Fang Zei

@ScorchMuffins might’ve put it best in that Twitter thread.

Lucasfilm is officially stirring the pot.

GlastoEls said:

darklordoftech said:

GlastoEls said:

SilverWook said:

And there are people inside Lucasfilm who want the OOT restored and released as much as we do.

Briefest of acknowledgments on the official site today that the Special Editons are controversial!

http://www.starwars.com/news/collectibles-from-the-outer-rim-star-wars-vhs-releases?cmp=smc|274674436&linkId=18658509

I love how that article is 100% revisionism-free. I love seeing the truth of how Star Wars has been throughout history.

The official site takes its first step into a larger, more open world.

Meanwhile the official Twitter posted:

https://twitter.com/starwars/status/664213076569407489
And immediately gets a ton of OOT requests. Maybe people do still care.

This is truly a new age if the words “No matter where you stand” and “for better or for worse” are being used regarding the special edition on the official website.

To his credit, Zombie did put up videos on his YouTube channel addressing the RMW 4K blurb and the rumor of an unaltered release.

TFA-related videos are simply gonna draw more views. I’m just glad he’s taking the time to discuss the OOT at all.

GlastoEls said:

SilverWook said:

darklordoftech said:

Is it just me or were the SEs hated far more before Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney? When Lucas owned Star Wars, everyone was saying “the evil Lucas is holding back the awesome OOT and shoving the awful SEs down our throats.” When Lucas sold to Disney, people switched to saying, “Disney wants to give us the awesome SEs but a small group of fans is trying to shove the awful OOT down our throats.”

There has always been a segment of the fandom that likes the SE’s. (Some have even gone out of their way to deride this site.) They don’t even want a world where both versions sit side by side and people can choose what to watch.

The general public is less aware of the situation, as the movies haven’t been referred to as Special Editions since 1997.

And this is why I slightly worry.

Who is actively - what’s the word - lobbying for this?

Save Star Wars has gone down - the general public know less and less - and nobody whatsoever mentions this at Lucasfilm any more.

Are we in danger that the quality of Harmy and other restorations is counter productive to Disney restoring it?

But then: look at the attention the recent Landis rumour got. The movie sites all picked it up, but so did some mainstream news sites, including Forbes…

I feel like the OUT is in a similar situation now to The Godfather and part II after Viacom quasi-bought DreamWorks. Coppola
asked his old friend Spielberg to put in a good word for restoring the first two films and Paramount gladly spent more than a million dollars on a state of the art cleanup job.

In a weirdly equal yet opposite way, it’s going to be the people creating new Star Wars content, people like Abrams and especially Johnson, who stand to make the biggest push in restoring the unaltered originals.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Kennedy cares just as much about it, but she’s a little too close to George for it to not be at least a little awkward for her whenever someone brings it up.

What she and George should really be talking about is not only restoring the unaltereds (which, as we’ve discussed at length, he wouldn’t really have a say in anymore) but also finishing the SE. Maybe she could even get him to reconsider some of the changes he’s made. If that rumor about Han shooting first again is true, he already has.

I can’t stop watching that gif.

They captured the motion blur of the OT’s miniature photography rather well.

Has that last part about no 35mm prints in North America actually been confirmed? A couple years ago Paramount became the first major studio to stop sending actual prints to theaters here. Maybe Disney announced something similar in the interval and it flew under my radar.

Like I mentioned in the other thread, I’d be happy enough if the liemax screens simply threw in 2D screenings. That way, audiences could get the expanded ratio in those scenes without having to see it in post-converted 3D form. This goes double for the “w/laser” theaters since those are mostly full sized with the 1.44:1 screen. I’m just lucky I’m near one of the 70mm 2D locations.

Someone from the company said they were considering converting the liemax theaters to laser and I welcome the idea. The TCL Chinese is technically a liemax if I’m not mistaken, so they’ve kinda already done it there.

DominicCobb said:

I think the general attitude toward the powers that control Star Wars has turned the tide from angry to optimistic, but if anything the outrage against the SE is even more widespread now. Think how well known Harmy’s Despecialized edits are. Whenever the Star Wars Facebook posts about rereleasing the movies half the comments are either “won’t buy if they aren’t originals” or “I’d rather watch Harmy’s.”

That’s why I’m convinced we’ll see an official OOT release by 2019 (Or whenever Episode 9 is hitting theaters) at the absolute latest. Actually, 2018 would line up with the “every seven years” pattern we’ve seen so far and serve to hype up the final chapter of the currently-being-made trilogy just like the OT dvd in '04.

Mike O said:

I suppose it’s too much to hope that we might finally get remasters of the first six movies that actually look decent and maybe even the director’s cuts for the 50th anniversary? Yeah, it is.

I would say the chances are pretty good if for no other reason than the fact that the big FIVE-OH is coinciding with the debut of the new 4K blu-ray format.

Wrath of Khan has been ready to go in 4K ever since they restored it in '09, but they’ll actually need to redo the others.

The TNG movies need 4K remasters as well.

