I was scrolling through facebook and noticed someone had done a fan-made saga trailer.
One of my biggest problems with the prequels is that George decided to shoot 2 and 3 on glorified HD video cameras and they look terrible compared to the other films.
I first heard about it in the 90’s, probably after reading in the Essential Guide to Characters that Boba Fett’s first appearance was in it.
Heard about it every now and then throughout the early-to-mid oughts. Empire of Dreams’ earlier cut apparently had a segment on it that didn’t make the final release.
By the time I joined this forum just over a decade ago I’d already heard about how the holiday special was “out there” if you knew where to look for it, much like the OOT had been when I was lurking the year before.
Finally watched it in late '08 after downloading it from google video (remember google video?!) and thought it was equal parts bizarre, boring, and WTF. The commercials really added to the experience.
Since someone brought it up earlier:
I remember finding it interesting that Fox had the copyright in the end credits and not Lucasfilm. Did Fox pay for its production and simply make it with George’s blessing?
The newspaper comics are another item from that time with Fox’s name on it and not LFL’s, IIRC.
https://twitter.com/pablohidalgo/status/817634108419371008
Pablo admits that 2 & 3 are stuck at 1080p
It’s been public knowledge for a while now that episodes two and three were finished at 1080p
Two and Three were definitely shot in 1080p. But I’ve always been curious - especially since these movies are framed at the scope ratio of 2.35:1 - whether they were finished at 1080p or true 2k.
They might’ve been a last minute thing since they couldn’t release what was originally intended for that time.
Maybe.
Hopefully the covers for the 4K OOT will reflect the original poster art and not the horrible steelbook cases. Though I would love a steelbook release to go with my TFA and eventual Rogue One blu-rays. This does leave Phantom Menace as a possible release later on, but Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith will be forever stuck at 1080p and be even more disconnected from the good movies.
Resident Evil: Afterlife, a movie shot in 1080p, is getting released on 4k UHD this month.
The prequels may be stuck at 2k, but they’re by no means stuck on regular blu-ray.
I wear glasses so I never go to 3D movies, I end up looking like a twit wearing them over my glasses and I get a headache from the double lenses.
I can at least deal with that for real-d and LieMAX 3D, which use polarization. Dolby 3D and Imax laser 3D both use the 6p method, which results in a foggy haze around the image if you’re wearing prescription glasses (haven’t seen a movie in either of those formats, it’s just what I’ve heard). I’m long overdue for a new prescription anyway so I’m just going to get new contacts as well.
One thing giving me hope is that we’ve gotten a reissue of the 2011 blu-rays every two years, which means we’d be due for another one this year, which just happens to be the 40th anniversary.
So, unless they want to give us the same discs yet again, they’ll come up with something entirely new to sell us.
I was so, so sure we’d be getting something new in the lead-up to TFA in 2015, and then all they did was steelbooks (although the movies were finally released individually at least). Even if they don’t bother with a UHD release just yet, I can’t fathom how they would repackage the blu-rays yet again without something, anything, that isn’t just a fancy container.
I’ll only see a movie in 3D if it was at least partially shot that way.
I’ve only intentionally broken that rule twice: Pacific Rim (digital Imax 3D, I later saw it again in regular sized 2D with a friend of mine) and Gravity (real-d). Well, I also saw Jupiter Ascending in real-d out of some misplaced sense of wanting to support The Wachowskis in their crazy space opera experiment that was guaranteed to flop. Maybe it would’ve looked better if I’d seen it in digital Imax 3D (this was right before they started rolling out the laser system), but I thought the post-converted live action looked terrible. The natively-rendered-in-stereo cg vfx sequences, as with any 3D movie, at least looked okay.
I honestly think 3D is mainly there to squeeze more money out of the movies that are gonna make a killing anyway. Pre-2009 there would be be three or four screens showing the same highly anticipated movie all at the same multiplex. Now, when you’ve got a big movie like The Avengers opening, two of those four screens are the 3D version. That means whoever didn’t get their 2D tickets early enough are stuck either waiting for a later showing or just seeing it in 3D, and whatya think they’re gonna do? That’s what happened when I saw Guardians of the Galaxy with my friends, and it wasn’t even opening weekend! At least it wasn’t their first time seeing it, and I ended up liking the movie so much anyway that I took a friend who hadn’t seen it to a 2D showing. The 3D version at least looked decently good.
So, yeah, that’s the one time I involuntarily broke my rule.
It’s frustrating to see the studios pushing the 3D versions of these 2D-shot blockbusters on us while giving the shaft to intentional 3D movies like Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. That’s commerce, I guess.
The only shot-in-stereo movies I know of that are coming out this year are Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (entirely stereo, just like the last two) and Transformers 5 (mostly stereo, just like the last two). Alien: Covenant might have been shot in 3D but there’s nothing in the trailers or posters even advertising so much as real-d. Ridley Scott shot Prometheus, Exodus and The Martian all in native stereo, so it will be interesting to see whether or not he abandoned it for Alien: Covenant.
