Density

It’s common knowledge around here that Lucas’s ideas for TFA were rejected all around, to the point that he went on 60 Minutes and bitched about it after the release of the film. He called Disney “white slavers,” do you really think they give a shit about his wishes after that? If they weren’t going to respect his ideas for the sequels, they sure don’t care about his “artistic vision” for the SEs. Especially not when Lucas himself already compromised that with the GOUT. That’s not rumor or speculation, that’s a fact.

Cartoons made by people lower on the food chain and mostly watched by kids don’t tell us anything. We’re talking about a cartoon that resurrected Darth Maul FFS. And TCW was not made by Lucas directly anyway (he probably had about as much to do with most of it as he did with TFA), plus it was generally better received than the prequels themselves. The fact that Disney has referenced it tells us nothing at all about the possibility of an OUT release.

You say “altruistic” as if they would be giving it away for free.

…Lucas has literally no say at all, let alone being the only one who can decide. Not sure how many times it has to be said: Lucas is gone. He’s out. He has nothing to do with Star Wars any more in any capacity whatsoever. For all intents and purposes, he might as well be dead already. He has no decision-making power of any kind over the franchise. If anybody is holding an OUT release back, it is likely Fox.

Besides, Lucas released the OUT. He gave in. It was crappy, yes, but it proved that what was holding him back was likely not some kind of “artistic” principle that the SEs remain the only available version, but rather that he was too lazy and cheap to restore the OT. Now he no longer has any reason to care. He won’t be doing the work or footing the bill. He got 4 BILLION dollars to get out of the way. There are no stipulations with that kind of money. Lucas is out, and I think he’s relieved to be out too.

And again, doesn’t make sense that they would include the SEs that reference the prequels if they aren’t including the prequels. And it IS relevant that JJ prefers the OUT, and Disney themselves have clearly emphasized the OT era. They are the ones who created TFA, which was clearly designed to emulate the spirit of the OUT. So yes, it does make some sense that it would be paired with them if Disney are the ones making the release.

Not many Tarantino fans around these parts huh?

Oh. I see, you downloaded a re-encode someone did to GOUT sync it, meaning synced with other audio files like those from Despecialized. From the sound of it they botched it. You need to search the Spleen for the first, official TN1 Blu-ray ISO. It should only have ONE audio track, but it will be in sync.

Bobocop said:
If I had to guess, I’d say the original intent was for the Emperor to be beyond the need for any such weapon, but along the way Lucas decided it would be cooler if every force user was a gymnast and had something colorful to twirl around.

That’s a bingo!

The audio should not be out of sync, and yes, it was a scan with limited color correction. This is most noticeably a problem in the first scene with Darth Vader on the Star Destroyer while the “Imperial March” plays like 15 minutes into the movie. The picture keeps fading to pink and back out again.

Wow. I thought I knew them all now, but wow. Lucas, you bastard, you continue to amaze me.

Wazzles said:

Density said:

I should hope that’s not true, as it would not only add grain, it would also cause needless generation loss. It’s better to keep everything in the digital realm as much as possible for this kind of project. I for one would much rather see the film restored as clearly as possible than try to recreate precise amounts of grain when I can assure you Lucas never would have wanted any grain at all if he was capable of avoiding it at the time. Grain is something I consider merely an artifact, not an actual part of the original cut.

Grain is an inherent part of the film format. It should be there as it represents what the original film is.

I’m not saying scrub it so clean that it looks bad or completely sterile, but as much clarity as possible should be extracted from the films while still looking natural. We’re not going to be watching them on a 35mm film projector, we’ll be watching them on digital HDTVs and digital projectors. They should be optimized for the digital format. I don’t get the obsession with artificially recreating the byproducts of past technology that were never intended to be there. If something can be done to remove them with newer technology without overdoing it, then I don’t see the problem with it.

I’m not talking about the worst, most offensive, or most childish change. I’m talking about the changes so baffling that it boggles the mind that anyone ever even thought of them and you can’t even begin to understand the line of reasoning going through Lucas’s head when he made them. When it comes to something like Greedo shooting or Hayden Christensen ghost, you may think Lucas’s reasoning for the change is idiotic, but you can usually at least understand why he did it and see what he was going for, no matter how strongly you disagree with the result.

