What time of the day were the first public screenings of the movie here in the States?
I say we give ourselves until then to make any final revisions. We could always repost to twitter (I hearted and retweeted but that was before I noticed the apostrophes).
Darth Solo, you have my deepest condolences.
I’m sort of caught up to speed on “Star Wars” in 4K. I came across Mike Vetra’s vimeo videos where he showed off his cleanup work/commentary. Sadly, I read that Mike would face serious legal action for ever releasing his “Legacy Edition”.
But then there’s Project 4K77, which I assume to be separate from Mike’s work. Even still, it’s such a shame that we may never get to see a cleaned up/restored 35mm scan, at least to the degree and clarity shown in some of the clips from Mike or Project 4K77. This is what comes down to right? If the quality is consistent and crisp, then that’s a threat, but so long as it’s inconsistent, like Harmy’s Despecialized version (note: I’m not knocking on his work at all and really appreciate it), then it gets to fly under the radar.
Am I understanding that correctly? For a brief while, when I read this topic, I kept thinking, “There’s nothing to worry; if Disney won’t give us what we want, the fans will”. Seems like that won’t be the case after all.
This thread was started almost three years ago because it came to light that Reliance Media Works had made a new 4k master of the OT. This past December, Gareth Edwards confirmed having watched it (ANH at least, if not the other two) right after he was hired back in May of 2014, which was right before this thread was started.
Naturally, it’s the SE. We know this because of the info Poita quoted above.
Meanwhile, as you said, there’s Legacy and 4K77. Verta cannot release Legacy, that’s correct. I’m not sure what the situation with 4K77 is, though.
In any event, this thread has basically become the go-to for discussion of any possibility of an official restoration of the original versions as well. However, as has also been noted, the people in charge remain silent on the matter.
George can make all the changes he wants. Just label it as a separate director’s cut, not the only version that should exist.
George isn’t the director for 66% of the OOT! ;D
Then call it The George Lucas Edition. Has a nice ring to it.
Here’s how I’d want the films to be addressed
1977 Theatrical Cut
1997 Special Edition
2004 Special Edition
2011 Final CutWell there were at least 2 different theatrical cuts in 1977, there was a theatrical cut from 1978 (even though just the audio mix was new), there was a theatrical version in 1981 (Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope)…
This highlights the whole problem from George’s POV. If Star Wars is a multi-film saga, there can’t be any rough drafts.
Off the top of my head:
The revised shot of our heroes zooming towards mos eisley, where they added those scurrier rat things in '97, was further revised in 2004 with a cgi landspeeder.
The infamous Han/Greedo shot was further tweaked in both '04 and 2011 IIRC.
The cgi model of Jabba used for '97 was redone in 2004.
In Empire they did indeed reverse a change from '97 where you hear Luke screaming as he falls. This might be the only Empire change unique to '97 unless there’s other obvious things I’m forgetting.
As for RotJ, in 2004 they added Naboo to the galactic celebration montage and also added the senate building and jedi temple to the Coruscant background.
When it comes to the general public, I am surprised how many people have no idea there are any changes and that the originals aren’t available,then even more surprised how little they care when I tell them.
While attending Star Wars Celebration and talking to other fans while standing in various lines, I was surprised that none of them cared to even talk about the originals or the possibility of a release.
My Harmy discs become more and more cherished as the years go by.
I can’t believe such an important movie with such a large passionate fan base has ended up like this. It’s like a Twilight Zone episode where I’m the only one who remembers the originals except for a few mysterious people I’ve been communicating with online.
Lucas pretty much succeeded in rewriting history and everyone watched and let him.
I think there’s still a not-insignificant number of people who fall between those two extremes: people who are big fans of the movies themselves but not hardcore convention goers. I’m talking about the kind of people who will leave a comment on an article about an OOT rumor or reply to someone’s facebook post on the subject.
Someone at Lucasfilm sure seemed to be paying attention to all those comments over the years about how Lawrence Kasdan should’ve written the PT when they hired him for TFA, or the frequency of posts the day of the Disney deal screaming “get Rian Johnson to direct Episode VII” when they eventually hired him for VIII. Sure, you could write off all of that as pure coincidence, but I’d like to think someone on the inside is listening.
I hope they don’t wait till 2020 to even comment about it.
I doubt they will comment on it then either
IMO there are way too many signs pointing to the next major home video release being in 2020 for it not to happen then (Disney getting the rights to ESB and RotJ, 4k UHD players in enough people’s homes, Episode IX having already been released on video the year before).
