Fang Zei

It would be interesting to see if there is more vertical picture information on the vhs than on the 2.00:1 collector’s edition dvd from 2004. The older dvd from the late 90’s, which was also 2.00:1, was non-anamorphic.

The laserdisc was also 2.00:1 if I’m not mistaken.

I always assumed the 2.00:1 framing was the result of it being the tallest AR that all shots in the movie were protected for if you include the vistavision vfx shots. Either that or Nick Meyer and Hiro Narita simply found it an aesthetically pleasing alternative ratio to the theatrical scope framing.

Papai2013 said:

IMDB was listing IMAX 65mm as one of the shooting formats for ‘The Magnificient Seven’ (2016) but now only shows 35mm. Wonder why?

IMDB is user-based and there’s always the potential for erroneous information.

65mm IMAX was also incorrectly listed as a shooting format for Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman.

TFA is now the third movie to be shot partially in actual 65mm IMAX to receive only a constant 2.35:1 AR transfer on blu-ray (Ghost Protocol and Batman v Superman being the other two).

Yeah I caught the last half hour or so of the 8pm airing and now the first hour or so of the encore.

One thing I’m noticing is a lack of any panning and scanning in certain shots that could really use it, and I’ve got the tv set for full 1:1 pixel mapping. For example, Yoda’s face gets cropped out when he says “your apprentice Skywalker shall be.” Another good example is the establishing shot of the trade federation army marching toward Theed where we can barely see the droid fighters flying overhead.

That bit about how Turner had to make “a separate deal with Fox” for ANH tells me there’s a very real possibility it’ll be the Lucasfilm-only version with that improvised edit of the music from the end of ESB’s end credits.

Or maybe they learned from TFA that silence can be more effective?

I’m still expecting the traditional version with the Fox fanfare if only for consistency’s sake. Digital downloads are one thing, but this is a network tv broadcast.

I do wonder though if this might end up being the hdtv debut of RMW’s 4k master of the OT. Unlikely, I know, but we’ll see.

I’ll try and check out TPM when it replays at 11:02.

Presumably this will be the network debut of the “rebuilt” 2011 master and not the older version spike showed. I’m also curious if they’ll show it letterboxed at its full 2.35:1 width or if they’ll crop it to 16:9.

Thinking back on it now, would it really have cost all that much money in 2006 (compared to your average dvd of just about any other film) to simply do a new telecine of the same '85 IP elements that were used for the '93 laserdiscs?

I know Lucasfilm’s form response letter said “existing prints are in poor condition,” but come on.

Are you gonna tell me they were in worse shape than whatever film element was used for the examples I listed in my long-ass post like Dune or The Thing or Blade Runner?

George’s whole thing was “don’t spend a single cent of my money remastering it,” but was it really worth the backlash?

I know, I know, “he was surrounded by yes men.” It’s still hard to comprehend.

Wasn’t it reported somewhere back around December that Disney had in fact requested a copy of the LoC’s original '77 print of the film?

As I recall, the prevailing theory was that they could very well be using it as reference for what the actual content of the initial theatrical release actually was.

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

This is actually interesting though. He may not think the OOT is coming out, doesn’t mean he likes the constant revision: https://mobile.twitter.com/pablohidalgo/status/777605840891064320

This is refreshing to see.

You would’ve never heard an LFL employee saying anything negative about the revisions while George was still in charge.

What we have to remember is that George still left one of his good friends in charge of his company. She probably feels a certain obligation to honor his wishes. Didn’t someone ask her about the possibility of a restored OOT at a convention two or three years ago? I seem to recall reading that she gave a very calculated response of neither “yes” nor “no.”

One thing I find slightly encouraging is how Rogue One doesn’t strike me as something that Disney will be able to blatantly double-dip on later in the year like they are with TFA.

That empty space later in the year could easily be filled by a restored OOT release, and it just happens to be the 40th anniversary.

Wazzles said:

The 2004 DVDs were announced in February and released in September.

FTFY

That would be the one.

The only other thing I remembered was the “He hates the fans, he hates me” line at the end, but I forgot about plush Yoda.

I remembered the Jedi costume, though.

Oh, and it was the main feature disc with the 2004 version that he snapped in half. Breaking the GOUT disc wouldn’t have made much sense now that I think about it.

Haha, Masters of Universe. I knew there was one more anamorphic title he rattled off. I’ve still never seen it, but then again I never watched He-Man.

On a side note, I noticed the Power Rangers movie playing on HBO in HD several weeks ago.

Interesting that Street Fighter was one of his only two non-anamorphic dvds, as I can think of several other Universal releases from the early days of the format that also weren’t anamorphic (Dune and The Thing both come to mind). Brazil was another non-anamorphic transfer from Universal that Criterion simply ported over for their own multi-disc set. Actually, I want to say it was also ten years ago when Criterion finally got around to remastering Brazil in a single-disc anamorphic release.

Which brings me to what I remember most about when the GOUT was released, and that’s how many other movies just happened to receive a remaster the very same month as well.

The Doors, another conspicuously non-anamorphic release, was finally remastered by lionsgate.

Blade Runner was reissued with a better-looking transfer. The previous disc, while technically anamorphic, was one of the very earliest releases on the dvd format and suffered for it.

Seven Samurai received a new restoration by Criterion. Toho is currently working on a new 4k restoration.

Dune and The Thing, the two early non-anamorphic Universal titles I mentioned earlier, had both been remastered by the time the GOUT hit store shelves. Hell, The Thing just received yet another remaster this year.

All of the movies I mentioned have since been released on blu-ray.

