Like I said, at most it'll be the surprise debut of the 4K SE, maybe even with the rumored restoration of Han shooting first again.
If it was the original versions we would've heard about it by now, not through the cinerama's website.
The quotation marks around "original" could actually be saying it's the original trilogy in name only and not the original version. Otherwise I don't get why they would be putting it in quotes like that.
Could I see Disney doing this as some amazingly awesome surprise? Sure.
Do I actually see it happening? Not bloody likely.
The running time could be yet another example of the theater owner grabbing the numbers off of imdb or something without bothering to check which version it was for.
I must admit it's weird for them to specify "original" in quotes like that right on the theater's website.
See how I'm trying not to get those hopes up?
Not gonna get my hopes up
Not gonna get my hopes up
Not gonna get my hopes up....
I'd be down for that. It would be cool to actually meet some of you people in person after all these years. The tickets are selling out fast (just sayin') but someone send me a PM if you want to organize something.
Wow, I hadn't even considered the significance of the in-theater marathons. That means Fox and Disney not only worked things out over digital online distribution, but theatrical as well. If I'm not mistaken, this will be the widest theatrical re-release of the films since 1997.
I'm still curious if this will be the surprise debut of the 4k SE, but I'm not gonna pay to sit through a crazy long marathon just to find out.
Here's hoping your friend actually knows what he's talking about, Lt. Hija. Bowing the OUT on blu-ray day and date with TFA next Spring was a possibility I'd also considered. I'm not holding my breath though, especially since we just this month got a reissue of the 2011 discs.
canofhumdingers said:
Fang Zei said:
canofhumdingers said:
And never mind... I should've paid more attention tithe lists. Both the DC and Citywalk theaters are the laser projectors. NOT 70mm. :-/
There are two Air&Space museums in the DC area.
One is downtown in DC itself and still uses 15/70 projection.
The other one, the Udvar-Hazy center out in Chantilly VA near Dulles Airport, just recieved the laser upgrade earlier this year.
When slashfilm posted that list, they must've either neglected to include the downtown location in the list of 70mm theaters or it just hadn't been added yet as the list was "subject to change" (I'm guessing it was the latter). If you go to Imax's website you'll see it.
In any event, I didn't see it until it was too late to secure a ticket to the 7pm Thursday screening.
Sorry for the confusion.
No kidding. I knew there were two museum locations, but didn't realize the one on the mall ALSO had an IMAX theater AND that it was still 70mm! It's been several years since I've been there... Awesome! I've already started plotting logistics of where to go and how to get there and this just gave me another option!
That's something else I should point out.
There are at least several dozen 15/70 theaters in the US. Interstellar played at more than 30 of them. Disney is probably just being careful about where they show TFA in that format because like I said it's so expensive to make the prints. Conveniently, several theaters already have the new laser system and I can only assume the movie will be playing at all of those locations because it costs next to nothing to make a dcp. Unfortunately, those laser locations will only be showing it in 3D as of right now.
Oh, and here in the DC area we actually have three full-sized Imax theaters. Yup, we're spoiled like that. The one at Air&Space DC opened in '76. I remember my Mom taking me there to see Blue Planet and To Fly in the early 90's when I was just a kid. The Museum of Natural History, directly across the mall, also got an Imax theater in the late 90's. Both theaters have been 3D-capable for years now. Udvar-Hazy opened in 2003 and was always 2D-only for some reason until the laser upgrade this year. The Smithsonian owns and operates all three theaters. Dark Knight Rises was the only time a movie opened at all three locations if I'm not mistaken.
canofhumdingers said:
And never mind... I should've paid more attention tithe lists. Both the DC and Citywalk theaters are the laser projectors. NOT 70mm. :-/
There are two Air&Space museums in the DC area.
One is downtown in DC itself and still uses 15/70 projection.
The other one, the Udvar-Hazy center out in Chantilly VA near Dulles Airport, just recieved the laser upgrade earlier this year.
When slashfilm posted that list, they must've either neglected to include the downtown location in the list of 70mm theaters or it just hadn't been added yet as the list was "subject to change" (I'm guessing it was the latter). If you go to Imax's website you'll see it.
In any event, I didn't see it until it was too late to secure a ticket to the 7pm Thursday screening.
Sorry for the confusion.
canofhumdingers said:
Holy moly! Was this already known about and I just missed it, or is this new news?
Where to see The Force Awakens via 70mm IMAX prints!
It's sad to see how few IMAX theaters there are left that actually show 70mm prints anymore. But at the same time...AWESOME! They're actually making and screening 70mm IMAX prints of the new Star Wars movie!!! I was not expecting this at all! I may have to make a special Christmas trip to one of these theaters just for the experience...
It flew a little under the radar. I check slashfilm constantly so I saw that story not long after it went up.