I think the RMW footage looks pretty great.
EDIT: Then again, I think that this entire forum is overly concerned with color correction. I think I might be in the minority there, though.
We should also remind ourselves that the brief clips in their reel may only be from a restoration of the SE. It may not matter if the color timing isn’t accurate.
That might only be for the publishing division to worry about.
Have the Tartakovsky clone wars or the Ewok movies been re-released in any way since 2014? Like, even as a digital download? I could maybe see them slapping it on the poster that you see on the “buy/rent” screen and mayyyyybe on the cover of a physical dvd case, but that kind of stuff (including the animated 80’s shows) seem of little consequence to the new canon.
He doesn’t seem to think so.
There’s also a video about the Threepio shot:
Just re-watched the reliance demo reel. Don’t know what y’all think, but it’s stunning IMO, especially the shots from the Bespin duel. On the BD, is just drab and gray looking. In the demo, all kinds of blues are coming out, and the sabers don’t suffer from that terrible over saturation.
Mike Verta wasn’t so thrilled with some of the shots in their reel, such as this one of the stormtroopers running through a Death Star hallway in ANH:
The Star Wars Saga: The Original Trilogies Trilogy the Collector’s Edition Set (with space left open for VIII and IX in the box).
Haha yeah they did that for the Jurassic Park Blu ray set
And the 2012 Bond collection IIRC (left a space for Skyfall).
I’d buy a $120 complete saga set to get a legitimate HD copy of the Original Trilogy, but I don’t think that PT would be a wise marketing move to package with the OT. Also, there really isn’t a “complete saga” anymore because there’s going to be so many movies.
Which is exactly why they should just give each movie its own ultimate set.
That dupe neg talk was just speculation on Robert A Harris’ part. I’m pretty sure we know for a fact that George had the changes cut directly into the o-neg. RAH is correct, though, that the o-neg is not needed for an amazing OOT restoration.
Now that it’s Disney’s money to spend on such a project and not GL’s, I’d say the chances are much greater. George even changed his tune from “my original vision” to “it’s too expensive right now” not long before selling the company. I honestly don’t think it would bother him if the remastered original were packaged with a remastered SE.
Ah, so now we know why Zombie hasn’t updated his youtube channel in the last couple months.
This may be useless, but Peter Mayhew’s tweeting of the original script (with emphasis on Han shooting first) to build up to a “big announcement” that he ultimately never made.
EDIT: Also, according to a poster on another forum in 2015, his company was instructed to remaster “Empire of Dreams” in HD.
Good point about Mayhew.
As for Empire of Dreams, could that hd remastering simply have been for purposes of putting it up on youtube? Or is that upload still in 480p like the dvd?
So we now have a timeline of:
May-July, 2014:
Gareth Edwards hired for Rogue One, watches “just completed” ANH restoration not long after. Reliance Media Works lists a 16-bit 4k restoration of the OT on their website (before quickly removing it as soon as some news outlets get wind of it) and posts brief clips in their demo reel.*
April, 2015:
The day before the digital release of I-VI, Devin Faraci writes an article claiming an unnamed source inside Lucasfilm has seen a new version of the SE where Greedo does not shoot first (someone mentioned something in the last couple pages of the thread about a different Jabba scene and I don’t remember hearing about that). He theorizes it may have been done for said digital versions and stands by his source the next day when it turns out to be the 2011 transfer yet again.**
September, 2015:
John Landis mentions having been told by George over lunch that Disney is planning to put out the original movies “the way they were.”
December, 2015:
Disney requests the Library of Congress’ 35mm print of Star Wars from 1977.
Summer, 2016:
Roadshow screenings of the OT are held around the country. Although originally specified as being the 1997 SE 35mm prints, they turn out instead to be DCPs of the 2011 version … at least content-wise. Tack reported it as looking quite different from the existing 2004/2011 Lowry transfer in terms of color and film grain and even notes that the 2004/2011 changes looked different from everything else, suggesting they may have simply been plugged into a new 4k transfer of the 97 SE-conformed o-neg.
*After pouring over screenshots from the demo reel, the lightsaber flashes from the ANH duel appeared to be from the SE. The comparison was deemed inconclusive IIRC from way back in the thread. Were we able to glean anything from the shot where the x-wings roll off of formation one by one (re: originals vs. 97 recomps)?
**My guess? George was still hanging around after selling the company but before Disney threw out his ST treatments, right? Maybe he had the change made around then but specifically requested that it be saved for the next physical format release of the movies (on 4k Ultra HD).
It’s the proverbial “sad state of affairs” when a director says they saw a 4k restoration of Star Wars and the interviewer doesn’t even ask what version it was.
But hey, the SE of ANH is twenty years old this month. It’s had all that time to become normalized.
I remember hearing about that but I’d forgotten the source, so thank you for bringing it up.
