CatBus

Creox said:

Does anyone know WHY Lucas stubbornly clings to his decision? Is he embarrassed about the original release or is he just being that controlling of his creation? or is it something else?

I find his decision to date quite puzzling on the surface of it.

I honestly believe he likes the latest SE revisions better, and it does more closely align with his original vision (in a general sense, clearly not the specifics). Keep in mind that Star Wars and Empire at least were heavily collaborative efforts, and Lucas was not anywhere near the final authority on Star Wars. He was involved, but he didn’t direct Empire and it showed. Other people could talk him out of his dumber ideas, and he was unsure enough of himself that he’d listen.

Now, it’s all Lucas, unfiltered. And yeah, that sucks.

PM’s sent.

I wouldn’t call it “defeatist”. We’re just at the “Acceptance” stage of grief. There are ways to accept something without being defeatist, described below.

CatBus said:

captainsolo said:

From 2005-2008 I gave up Star Wars entirely. For someone who as a child had been an incessant fan, (My childhood was comprised entirely of Film, Literature, James Bond, Star Wars and Batman) this was really hard to do but I just found I didn’t care anymore.

It occurred to me that since I went through this stage too, our whole collective experience may fit the Kübler-Ross “stages of grief” model. So here we go:

Denial: “No way will Lucasfilm pass up a chance to cash in on re-releasing the unaltered trilogy. They’d never let that goldmine go to waste!” Uh-huh, sure.

Anger: We may not all say George Lucas did something nasty with our childhood, but everyone has a little generalfrevious buried deep down somewhere.

Bargaining: cough Petition cough

Depression: The phase described by captainsolo above.

Acceptance: “Don’t want to preserve Star Wars, Mr. Lucas? Fine, I accept that. Now we’ll just have to save the damn thing ourselves!” A little more defiant in tone than you’d expect from something called “Acceptance”, but I think it works.

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Thanks, now I’m looking in the right place for these. Also, it’s exciting that they forgot to re-apply a few of the special edition fixes, so that we have some 4K original(ish) footage to use. Hoping we see more of those!

DuracellEnergizer said:

CatBus said:

Hal 9000 said:

All them discs and no OOT?

Angry Yoda sounds

Water, water everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

Drink that salty brine — DRINK IT!!!

Oh my God, I’m so sorry, Ms Warwick.

PM sent!

Hal 9000 said:

All them discs and no OOT?

Angry Yoda sounds

Water, water everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

Helvetica is the closest match I can find, maybe Neue Helvetica. The lowercase “f” looks more like Akzidenz-Grotesk, but then the uppercase “R” is very wrong in that font.

Is this site being kept current with what you’ve found, or is there a better/browsable version we can see?

https://starwarsviscomp.wordpress.com/19se/

It’s a pretty small list of changes, which has me suspicious. For example, this strikes me as a recomp, but it’s not listed:

IMO it will take several months to have confidence we’ve identified all changes unique to the 19SE and come up with LUTs for a theatrical regrade. The UHD’s will be released at just around the time we’d be in any position to do anything useful with the 19SE, even if we work our asses off from now until then.

And this is all assuming the UHD’s do not contain even more changes. But since at this point Disney’s in charge of the content (and the timeline would be pretty much impossible anyway), I think the crazy revision train has finally stopped. The Maclunkey cuts are the final destination. Welcome to Travesty: Population 3.

ADR14NAT1ON said:

Harmy said:

Maclunky 😕

Hey there, everyone, I don’t believe this has been discussed, I see Harmy only quoted it. If it has, just ignore me.

Apparently in the Disney+ release of Star Wars, which I hear looks excellent because of a new 4K scan or something, they once again altered the scene with Han and Greedo. Greedo still shoots first but now they added the line “Maclunky” that Greedo shouts right before he dies.

This is the discussion thread for that:

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Official-All-Star-Wars-films-released-in-4K-HDR-on-Disney-Plus-4KSE-with-more-changes/id/70590/page/1

Why, in the name of the force, would they do that? Unbelievable.

Apparently it’s supposedly for greater tie-in with the prequels. Supposedly some prequel character says “Maclunkey” and if you’re cool and in the know about crappy prequels you too can know the meaning of Greedo’s dying words. Or like everyone else you can just pretend it never happened.

All of these changes are from the Reliance 4K project, which was done under Lucasfilm/Lucas for a 3D release that never materialized, so that sort of thing mattered to them. Disney just used the films they bought.

PM’s sent.

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As of this week, I finally have a proper Star Wars-worthy surround system, so obviously I’m going to take advantage of this development soon.

I have some questions for people more familiar with surround setups:

1. I calibrated the new speakers using MCACC Pro, which seems fine for the speakers, but seems to have effed up the sub levels. I’m assuming that if I use an SPL meter, I can produce a 60Hz test tone from my fronts, mark down that level, and then produce a 60Hz test tone from my sub and adjust the sub’s volume knob until it matches the same level as the fronts. I’d also try to zero out any receiver-driven adjustments before doing this. Seems sensible, but is it correct?

2. Eventually I may determine that I want to boost the center channel in an attempt to further improve dialog clarity. Obviously this is a blunt tool for a subtle problem, so what’s the safe range for adjustments?

3. Should I admit to hairy_hen that I’ve been enjoying his mixes downmixed to stereo until now?

4. Do you have favorite bits of the trilogy as far as the surround presentation is concerned?

PM sent.

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PM’s sent. And no thanks, I’m full up on love already 😉

Hard to say–while the new official 4K sources seem very good, they still ultimately need to blend with the 4K77/80/83 sources used for despecialization as well. Since IMO the 4Kxx releases still only resolve less than 720p of image detail, it would be hard to blend with the new 4K sources at greater than 1080p resolution without making the seams show between the two sources. Not that it’s not worth trying – there’s lots of tricks you can do with sharpening and fake grain that may help it blend.

As for the “edge over 4Kxx”, have you compared ROTJ:DE at 720p to 4K83 at 4K? While 4K83 is certainly amazing and looks great, ROTJ:DE already has the clear advantage in fine image detail (and IMO also in color, at least until DrDre is done with his 4K83 regrade). The advantage of negative/IP scans over projection print scans is already apparent right now at a lowly 720p, but could become moreso using the new 4KSE release – and that advantage could present a problem to despecialization efforts.

As for the Atmos track, the original films only ever had six audio channels at the most, and IMO preservations will only have six channels at the most too. Otherwise you’re just adding SE audio elements back in.

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