I totally read this as “the holiday special will air on Disney +” and did a huge double take.
In my opinion, the original Star Wars will only be released after George Lucas dies. Disney clearly wants the original versions to be released, but they will never have the guts to go against his wishes while he’s still alive. After he dies, they’ll probably still hold off the release for a few years in order to avoid seeming insensitive, but after a while they’ll release the original.
After dumping his final production Strange Magic and blowing off his ideas for the sequels, I have doubts that they are really that considerate of his wishes.
But those were done in a very low-key way, not really in public view. I doubt they’d go against Lucas’ wishes publicly, especially not to the degree of visibility that a release of the OOT would have.
Except I seriously doubt George cares anymore at this point. He released the unaltered cuts on dvd. Laserdisc ports, sure, but he did release them. He even changed his tune circa 2010 from “the unaltereds aren’t my vision for the saga” to “they’re too expensive to restore right now.” He let the Academy screen a 70mm of the ‘81 ANH just last year.
When he sold Star Wars for $4 Billion, he let it go.
George is not the problem anymore, it’s Disney.
Now, it might very well be the case that the bean-counters have decided the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. It might also be the case that they’re simply sitting on an OOT restoration intentionally biding their time. I swore up and down that people would not be nearly as enthusiastic about spending their money on “Jedi Rocks but in 4k hdr this time” after three rounds of revisions to these classics. It could turn out that Disney simply wanted to cash in on the latest format and still has the OOT in their back pocket for when the well dries up.
Time will tell.
I don’t think it is possible for anyone to ever release any sort of restoration on any part of the Original Trilogy that wont immediately be regarded as inferior to what is actually desired.
True, but 4k83 in theory gets pretty darn close to what’s desired since it’s from a show print directly off the negative.
4k77 uses a tech print which is also, theoretically, closer to the resolution of the camera negative than any run of the mill print could provide.
I’m not sure what’s being used for 4k80.
Disney has every motivation they could possibly need to restore and release the original versions. They paid $20 billion more than they’d originally planned (which was already something like $50 billion) to buy 20th Century Fox thanks to the bidding war they ended up in with Comcast. The original Star Wars was one of the films they gained the rights to in the buyout, along with the other five pre-ST films. Are we really to think 2020 was the last time we’ll see a new release of these movies?
With all of the talk these days about how movie theaters are hurting financially, it would sure make Disney look good if, let’s say, three years from now they were to release an unaltered OOT restoration in theaters and have that be the only way you could see it. They would of course announce a home release months later, but the message they’d be sending in the meantime about how they respect the history of their films and how much it means to their fans, not to mention the importance of the theatrical experience, would ultimately benefit their bottom line.
There was speculation on these boards as to whether or not the ‘97 cg shots were transferred directly from the digital filmout tapes for the 2019 4k version à la the 2011 rebuild of TPM or if they were simply scanned back in from the negative just like any other shot in the movie.
There was also speculation somewhere (maybe it wasn’t here) that the ‘97 re-comps were re-done from scratch yet again to take advantage of the higher resolution.
Has any evidence emerged to support either of these theories?
Y’know, it never occurred to me to wonder about this until now, but did Lucas plan on having Clive Revill play the emperor in Episode VI when he cast him as the hologram voice in Empire?
Not sure what FHD is?
FHD Full HD (1080p)
UHD Ultra HD (4K)I was asking about the the 2020 FHD blu-rays that came out with the 4k ones. But I guess since those come from the same “new” sources as the 4K versions, the colors, the tighter framing etc. are identical to those of the 4k ones. Minus the higher resolution and HDR ofc.
Keep in mind those are only available in the box with the 4K, the individual releases are still the 2011 version.
