it’s better than its contemporaries – but because writers from that time period regularly normalized this sort of thing, that’s all. That said, I cheer a little inside when Han asks Leia’s opinion of where they should go next when they’re drifting in the Anoat system. It’s a little seemingly inconsequential moment that helps give their relationship a much-needed sense of partnership. It’s not all bad.

Again, Empire is a classic film and a favorite of mine. I love Casablanca as well too, but I also wince at how Sam is treated, even though I know it was very progressive for its time. There’s no such thing as a timeless film.

ZkinandBonez said:

I’m assuming then that “grain management” is done on new movies shot on film as well? Could that be why a lot of new movies shot on film end up looking so digital?

I’m sure to some degree it is, some films more than others (heavy post-production modification is a hallmark of modern film since Amelie and O Brother Where Art Thou?), but fine-grained filmstock and large format filmstock can look relatively grain-free compared to the chunky, grainy filmstock of the seventies. Your modern 35mm film will look more like Lawrence of Arabia than 4K83 even without any degraining – much more subtle.

Agreed about color grading. It’s necessary to regrade films for Blu-ray, but people don’t seem to have as much of an interest in color fidelity as they should. It often doesn’t even seem to be a goal at all.

ZkinandBonez said:

I can’t imagine this is necessary in order to clean up old films in general?

Blu-rays of old films aren’t made from projection prints because projection prints, in most cases, don’t have enough fine detail to make complete use of 1080p resolution. People like all the extra detail Blu-ray had the capacity to reveal, and 35mm negatives give us the ability to provide all that and more, so I don’t really blame anyone for doing what they do in this respect.

But if you go back to the negative or something like it, you’ll usually have to redo the color grade, because the colors on the negative frequently look nothing like the film as it was originally projected. And usually there’s some other cleanup people do as well. “Grain management” is part of the modern restoration workflow of any film-based movie, but what the grain management entails can vary. Degrain/regrain is one of the blunter tools in that toolkit, and all I can say for sure is that it’s used a lot, and it was used on the 2011 Blu-rays.

canofhumdingers said:

What’s wrong with the romance between Han and Leia? Their back and forth banter is one of the oft-cited strengths of the film, and I agree. Their chemistry on screen is really fun and engaging.

It’s basically the “boy sexually harasses girl until she gives in” storyline. It’s very well done for one of those, but that’s the core. There’s also moments that undercut that angle and add a little more depth and real connection, giving Leia a little more agency in the relationship, I’m not denying that either, and the onscreen chemistry is undeniable. But it’s definitely a problematic part of Empire IMO.

That said, Empire is my favorite film of the trilogy by far. But if I’m giving advice to my sons about how to approach romantic relationships, “Don’t be like Han Solo” is right up there.

ZkinandBonez said:

CatBus said:

The 2011 Blu-ray grain is mostly fake grain, so it doesn’t really represent the films as they would normally appear. Nevertheless, the negatives would still have quite a bit of natural film grain – less than the 4Kxx projects, but maybe only slightly less than 4K83. The real odd-looking ones are the UHD’s. The only significant grain to be found on them is frozen grain.

I’ve heard of Blu-ray releases “de-graining” old films, but I’ve never heard of adding fake grain. Why would they do that?

It’s pretty common. They degrain the film first, so that they can do major image enhancements without the grain causing weird effects (i.e. so you can boost the yellows or the sharpness without having yellow/extra sharp grain, also for 3D conversion so you don’t end up with 3D floating grain). Then, because the image looks like crap without grain, they add it back in at the end, after all the image adjustments have been made. People blame Lowry for inventing the degrain/regrain process, and I’m not sure where it really started, but it’s widespread. Some places go through more effort than others to make the added grain look natural and filmstock-accurate. Rarely does the film end up looking as grainy as a film (negative) from that period really would, so the whole process is still a net loss of grain (so a “de-grained” Blu-ray likely still has added fake grain). In these cases, the grain that’s there isn’t from the film, it’s from a computer. “Filmic” is what reviewers tend to call it when it works well.

