Fang Zei

rodneyfaile said:

What is the latest reasoning on why they haven’t been released already? Waiting on the purchase of Fox to be finalized? Waiting until after IX?

It’s probably several things.

The pending buyout of 20th Century Fox would seem to be the biggest factor. They own ANH in perpetuity and the rights to Empire, Jedi, and the prequels don’t revert to Lucasfilm until next year. Until all the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed, Disney wouldn’t want to be involved with a release they’d need to share profits on with another studio.

4k is the other big reason. Even if Disney had the distribution rights, they’d probably have waited until this year at the earliest to do any new physical release so they can debut I-VI on UHD in grand fashion. If you count from when the blu-ray/hddvd format war ended, then we’re as far into 4k this year as we were with blu-ray when the 2011 release happened. Even if there’s no unaltered restoration in the works*, I fully expect we’ll hear some official word by the end of the year on when the OT will hit the format.

Lucasfilm doesn’t even have a new Star Wars movie in the pipeline for a 2020 release. That could still change, but Avatar 2 (a Fox release) will almost definitely be hitting theaters in December of 2020. Disney could change things up and put out a new Star Wars movie in November, but it seems likely 2020 will be Lucasfilm’s hiatus year in terms of new theatrical releases and they’ll simply focus on The Mandalorian and this Cassian Andor show, and maybe the saga UHD set could hit later in the year as well. Of course, I could be totally wrong and they’re just waiting until Celebration for the big reveal of a concept teaser for either the Obi-Wan movie or the first part of Rian’s trilogy.

*Like I’ve said before, I really don’t think they’ll bother releasing a UHD that doesn’t at the very least include the unaltered OT.

Oddly enough, I very clearly remember the first broadcast of the ANH SE that I saw here in the States was a local one.

IIRC, it was on channel 20 here in DC (WDCA), which by that point was part of UPN (it was actually one of only four Paramount stations in the entire country pre-‘95 and therefore the home of TNG and DS9 in this neck of the woods (and Babylon 5 before it moved to TNT for its final season)).

Anyway, I remember realizing somehow that this wasn’t a network broadcast and I found that really weird for a Star Wars movie.

SilverWook said:

Fang Zei said:

Anthony Daniels tweeted this out earlier today,

https://twitter.com/adaniels3po/status/1092555522765713408?s=21

which means we’re definitely getting some big piece of news this week, even if it’s not the title.

Revenge Of The Droids 😉

I did find it appropriate that they had Tony tweet that out.

Hasn’t it long been assumed that the saga would end with the droids giving their “journal” to the Whills?

OutboundFlight said:

I hope it isn’t balance of the force then we’d have a last Jedi situation all over again…

You mean in terms of more than one Star Wars movie having the word “Force” in the title?

It would at least give the ST titles some symmetry, and it would be a fitting title for the final installment of the saga since bringing balance to the force is what they were talking about all the way back (chronologically) in Episode I.

I’d actually be perfectly fine with that title.

Since Episode I and Episode IV both have titles that don’t necessarily have anything to do with the Star Wars universe and the ST didn’t go that route (Jedi and The Force are both very SW-specific), I was kinda hoping they’d invert that pattern and go with something similar for IX.

But like I said, I’d be perfectly fine with Balance of the Force.

Anthony Daniels tweeted this out earlier today,

https://twitter.com/adaniels3po/status/1092555522765713408?s=21

which means we’re definitely getting some big piece of news this week, even if it’s not the title.

Ashdogg said:

I don’t know if someone has mentioned this previously (my apologies if it has), but if LFL released the OT Special Edition it won’t likely be a true 4k format. The CGI effects were no doubt rendered at 2K, so even if you upscale them to 4K - the quality of the video will be equal to that of 2K (half of the prequels were shot at 2K) and you could end up with a 4K/2K hybrid. It shouldn’t be impossible to overcome this - but it certainly wouldn’t be a simple process. From a financial point of view it would make practical sense to do the Theatrical Editions of of the OT - even there, I expect it’d be still be somewhat an involved process. It really comes down to how far they’re willing to go and for what price.

New movies being made today are only just starting to have their vfx rendered in 4k. Many films that were finished in 4k still had their effects shots rendered in 2k. Like I was saying a page or two back, if the final rendered 2k frames from ‘96 / early ‘97 still exist in their pure digital form somewhere and are still readable (as they still were for TPM in 2011) then they would at least look better than scanning the filmed-out negative back in.