And it seems the only reason they did that was because they didn’t want to have the newer 4k-derived transfer out there in any form (not even as a regular 1080p blu-ray) until it debuted on day 1 of Disney+ and then later in physical form with the UHD release. But now, simply because they wanted the individual blu’s out there when they did, it’s going to create confusion for people who see identical cover art to the 4k expecting it to contain the newer transfer. (EDIT: SilverWook and Broom Kid basically beat me to it)
Were the 2011 versions ever released as just dvd-only or were they only included with the dvd/bd trilogy combo packs that came out in 2013? If it’s the former then we might be looking at a repeat here, only minus the trilogy part.
Also, were the OT films (any version) ever released on dvd individually outside of the 2006 GOUT?
The casual Star Wars fan would likely buy such as a set, and even film fans in general.
That may be true, but most of them would not know what they are buying anyway. So in the end, that does not amount to a demand, because if they throw out another SE with a minimal effort, they will get just as much money as if they put a lot of effort into a proper restoration of OOT.
A restored OOT would at this point be the only thing Lucasfilm has in their back pocket to get people to shell out for these movies yet again. I’m not getting my hopes up, but we did see a reissue of the 2004 dvd discs two years later that included the GOUT, and a trilogy reissue two years after that which still included the GOUT discs.
We also saw reissues of the 2011 bd, first in 2013 and then 2015, before everything went quiet for four years in the build-up to D+ and the physical 4k UHD release. It would seem Lucasfilm can’t resist the urge to double-dip, and as of now they’ve still got a Star Wars movie pencilled in for the end of 2022. That’s a long way away, and almost three years will have passed since the debut of the 4k versions by then. Maybe just maybe they’re saving the long sought after unaltereds for last.
I refuse to believe anybody loves Maclunkey. Even the guy who played Greedo is baffled.😛
https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/star-wars-greedo-maclunkey-disney-plus-exclusive-interview/And where are people getting the idea this is any sort of final definitive version? I’ll believe that when George says he’s done with it.
Star Wars: The George Lucas “I May Have Gone Too Far in a Few Places” Director’s Cut
Maybe, but I’m not so sure just how much loyalty they’ll feel once they start feeling the pressure from the higher ups at Disney to make them as much money as possible by any means necessary.
The money Disney is losing isn’t about to be made up by releasing the Original Trilogy to Disney+, though. That’s not feasible or plausible. Lucasfilm is already driving a lot of traffic to that platform (and to Disney in general) as it is and it’s not really having much of an effect on those losses, because those losses aren’t really FROM the movies division. Disney’s losses are being most strongly felt in the parks being closed, and sports being gone. Theaters being closed is hurting them, yes, but that’s not a particularly large concern in the face of their owning their own streaming network. They just moved the Hamilton release up a year and a half, for example.
As for George, half of that $4 billion he got paid in the sale was in Disney stock, not actual cash. It’s in his interest to see the company do well,
The original versions aren’t big enough for that to be a concern. They just aren’t. It’s not a money thing. Lucasfilm just doesn’t want to do it right now. They probably will, eventually. But there’s no weird conspiracy behind it. No contractual stipulations, no distribution problems. And it’s not a spite thing, either. They just… don’t want to do it.
For now.
When they do, it probably won’t be due to money concerns, either.
Who said anything about Disney+? They’ll probably never do that. I was talking about physical media. Highly unlikely it’ll happen this year or next, since they just released the UHD’s barely a month and a half ago, but Disney’s still got another Star Wars movie pencilled in for the end of 2022. Sounds like the perfect occasion for an expensive holiday-timed multi-disc collector’s set with the unaltered and ‘97 versions thrown in.
They could give the prequels the same treatment, maybe with the Imax cut of AotC although that’s a long shot. Even the Disney-era stuff had conspicuously absent stuff like, for example, any mention at all of Harrison Ford’s leg injury on TFA, and deleted scenes for Rogue One, Solo, and TRoS. They could always throw in the 3D version just to add an extra disc to all 11 films and up the price point.
Look, I’m not saying they’ll “need” to do any of this out of financial desperation. But what I am saying is that a barebones UHD with previously released extras (extras they couldn’t take the time to properly author, apparently) can’t possibly be the last disc-based release of Star Wars.