But for me, the essence of just how pointless the SE is comes in two unfathomable dialogue changes that just make no sense. My least favorite dialogue change is the loss of “bring my shuttle,” but you can at least see why he did that since he was adding footage of Vader walking to his shuttle at that moment, so the line no longer made sense in context. But there are two that I just don’t understand why they were done at all:

1. “You were lucky to get out of there” replacing “You were lucky you don’t taste very good”
2. “It’s alright, I can see a lot better” replacing “It’s alright, trust me”

I’m convinced that the only reason these lines were changed is because Lucas initially recorded two takes and just decided to go with the alternate take when doing the SE for shits and giggles. It was just lying around, so why not? Otherwise I just can’t understand why he did it. It’s not something that makes or breaks the films, but in both cases they are made just ever so slightly worse because the humor and humanity in those lines that was probably the reason the younger Lucas chose them in the first place is gone, replaced by cold and sterile lines that were overly literal and overexplanatory. And for nothing. I just don’t get it.

I should hope that’s not true, as it would not only add grain, it would also cause needless generation loss. It’s better to keep everything in the digital realm as much as possible for this kind of project. I for one would much rather see the film restored as clearly as possible than try to recreate precise amounts of grain when I can assure you Lucas never would have wanted any grain at all if he was capable of avoiding it at the time. Grain is something I consider merely an artifact, not an actual part of the original cut.

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

TV’s Frink said:

Fang Zei said:

There’s no way they would remove the logo and fanfare from an OUT release. They would present the movie as close as possible to how it was (at least to the layman if not nitpickers like us), and the iconic fanfare’s absence would be quite a glaring omission.

Would they even have the rights to do so?

Another thing to note is that, for the aforementioned examples of MGM/WB, Paramount/Universal, etc., the studio logo in the original opening credits still represents the studio that originally funded and PRODUCED the picture. So the logo serves primarily as a credit, not an ad for the studio. WB/Universal in these cases is the new DISTRIBUTOR and rights holder, and they’ll usually add their logo somewhere before the original film starts or before the disc menu.

In the case of 20th C. Fox, as it relates to Empire, Jedi, and the prequels, they only were the DISTRIBUTOR, not the PRODUCING studio. Any release post-2020 will have no 20th C. involvement for those films at all, either in the original production or current distribution. Having the logo on them would be quite odd indeed.

Giving credit to the original distributor, the studio that made the existence of the films possible in the first place, isn’t all that odd. Hell, I noticed that the 2011 Blu-ray of ESB still credits Clive Revill and Jason Wingreen, and they’re not in it at all anymore.

TV’s Frink said:

Fang Zei said:

There’s no way they would remove the logo and fanfare from an OUT release. They would present the movie as close as possible to how it was (at least to the layman if not nitpickers like us), and the iconic fanfare’s absence would be quite a glaring omission.

Would they even have the rights to do so?

I don’t see why Fox would stop them from doing so. It only benefits them if anything. Besides, they’ll likely have to make some kind of deal before an OUT release is possible anyway, and they definitely will for the original SW, and I can see part of that being that the logo and fanfare stays. It’s such a minor point anyway, I don’t see why anyone would contest it or make a big deal of it on either side. Plus, I believe someone just said that other titles distributed by different companies than they were originally have kept the original logos/fanfare. I know I still see that MGM lion from time to time on older movies. The Wizard of Oz, for instance, despite now being distributed by Warner Bros. So when you’re talking about particularly iconic movies like that and the original Star Wars trilogy, movies for which every frame and every sound from the beginning to the end of the runtime have been scrutinized endlessly and have some meaning to somebody out there, some memory associated with them, then I can see them making a point of leaving it in. Especially considering the iconic theme music was literally designed to follow it. They won’t truly be able to call it the “theatrical” version if they don’t, technically. Not as big a deal for the Special Editions since those have been revised endlessly anyway, but if you’re going to try to appease the purists, might as well go all the way.