Unfortunately, they didn't include Air&Space DC in the list (maybe it was a late addition?) and I didn't see it until I checked IMAX's website, by which point it was too late to get tickets to the 7pm Thursday screening. 10:45 pm on Friday is actually the earliest showtime that doesn't give me an "unavailable/check back later" message. I am nevertheless overjoyed that I'll be able to see it in 15/70 2D without traveling more than a few miles, and with easy access to public transportation. Maybe it's a good thing the regular-sized showings nearest me were already sold out. Now I have a reason to save my cash for the real deal, even if it means going into internet blackout for a day or two.
The best part of this news is that Disney is simplifying things by playing the 15/70 version in 2D and the laser and xenon versions in 3D. It would be nice if they included some 2D showings on their laser and xenon screens as well, for the people who can't make it to the only dozen or so places playing it in 15/70, but oh well. We've still got two months to go, so maybe they'll add more locations as more and more tickets sell out.
The decision to only show the 70mm version in 2D makes sense from a business standpoint as well. It costs at least thirty grand just to print one of those things and I would assume twice as much if the movie is in 3D.
I'm just glad it will be that much easier to see the movie the way it was intended.
GlastoEls said:
towne32 said:
SilverWook said:
There were many stories of people arranging to get May 25th 1983 off well in advance.
Sure. And those marathons will sell out this time, I'm sure. But as far as I know, they're one day only events and that's probably not how they would handle a OOT release. Then again, how they would handle it seems to be 'not at all'.
Which again is the strangest part of all of this.
Not one single mention either way, by anybody at Disney / LFL, since the purchase back in 2012.
All we have on the record is the John Landis quote.
It kind of begs the question as to whether we're making enough noise about it, or if there just aren't enough of us out there to begin with.
I'd like to think LFL/Disney is simply taking its time righting the wrongs of the last twenty years. The OUT/SE issue is something that actually bookends the prequels ('97 and '06). Maybe the new regime wants to first wash the taste of the prequels out of our mouths with TFA and Rogue One, before tackling the big elephant in the room.
That's the exact example I was going to bring up. And unlike the situation with Batman, where the relevant parties simply didn't foresee the long term consequences of their copyrights, the Disney buyout of LFL just happened recently. We've already seen them work things out over the matter of digital distribution. There's no reason to think they can't come to an agreement over other forms of media.
That's a crazy story about Hamill, Anchorhead! What form were they in? Film reels?
The situation with Fox wouldn't really have any bearing on the OOT specifically. As far as I know, their ownership extends to any and all versions of ANH but everything else belongs to Lucasfilm.*
Between 3D and 4K, there are two more opportunities to squeeze more money just out of the SE. But like I've said before, those still aren't good enough reasons to get people to shell out for these movies in significant numbers yet again.
*I've heard some people incorrectly speculate that that's why Lucas created the SE in the first place, to get his own copyright on ANH.
Yeah that looks weird and yet - even in lego form - oddly JJ-esque.
DominicCobb said:
Bingowings said:
Ridley Scott is still a strong visual director but he allowed himself to be associated with a script mangled to death by Lindelof.
It's interesting that every time Lindelof is involved with something people always blame him for its perceived failures. If I remember from what I read, the main issues people have with Prometheus were Scott induced issues, a lot of them in the editing phase.
Not that it really matters in regards to TFA. Lindelof has nothing to do with that.
I like Super8 and Cloverfield but his first Star Trek is as bad/good as any TNG movie and the second one is truly painful in places. He didn't write the screenplay but he allowed himself to be closely associated with it. He is allowing himself to be closely associated with TFA.
But he wrote the screenplay to TFA, he didn't just allow himself to be closely associated with it. The challenge of directing a Star Wars movie vs. the challenge of directing a Star Trek movie is completely different. Sorry Trekkies, but the Star Wars one is a bigger challenge. Abrams is not a Trekkie - that's why they brought him on as director, so that he could reimagine the franchise and make the film engaging for everyone (I'm not saying that's what the film needed, but certainly it was what the execs wanted and it worked). Abrams is a huge Star Wars fan. That's exactly what TFA needs. Someone who loves the franchise (read: the good parts of the franchise) and who understands that if he effs this movie up he won't just be disappointing the whole world but himself too. Hence why he threw away the original, Lucas-story script and wrote a new one from scratch with Kasdan.
A friend of mine has been very skeptical of Episode VII because JJ Abrams "likes to change things."
Your last paragraph there pretty much sums up my response to him.
I know there was no way in hell we were ever going to get the Fox fanfare in front of TFA, but it's still too bad the opening of the film will be missing that certain something.
It wouldn't surprise me if the next official alteration to 1-6 simply removes the Fox logo and fanfare entirely, including from ANH.
If TFA is simply opening with the Lucasfilm logo, I think it would be better to just not hear anything before the main theme. I'm surprised that isn't what they did for the digital release of 1-6.
He said he knows several people working on the vfx for TFA at ILM and that they've told him it's not, in their opinion, going to be a particularly good movie.
I don't doubt he was told this, but he only discussed it in the vaguest of terms. Perhaps he was told more by his friends and didn't want to get them in trouble.
