Fang Zei

rocknroll41 said:

Not sure if this has been discussed here yet but:

New rumor going around is that the theatrical re-release of Star Wars A New Hope planned for 2027 will be the original, unaltered version… but they might use AI to upscale it to 8k/ 120 frames per sec.

You joke (I think?) but Cameron literally used that TrueCut technology to “motion grade” certain scenes in Titanic and Avatar for 48 frames per second.

JadedSkywalker said:

Look how angry he got that Disney did not use his story treatments,

Yet there was nothing he could do to stop that.

I get not wanting him to trash them in the press, though. That’s why I suspect the recent announcement might turn out to be a kind of “final edition” where he gets to go crazy making any last changes he wants to on their dime and in exchange they get to include the restored unaltered versions without him badmouthing them for it.

George himself would’ve probably gotten around to it sooner rather than later if he hadn’t sold the company. He wouldn’t have been able to justify not doing it in the early 2010’s when all that was keeping Lucasfilm going was The Clone Wars. Now his former company is just another part of Disney. They’ve been able to hold off on something like that because they have a million other revenue sources. But it hasn’t been all smooth sailing for Lucasfilm these last several years and even they have to eventually ask themselves whether it’s worth it to keep the most conspicuously absent other version of a movie ever made locked in a vault.

Did anyone check out Eck’s video he made on the announcement now that we might have a little more context for the potential scoop he broke that the German article benduwan posted in this thread almost a month ago mentions?

https://youtu.be/Q36HagGPPUc?si=QUp8rn8EiWMqunRV

At the 3:20 mark he actually shows what he claims are screenshots from the allegedly official restoration project that accidentally made some clips public.

He also claims that this restoration is using alternate takes of certain lines of dialogue because they are of better quality than what was previously available. If that’s actually true, not sure how I feel about it. Obviously there were multiple different soundtracks heard in 1977 with different dialogue takes in certain scenes (maybe Eck is getting what he heard confused with this?), and yes they would still be using original recordings from ‘76/‘77, but unless it’s matching one exact version that would’ve been heard in theaters back then it’s not really preserving the movie as originally exhibited.

The Coppola restoration of The Godfather apparently used an alternate take of a shot in one scene IIRC, so this kind of approach isn’t unprecedented.

Anyway, just thought I’d share for anyone who wants to compare the alleged screenshots to any official releases as well as the various preservation projects.

Mocata said:

It’s got to be the Maclunkey version, especially after that Kathleen Kennedy speech about the BFI print being super rare and whatever. Even the name has been revised again! The sequel trilogy era convention of losing the numbered episode is still in effect.

Edit: the online press thing claiming this is a “once in a generation event” is weird too. Like, is it the 1977 version? If it’s not why is this such a special event? If it is are they going to put it into a vault for a few decades and not stream it until a new generation grows up? What are they talking about?

There hasn’t been a wide theatrical release of the original movie - any version of it - since 1997.

So, in that very specific sense it’s a “once in a generation event.”

Referring to it as Star Wars: A New Hope could simply be to specify it’s the original since there’s been a million other things since then and simply calling it “Star Wars” might just confuse people at this point. Yeah, that’s all it was called for the first four years but we’ve had another 44 years of it being a franchise since then. That’s probably an overly optimistic read re: whether or not it’s the original version, though.

I can’t help wondering if they’re announcing it this far ahead of time so they can gauge everyone’s reactions and see just what it is people want.

30th in 2007: George wanted to hype up The Clone Wars.

40th in 2017: Right in the middle of the ST. Episode VIII had literally been penciled in for Memorial Day Weekend that year until RJ asked for more time to work on the script.

50th in 2027? I’ll just note, by that point the 2019/2020 transfers will have been out there for more than seven years, with the underlying 4k scan possibly dating back as far as 2012. Even if this is still George’s Preferred Version, I wouldn’t be shocked if it ends up being a brand new master they can show off in Imax.

Mocata said:

Here’s the “rumour”

Because now the well-known “Star Wars” YouTuber EckhartsLadder reports that documents have been leaked to him by a source that prove that Lucasfilm is working on a restoration of the original theatrical versions of all three titles of the original trilogy. He assumes that the plan is to make these available on Disney+ as an extra in the future.

So, I have a fairly big, genuine bit of Star Wars news to leak.

In short: Lucasfilm is in the process of restoring the Star Wars Original Trilogy for public release. Probably on D+.

And there is proof.

I’ll explain as much as I can, though there are limits to what I can share. pic.twitter.com/09sXXaiqcY

— EckhartsLadder (@EckhartsLadder) July 8, 2025

Yup, zero actual evidence, although I did track down a reddit thread where the person who first brought it to Eck’s attention breaks down beat by beat exactly how they found out about it.