What the UHD versions of Star Wars are is the version prepped for 3D conversion (so scrubbed as completely as possible of grain), but the 3D project was abandoned. Normally such a film would be fake-grained back up before a 2D release, but apparently nobody got the memo.

Ideally you wouldn’t bother degraining and regraining, but film negatives often have wildly differing colors than the original projection prints, so if you have a process that starts with scanning negatives (and people tend to like seeing all that extra fine detail on their Blu-rays that comes from the negatives), color grading and grain management usually just have to come with the package deal. But as with everything, there’s how to do it right, and how to do it cheap, and you can get wildly different results.

For an example of what they’re trying to avoid through degraining, mess with the sharpness setting on your set. Go ahead and turn it up to 11, then watch a grainy movie. It’s… not right. Also keep in mind that most displays are sold with default sharpness settings that are not zero, so grain really does genuinely look wrong for most people, because their sets are pre-configured to make grain look bad. The correct setting for sharpness on your display is always zero.

The 2011 Blu-ray grain is mostly fake grain, so it doesn’t really represent the films as they would normally appear. Nevertheless, the negatives would still have quite a bit of natural film grain – less than the 4Kxx projects, but maybe only slightly less than 4K83. The real odd-looking ones are the UHD’s. The only significant grain to be found on them is frozen grain.

Agreed, the model work/practical effects in Empire are both ambitious and successful. It occurred to me that it was Empire’s wildly successful integration of Yoda into the film that spawned the 1980’s phenomenon of movies like The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth – which, to be honest, weren’t nearly as successful in that regard. Yoda was lightning in a bottle – a very, very tough act to follow.

IMO it’s the only film in the trilogy that’s a true serial installment. Star Wars was a one-off fantasy adventure that built a world for you, and left some threads open for future films. Jedi wrapped up all the loose ends and put a bow on top. But Empire was a serial – you already knew the characters, you had an adventure with them, and the adventure ended with a ton of loose ends and cliffhangers to follow up on in the next installment. Some dig that, some don’t. I really do.

Also, Empire maintains a split storyline longer than the other films. Some find it unfocused, but again, I dig it.

As far as other things go, the music is best in Empire (which is why the Special Edition is such a shame, because it mangles one of the best parts). The romance is definitely a product of its time, to put it generously.

I personally love Lando, but can completely see why he gets choked. He may be rescuing you, but he (perhaps) killed your lover/friend five minutes ago in front of you. So yeah, choking.

One of the true 1977 mixes has been on home video – pre-1985 releases of Star Wars have the 1977 stereo mix. The best quality audio of the 1977 stereo mix was from a pan & scan Japanese Laserdisc, and is included with most preservations.

In terms of dialogue, there’s no difference between the 1977 stereo and 1993 mixes. In terms of sound effects, the obvious one is the shattering glass sounds during the cell block shootout. A lot of fans (myself included) think of these additions as precursors to the Special Editions – the 1985 mix was at least a mashup of the various theatrical mixes, but the 1993 mix brought in stuff that was never in the films before. I’m sure there are other changes too, but I just don’t listen to the 93 mix that much (for that reason).

As far as sound quality goes, the 93 mix is probably technically the best-sounding official Star Wars mix ever made. But I just can’t get past the non-theatrical elements, so I prefer the 77 mixes (hairy_hen’s six-channel reconstruction is my favorite).

The 70mm visual variations were confirmed by multiple people who saw the film. You should check the Puggo Edition, a preservation of an 8mm digest print (not the full film). It includes many of the different visuals that people had only described before in the 70mm version (confirming the radar dish difference, for example), but it also has a number of different audio takes that weren’t present in any theatrical releases.

The Romanian bootleg voiceover dub is now synced (Star Wars only) and available for download at the usual place, or you can contact me.

Some background on this, gleaned from Chuck Norris vs Communism, which I highly recommend:

Irina Nistor voiced over more than three thousand foreign films in Romania under Communism, helping make them much more accessible to all Romanians. She accomplished this stunning amount of work because she rarely if ever watched the movies first, and just voiced over the films during her first/only viewing – so the entire process of creating a dubbed master copy of the film, from beginning to end, took her less than two hours!

