Fang Zei

It was mentioned upthread that Despecialized 3.0 will be “entirely 35mm based.”

Does this mean 3.0 will finally be the “best of both worlds” version? In other words, the unaltered 70-80% of the bd color-corrected, with the 35mm scans used for the stuff that was altered, and none of Harmy’s meticulous recreations nor using the ‘97 re-comp shots in place of the true originals?

crissrudd4554 said:

Fang Zei said:

Speaking of which, did we ever determine what film element the unaltered GOUT crawl would’ve been scanned from?

Lucasfilm’s form response letter at the time stated that existing prints were in “bad condition” or something to that effect, but they didn’t exactly help their case by splicing in a newly transferred piece that looked just fine to me.

I’m curious if it’s a recreation after watching this video. In the GOUT the SW logo fades out sooner than it does on 4K77 and the SSE.

https://youtu.be/P1b47UP6ZGI

Does anyone want to chime in on this?

I’m curious myself.

Any legal barrier that was in their way is now gone, or at least it will be once the deal is officially finalized.

The time will eventually come to put out I-VI (and TFA and Rogue One) on 4k UHD. Whenever that ends up happening will be our earliest chance at seeing a restored OOT. If they were going to double/triple-dip the 2011 discs by including a 1080p OOT (like they did with the ‘04 dvd by including the GOUT), they would’ve done it by now.

Of course, now that the Fox buyout is on the way to being finalized I suppose anything’s possible. Maybe they’ll finally restore the OOT in 4k and just put it out on regular 1080p blu, maybe with a remastered SE to go along with it. But when the time comes for the OT on UHD you can bet they’ll include the unaltereds in all their glory.

Being able to watch the SE in 4k hdr, now with a fourth round of changes, just isn’t going to be much of a selling point for a sizable percentage of the fans.

Speaking of which, did we ever determine what film element the unaltered GOUT crawl would’ve been scanned from?

Lucasfilm’s form response letter at the time stated that existing prints were in “bad condition” or something to that effect, but they didn’t exactly help their case by splicing in a newly transferred piece that looked just fine to me.

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

The GOUT is just a low-resolution early 90s master from Lucasfilm (so, ostensibly, from earlier generation sources like the O-neg or separation masters). The SSE is based on release prints, I believe. They’re entirely different.

The GOUT transfers were done in 1993 from interpositives struck from the o-neg in 1985.

It occurred to me after Lucas’ interview mentioning the “microbiotic world” got out there that maybe this is what Hamill was talking about decades ago when he said George’s idea for how the saga was going to end was “really weird.”

When TPM 3D was on its way to theaters back in early 2012, the idea was that each year we would get the next entry in the saga.

At the time, I remember my assumption was that in 2017 when RotJ hit theaters we’d be hearing about them starting pre-production on Episode VII and that it would be shot in native 3D with stereoscopic camera rigs Cameron style.

I totally figured George would use the 3D post-conversion of I-VI as a test run of what he wanted to do with the ST. It would’ve been like 1997 all over again.

IIRC, back in 2011 George was going to build his own studio somewhere on the grounds of Skywalker Ranch, but the neighbors objected and he decided to build low income housing instead.

We didn’t find out until after the Disney deal that the real reason he wanted his own studio space was so he could make the ST right there in his backyard.

Maybe I’m not remembering the timeline of events clearly, but I want to say Kathleen Kennedy became president several months before the Disney buyout and that part of the reason George hired her was because he was selling the company (which, again, the rest of us wouldn’t find out until later).

Was the fake spoiler about Rey losing a hand in TLJ even a fake spoiler or did I stumble into mere speculation when I dipped into that thread last year?

Anakin Starkiller said:

Was that second bit in response to my post about returning to this thread?

Not at all, and like I said it was within six months before TLJ hit theaters that I ended up reading that spoiler (which turned out to be fake), not more than a year out like we are now with Episode IX.

I’m wondering now where that story originated.

DominicCobb said:

Fang Zei said:

Yeah, the ST has made it 2/3 of the way through without referencing anything about the OT that’s version-specific.

Was there ever any truth to that rumor from two years ago about Hayden as ghost Anakin showing up in TLJ?

Nope. Johnson has mentioned that he basically decided against the possibility completely as soon as he thought of it. I think the rumors started from a piece of concept art from TFA. But even then it was never seriously considered - the concept artists always come up some of their own ideas during development that sometimes get worked in, but that piece never made it past that one artist’s rendering as far as I can tell (well, I guess it ended up in the Art Of book).

Fascinating.

Yoda showing up was pretty much the only thing I spoiled for myself that turned out to be true aside from finding out in the wake of Carrie’s death that Leia ends up in a coma with Laura Dern’s character in charge, but even then I had no idea there would be this “on the run” storyline and just assumed they’d be down on D’Qar the whole time.

Actually, the spoiler I was really kicking myself for reading after peaking into the TLJ spoiler thread a little over a year ago - that Rey would lose a hand in true middle-chapter-of-the-trilogy tradition - turned out not to be true at all.

The question I always ask is just how in the world do these film prints end up in the hands of anyone other than the studio that released them.

Do you think the DMR files for the two-hour version of AOTC are still sitting on a hard drive somewhere?

Yeah, the ST has made it 2/3 of the way through without referencing anything about the OT that’s version-specific.

Was there ever any truth to that rumor from two years ago about Hayden as ghost Anakin showing up in TLJ?

Miramax continued to release plenty of stuff that wasn’t “family friendly” even after they were bought out by Disney.

Jedi Master Skywalker said:

oh ok well check news about it.

its were they said streaming rights are owned by turner

Ah, then I stand corrected.

I guess they only have it up to stream during the weeks when they’re actually airing the movies on the network.