Apparently there are conflicting rumors regarding the next trailer.
A theater in Vancouver says it's dropping October 19th, also when tickets supposedly go on sale.
The other rumor claims we're not seeing it until November but that it is already done and being looked at by the people at corporate, along with some tv spots.
Disney's also going to want to start promoting Captain America: Civil War soon as well. They're gonna be keeping those trailer dates as far away from each other as they can.
DuracellEnergizer said:
Fire whoever's been giving the shitty new comics and novels the stamp of approval and replace them with someone who'll actually say a great big "NO!" to schlock stories.
Abandon the stupid concept of "canon" once and for all and let the writers write whatever stories they may in whatever continuity they wish (be it a previously established continuity or their own personal continuity).
Cancel all the ongoing Star Wars comic series and replace them with a single SW series -- an anthology series containing multiple stories per issue focused on a wide variety of characters from various timeframes.
Publish fewer novels.
That's it -- that's all it would take to improve the nuEU for me.
Here's the funny thing about the old canon: nothing was ever explicitly de-canonized. Even the Holiday Special counted, on some level.
Which brings us to the whole concept of different levels of canon.
Which is half the reason the EU was rebooted in the first place.
What did George think of the Thrawn trilogy? Obviously he gave the OK for post-Jedi stories to be told, and I remember hearing about how he liked the Dark Empire comic.*
Did the EU just get away from him later on or was it always intended as a cash grab from the very beginning?
Like, he also gave the OK to kill off Chewie in Vector Prime.
I get the impression that the EU writers were leaving a contingency plan for the eventual Episode VII but that George was leaving no such plan for the EU. It simply didn't count, in his view.
*Although, Dark Empire contains one of the three big post-Jedi EU things that George said never happened in that now infamous quote.
Wazzles said:
towne32 said:
Mike O said:
but why spend the tons of money and time on a restoration of a version with a tiny existing interested group of purchasers when the existing versions, for which they already have HD masters, are selling like heroine?
If they ever want to release in 4K (and not just an upscale), they'll need to either release the 1997 version as-is, or spend money modifying them in some way. That could mean re-building something that resembles the 2011, the OOT, or both.
Well not even the 97's as-is would work. AFAIK, the CGI is rendered in like 2k. So to release the current version (or something that resembles it, they would have to re-render the added CGI from 97, 2004, and (probably) 2011, and then upscale the content shot digitally (the Emperor in ESB, Hayden in RoTJ). No matter what, releasing the SE in 4k will be some sort of a pain in the ass. It's likely that the OOT may be easier to restore at 4k since there is no CGI, save for a few wire-frame models that would look fine regardless.
They wouldn't have to redo the cgi.
It would be no different from plenty of other movies over the past decade that were 4K DI finishes with 2k vfx renders.
The only real question is whether George is still satisfied with the '97 cgi after all these years. But even if he's not, it's now Disney who controls the purse strings. I doubt they would bother.
SilverWook said:
And I would probably suffer the SE's just one more time if they were shown theatrically in 3-D.
I think a lot of people would, which is why I'm convinced it will happen eventually.
We do live in a world now where The Shield, a show shot on 16mm film, is being remastered in 4K. So I guess anything' possible.
Wally Pfister's expert opinion was that you'd have to scan in 35mm negative at somewhere between 8k and 12k res to really get all the detail it's capturing.
It's just that 8k is prohibitively expensive right now for anything other than capturing and scanning.
Really.
That's because, for starters, 8k is overkill for 4-perf 35mm film.
Also, the vfx shots in TFA, which I'm assuming will make up a pretty sizable percentage of the movie, will not be rendered at anything higher than 4K except for the shots in that one IMAX scene.
When most of your movie is stuck at 4K to begin with, you're not going to gain much of anything by mastering it at a higher res.
On that note, does anyone want to start taking bets as to when the next/final trailer is gonna drop?
Ryan McAvoy said:
Ronster said:
HDTV Broadcasts are already in terms of quality going to fall behind and how on earth will 8K get transmitted through the air.
Maybe because there will always be bandwidth limits on how high you can go, physical media will make a come back. 2K streaming and 8K physical discs. PT streaming online, and ST and restored OT on 8K Blu-Ray discs ;-)
Seeing as how the ST will likely not be finished at anything higher than 4k, probably not.
The Ugnaughts are supposed to be from the nearby Anoat system if I remember the old EU correctly. I always thought they were saying "The No-Add system" until I turned on the dvd subtitles.
Anyway, McQuarrie's floating islands of moss with their humanoid inhabitants flying around on thrantas is something I could see being added into the background of the Bespin arrival (before we actually see Cloud City) or just added editorially like they did with the cloud car that flies past Leia's room.
It was probably a stretch in '97 when all they could do was add the refinery, another McQuarrie concept, into the foreground of one of the shots. But now that we're in a post-Avatar world, showing the native lifeforms of Bespin would certainly be possible.