The only other rumors we have to go on are John Landis’ story about talking to George and the report that Disney had requested a look at the LoC’s old print of Star Wars '77 (I forget who reported this).
RIP Carrie and Debbie.
Thank you for everything you’ve given us.
Part of me wants them to keep Episode VIII exactly as it would have been and not change a thing, since Carrie had already filmed all her scenes for the movie before her death.
There are a million and one possibilities. I’m sure everyone at Lucasfilm are putting their heads together. As others have said, Carrie would have wanted whatever is best for the sake of these movies. But we also want a worthy tribute to her, a sentiment no doubt shared by the filmmakers.
My thoughts?
I don’t want them reusing footage or using cgi for Episode IX. This is all obviously dependent on how things play out in VIII (and whether or not they simply make changes to that movie as well), but what I would want them to do is to take a page from how Leonard Nimoy’s death was addressed in Star Trek Beyond. Early in Episode IX, have a scene where a group of characters return from a battle. It was a victory, but General Organa was killed leading the Resistance.
An idea someone posted in the comments at birthmoviesdeath that I actually loved:
“(at some point) cut to a memorial statue or plaque, and we dolly out to reveal a person (Finn? Poe? Rey?) paying their respects as they pass by before joining a meeting or on their way to a ship or something.
They could even touch it and say “for luck” before moving on.”
That really got me, but in a good way.
My only other suggestion would be to give Billie Lourd’s character a bigger role in Episode IX. She was just on Late Night with Seth Meyers a couple weeks ago and is becoming quite the actress herself, despite - she mentioned - her family’s best efforts.
Just so we can settle this part of the debate:
The 4k master is not an upscale.
Yes, we know this with a degree of certainty.
The only things that would be upscaled in the SE are practically all of the vfx shots, since even the “unaltered” miniature shots were still recomped and this only would’ve been done in 2k.
However, it’s worth noting that even new movies made today in 2016, even if they’re finished as a 4k DI, still only have their vfx shots rendered at 2k. So, there’s nothing at all disingenuous about the '97 fx shots being upscaled from 2k as far as I’m concerned.
It’s also worth noting that the 2004 and 2011 changes may possibly have been finished at true 2k and not 1080p (subtle and perhaps insignificant distinction, but still). ILM might have saved them on a hard drive and simply “plugged them in” to the new 4k master. But those changes are so few and far between either way, so they’re not worth worrying about really.
What matters is that most of the OT-SE is still the original camera negative, or at least IP replacements for the frames of the o-neg that were damaged beyond repair. This fresh 4k scan utilized for Reliance MediaWorks’ 16-bit 4k master will bring out even more detail than was possible with the 2k scan Lowry used twelve years ago.
In regards to the original 1977 film, did they not acquire such a print back in the 80’s when it became one of the very first movies to be added to the registry? Or was there some factor preventing them from doing so?
These rumors just keep flying, but still nothing concrete. I’m just finding it hard to get my damned hopes up. I’d download Harmy, but I’m scared of getting arrested.
You wont get arrested. The person who shared it would be more likely to get arrested. I’ve downloaded a ton of torrents over the years and never had an issue.
Almost all of the fan-edits of films I want are of movies I own at least one copy of, and sometimes several. My brother is a lawyer trying to get into Internet intellectual property law and says that it can be a pretty big fine if I get caught, but not arrested. Thanks, Atticus. Millions of people torrent stuff, but I swear, I’d be the damned one who got caught.
Your brother is a lawyer named Atticus?
He went to law school, I called him Atticus sarcastically. It would be so cool if he was a lawyer named Atticus though.
You should ask your brother if Lucas could actually prevent an official OOT restoration from ever happening by writing it into his will or something, or if there would still be ways to circumnavigate his wishes after he’d passed away.
Yes, I know we keep saying “he sold it to Disney fair and square.” But the truth is we really don’t know what the terms of the sale to Disney were. I’m like 99% confident that Disney’s the reason it hasn’t happened yet, they want to keep the focus on the new movies and also wait until they fully control all the non-ANH movies. But it’s that 1% of doubt that makes me wonder. We’ve already heard rumors that people at Fox “don’t feel comfortable” being involved in an unaltered restoration while George is still alive.
…Gareth is quoted as saying that John Knoll said that …
Stopped reading due to Landis being absent from this chain of hearsay.
What’s weird is that I was reading through the most recent comments in this thread before asking when exactly that John Landis quote happened. Then I googled it and apparently it was September of last year, placing it roughly halfway between when Edwards would’ve watched the 4k restoration and right now.
In reply to the earlier comments about it being an upscale, it’s definitely not an upscale. Reliance Media Works had the OT listed on their website as “4k 16-bit” very briefly in July 2014 before it was quickly taken down. This would’ve been only a couple months after Edwards was hired. The brief clips on RMW’s demo reel show that it’s clearly from a fresh scan.