But even if they had to resort to scanning it back in (and as I said in my post I’m pretty sure that’s what they did for the 2004 transfer), that’s only a small percentage of the SE. The rest is still 35mm negative straight from the camera and would benefit in every way from a 4k scan.

crissrudd4554 said:

I’m fairly sure a 4K release of the OT (or at the very least a 4K version of the first film which apparently was already completely in 2012 but we’ve yet to see what it will be used for) shouldn’t be an issue. The Prequels is another story. IIRC AOTC and ROTS were filmed and completed at 2K so yes those films would need upscaling.

A significant percentage of movies released on 4k UHD were only finished in 2k. As long as they don’t botch the upscaling, the prequels should look just fine.

ChainsawAsh said:

Z6PO said:

Didn’t they recomposited the effects because the film stock used originally for the final composites was degrading rapidly ? And was already in such a bad shape that it was deemed unusable at that time ?

Because there are definitely no other sources that can be used for the original effects… 😒

Exactly!

As I said in the second or third edit of my way too long post above, there are other film elements aside from just the o-neg that could be utilized in an official restoration of the unaltered version.

Also from my overlong post, it wouldn’t really be the 100% unaltered versions if we started talking about re-compositing the opticals. You’re certainly not alone there.

For the 2011 master of TPM they were at least able to go back to the digital filmout tapes so that they could transfer the movie (well, almost all of it) straight from the digital source.

Even if they’re not going to re-render the ‘97 cg shots from scratch, I wonder if at the very least the finished frames still exist in a readable format like they did for TPM. We’re only talking two and a half years earlier. For the ‘04 master it looks like those shots were simply scanned back in off the negative since you can still see filmic anomalies like weave even after Lowry finished their (rushed) cleanup.

By the way, this is exactly why I’d want the ‘97 versions preserved. The o-neg is already conformed to that exact edit of the movie anyway.

4throck said:

The best approach would be the same as they did for TNG, with re-composited effects.
For TNG they improved the light passes a bit, and I guess they corrected small model defects.

But it looks seamless and much better than 2000’s CGI.
For Star Wars it would look great and still have the 1977 feel.

They already did exactly that for the ‘97 SE. They scanned in the original individual elements (which I guess would’ve all been 8-perf horizontal VistaVision negatives?) and recomposited them digitally at 2k res, filming back out to a new piece of 4-perf cinemascope neg and intercut with the rest of the movie just like the cg shots.

As with the cg shots, if the finished 2k files are still readable like they were with TPM then they should at the very least be transferred if they’re not going to spend the money to re-re-comp the elements with, say, an 8k scan / 4k finish.

I don’t even know what the state of those individual film elements would be after an additional two decades of storage, but I still remember that post from several years ago where someone in-the-know said that Lucasfilm was archiving everything, so maybe they’ve been scanned yet again.

But yeah, as LordZerome pointed out, this is still SE talk. If we really wanted an unaltered OT that was 110% unaltered then we shouldn’t be talking about re-comps at all.

Speaking of which, if I remember Zombie’s article on the matter correctly, certain stretches of the conformed 35mm negative had faded badly by the time it was dug up in the mid-90’s to be restored for the SE. Zombie mentioned that there were four different film stocks that made up the conformed o-neg and that one of these stocks just wasn’t designed to last. I want to say it was the stock used for composites, which means even if they saved those shots in storage there’s no guarantee they’d be salvageable even with modern digital restoration tools. So, a secondary source like an IP or the separation masters might be necessary to get those shots for an official OOT restoration.

DrDre said:

I think it is likely Lucas had the negative and all the original elements scanned and restored. So, I don’t think there’s a version persé. There are masters from which the original and SE versions could be created, although I believe at the time he was mostly focussed on the planned 3D releases of the OT.

The planned 3D versions were most likely why these new 4k masters were created, especially since we now have confirmation from someone involved that they were finished all the way back in 2012. George didn’t sell LFL to Disney until the end of October, so maybe he had the new scan done as a good starting point for the post-conversion before Disney scrapped it. It would explain why they’ve sat unused for almost seven years.

Like the anonymous former RMW employee said, it’s unlikely their work on the OT could be surpassed even seven years later.

4k 16-bit is about as good as it gets.

It took almost five years, but we finally have some comments on this 4k job from the people directly involved.

Thanks for sharing, Dre.

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

I would bet on they’re also doing individual packages for each title. Collectors’ edition packaging (steelbooks, retailer exclusives) seems to be where it’s at right now in physical media.

Since TLJ and Solo are already out there in 4k, it might actually make more sense to only release the other eight movies individually for now. They could even make that the way you get the unaltered versions, say it’s a limited edition just like the GOUT. Then later on they could do a streamlined box set that’s just the final versions of I-IX, no OOT, no Rogue One or Solo.