Considering the amount of detail they go into, it sounds like the kind of thing you just couldn’t make up if you tried. So yeah, it certainly seems like it could finally be legit this time. Obviously there’s no point in getting our hopes up until it’s actually happening, and even then it’ll be up to us to judge the final results.

benduwan said:

It’s in german but it seems promised:
https://www.filmstarts.de/nachrichten/1000153662.html

Kinda shocked this didn’t get its own thread.

There was also an American Pie trailer that literally opened with the trailer voiceover guy literally talking about how some magazine (Entertainment Weekly maybe?) had done a poll of the summer movies people were most excited to see, and as we pan up the list with that motion blur / zoom in effect, the narrator goes “the question remains, why American Pie?”

Yeah, still remember that.

There was of course also the aforementioned Spy Who Shagged Me trailer that parodied Star Wars.

Fox being the distributor, they basically fit three short trailers into one long one that was the last to play before the movie started:

“And now, a quick look at three projects currently in production”

Anna and the King, Fight Club, and Titan A.E.

I’m not a hundred percent sure it was in that exact order, but Titan A.E. was definitely last, which I thought was appropriate before a Star Wars movie.

It’s so funny that I actually vaguely remember hearing about this back in 2011.

Even if this was indeed a thing, it’s nowhere near as advanced as how dolby vision or even just regular hdr10 works.

This reminds me more of the “filmmaker mode” they finally started building into new tv sets just within the last several years, which completely turns off any processing like sharpening, noise reduction, etc, and also sets the correct 6500k color temperature (or as close as the tv can get to it out of the box).

Maybe that’s basically what this THX Media Director was, simply forcing the tv into a thx mode over the hdmi connection from the bd player if the disc and player were both capable, but … you should really just have that input set to that mode all the time so that whatever you’re watching on blu-ray is relatively accurate to the industry standards it would’ve been color graded and mastered at.

It’s possible that the difference with THX’s Media Director is that they actually took it a step further and tweaked the settings on a title by title basis … but again, that’s not really how things are supposed to work. Lucas, for example, isn’t supposed to grade and master his films expecting everyone’s televisions to be slightly tweaked one way to his specific set of preferences while Spielberg grades his films to another.

Maybe this really was an experiment in what eventually became hdr, and thx’s media director was able to somehow subtly tweak the settings this way and that as the movie played? Very interesting.

True story, I watched the 2011 disc of ANH on a 2k cinema projector in an actual movie theater back in 2017 and it looked surprisingly good. Like, maybe/probably that was just the insane quality of the projector making up for any shortcomings of the old 2004 hd master, but I could finally see where the bold statement all the way back then of it being a “digital negative” came from.

Mocata said:

What’s weird this time is that they claim it will go into production in like 5 months from now. Will they just cobble together art and script ideas that were floating around already? The whole reveal is kind weird in general.

Levy was first reported as being “in talks” to direct a Star Wars movie more than two years ago, and Tropper was hired as the writer back in July.

All we found out from this most recent announcement is the title, the release date, when they plan on starting production, and that it takes place after Episode IX.

George will be in Hollywood on April 24th for a screening of The Empire Strikes Back that will open the TCM film festival.

There’s nothing indicating which version they’ll be showing, but since George will be there I can only imagine it will be the most recent one.

stretch009 said:

I see there’s no mention here of ‘O Brother, where art thou?’ (2000) which is loosely based on Homer’s Odyssey.

I’d also like to point out the irony that ‘O Brother, where art thou?’ was the very first movie to be color-timed digitally and Nolan is now practically the only director who still insists upon color-timing their films photochemically.

Sorcerer, a movie largely ignored during its original theatrical run in the summer of ‘77 thanks in no small part to Star Wars, will be released on 4k UHD this June by Criterion.

Brazil will also be getting a 4k release from Criterion in June. I still remember this as one of the earlier 4:3 letterboxed dvd’s they put out. They finally got around to remastering it, yup, that’s right, the very same week the GOUT hit shelves.

oojason said:

This isn’t too surprising considering they’ve done this for the previous 2 Prequel films
 

Did AotC get a re-release?

JadedSkywalker said:

Pulled from 2026 Christmas release is un-freakin believable.

It really isn’t, though.

Dune: Messiah is also set for that same date.

The irony of all of this to me is that we went from five movies that got rushed through production to five years of streaming shows without a single new theatrical film. Now the first one we actually get won’t be any of the originally announced projects but a continuation of one of the shows.

