Every possible title for VII, VIII and IX had been thought up by someone at some point.
Wasn’t there a no-budget fan film made prior to October of 2014 called Star Wars: The Force Awakens? Wasn’t there an actual Star Wars novel (Legends now, I think) titled The Last Jedi?
That’s what he’s saying - disc 1 would be the SE in 4K, disc 2 the SE in 1080p, disc 3 the OT in 1080p, and disc 4 is extras (in 1080p). The standard BR release would just drop the 4K disc.
Exactly, which would once again be giving the two versions unequal treatment (both versions get 1080p but only the SE gets released on UHD).
Honestly, I wouldn’t complain at this point. If I got a good restoration of the original trilogy in 1080p all from original film elements done right, then I’m going to be a happy camper. If that’s what this release turns out to be then I hope that people don’t boycott it based purely on that.
Oh, I’d look at such a scenario glass half full, to be sure. More than half, even. There’s a big debate in the AV community right now as to whether or not HDR is inherently revisionist for older movies anyway. I’ve even heard it argued that the dynamic range of regular sdr blu-ray is already exceeding that of the original prints of many older films as well.
I’ve also heard it argued, scientifically, that 35mm film prints of movies probably never exhibited anything higher than 720p in terms of real perceivable detail anyway. The story doesn’t even change much if we go back to the camera negative. Even Robert A. Harris has argued that The Godfather films wouldn’t stand to gain much from being seen at their full 4k resolution.
The counterargument, of course, is that a restrained use of HDR (or just no HDR at all) combined with the higher resolution and wider color gamut UHD affords would actually bring us closest to how the OOT originally looked in theaters.
It’s also the principle of the thing. Both versions should be made available on the most recent format and not just the SE.
But considering I skipped the GOUT and the 2011 blu-ray, yeah, I’d probably pick this up.
That’s what he’s saying - disc 1 would be the SE in 4K, disc 2 the SE in 1080p, disc 3 the OT in 1080p, and disc 4 is extras (in 1080p). The standard BR release would just drop the 4K disc.
Exactly, which would once again be giving the two versions unequal treatment (both versions get 1080p but only the SE gets released on UHD).
The part about “Four discs per film for the 4k, three for the standard blu” made my heart sink a little, since that might mean they’re once again going to give the two different versions unequal treatment, with the 4k UHD only including the SE in 4k and relegating the unaltered version to 1080p.
When we have actual 4k transfers of these movies made by the fans and LFL actually has the ability to do us one better with a professional cleanup from a scan of higher quality elements only they possess, it would be a real shame if they gave us the OOT only to lock it into a level of quality from 13 years ago. Deja vu, man.
Again, this is assuming anything in this article isn’t total clickbait bs. The timing makes it highly suspect.
So we’re actually going back to a planet from I-VI? Wow, we were so close to making it through the ST without doing that.
Well, and it’s centered around May 4th, aka “May the Fourth Be With You”
I noticed it was in early May and yet that went completely over my head!
Anyway, I might try to ask the relevant person over there if they can tell me with any confidence which format the movies are being shown in.
I saw Search for Spock and Voyage Home back-to-back at AFI Silver the week of The Man Trap’s 50th in 2016. I asked the box office person whether they were actual prints and they asked someone and said that they were, which ended up not being true for SFS (it was digital and from the same subpar master as the bd), but Voyage Home was a European 35mm print with the prologue and it looked gorgeous!
I was going to bring this up in the 4k restoration thread!
AFI Silver has shown the ‘97 prints as recently as a few years ago IIRC, so it’s possible they’ll project TPM and the OT-SE on actual film.
TPM’s 20th seems to be the only reason they’re doing this marathon next month.
The TBS/TNT deal might just be for broadcast rights, though.
IX will definitely show up on Disney+ first, probably by the middle of next year after the blu-ray’s been out a couple months, but won’t show up on tbs/tnt until the end of 2021 at the earliest. Yeah, you can also watch them online, but that’s technically going through your cable provider first since I don’t think you can get those channels without a cable subscription of some sort.
For purposes of legality, “streaming” is considered something entirely different from the tnt/tbs deal.
Since Disney+ will likely launch by the end of the year, how long do you think they’ll wait to just add all the movies now that they own the rights completely?