Yet here we are, a decade later and nearly four years into Disney’s ownership of Lucasfilm, and the highest quality these movies have seen in an official home video release is a laserdisc master from 1993.

I don’t really see the part where he says “and also there will never be a restoration of the OOT by Lucasfilm.”

There was another amusing video I remember from back then. I wouldn’t know how to track it down now a decade later, but it was some dude in his room with the GOUT discs and he mentioned the non-anamorphic transfers and then proceeded to show the dvd cases of movies from his collection that actually were anamorphic. As I remember it, these titles included Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (“with Robert Picardo the doctor from Voyager” as the dude added).

This video also ended with a breaking of the GOUT discs.

doubleKO said:

Joe Johnston tribute!

MathUser said:

Back in the days I was suprised to see this on shelves still. I bought it right away when it came out cause it was supposed to be a limited time thing. Is there a official reason it was expanded from a few months to 6 years?

The dvd’s were re-released as separate trilogy packs in 2008. Lucasfilm probably just wanted an equal number of discs in both sets.

I wonder, even if they were to get back to him in a timely matter, if he would even be allowed to tell us anything.

I would think Lucasfilm would want to announce something as big of a deal as an unaltered Star Wars '77 restoration on their own terms and not let the news just get out there via unofficial means.

We all remember how the blurb on RMW’s website about a 4k OT restoration just mysteriously disappeared not long after we heard about it.

I attended a free screening of “The Man Trap” at the Air & Space Museum earlier tonight with Rod Roddenberry and John & Bjo Trimble in attendance. They played the episode on the giant full-sized Imax screen and started it at exactly 8:30. I was slightly disappointed that it was the “remastered” version with the cgi effects and not the original version, but it still looked and sounded absolutely amazing. I happened to sit next to a truly OG fan just old enough to remember seeing it when it first aired, and as we discussed on the way out, the changes were at least merely cosmetic and didn’t alter the story a la Greedo shooting first.

Rod was interviewed beforehand and provided an introduction. The Trimbles joined in afterword for a Q and A. There were plenty of great anecdotes. Did you know Gene had to fight the tobacco companies and NBC to keep Spock from smoking a special green cigarette? Oh, and this was coming from a three-pack-a-day smoker.

Rod told a story, one that got me unexpectedly emotional, about how as a kid he came home one day with a drawing he’d done of his dad. When Gene saw the drawing and noticed the cigarette and smoke coming from his head, he decided he was going to quit cold turkey. Majel Barrett said he was difficult to live with for the three or so months that followed, but he kept to his decision. “No intelligent person should be slave to a little stick,” Gene said.

Speaking of Majel Barrett, apparently Lwaxana Troi was a fairly accurate reflection of how she was in real life. They didn’t write the character so much as cast her in the role and let her play herself.

If you’re wondering why I’m writing this at such an ungodly hour (aside from my sleeping schedule being kinda fucked), they were doing a Trek movie marathon on Syfy and First Contact just ended. Man, that ending with the Vulcans still gets me all teary-eyed. I’ve got vivid memories of seeing that movie on opening night in November of '96 while my mom and sister saw Jingle All The Way (starring, yup, Jake Lloyd). Meanwhile, I was seeing John Knoll’s vfx work. Watching it again just now brought me back to seeing it with that audience, their reactions to all the great moments. I still remember that very Final Frontier esque closing shot panning up from the forest as Jerry Goldsmith’s music swelled and the audience burst into applause.

I stepped outside to meet up with my mom and sister. “Oh, there was a trailer before Jingle All The Way. Apparently they’re putting the Star Wars movies back out in theaters early in the new year.”

And so it began…

I seem to recall someone thinking that the mustafarans working on one of the floating lava platforms during the duel were there in one version and gone in the other. Again, I don’t know if this was ever confirmed.

Was there only one U.S. theatrical version of RotS or were there differences between the 35mm prints and the DCPs? I saw both, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you now if, for example, the wipe was there in both versions or if that change predated the dvd. I think the wipe is back in the official bd if I’m not mistaken?

I’m wondering why RotS looks exactly the same colorwise while AotC looks drastically different.

Maybe it suffers from being one of the earlier DI jobs and the 2002 files didn’t properly convert over to a 2011 format?

It’s especially bullcrap when you consider that it was Lucas himself who made the decision to go ahead and make 7-9 anyway, despite his previous statements that he wouldn’t. I don’t know the details of his outline circa 2011/2012, but something tells me it had a little more plot than “the galaxy lives happily ever after.”

The extra line of “how is that possible” is one thing, but the '04 alterations don’t actually reveal that Vader is Anakin. In both versions Palpatine speaks of “the son of skywalker” in the third person. The only real difference is that we learn the name of Luke’s dad a movie earlier.

Correct. When color tv was introduced here in the States, they had to make the signal compatible with the some 30 million b&w tv sets that had already been sold. What they discovered was that if the audio, the b&w video and the additional color signal were all running at the exact same refresh rate, they interfered with one another. So the video refresh rate was altered very slightly to 29.97. Hence film-based material had to be slowed down from 24 to 23.976.

Harmony Korine’s Spring Despecializers.

(in reply to generalfrevious):

Well Lucas pretty much burned all the bridges with the GOUT didn’t he? That was a loud and clear “fuck you” to the OUT fans.

I seem to recall someone, maybe Sansweet, saying something along the lines of “oh, we’ll see how these sell and if there’s demand then we’ll give them a proper remaster.” Or maybe that was just pure speculation. It was nearly a decade ago so my memory’s a little fuzzy. But either way I don’t think anything would’ve happened for the 30th when the GOUT release was only the year before.