Maybe this is actually a good thing, since this way there’s less of a chance they rush unfinished scripts before the camera.

The only things that got scanned into the digital realm in ‘95/‘96 were the shots getting cgi added to them. The optical composites were also redone digitally using scans of, presumably, the original VistaVision vfx footage.

Literally everything else had to be restored photochemically.

Lowry’s 2004 HD master that was initially prepared for the dvd was created from a 2k scan of the camera negative. This was redone from scratch in 2012 for the 4k.

The new pieces of negative created in ‘96 for the SE would’ve mostly been filmouts of footage that had gone through the computer to have new cg effects added to them (obvious exceptions here and there, the new shots of Boba Fett and Oola in RotJ for example) and/or been generated entirely in cg. It’s unclear whether these new and redone vfx shots still existed in purely digital form by 2004/2012 or if only the filmed out negative was made.

TPM’s digital filmout tapes, which were used to film out the final “negative” in May of ‘99, were still readable twelve years later when it came time to prepare the blu-ray and do the 3D conversion. Remember, unlike the SE which was still mostly the true original camera negative, every single shot in TPM had to go through the computer to have vfx added to it, something pretty much unprecedented for a live action film at the time. Even the few shots that had no vfx added to them were scanned in/out just for the sake of consistency.

So, for the SE it was just the new cgi vfx shots (either the old footage with cgi added to it or the entirely new cg shots) and the digitally recomp’d shots that would have existed in their finished form as digital filmout tapes before being, well, filmed out to brand new pieces of negative. Whether those filmout tapes were saved and still readable by 2004/2012 is unclear, but I’ll just say that back in ‘04 watching the dvd even the entirely cg shots in A New Hope still look like they were scanned back in off the filmed-out negative.

Acbagel said:

Wish they’d just adapt the Dawn of the Jedi novel/comics from the EU. I really want to see Disney Star Wars attempt a genuine and faithful EU adaptation to live action, and the Old Republic/Dawn era is a perfect place to experiment with this.

I just feel like they’re never going to do that in order to maintain the element of surprise. Otherwise the fans would already know what was going go happen.

That’s the whole reason they gave for rebooting the EU in the first place, to “maintain the element of surprise for the audience.” Of course, they could have still set the sequel trilogy within the existing EU if they’d really wanted to, but even Lucas doesn’t seem to have been planning on that before he decided to step away for good.

Anyway, the latest rumor is that Mangold plans on tackling this movie next, possibly as early as next year, after his Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” comes out in December.

Mocata said:

It would probably be a living nightmare like in the Alien 4K.

I’m guessing that’s a typo, but just for the record it’s Aliens that got fed to Park Road’s AI upscaler.

MonkeyLizard10 said:

Fang Zei said:

MonkeyLizard10 said:

Does anyone happen to know off-hand which DTS trailer(s) would have been the ones played before DTS showings of AOTC?

EDIT: actually the DTS disc for it should give it away so long as the names are not too short and cryptic

Like Mike and that first teaser for the Matrix sequels are two that I still remember from my opening day screening.

Total guess as to what else would be on the dts disc.

Minority Report, The Bourne Identity, and Men in Black II are other possibilities.

According to the DTS disc, for DTS theaters, either the regular DTS trailer or the DTS SONIC trailer were used.

For THX it seems that many seem to think that the first theatrical (as opposed to home video) premiere of the relatively new 2001 THX Cavalcade trailer was with Attack Of The Clones.

Yeah Like Mike trailer ‘A’ is for sure that was supposed to always run as well as the built into the first reel Minrority Report trailer ‘C’. They are the two with audio on the AOTC Cinema DTS feature disc.

I was a little unsure about The Matrix Revolutions since it didn’t come out for over a year later and if it was true figured it must have been the teaser so it is cool that you confirm that you saw The Matrix Revolutions teaser.

Apparently some say the film was supposed to only run with 4 trailer max limit opening week, although it is unclear if that meant max 4 in addition to the built-in Minority Report or max in addition to that plus Like Mike so whether it was supposed to be 4 or 5 or 6 total. Most seem to think probably the limit meant max 6 total but maybe 5 total and few think it meant 4 total.

Apparently Star Trek Nemesis, Men In Black II, Die Another Day, Austin Powers Goldmember were other options.

Probably it was Minority Report ‘C’ + Like Mike ‘A’ and then some mix of 4 of: Star Trek Nemesis, Men In Black II, Die Another Day, Austin Powers Goldmember, The Matrix Reloaded teaser. There also seems to have been a Star Trek Nemesis w/Men In Black II combo trailer not sure if that was supposed to count as one or two, maybe ones that showed that then also shows The Matrix Reloaded teaser or something?