That Japanese trailer does a good job of revealing just a little bit more without making us feel like we’ve seen the whole movie.

Actually, even the new shots don’t really tell us much of anything about the story that we didn’t already know from the previous trailers.

We’ve got more than a month to go. Mystery Box or not, there’s still a lot they could let spill in the marketing deluge.

I might have to seriously consider going into spoiler lockdown mode.

Something I didn’t really notice until now, or maybe only noticed on a subconscious level, is how much Rey’s staff weapon thing resembles Darth Maul’s lightsaber.

“Tie Fighters. Those are still cool, right?”

joefavs said:

I was actually aware of the 70mm screenings, but as it stands I’m still several states away from the nearest theater listed as having it. Let’s hope they end up expanding that after all. But yeah, I meant apart from the 70mm. There’s a theater reasonably close to me listed for screenings in the new Laser system, but I believe that’s 3D as well.

If it makes any difference, they’ve added several locations since tickets went on sale a couple weeks ago.

Here’s the list:

http://www.imax.com/community/blog/star-wars-the-force-awakens-imax-tickets-on-sale-now/

joefavs said:

and unless there’s plans for a 2D IMAX version that I haven’t heard about

I was already considering starting a thread about this, and your post might’ve just convinced me.

There will be actual 70mm IMAX 2D screenings, but as of now there will only be 15 locations in the world showing it that way. There will probably be a few more locations added by the time December rolls around. I say that only because TFA will have a much bigger box office draw than something like, say, Interstellar, and there were at least 30 IMAX prints made for that one. Apples and Oranges maybe, since at least half of Interstellar was actually shot in IMAX compared to (allegedly) just one scene in TFA.

Not unlike what happened with STID, the studio is more focused on squeezing the extra dollars out of the several thousand 3D-capable screens than they are about showing off the only several hundred IMAX screens.

Speaking of which, all of the full-sized IMAX theaters that have upgraded to the new digital laser-illuminated system will be showing TFA, but only in 3D unfortunately (same with the smaller “lie max” screens). They’re not bothering to fit in even one 2D screening a day like Man of Steel did (and as I certainly hope Batman v Superman will do, since that will actually feature native IMAX footage just like TFA).

SilverWook said:

Could this be real?

https://soundcloud.com/xandreofficial/star-wars-episode-7-the-force-awakens-theme

An elaborate fake, I’d guess.

Sounds like it was recorded using synth for one thing.

I also heard note-for-note themes from E.T., Revenge of the Sith and, of all things, Inception.

Overall, the track doesn’t scream John Williams. It barely screams Star Wars.

I’m a big proponent of seeing a movie the way it was shot. So, when it’s a movie that was actually shot in 3D, I’ll always see it in 3D.

I’ve made exceptions to that rule, of course. Pacific Rim was probably the first time I intentionally got a 3D ticket knowing full well the movie wasn’t shot that way. I ended up seeing Gravity in 3D about a month after it opened and was somewhat disappointed with the luminance of the image. More often than not, I’ve found that to be the case with 3D movies. Unless you see it in IMAX 3D, where there’s a certain amount of quality control, it’s a total roll of the dice as to what kind of 3D experience you’re gonna get. I just saw The Martian in 3D last month in AMC’s own “premium large format” and still found the light levels to be seriously lacking.

TFA, like Star Trek Into Darkness before it, is an interesting beast. Abrams shot some of the movie in IMAX even knowing it would be post-converted into 3D. Disney is at the very least striking several 15/70 2D prints and listing their locations, which is more than Paramount could say for itself with STID.

I will say this. When I saw the opening scene of STID in digital IMAX 3D (in front of The Hobbit), I was very impressed with what I saw. The anamorphic 35mm and IMAX 65mm footage all looked very nice converted into 3D and shown in digital IMAX 3D. Several months later, I saw a press screening of Man of Steel in 3D. I’m guessing they optimized the projector luminance just for that screening simply so we’d come out raving to our friends about how good the 3D looked. But I can’t lie, they actually did a pretty good job with the post-conversion. They managed to make the anamorphic 35mm footage look like natural 3D. I’m starting to think that might be the ideal source format for 3D if you’re not going to actually shoot in stereo.

If you can see it in 2D, I would say go with 2D. The movie was shot that way, on film in CinemaScope (just like the OT and TPM) with a DI finish. The 3D is a post-conversion, and while yes I’m sure they probably did a fine job with it and yes all of the cgi would’ve been natively rendered in 3D, seeing the movie that way isn’t really a “pure” experience IMO.

I’m assuming Abrams won’t be involved. I can’t imagine he will, considering the cbs/paramount split. He likely will have moved on to exec producing 8 and 9.

It’s not surprising to see them going with one of the big names behind the recent movies. Between Kurtzman and Orci, they had a guy who, like Abrams, was not so big a Star Trek fan but seems level headed, and a guy who’s a huge fan but also a conspiracy theorist.

They went with the former.

I was pretty excited reading the story over at birthmoviesdeath. Did a big huge “Whaaaaaa???” upon seeing the headline.