Fang Zei said:
The consensus seems to be that the people currently in charge at Lucasfilm feel a sense of loyalty to George,It’s this.
I happen to think it simply comes down to greed on Disney’s part and the desire to maximize profits.
Not this.
Either way - Fox never had anything to do with the original versions not being distributed. That was never at any point anything other than misguided fan speculation repeated so often on forums and comments sections that people just took it as read and repeated it themselves. There was never any inkling that theory had any basis in fact, it just sounded plausible-ish provided you didn’t look into it too closely, and nobody “winning” arguments on a messageboard was inclined to do that anyway.
It’s the same with the “Lucas built a clause into the contract” story that has since replaced the “Fox won’t let them” story that’s been mooted for almost 10 years. Lucas never built a clause into a contract, and Iger never agreed to such a clause. The entire notion of the clause even existing is a fan invention.
The holdup is Lucasfilm. Not Disney. And the people with the power to get it done at Lucasfilm don’t want to do it. If they did, it would be done already.
Maybe, but I’m not so sure just how much loyalty they’ll feel once they start feeling the pressure from the higher ups at Disney to make them as much money as possible by any means necessary.
As for George, half of that $4 billion he got paid in the sale was in Disney stock, not actual cash. It’s in his interest to see the company do well, and that might override his desire to withhold the “rough drafts” of his work from the public.
Disney owns all of what was 20th Century Fox now and everything Fox owned the rights to, so that ain’t the reason.
The consensus seems to be that the people currently in charge at Lucasfilm feel a sense of loyalty to George, and that Disney might have even made a gentlemens’ agreement with the man not to release anything other than his preferred versions.
I happen to think it simply comes down to greed on Disney’s part and the desire to maximize profits. For all we know, they might have been planning from the get-go to eventually give the unaltereds their due … after they’d reissued the 2011 blu-rays several times and then at least once on 4k UHD, of course. If that’s in fact the case (we have no way of knowing, but we can speculate) then it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the massive financial losses they’re about to incur this year, err, “accelerate” their plans just a little.
Just like everybody else who wants their favorite movie on the latest format? Golly, I’d love to have an early 2000’s anamorphic OOT DVD release I could bitch about being the only thing out there one could buy. Even the original cut of The Warriors got one.
It would be ironic if an official restoration happened and got released to blu-ray and uhd … but never got an official anamorphic dvd release.
For the record, I’d be okay with that if it meant the OOT was future-proofed in the highest possible quality physical media can provide.
Star Wars conversation with a friend a few months ago…
Me: “If you want to watch the original trilogy the way we saw it as kids I have the “Despecialized” versions without the cgi in HD…”
Friend: “Naw, man. When I want to watch the originals I’ve got my old VHS tapes, and they still work fine.”
(He points over at a shelf, I notice they’re the fullscreen Special Edition tapes, I scream internally.)
This right here begins and ends the argument for why all versions should be officially preserved in a future release.
For some people, the “original version” still ain’t the original.
And if Disney doesn’t want to do such a release, let Criterion do it. They love things like that.
They’d probably put George’s preferred version on disc 1 (they’re all about preserving the artist’s vision) and then get people like Robert A Harris to consult on a restoration neither George nor Disney could be bothered with.
When was the last time Criterion put out anything owned by Disney? The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is The Life Aquatic, which was released theatrically through Touchstone, but I feel like that was already several years ago.
It would be great if they did the same for Graffiti and THX, although I don’t know what their current relationship is with Universal and Warner.
If Disney won’t release every Star Wars movie without any changes, this is the least they can do. The 2006 DVD was released with no effort and missed the point entirely because it had 1993’s audio alterations. My idea is for a standalone release of Star Wars in its unaltered form in Ultra HD Blu-ray and digital. This would not only preserve an important piece of film history, but make them a damn good amount of money as well. George Lucas probably put something in the Disney contract so they can’t do this though, because any sane person in charge of Star Wars would definitely have done this already. I just can’t stand the CGI crap George Lucas put into Star Wars. What was he thinking?