But even if they continue to hold off so as not to distract from the standalone movie planned for 2020, they’ve already said they’re planning to go on hiatus from new movies before long. Part of me wouldn’t be surprised if 2020 ends up being the hiatus. It would be a natural enough time to do it, after Episode IX and all. But whenever it happens, I think chances are good the relevant people at Lucasfilm will consider a fancy new home video release if only to justify their jobs.
The more I think about it, the more it becomes obvious that people simply do not care about seeing the OOT restored. Or at least there aren’t enough people who actually care as much about it as we do.
If the next several years came and went and Lucasfilm continued to say nothing on the subject, that many more people will simply say “I give up, it’s never going to happen.” Over a long enough timeline there simply won’t be anyone left who actually gives enough of a damn to complain about it. Sure, maybe someone at Lucasfilm will see the money-making potential of a release that includes the original versions, but man, they really seem to need a lot of convincing for something that’s guaranteed to rake in the cash.
The biggest imperative is preserving the movies, because one way or another the films elements will eventually disintegrate. Maybe we really should forget about dangling that carrot of “we’re waiting for you to take our money on this,” a strategy that’s failed to get their attention, and appeal to them on the grounds of preserving our cultural heritage.
In other words, we need to shame them into restoring the OOT.
Yet their using the word “revised” implies that the OOT was not merely a rough draft of the “finished” version.
This should probably be retitled as the spoilers thread if we’re going to post stuff like spy photos here.
Just sayin’
Writing an article about the 20th anniversary of the SE while also celebrating the 40th anniversary of the original movie is actually a step in the right direction as far as I’m concerned.
It’s the biggest acknowledgement that the films have been changed since … well, since they were changed.
I wonder if Lucas created the PT primarily to keep LucasFilm alive? Its artistic outcome would not have been important as long as it generates money. Back in the 80s he also saw ESB & ROTJ as mere vehicles to fund his elaborate Skywalker Ranch. Somewhere between ANH & ESB the filmmaker disappeared and the businessman took over. Didn’t he say during infamous “White Slavers” interview with Charlie Rose that he wanted to do the ST himself and that he had to care about his employees? Maybe it was easier to sell LucasFilm than to stem another trilogy himself…
Late reply to this one but this is actually true. Young Indiana Jones in the early 90s was a huge money loss for Lucasfilm. He had to come up with something that was going to generate income. This was partially why he went forward with the prequels.
I think Lucas has a love/hate relationship with Star Wars. With Empire he really did want to farm out the star wars movies to other people and he would build his dream Skywalker Ranch studio. However he had a very hard time letting go of wanting to control Empire and the quality of that film. When he did Jedi he was onset every day I believe as opposed to the hands off approach he had with Empire. After Jedi he was finished with the whole thing until he decided to finish the saga with the prequels which would make him a ton of money and he would have absolute control over the output of the film.
It’s worth noting that Disney spent roughly 50% more on TFA than George did on TPM, and that’s after adjusting for inflation. To George’s credit, he spent twice Jedi’s budget on TPM. As many were saying at the time, the prequels would have cost way more if George hadn’t owned ILM. It’s ironic that seeing their work on Jurassic Park is what convinced him he could finally make the PT, because a certain Ian Malcolm quote fits rather perfectly with what he decided to do next.
Did any of the educational stuff Lucas once talked about utilizing with Young Indy ever come to pass?
Are you talking about the historical documentaries he mentioned they were working on for the dvd during that Charlie Rose interview circa RotS or is this something he mentioned way back in the early 90’s when the show was airing?
On a related note, I’m only just now getting around to watching Twin Peaks (I tried a couple years ago but only got several episodes in before getting sidetracked). I would’ve been almost five when that show started airing and I do seem to vaguely recall being aware of its existence. By contrast, imdb tells me that The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles aired from March of '92 to August of '93 and yet I don’t recall even being aware of its existence during that time at all despite being several years older.
Maybe I was too distracted by TNG and DS9 to notice, maybe I just hadn’t quite seen the Indiana Jones movies, but it’s still shockingly weird to me now that this show wasn’t even on my radar. Was it on during a bad timeslot? Is it even any good? Imdb also tells me there were several made for tv movies (or were they just direct to video?) done afterwards.
I would hear/read this show being brought up every once in a while, and remember seeing the ad at the front of the Raiders vhs (I’d seen it before and so I knew how the ad ended, but I remember this one time we were watching Raiders and my parents and their friends burst out laughing when you hear old Indy say “all before the age of 21”).