So it’s a single-voice voiceover, but it’s also distinct in the occasional delay in the voiceover, as she translates the film in realtime (no script). I can’t say the end result has a lot of listening value to those who don’t know Romanian, but it is one of the more historically important dubs we have. And it’s in very good shape.

Obligatory observation that these screenshots are of color-corrected special editions. They will be despecialized.

If anyone has any questions about the Turkish dubs, ArdaYlcn is happy to answer them. There have been quite a few different Turkish dubs, two of the unaltered trilogy, and five (?) of the Special Editions. He was instrumental is getting me the ones I’m currently working on.

FWIW, I’ve got a few new dubs I’m working with:

• Cantonese: it’s an SE dub, so it needs to be despecialized. Contrary to my experience with other Hong Kong dubbing of 70’s and 80’s films, this dub is very well executed. I’m actually a little disappointed it’s so well done, but I’m sure I’ll survive. I’m hoping if we release preservations with this dub, we may attract the attention of people with access to the Mandarin dub, which is something I haven’t yet been able to track down. I’ve synced Star Wars, and the other two films are pending.

• Turkish: I previously had Turkish despecialized dubs, with the Empire dub incomplete. But I now have VHSrips of made-for-TV 1993 dubs. Star Wars and Jedi are in good shape (for VHSrips), but Empire is pretty bad. I’ll likely swap out the Turkish dubs in my collection for these, in part at least. The sound quality isn’t as good, but they’re authentic pre-SE Star Wars. I may stick with the despecialized Empire, and use the VHSrip to fill in the missing dialogue, which will be a little weird having Vader switch voices, but not as weird as it is right now with Vader switching voices and languages. Again, Star Wars is synced, and the others are pending (I may not be able to do much with Empire)

• Romanian: Anyone here ever see Chuck Norris vs Communism? If not, it’s highly recommended. If so, you’ll recognize the name Irina Nistor. I have a Nistor bootleg voiceover of Star Wars (sadly, not the entire trilogy). Nothing synced yet, but I’m excited about this one and won’t let it slide.

I also have the 1980 theatrical Turkish dub of Star Wars, and I believe the word for this dub is “crazypants”. It steals the title of “Weirdest Dub” from the Tamil dub. Sorry, guys, dubbed Ewoks and rampant heavy breathing just isn’t weird enough. The background is that, like the Soviet-style voiceovers, the Turkish dubbers didn’t get a soundtrack without English voices. But what they chose to do instead of a voiceover was to replace the English dialogue (er, mostly) with Turkish dialogue and random background music and noises. Did you know Leia’s hologram played light jazz? Did you know the Cantina band did a ragtime piano number? No, I bet you did not know these things. But mostly they just use Star Wars theme music over and over (and over and over), but they’ve also got some generic sci-fi synth music in there as well. I can’t say I recommend it for everyone, but it’s certainly awesome in its own way – the voice acting is also very good, and I’ve been told the translation is very good as well.

I can’t speak for the video, but there’ll be a Cantonese dub available for Hong Kong fans. And possibly a Romanian bootleg voiceover a la Chuck Norris vs Communism.

I was interpreting his statement that the audio was taken from TV master tapes and it was synced to match video from the only DVD release that ever existed (GOUT). I’ve heard both TV master tapes and VHSRips, so once I have the audio, it will be obvious which it is.

Nice! I should be getting these soon.

schorman13 said:

There are many localized crawls available on the Different Blu Ray versions of the first six films, from 2011.

I’m assuming none of these included “theatrical style” subtitles for Greedo/Jabba, correct? i.e. it’s all just a disc subtitle track with some default unstyled font. AFAIK, the only languages that ever would have gotten Greedo subs on the film print were French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese, and I only have seen a couple of these myself. But I suppose the 97SE also had a theatrical run, so it’s possible there were others, if shown theatrically with a dub that didn’t voice over Greedo/Jabba.

PM sent.

If you are unable to find the theatrical Turkish dub for ROTJ, I’d be interested in the 1993 Show TV dub, since that would be for the right version of the film and wouldn’t need to be edited except to sync.