The 1993 audio thing actually raises an interesting question, which is, just how original and unaltered should an original/unaltered release be before it’s considered definitive enough?
Wasn’t ESB only shown in 70mm for the first month or so, and had several differences from the “original” version we know now?
There is more changes thant those 4 known changes (ex: the invasion of Naboo was rerendered with different ships, the external view of Palpatine’s office was deleted, the sound was totally remixed) , but it is probably not the point of this discussion.
Ah, forgot about the Naboo invasion. After all these years my memory is a little blurry, but I want to say the view from the window of Theed Palace was re-done? Or are there other shots I’m forgetting about?
Re: Palpatine’s office exterior, yes that shot was deleted but since it was replaced by the air taxi sequence I don’t really think about it.
ZigZig is 100% correct. The DVD was made from the same master as the VHS and LD from 2000. The only difference are the 4 known changes. This was also aired in the EU in HD. It features a more cropped picture and a different color grade. The BR was a new scan (it might have been 4k since we are talking 2011) and features the CG Yoda to match the other two PT movies. But this new version is NOT a new scan and features no known changes. Same colors, same shots, nothing new. And no sign that it was a native 4k scan (not that it would make any difference in the FX shots which were 2k to start with).
When you say “the 4 known changes,” you mean:
Do I have that right?
The blu-ray added a few more changes on top of that, and the only ones that come to mind are:
re-done shot on Trade Federation bridge early in the movie
re-rendered Bode and Feed in one shot during podrace
digital Yoda
Anything I missed?
Does the general public even know the PT has different versions? I mean barely anyone out there in the wild knows what the OOT is so…
RotS is kinda the odd one out, since the version we have now is basically the theatrical cut with only one or two very minor changes to the picture and sound, and it’s the only one where the edit hasn’t been adjusted one bit AFAIK (aside from the wipe/cut).
Even TPM’s most significant changes (Extended podrace, Coruscant taxi, cgi Yoda, the bridge by Theed Palace), could easily be branched onto the same disc as the theatrical cut.
Heck, including the imax cut of AotC would merely require skipping over stretches of the movie for the most part.
For each movie they could do three cuts:
TPM:
‘99 Theatrical
‘01 Extended
‘11 bd
AotC:
‘02 theatrical
‘02 Imax
‘11 bd
RotS:
‘05 theatrical
‘05 dvd
‘11 bd
I don’t think any further changes from the 2011 versions were spotted in the D+ versions, were there?
For a small moment in time, I thought we might just get the OOT. Guess not. Oh well.
I made sure not to get my hopes up, because if those bonus discs were ever going to end up being the unaltered versions we would’ve known about it the moment this set was announced.
Maybe on some distant day, when I have the gear to easily acquire the fan preservations of my choosing, I’ll pick up this set just to abide by the rules. Although I must admit I’ve never fully agreed with this idea that we need to give LFL money for work they didn’t do. Does having a D+ subscription count?
I don’t think they’ll remove the “Fox” name from legacy credits of movies they now own (they haven’t here). It’s only for future projects that they’re changing the name. For example, the poster for The French Dispatch already says Searchlight Pictures on it.
This is similar to how Ted Turner bought out MGM’s entire back catalogue in the mid-80’s and, even after his assets were in turn acquired by Time Warner in the 90’s, the legacy credits on the back of the Warner Bros dvd releases of those films still said Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer just as they always had (2001: A Space Odyssey is a good example). Also worth noting is that while the opening logos of those films remained unaltered, the turner logo was added to the packaging since the copyright technically belonged to that company now and not MGM.
The fact that it was the last major re-release of the movies in theaters is reason enough to consider it important.