All of the Star Trek shows and movies were up on CBS All Access from the get-go IIRC.
I’m sure all the films will be added to Disney Plus once it launches.
Which begs the question of whether the OT will finally be from the newer 4k master or if it will be the now ancient 2004 Lowry master yet again. I don’t know if there’s been talk yet about Disney+ having any 4k content, but the Lowry’s are stuck in 1080p.
I’m sorry, but what does “Lowry” mean? I’ve never heard of it. Does this mean the re-color timed DVD and Blu-ray masters?
Yes.
Lowry Digital did the HD cleanup of the OT in 2004 working with 2k scans of the original camera negative (which has been conformed to the SE ever since 1997). The resulting HD master (not 2048 by 858 2k but 1920 by 817 HD, the Lowry guys actually specified this in 2004) was used for the 2004 dvd, the hd broadcasts, the 2011 bd and the 2015 digital release. It was already starting to look outdated in 2011 and it’s ridiculously outdated now.
Since Disney+ will likely launch by the end of the year, how long do you think they’ll wait to just add all the movies now that they own the rights completely?
All of the Star Trek shows and movies were up on CBS All Access from the get-go IIRC.
I’m sure all the films will be added to Disney Plus once it launches.
Which begs the question of whether the OT will finally be from the newer 4k master or if it will be the now ancient 2004 Lowry master yet again. I don’t know if there’s been talk yet about Disney+ having any 4k content, but the Lowry’s are stuck in 1080p.
Since Disney+ will likely launch by the end of the year, how long do you think they’ll wait to just add all the movies now that they own the rights completely?
All of the Star Trek shows and movies were up on CBS All Access from the get-go IIRC.
The OT:
ANH Faces vhs pan n’ scan, (received it as a Christmas gift ‘95)
SE trilogy vhs widescreen, (received it as a Christmas gift ‘97, I gave it away in 2012 as part of a vhs purge)
OT dvd widescreen, (mom bought it at costco in early October of ‘04 at costco, I’ve since sold it off)
In April / early May of ‘05 I tracked down used copies of the pan n’ scan faces vhs of Empire and Jedi at a record n’ tape traders at the beach, but since I’m an idiot and was using a bag that had magnetic clamps the Empire vhs was ruined (pretty sure I gave away that bag not long after). I eventually found a used ‘95 pan n’ scan box set (which I held on to for the Maltin interviews, funny how you can find pretty much anything on youtube now) and disposed of the individual copies in the recycling bin.
In May of ‘05, I found a used copy of whatever the first pan n’ scan vhs release of RotJ was (from 1986 I want to say?) at my local video store, which had been a West Coast Video and then a Forbes and was Potomac Video by that point IIRC. I’m pretty sure they were just selling off some of their vhs copies they’d been renting forever, although this vhs of Jedi played remarkably smoothly so maybe these older tapes were really made to last. Anyway, I held on to that also.
PT:
TPM vhs pan n’ scan, found it in my Easter basket April of 2000.
TPM dvd, bought it at Suncoast not long after it was released in October of ‘01. I’ve since sold it off, which I kind of regret because it would’ve been nice to have a physical copy of The Beginning documentary.
AotC dvd, got it the week it came out. I still remember that Toys r us was selling it for crazy cheap, only 9 bucks and change, and the other stores had to price match. I got it at Circuit City. I’ve since sold it off.
I’d been in college for a couple years when RotS hit dvd and I actually got it a day or two early since the local mom n pops used book/record store in the town where I went school would break street date regularly. I’ve since sold it off.
Others:
I picked up volumes 1 and 2 of the Genndy Tartakovsky clone wars not long after their respective release dates and eventually picked up the ewok movie double feature. I held on to all three of these!
Lucasfilm under Disney:
Picked up TFA on bd the day it came out, as much as it burned my ass to pay in any way for a dvd copy of a movie in 2016 (and a month after the debut of 4k UHD, no less). Strangely enough, my bd’s of TFA and Star Trek ‘09 have both suffered disc rot. Must be the JJ Abrams curse.