And I hope they offer both crawls, too, for SW/ANH, which should not be difficult with Blu-ray branching capabilities. Really no excuse not to do it when fan projects here do it.

I don’t care all that much if they remove the Fox logo and fanfare. I would prefer it be kept in an OUT release, as it was on all the original films, but if it’s not it will be easy enough to add it back in, and it doesn’t break the film anyway.

Besides, I believe the Fox fanfare is still included on the recent re-releases of the SE CD soundtracks, yes? I know it’s still on Spotify and iTunes and such at least.

It is not difficult to extract an MKV from the ISO. That is most definitely your best option, considering I’m pretty sure there were some issues in the MKV that were fixed for the ISO.

Oh and also, keep in mind that the GOUT is widely believed to have been released in response to the prevalence of laserdisc transfer bootlegs in circulation. Now with fan preservations like Despecialized and SSE making the news, more pressure is on now than it was even then to do something about it.

I don’t get the point of leaving out the prequels unless it’s going to be the OUT. Why include Special Edition changes done only to tie into the prequels? I mean, Abrams himself said he showed the theatrical cuts to his kids because it was “very important,” which likely means TFA was meant to follow the original cuts more than the special editions.

Am I reaching here, or could this be a great sign?

Well, if an “adult” is someone who follows “the rules” unquestioningly and refuses to “debate” them or think critically, I have no interest in being an “adult.” YMMV of course.

“If a project is sourced from an HDTV broadcast, and that movie has subsequently been made available for purchase on Blu-ray Disc, you are expected to own the BD before obtaining the fan project.”

So… if he owns the Blu-ray he’s good then. This adult sees the debate as settled, you’re right.

The thing is that the 2004 DVDs were never released in HD quality in a consumer format. There’s a reason MySpleen allows those HDTV rips but not direct rips of the Blu-rays. And not to mention, they’re out of print anyway so buying them used will not go to Lucasfilm or anything. In a way it’s not much different than paying for a bootleg of Despecialized. The end result is the same. Just seems kind of pointless to me. And Harmy doesn’t ask that you own the GOUT or the 2004 DVDs and never did, even when the GOUT was used for pretty much everything outside of the Blu-ray. I don’t really see why you need to own the 2004 DVDs to “ethically” download the broadcast. It’s all technically piracy anyway, as much as some on this site like to deny it. And they’re all the same movies that were only copyrighted twice AFAIK, the original release date and then again in 1997. So if you own the latest SE, you own them all as far as I’m concerned. The 2004 HD broadcast and 2011 Blu-ray were even from the same exact transfer, just a few additional changes were made for 2011.

Why would you replace a good movie with a good movie?

You can use Team Blu or Harmy’s 97 preservation instead of the TV capture if you want HD quality over authenticity. And since you’re using Despecialized, I imagine you do.

Also, Towne32 was kind enough to PM me a version of 2.7 with the ANH crawl if you want to save some work. I’m not sure if he’s released it anywhere else or not. But if not, I’m sure one of us could help you out.

As for Special Features, I know several users here have made Special Features discs loaded with documentaries and such for use as bonus discs in custom Blu-ray sets like this. Look around the forums.

TV’s Frink said:

ray_afraid said:

timemeddler said:

I imagine a t shirt with “Lucas Raped My Childhood…” on the front, and " And Disney legalized It" on the back would get the point across

HOW would this “get the point across”?
The average Joe wouldn’t know what the hell you were referencing.
The only point that phrase makes is that you’re a man-child with no sense of taste or decency. A person to be avoided at all costs.
Is that what you’re going for?

Maybe?

I can literally smell the cheetos and Mountain Dew reeking off that post.

Maybe so, but it does callback to the ROTS duel (for better or worse…) and it could actually make the scene feel more dramatic? Maybe?

That does give me an idea - What if someone re-scored the OT to incorporate PT themes that didn’t exist at the time like Across the Stars for Han and Leia scenes, Duel of the Fates for the final battle in ROTJ, Battle of the Heroes for the Obi-Wan/Vader duel, etc.? Too crazy?