I just don’t see how an announcement of only the SE (and the prequels and TFA/RO) in 4k would be met with any other response than “who cares?”

Disney should be smart enough to know that this is it for Star Wars on physical media and that they might as well put together the definitive collection for all time.

If they want to do it this year, they can just leave a little extra space with a cardboard placeholder for where Episode IX will eventually go.

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

I remember Collin Trevawhatever had said he was going to shoot IX in 65mm. Has Abrams kept this decision in place?

Short answer: no.

Longer answer: The first official photo (the only official one so far if I’m not mistaken) from the set was tweeted out by JJ himself back in early August the day they started principal photography. It very clearly shows a Panavison 35mm film camera, one of the very same used to shoot TFA in fact (it has “VII” and “IX” etched into the side in the yellow wireframe font). In the photo you can even see the lcd display viewfinder which shows that the camera’s capturing a native 2.35:1 image just like the majority of TFA and TLJ.

So, they definitely won’t be shooting the whole movie in 65mm judging by the photo, probably not even the majority. Abrams shot the escape from Jakku scene in TFA entirely in Imax, with the picture filling the screen if you saw the movie in that format. Johnson shot some Imax for the Ahch-To scenes and some taller aspect ratio stuff for Krayt (it’s unclear if this was also actual Imax or some other format) but opted in the end to keep the Imax version 2.35:1 throughout the entire movie just like the normal version.

I’m sure Abrams will probably shoot some of IX in Imax as well, although there hasn’t been any official word AFAIK. He may even mix in some 5-perf 65mm stuff as well (that’s the normal 65mm Trevorrow wanted to shoot all of IX in).

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starwarsspeculation/comments/a12nte/star_wars_ivii_4k_release_next_year/

I know it’s an anonymous Redditer, but a 4K release is an eventuality, and a release leading into Christmas and IX makes sense.

One can dream it will contain the theatrical when it happens, whether this year or later. There really is no excuse from a technical/financial perspective not to release the original cut when SW hits the format.

That last part is worth repeating. IIRC, the 2011 blu-ray packages didn’t make as much money in their first day/week of release as the dvd did back in 2004.

A large reason for that, I think, is because the only perk of owning the blu-ray aside from being able to watch the prequels and yet another revision of the SE in HD was the deleted scenes that were gonna end up on youtube anyway. I think there were a lot of people who remembered 2004 and said “fool me once,” although many here bought it anyway hand over fist for the extras.

None of those selling points were enough for me then, and a 4k HDR SE certainly won’t be enough of a selling point for me without the unaltered versions. I suspect I’m not alone in that regard.

There’s plenty of stuff to dislike about the SE without citing Luke screaming the Emperor’s scream as he falls in Cloud City, one of the few (the only?) changes George actually reversed in later re-revisions of the OT.

It’s weird to think that George offered the Episode I director’s chair to other people (Zemeckis, Ron Howard, Darabont et al), all of whom turned him down and said he should direct it himself.

The GOUT debacle was what finally did it for me, and I bought more tickets to each of the prequels than I’d like to admit.

LexX said:

SilverWook said:

It’s a 67 year old novelty then.

An old gimmick is still a gimmick.

I suppose sound and color and widescreen aren’t gimmicks since they actually became the norm, whereas even now 3D is only used on a small percentage of movies released each year. Many people don’t like wearing the glasses, paying the extra bucks to wear the glasses, and prefer watching their movies in 2D anyway. 3D has stuck around this time because it’s so obviously being used by the studios to squeeze a few extra bucks out of the people who didn’t get their 2D tickets ahead of time for (insert name of big franchise tentpole) on opening weekend. If they can figure out the glasses-free tech then I can maybe see it becoming more the norm, but that’s years away.

HDR, on the other hand, probably will become the norm a lot sooner than that, at least going forward for new releases. We’ve even seen it used on a few catalog titles already. It’ll be interesting to see how it gets used on I-VI and if they consult with George on the final grade.

Alita: Battle Angel
Gemini Man
The Irishman
Captain Marvel
Shazam!
Avengers: Endgame

The first movie I ever saw in 3D* was Up in the Summer of 2009. When Avatar came out at the end of that year I ended up seeing it three times, all in 3D. They were all at the same multiplex but the first two times were in smaller auditoriums so it was the 16:9 version. The third was in a bigger theater and was in scope. Avatar ended its run just as they were opening their new LieMax.

Since then I’ve tried keeping my 3D screenings to stuff captured with stereo camera rigs, but there have been a few exceptions and I must admit the post-conversion quality has come a long way.