Other than that, the only things I knew about Young Indy were that some of the eventual PT crew worked on it, like McCallum and Tattersall, and I seem to recall hearing somewhere that George got back in the director’s chair for some of it and also experimented with certain digital techniques. I also see some big names were responsible for the writing and directing, like Mike Newell who went on to direct the fourth Harry Potter movie.
Anyway, I still haven’t seen it after all these years but might be interested at some point if it’s at all worth it. In retrospect, the 90’s might have been the Star Wars renaissance but it feels like the dark times for Lucasfilm since I can’t think of anything else they made during that stretch other than Radioland Murders (which I caught the end of on tv once) and TPM.
To my knowledge it’s not up on any streaming services, which is a mitigating factor since I’m not going through the trouble of getting the dvd just to see it. Maybe the show is still stuck in standard def or it’s a rights issue, or both.
They’re basically fudging all of that stuff. If this were really the prime timeline, why aren’t they wearing the sweater-looking uniforms from The Cage?
Instead they seem to have taken the Kelvin set and costumes and simply extrapolated out that in the original timeline things looked … not very different twenty years later?
No doubt the writers will explain away the inconsistencies in an interview or something. Kurtzman and Orci said somewhere that everything looks way more advanced in the Kelvin timeline because the escape shuttles took scans of the Narada and Starfleet learned all this late 24th century technology (including the Borg stuff used to grow the flower-shaped structure around the ship) 154 years ahead of time.
True, there is a difference between “bad” and “less significant.”
A good example is John Carpenter’s The Thing. It’s not as culturally significant as Star Wars and yet it’s recieved two different blu-ray transfers.
I don’t think linking to the homepage of this site is a good idea. Have any of you seen the homepage? It looks like a defunct niche website from 2007. It says ‘news’ and the newest thing isn’t from this decade… no offense of course.
Yeah already mentioned somewhere, the letter will probably go up there
Couldn’t we just make a page specifically for the letter instead of putting it on the main page?
As I recall, that’s exactly what we did for the most recent petition.
Was it actually someone else’s idea other than George to make changes to the movie (even if it was just re-doing a dozen or so shots with cgi) or were Muren and Knoll simply George’s enablers?
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=star wars unaltered trilogy
Some info on when people have searched for ‘Star Wars unaltered trilogy’.
In short, there were small spikes in 2006 and 2011, then people cared a whole lot right when TFA came out, then cared a bit less when Rogue One came out.So I’d say it’s obviously a good idea to create a stir when it coincides with a major movie release or a blu-ray/4K release of the OT.
Rian Johnson is not a fan of the SE if this tweet from January of 2011 is any indication:
https://twitter.com/rianjohnson/status/23164864209887232
Granted, this was still more than three years before he was hired for Episode VIII, but I’m sure his feelings on the matter haven’t changed.
People were still replying to this more than four years later in August of 2015. It might be worth replying to it and/or liking it and/or retweeting it on the 25th.
I mean, he never deleted it so…
Hope there is a live stream and plenty of Original Unaltered Trilogy talk.
I wonder if they will show the movie?
If George is coming, I doubt it would be unaltered. I can imagine them playing an SE, and loudly voicing their disapproval at the many of the changes, all with George in the room with them to hear their hatred for his destruction of their work. Maybe then something would finally click in his head.
Well, there was that story from years ago about George attending a 35mm screening and, according to the people sitting nearby, getting very uncomfortable upon realizing it was the unaltered version and not the SE.
Phil Tippett has been rather outspoken about his dislike for the alterations has he not?
I’d be curious to know John Dykstra and Richard Edlund’s thoughts on the matter as they were not involved with the SE and PT IIRC.
I thought we would see the Jedi fighting scores of Mandalorian Super commando’s
For the longest time I thought Joe Johnston would’ve been the perfect director for Episode II if for no other reason than the fact that, regardless of whatever the story ended up being, Boba Fett was always going to play some sort of role in that particular installment of the PT.*
But hearing you say it like that, suddenly I got images of Captain America taking on Hydra in The First Avenger. I feel like we could’ve gotten something similar to that if the production had hewed closer to the OT’s more practical filmmaking techniques (as the sequel trilogy largely is). Instead I feel like the Mandalorian army everyone wanted to see became the clones and the Jedi were fighting with them instead of against them.
*at least that’s what I read in a newsweek article at some point during the months leading up to TPM’s release. Said article also mentioned a rumor about Jet Li possibly playing Boba. I’d love to know how that one started and if there was ever any truth to it.