Like I’ve said before, if the OT were ever to get the Blade Runner treatment it honestly wouldn’t bother me if the ‘04 and ‘11 versions were jettisoned. They could easily be branched onto the same disc as the ‘97 version (just as the ‘92 Blade Runner was branched onto the same disc as the ‘82 cuts), but the ‘97 version takes priority. It’s the first and still the most significant round of revisions to the films. It’s what got us into this whole mess in the first place, which gives it historical value. For seven years it was the final version of the films, George’s “vision,” until he changed it again while finishing up the PT. The stuff he introduced in ‘04 like TPM Jabba, Temuera’s voice as Boba and Hayden as Anakin’s ghost reminds many viewers of movies they don’t like while they’re trying to enjoy movies they do, and the ‘97 cuts at least take advantage of cgi without actively reminding the viewer “hey, this trilogy is part of a longer saga now.” Even if the SE was created in large part because the PT was right around the corner, it’s still a pre-PT version.
But at the same time, I acknowledge that any change to the content of these movies is going to put off fans of the OT as it existed originally. Had the SE been basically the same films we remembered, maybe with just the fx shots re-comp’d and the wipes re-done, this site wouldn’t exist. But since they decided to flat out erase the groundbreaking vfx work of many talented artists in order to “modernize” these movies, any improvements that come along with that is soured. I didn’t even get into the Han and Greedo / “Alert my Star Destroyer to prepare for my arrival” / Jedi Rocks of it all.
The ‘97 version was the expensive $20 million restoration of Star Wars even if it introduced a lot of changes we don’t like. It was the first time I saw the OT on the big screen after only seeing it on tv throughout the early-to-mid 90’s via home video and USA network airings. I was eleven, and don’t remember noticing Greedo shooting first until I saw it again almost a year later on letterboxed vhs! I wasn’t hip to internet fan culture at the time (we didn’t even have internet until late ‘97, and that was 28k dial-up), so I don’t think it even dawned on me how big of a deal that particular alteration was until I saw Ben Affleck commenting on it in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
What I find kind of funny is that this Skywalker Saga set is going to contain an additional disc per movie and yet that additional disc will not contain the unaltered versions.
That’s one less excuse Disney has to include it in the future. If the bean counters go “oh, pressing an additional disc per film would cost too much,” we can point to this set and say “you pressed an additional disc per film before just so you could include extras a lot of fans would consider of lower importance than a restored unaltered version.”
27 discs??
My theory on what will be included:
UHDs of each 1-9 (obviously), regular BDs of 1-9, and the same bonus discs from before. That adds up to 27.
No it doesn’t. There were only three bonus discs in the 2011 Blu-ray set, and neither TFA nor TLJ has a bonus disc. The standard Blu-rays of both TFA and TLJ simply include all the special features on the same disc. In TLJ’s case the standard Blu-ray functions as a bonus disc to the UHD for that reason.
So if they just included what’s been released so far, plus ROS and new UHD discs for all the films aside from TLJ, that would only add up to 21 discs.
At the very least they would have to spread everything out to an extra disc per film to get 27 discs. Which would be incredibly inefficient. And I can’t imagine they have enough new features from the sequels alone to make up 6 discs. So we should expect at bare minimum they include a lot more special features for all the films in some shape or form. That may or may not include the OUT.
You’re correct about the 2011 extras, but for both TFA and TLJ the extras were given their own discs. If you’re in a territory outside the US I suppose things might’ve been done differently, though.
It’s the prequels that I’m maybe the most curious about. TPM has been altered the most drastically by far from its theatrical version, but the differences become more trivial once we get to AotC and practically non-existent when we hit RotS. I know there isn’t nearly the same demand for the O-PT as there is for the O-OT, but it would be nice to see those versions officially preserved.
I could totally see Disney streamlining the collection by simply labeling each movie’s third disc “bonus.” That way, if they do include the theatrical I-VI, there won’t be an awkward lopsidedness to the set.
An entire bonus disc for each individual film?
Maybe they’re including the extras from the 2011 bonus discs, just broken up among the individual movies?
Notice I’m trying real hard not to get my hopes up about you know what.