Speaking of post-conversions, LotR is another “original trilogy” that’s been floated for dimensionalization. It’s probably dependent on how much WB feels like spending the money, but now that Jackson is done with his World War I documentary and FotR’s 20th anniversary is right around the corner I could see him pressuring them to make it happen.

Again, Cameron’s influence will probably be the single biggest factor in all of this. If the Avatar sequels make a big enough splash and we get another Hugo or Gravity or Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, then Disney will probably see the potential for a 3D OT.

*not counting seeing T2 3D at Universal Orlando in the Spring of 2003

The one big financial incentive Disney had for doing a 3D conversion of the OT seems to be gone now since I don’t see them doing a ‘97 style re-release in theaters. The only real reason to do it at this point is simply so that it can exist in that format alongside the other movies, but the in-theater saga marathons the day before Episode IX seem to be the only time and place for it. Even then, I would think most people buying a ticket to that sort of thing would probably prefer to just watch these things in 2D.

I felt kinda sorry for the people who went to the I-VII marathons a little over three years ago who got I-VI in 2D and were then forced to watch VII in 3D. I wonder how Disney handled things for I-VIII a couple years later.

moviefreakedmind said:

Wouldn’t 4K be more or less pointless for TFA and RO? Movies like that are always mastered in 2K to begin with.

Rogue One’s DoP Greig Fraser confirmed that the movie was finished in 4k, but it’s unclear at what exact res the vfx were rendered at. There’s still a decent percentage of the movie that’s entirely in-camera, and they used the Alexa 65 with Ultra Panavision lenses which means there was still a good 6k worth of detail for those shots even after they cropped a little off the sides to make it 2.40:1.

TFA turned out differently, at least going by what I’ve read. Abrams’ editing process didn’t give the vfx people enough time to render out the shots at as high of a res as they otherwise could have, and since that’s most of the movie I think it’s effectively stuck in 2k.

joefavs said:

Yeah, I don’t think I know a single person who even owns a 3D TV. Might have been cool to see those 3D versions theatrically, but I really don’t have any interest in watching them in my living room.

Anyway, I was sure we’d at least get TFA and R1 in UHD for Christmas since there was no new movie in theaters, even if the OT was a long shot. Since that came and went, I’m not expecting anything before IX comes out on disc. Hopefully they’ll do it so that I won’t have to re-buy too much. Be a shame if IX came out in a steel book that matched TLJ but then three months down the road we find out that the only way to get TFA in 4K is in a boxed set. I might hold out on the disc for the first time and just go digital for IX if we haven’t heard by then what’s going on with TFA.

What makes you think they won’t just put out TFA and RO on 4k this year?

It made at least some sense not to do it this past holiday since they needed to push Solo after it underperformed in theaters. Speaking of which, it wouldn’t at all surprise me if Disney does eventually include more of the Lord and Miller footage in an eventual re-release, if only to help recoup their losses. Maybe that’s something they could save for the inevitable over-priced franchise collection, just as the OT deleted scenes were exclusive to the “complete saga” blu-ray.

SilverWook said:

It doesn’t help that there hasn’t been a new 3D set on the market for a couple years now. Maybe the Avatar sequels will revive the market. That there were two different home systems didn’t help much. Active 3D sets requiring more expensive glasses that need batteries. 4K sets actually do 3D better with no loss of resolution.
I was amazed to find out there was an outboard 3D converter gizmo for 2D sets. It uses the old red/blue system, but from what I’ve read, it works pretty well once calibrated.

I’m not a fan of how the “passive” method was implemented at home, with the fpr filter always there over the display and making everything look like you’re watching it through a screen door.

Years ago, Samsung was working on a tv that would’ve used the “active passive” version of RealD’s tech, but it was deemed too expensive.

Maybe Cameron will pressure the industry to figure out a solution in time for Avatar 2’s home release a little over two years from now.

All of this 4k talk has made me completely forget about the 3D versions of I-VI.

TPM got a theatrical 3D re-release in early 2012 but never made it to 3D blu-ray. The stereo conversions of AotC and RotS were finished shortly thereafter but have only been seen at fan conventions.

Then there’s the OT, which they were doing tests on as early as 2007 but was never finished.

TLJ and Solo didn’t even get a 3D blu release Stateside, probably because Disney put out the UHD versions day-and-date with the regular blu’s and wanted to push that as the premium SKU. I’m guessing there’s simply more of a market for home 3D in the UK than there is here.

Peter Suschitzky, Rocky Horror’s DoP, would later go on to shoot ESB. He recently lensed After Earth for M Night Shyamalan, which makes a pretty good case for him working on a Star Wars movie again.

We’ll be waiting with great antici…

…pation.