I skipped out on buying Rogue One since I knew it would be up on Netflix in due time and also because Disney was dragging their feet about supporting 4k and I didn’t want to pay for a dvd copy I’d never watch yet again, which brings me to…
Last Jedi, which I picked up the 4k combo of the week it came out. It was nice to finally be able to future proof while I wait to buy 4k hardware, but the included blu-ray had the honor of being the first disc to actually lock up my bd player with its overly aggressive DRM. A firmware update a couple weeks later resolved the issue and I was able to get it working in the meantime by unplugging the power and rebooting, but yeah, unexpected to say the least.
I was wondering what had happened there! We just saw Peter in Guardians of the Galaxy a few short years ago, so I was surprised to find out they’d used Witwer.
Was Ray Park actually in makeup/costume or was his performance mo-capped? Something about the hologram effect makes it so I can’t really tell.
That shot must’ve looked amazing in 3d Imax.
Speaking of which, I’d be interested in knowing exactly which shots in the movie were actually captured in 15-perf 65mm.
Some much needed perspective:
As someone mentioned upthread, that alien looks straight out of Explorers. Doesn’t mean it can’t still be real, but I have my doubts.
With Rian Johnson and Benioff/Weiss’ respective projects in development and at least one of them supposedly in pre-production, I wonder if there will be anything official announced.
Speaking for myself and not for the other members of this site, Rogue One is easily my least favorite of the four Star Wars films produced thus far under Disney.
I think you’re on to something with the “special edition” observation. Rogue One feels like you’re getting a glimpse into George’s “vision” of the Star Wars universe circa 1975.
If it weren’t for our anger at the burying of the OUT, would anyone here care about completionism with the prequels? There are probably tons of movies with tiny little changes like this on home media that no consumer ever noticed.
I think if it was an all-in-one set or nothing just to own a restored OOT most people would be happy to buy it but never watch the prequels.
As for the other movies you mention, at least when a director’s cut exists it is advertised as such. They don’t pretend nothing happened and expect everyone to believe changes made decades later were always the same. Only something like Amadeus is only available in one format (the longer version) but at least it’s always labelled correctly.
From time to time I have to remind myself of that quote from that guy from Wired magazine from the week the GOUT hit shelves:
“They’re not going to make the fans happy because the happy fan has everything he or she needs.”
They made everyone who wanted the OT deleted scenes buy the expensive complete saga blu-ray set just to get them. Why give each OT film its own multi-version 4k package when they can just make the OOT exclusive to the I-IX box?
It doesn’t really make sense for them not to release the OOT (but then again here we are without anything), but I personally would be a little surprised if they put out the theatrical PT. TPM maybe, as it’s the only one with obvious changes. But I doubt we’re at a point anymore where studios care about home releases all that much to be that completionist.
And by the way, if we’re talking completionist, what about the 70mm ESB?
Oh, I fully accept that the theatrical version of TPM is little more than a historical trivium at this point. CPY is the only thing of note that’s been deleted from the movie. It’s still basically the same otherwise, and that also goes for the entirety of AotC (where we simply get a little more of the movie in the aforementioned Lars Homestead garage) and RotS.
It would be very easy, though, to simply include the other versions of the prequels via branching. Even the imax cut of AotC could be branched and included as an easter egg you have to enter a code to watch, just like that third version of T2.
Anyway, what’s so special about the 70mm ESB? Didn’t ANH also have picture and sound differences between the 35mm and 70mm versions?
A fair few guests have been announced - https://www.starwarscelebration.com/Guests (though not sure how up to date that is).
I hadn’t realised the delectable Katee Sackhoff had been in Rebels & Clone Wars!
I had read somewhere - and can’t remember where - that Oscar Isaac may be appearing too.
Aye, I think that’s Chewie - who’s about to pull the arms off JJ 😉
I don’t think I’d realized that either re: Katee Sackhoff. Between Star Wars, BSG, and Riddick, she’s appeared in three of my favorite franchises/series.
Dune started filming this week in Budapest and Oscar Isaac was on one of the late night shows the other night sporting what I can only assume is his best Duke Leto beard. Unless he’s somehow shooting all his scenes within the next three weeks or they’ve scheduled him to start in the middle of April, he’ll need to fit a very long roundtrip plane ride to Chicago into his calendar if he wants to be at celebration.
I doubt we’ll ever get an official release of the 2005 ROTS. It’s just too close to identical to the BR release.