Somebody should do one of these posts on Reddit:
<----- Number of people that want the original theatrical version of star wars released on blu-ray
If that hit the front page of reddit it would mean quite a bit I think. The OT crowd would definitely have to get the ball rolling. I’m assuming everybody has reddit accounts?
I don’t.
Right. We are not giving them directions or writing a contract. We are hoping to raise awareness and increase discussion, and despite low chances of success, hoping that we might get some kind of information. A comment that is less worthless/ambiguous than the recent Kennedy interview.
If, someday, they release a 2k OOT (first of all, I would still be thrilled), it won’t be because, "hah! You ****ers should’ve specified 4K! Gotcha!"
I know people still feel burned about GOUT, but that didn’t happen due to a misunderstanding.I don’t think Lucasfilm will release the theatrical releases on Blue-ray, at least as long as Kennedy is president. Because of her relationship to George Lucas and him appointing her president, she doesn’t want to touch what she sees as “his movies”.
And if it does ever happen, it wont be until 2020, when Disney gets the distribution rights to Episodes 5 & 6.
Getting Star Wars fans talking about it can’t hurt though.
She wouldn’t be doing anything to his movies, though. She would simply be including the original versions alongside his versions. EDIT: crissrudd beat me to it.
Welcome to the forums, btw!
Thanks for the welcome 😃
Lucas has said that, to him, the original releases don’t exist anymore, the current versions are THE movies and he talked how he wants that to be the only version that people see and how eventually all the VHS tapes of the old version will burn out and be thrown away. He underestimates the power of the internet and passionate fans.
So it seems to me like Lucas doesn’t want people watching the theatrical releases, and Kennedy is going to honor his wish.
But Kennedy is 63 years old, and will retire or change jobs within the next decade or two, so the new blood that steps in could have a different stance.
Lucas himself had softened on the issue by the time he sold his company.
Those earlier quotes about the millions of vhs tapes became irrelevant in 2006 when he decided to release the unaltered versions on dvd. Yeah, they were from outdated 1993 transfers, but the dvd discs themselves will last a long time.
George’s comments have been remarkably inconsistent over the years. In 2005 he said there would never be an Episode VII! By the time of the blu-ray release in 2011, he wasn’t even using his “vision” for the films as an excuse to withhold the unaltered versions. He simply said that it would “cost too much.” What he probably would have said under the influence of truth serum is “I’m keeping it in my backpocket for a rainy day since I know many of you fans will go out and buy it all over again.”
Then he sold the company to Disney.
It’s not his money being spent anymore. I doubt he cares one way or the other if the unaltered versions are restored/released, just so long as his versions are still packaged as “the main version.”
The fact that Lucas allowed what were originally intended as ‘Limited Editions’ that were supposed to be off the market by the end of 2006 to be repackaged again in 2008 IMO is another example that shows that he only is/was refusing to restore the originals, not release them.
you have a fair point, but also, once you have a product, i doubt you need to go back to the boss man to approve selling more… but to approve a new project, even if it is just putting a crappy transfer onto bluray, would that not require ‘approvals’ again. Maybe i am just naive about how strongly Lucas feels about holding back the OOT
That’s a safe assumption, not naive.
If anything it’s the situation with Fox that’s made Disney so silent on the matter.
Would it be strange to add a line to the end of the letter something like “we would love the opportunity to discuss this with you” or “if you would like to hear our ideas please feel free to reach out”?
I would certainly want to.
Or we could simply tell them to talk to Robert A. Harris about it.
Right. We are not giving them directions or writing a contract. We are hoping to raise awareness and increase discussion, and despite low chances of success, hoping that we might get some kind of information. A comment that is less worthless/ambiguous than the recent Kennedy interview.
If, someday, they release a 2k OOT (first of all, I would still be thrilled), it won’t be because, "hah! You ****ers should’ve specified 4K! Gotcha!"
I know people still feel burned about GOUT, but that didn’t happen due to a misunderstanding.I don’t think Lucasfilm will release the theatrical releases on Blue-ray, at least as long as Kennedy is president. Because of her relationship to George Lucas and him appointing her president, she doesn’t want to touch what she sees as “his movies”.
And if it does ever happen, it wont be until 2020, when Disney gets the distribution rights to Episodes 5 & 6.
Getting Star Wars fans talking about it can’t hurt though.
She wouldn’t be doing anything to his movies, though. She would simply be including the original versions alongside his versions. EDIT: crissrudd beat me to it.
Welcome to the forums, btw!