Jedi Master Skywalker said:

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

Jedi Master Skywalker said:

the problem now is getting rights for the films from Turner Broadcasting

What? Why on earth do the cable broadcast rights matter?

they own streaming rights.

I don’t think they own the streaming rights. The deal was for broadcast only. I just looked on the tnt app and they’re not on there.

ronwlim said:

I have no doubt we’ll get the original versions, but I meant 100% unaltered: Fox fanfare. original non-logo Lucasfilm title, no “ANH” crawl. The 1977 version.

-Ron

I feel like all of those things would be there regardless. If they can scan in the unaltered opening crawl just for the GOUT, then surely it would be there on an actual OOT restoration.

They’d probably just use a source that’s pre-97 anyway (like the separation masters), unless they have a truly foolproof way of scanning the SE-conformed o-neg and making sure they can tell the unaltered shots from the altered ones.

The guy from Fox at that Disney restoration presentation said that the pieces of the o-neg removed for the alterations were put in storage, but didn’t Michael Kaminski say in his article that certain shots in the o-neg had faded completely because of the nature of the specific stock used for those shots? So they’d need to go to an alternative source like seps or interpositives for some of those shots regardless. I think the big expensive restoration of The Godfather used the o-neg primarily and used seps for the shots that were too faded/damaged.

As for pittrek’s memory, he’s probably referring to that via satellite interview with Iger that cnbc (or whichever cable channel) did way back in 2014 or early 2015. The interviewer asked something to the effect of whether we might see a release of “the original Star Wars” and Iger smiles just a little and says something like “y’know, that’s not a bad idea.”

Mike O said:

Well, I look at it this way:we might bet the OOT before we ever get The Abyss and True Lies on Blu-ray. Whoopee.

At this point they’re probably just waiting for the right time to put it out on 4k.

Edited to clarify: I was talking about The Abyss and True Lies, not the OOT.

Collipso said:

can the holiday special be remastered in HD? i thought it had been shot on tape, therefore that would be impossible. what about the ewok movies and the 80’s cartoons, can those be HD?

All the live action stuff in the holiday special (which is most of it, IIRC) was shot/finished on standard def videotape*, yes. The animated sequences might benefit in some way if they were shot on film first and those elements still exist in storage somewhere, ditto for the 80’s cartoons.

The Ewok movies can absolutely benefit from HD and even 4k**, since they were shot on film (presumably 35mm).

*pretty sure this was analog videotape too

**Don’t say it’ll never happen! We already got the Peanuts specials released in 4k UHD with both SDR and HDR versions included, and I’m pretty sure at least one of the Ewok movies actually got a theatrical release.

Mocata said:

The theatrical release of the OOT is probably treated with contempt like the old EU now.

Yeah, but they still kept the old EU in print under the “legends” banner, didn’t they?

I know it’s not a perfect 1:1 analogy I’m making here, but if Disney sees money in something that doesn’t really matter to them anymore in terms of their current goals for the franchise, they’ll do it.

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

There’s really no logical reason to think this reduces the chances of an OUT release.

Unless of course the chances already were zero, in which case they literally can’t be lowered anymore.

I remember reading in the earlier days of digital projection that the audio was simply “linear pcm essence.”

Since the digital version was already being delivered on a hard drive, it wouldn’t make much sense to have the dts audio on a separate disc. The whole reason dts worked that way was because it couldn’t be recorded as a track on the actual print the way dd and sdds were. They figured out a way to fit the dts timecode onto the print, which would sync to the dts cd. So whatever dts cd(s) we have for AotC are more than likely the 35mm version.

It’s been 16 years, but I’m still kicking myself for not catching the digital version when it was still playing at one of the closest theaters to where I lived. It was the only theater in Virginia showing it in digital, and of course there were only a hundred or so theaters in the country showing it digitally. After seeing the movie in DC on 35mm opening day, I just wasn’t in a rush to revisit it. It wasn’t until three or four weeks later that I fancied a rewatch, but by that point they’d moved it out of the digital auditorium for Scooby-Doo.

Either way, I’m still 99% certain the “to be angry…” scene wasn’t added until the dvd release. That summer was when I first started lurking and occasionally posting on the TFN boards (shudder). I remember plenty of talk about the alternate shot of Padme holding Anakin by his mechanical hand at the end and not a single mention of an extended bit of dialogue in the garage. Since one of those changes is quite a bit more noticeable than the other, I think it’s safe to say the “to be angry…” exchange wasn’t in the dlp version.

There was one person who swore they saw two different edits of the beginning of the arena scene (when padme is picking her lock), but that’s the only thing aside from the hand-holding that people were talking about that summer.

One last funny story I’ll share. I remember listening to the dvd commentary that November and George mentioning during the big Arena battle that he’d decided after the movie’s release to go back and add sparks to Jango Fett’s backpack. Well, he must not have expected it to already be showing up in the version he was actually sitting down to watch because he stops mid-sentence in surprise, pauses for a moment, and then says to the vfx guys “I just put that in yesterday for crying out loud!”

I’m like 99.99999% certain that that part of the scene wasn’t added until the dvd.

I think it’s likely that Lucasfilm will restore the OOT once Disney’s buyout of Fox is complete since ANH will no longer be a factor.

Whether or not we ever see the ‘97 SE and the theatrical prequels restored is another story. In a world where we got five different cuts of Blade Runner spread across three separate discs, it seems pretty backwards to not at least include the original/‘97/“final” versions of each OT film.

Handman said:

I don’t think TV is part of the deal, so they wouldn’t get The Simpsons.

Disney would get any and all IP owned by Fox, so they would get The Simpsons.

The Murdochs would hold on to the Fox network itself since Disney owning more than one of the “big four” (they already own ABC) would violate antitrust regulations.