For AOTC, the 35mm version would be a possibility, as would the IMAX cut, but I doubt they’d make a distinction between the DLP and DVD/BR versions.
Then there’s the question of TPM and the OT’s “middle children” (2001 TPM with extended scenes and CPY; OT 97 and 2004), which are possible, too.
It’s more likely IMO that we’ll get the original theatrical cuts sans ROTS (77, 80, 83, 99, 02 [35mm]), and the “final” cuts of all of them alongside (2011 BR versions), with all the middle versions omitted. With the IMAX AOTC possibly thrown in for good measure.
Isn’t the wipe back in the RotS bd or am I remembering wrong? The dvd turned it into a cut, unless of course that cut was already present in the dlp version. The 35mm version definitely had the wipe. I also saw the dlp version of RotS but can’t say with any confidence whether it had a cut or a wipe, but I want to say it was still a wipe.
That little bit of info that came to light recently about the Kashyyyk rooftops is too trivial of a difference to me. It’s the same basic bear, Homer.
AotC now has like five different cuts. The 35mm and dlp cuts would’ve been virtually identical in terms of running time with the only notable difference being Anakin and Padme holding hands in that closeup shot at the end in the dlp version. The dvd extended Anakin’s confession to Padme in the Lars Homestead garage and the imax version edited the movie down to 120 minutes to fit within the maximum running time of the 15/70 film platters in 2002. Finally, the 2011 version re-arranges the order of certain shots in a couple scenes. I’m fine with losing the dlp and dvd cuts and just keeping the final version (with some proper color-grading this time) and the 35mm version (the digital filmout tapes could hopefully still be read after all these years as they were for TPM back in 2011) with the imax cut thrown in on a regular ‘ol bd (I wouldn’t even care if it was a tad compressed sharing disc space with other bonus features, I just want to finally see that version after all these years).
I don’t care about losing the ‘01 version of TPM. Just give me the oldest and newest versions of the prequels with proper color-timing. For each of the prequels, both versions could easily be branched onto the same disc. The OT films would need separate discs for the original versions.
Speaking of the OT, I don’t mind losing the ‘04 versions but I’ll be sad when they probably don’t go full Blade Runner and omit the ‘97. Would love to be surprised, though.
What I strongly suspect will happen are individual 4k UHD releases for I-VI, TFA, and RO by the end of the year. It would only make sense since they already put out TLJ and Solo on 4k day and date with their bd and dvd versions. Whether they end up being barebones 4k upgrades or actually finally give us what we want remains to be seen. I kinda strongly suspect even more that Disney will milk this thoroughly and wait until the end of 2020 if not 2021 (they gotta make sure everyone buys a copy of IX next Spring) to finally include a restored OOT in the great big $200 box set you’ll need to buy just to get it.
As for sound mixes, I’d love to hear the mono mix of ANH.
If Universal can include the original monomix of Jaws for its blu-ray release in 2012, Disney has zero excuse not to include the monomix of ANH in 2019.
What should the primary audio track be based on? If we’re going by the 35mm version for the picture, the audio should be from that version as well and not the 70mm, right?
There’s another thing to consider when it comes to the picture. Evidence suggests several vfx shots were revised at some point between the initial release on May 25th, 1977 and more prints being struck later that year. IIRC, the white dot ships zooming into space from Yavin IV and the Falcon drifting lazily to the left to evade the Star Destroyer are two such shots where differences have been spotted. My vote would be to preserve the earliest versions if they still exist.
Part of me suspects Disney will put out TFA, RO, and I-VI on UHD in time for IX’s theatrical release. It seems weird that they would let these last nine months before the grand conclusion of the saga go by with only Solo and TLJ available on the highest quality format.
I’d like to think they would finally include the unaltered cuts of the OT at the very least, and who knows, maybe they finally will. As I’ve said many times, I just don’t see a 4k SE-only release selling anywhere near as many copies as one that included the unaltered version.
My vote would be just go all out and give each film the Blade Runner treatment. We heard several years ago that Lucasfilm was scanning in every last piece of film in the archives anyway. I’d love it if they threw in the ‘97 versions of the OT, the theatrical versions of the PT, and the Imax cut of AotC.
That’s the whole reason someone on these very forums gave it the name GOUT in the first place, “George’s Original Unaltered Trilogy.”