To clarify, the very first teaser for the Matrix sequels went out to theaters with AotC. I still have a vague memory almost twenty-two years later of watching it in quicktime as soon as it went up online the night before. It was for both sequels, but only contained footage from Reloaded since they were probably still in the middle of filming Revolutions and didn’t want to give away too much about where the story was going anyway.

MonkeyLizard10 said:

Does anyone happen to know off-hand which DTS trailer(s) would have been the ones played before DTS showings of AOTC?

EDIT: actually the DTS disc for it should give it away so long as the names are not too short and cryptic

Like Mike and that first teaser for the Matrix sequels are two that I still remember from my opening day screening.

Total guess as to what else would be on the dts disc.

Minority Report, The Bourne Identity, and Men in Black II are other possibilities.

The first season covered everything up through Jurassic Park.

I could see them starting season two covering the next several years, including the SE.

How crazy would it be if they showed ‘97 Jabba in 4k? There’s “a whole new generation” that’s probably never seen that before.

Another Enthusiast said:

JadedSkywalker said:

People holding out for the originals are gonna be disappointed they haven’t been touched since the laserdisc master in 1992. The restoration was the 1997 edit. No restored OT exists.

The best you can hope for is team blu. I can’t fathom the mind of George Lucas on this nor will i try to psychoanalyze it, its just so bizarre.

To be fair, the Light & Magic trailer on YouTube does show the Death Star explosion with no Praxis effect, which I’m pretty sure is what the comment above yours was referring to. I believe it is also in the actual series, also, and not just in the trailer, but I have not yet watched the series. In addition, I believe it is a possibility that when the '19SE master was created, the new master created was digitally backed up without any alterations. I may be wrong, though. I believe I remember reading somewhere that the unaltered footage in Light & Magic was not sourced from Despecialized or 4K77. This may bring more credibility to my guess, or not, depending on personal opinion. Make of that what you will.

It’s in the actual series itself also. I’m pretty sure all of the footage they used is the actual unaltered material.

There was a rumor back around 2015 that Lucasfilm was going through every last piece of film footage they had and cataloguing it. I’m sure they have, at the very least, a raw scan of some type of print of the OOT, even if they haven’t spent the money to restore it.

Pryze said:

A bit of an old thread – but does anyone on here know the actual “resolution” of the 70mm print? Like if you COULD compare it to a digital res like 4k or 8k, what would it be?

This is actually something I’ve always wondered myself.

It’s probably around 4k worth of perceivable detail, although I’m not sure exactly at what point in the photochemical chain the OT films were blown up to 70 from 35.

There was actually a study done years ago where it was estimated a 35mm release print was only projecting about 875 lines worth of detail onto the screen at the absolute most.

70mm is a perf taller than 35 and roughly twice as wide, but that still only gets you between 2k and 3k worth of information up there on screen.

There’s way more detail to be gleaned from the camera negative itself, but seeing a Star Wars movie in 70mm back in the day was getting you as close as possible to what the 35mm cameras captured.

thepowerofwill said:

JadedSkywalker said:

They also are releasing Prey on 4k. From 20th Century Studios. I never thought Disney would put out so much all at once.

is it on their disney+ ? or where ?

That ended up being made exclusively for Hulu. By skipping theaters altogether they exploited a loophole that would’ve otherwise required that the movie have a window on HBO afterwards. Avatar 2 was apparently the very last new movie in their deal with HBO.

Roobyoo said:

jpb19 said:

Roobyoo said:

This is a punch into the gut. I recently tried to watch The Phantom Menace (don’t blame me) on Disney+, but the low bitrate and bad sound quality had to force me to turn it off. So I decided to plug in my HDD with an own rip of the film from my Blu-ray, with a prestine bitrate and DTS sound. The podrace scene was like night and day compared to the stream.

Bad bitrate and sound quality? Disney Plus version is 4K. Streams are based on your Internet connection. I prefer digital 4K versions of Star Wars over Star Wars on disc for the altered versions of the six films. I own Star Wars on digital HD. Eventually, I will purchase 4K versions of all 11 Star Wars movies. If you have ITunes, you can download 4K versions locally to your PC and cast the video to a smart TV screen or Roku device.

Resolution isn’t the same as bitrate. The lower the bitrate, the more compression artifacts you’ll get. With a 4k Blu-ray you’ll probably will get around 1000 mbps, although Disney+ in 4k dumps around 17 Mbps.

My internet connection is very good, and I’m streaming via direct cable connection.

I’m guessing that’s a typo, but just to be clear, a 4k disc will peak at 100mbps, not 1000.