Then I got to the part about it being exclusive to cbs’ streaming service.

Uuuuuigh.

So I guess they’re gonna try and make this the House of Cards to their Netflix? Or will it be available for free to those of us already paying for cable (I’m guessing the answer is no)?

(EDIT: Warbler beat me to it!)

Pretty disappointing CBS won’t be airing this on their actual network. On the other hand, if the streaming service frees them up to do things they couldn’t as an actual OTA network tv show, it might be for the best.

Anyone else think JJ secretly filmed Billy Dee’s surprise cameo like he did with Nimoy in Star Trek Into Darkness?

generalfrevious said:

I don’t know if this has already been said, but I would be upset if Luke Skywalker turned out to be Kylo Ren. That would ruin his whole arc in the OT.

That magazine article from months ago, it was either Empire or EW or Vanity Fair, had photos of Adam Driver as Kylo Ren without the mask on.

AuggieBenDoggie said:

Fang Zei said:

As an article I was reading today pointed out, Disney is really going after the younger audience with the marketing.

To them, that’s what a Star Wars poster looks like.

Struzan has already confirmed that he has done more stuff, and not just the D23 poster, and he was in line to do the official one sheet. So I’m hoping we get to see some of the other concepts he finished. I guess time will tell.

Why does my Spidey sense tell me they’re saving it as a retailer exclusive cover for the bluray?

It would be a nice surprise if this turned out to be yet another promotional poster and Struzan did the final one sheet.

My first thought upon seeing this poster was “huh, it looks like a Marvel poster.” Iron Man Three in particular came to mind, the way the characters almost look like they could’ve been painted.

My second thought was how much it reminded me of all the fan posters we’ve seen over the last couple years, what with Leia’s new hair style and costume. This was better in some ways and yet also worse at the same time. The fan posters were amateur attempts at the Struzan look whereas this was a professionally made photoshop job.

Which brings me to my third thought, which is how much this reminded me of that “saga” photoshop artwork you always see the movie news sites using in their stories about Star Wars.

Of course, seeing the first good look at Starkiller base also reminded me of Spaceballs.

“Air… Air!!!”

Wazzles said:

Fang Zei said:

Wazzles said:

but then again, so are II and III.

Yes and no (I think). The cameras used for shooting II and III were only 1920:1080, yes. But I want to say that the vfx and the DI were done at actual 2k cinema resolution.

IMDB confirms that, but it seems kind of silly to have a DI in a higher resolution than your filmed portions. The 2011 OT is a different beast entirely, however.

Correct. The 2004 masters were only 1920:1080. One of the Lowry guys even specified this at a press conference for the dvd when someone asked if it was 2k. And that’s the master that’s still being used eleven years later. There was even a screening in Georgia last year of ANH IIRC, an actual DCP of the 2011 version.

Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill. Maybe 1920 vs 2048 isn’t a massive difference. But I would think the outdated resolution combined with the '04 master’s other issues would be enough for LFL to finally start using a newer transfer (I put it that way because we know a newer one exists).

Wazzles said:

but then again, so are II and III.

Yes and no (I think). The cameras used for shooting II and III were only 1920:1080, yes. But I want to say that the vfx and the DI were done at actual 2k cinema resolution.

Ah, the threads that finally get noticed and bumped after a forum migration.

Ten million? Are you sure?

I remember hearing that 80,000 (or was it only 20,000?) signatures figure being tossed about, but maybe that was just over a certain amount of time after the petition’s creation in order to emphasize the response it got. I’d have to go back and watch Jay’s interview in The People vs George Lucas, if it’s still up on Netflix.

It may very well have gotten to ten million by May of 2006. Maybe it even kept growing after that. After all, we never actually got the unaltered trilogy on dvd in actual dvd quality. Although by that point the HD disc formats were out and that was the next frontier.

When was the petition created anyway? 2002?

AuggieBenDoggie said:

The new trailer was great. Cant say as much for the new poster though :\

As an article I was reading today pointed out, Disney is really going after the younger audience with the marketing.

To them, that’s what a Star Wars poster looks like.

For the time being, the marathon screenings on December 17th are the next “let’s wait and see” release of the movies, but I’d be shocked if it were anything other than the special edition per usual.

George does not seem to mind the possibility of the original versions finally receiving equal treatment to the SE, especially now that it would no longer be on his dime.

Even the situation with Fox doesn’t seem like a roadblock, if the digital release and the upcoming marathon are any indication.

Disney’s ownership of Star Wars is a double-edged sword. The fact that Episode VII is happening has been enough of a distraction over the last three years from them needing to say anything at all about the OOT.

That guy from Wired magazine might’ve said it best back when the GOUT fiasco happened:

“They’re not gonna make the fans happy because the happy fan has everything he or she needs. They will kill the goose that laid the golden egg, they will cook it and they will sell the bones on eBay.”

I hope these words won’t hold true now that Disney’s in charge. Obviously nothing’s stopping them from producing a stellar OUT restoration, and there’s enough new content on the way to keep them going for many years to come.