Fang Zei

The fact that the steelbooks are well over a month away makes that comment highly suspect.

However, we did hear this very same rumor back in April the day before the digital versions became available for download, with clarification following the next day that this was actually seen by someone inside Lucasfilm and that it could still be for a future version of the movie.

I'd be shocked if these steelbooks weren't the exact same 2011 discs. It makes sense that we'd see big changes made to these movies for their dvd debut and then again for the blu-ray. Those were both huge upgrades in how people could watch the movies at home and it makes sense that GL would use those occassions to make additional changes. Also, in both cases, it had been seven years since the previous revision (which makes me wonder .... 2018?).

In the relevant thread at the AVS Forum, someone brought up a good point about how Disney will inevitably want to release these movies on UHD blu-ray.

For the OT, they know that another SE, even if it's an SE with expanded color, HDR and in 4k, is not gonna be enough of a selling point. Not nearly as many people will make the jump to UHD like they did with blu-ray. Since those steelbook singles and the reissue of the complete saga set are hitting next month, I'm guessing it's gonna be a while before we see another release of the existing films.

When another release does inevitably happen, probably for the UHD debut, I simply don't see it being a big enough deal to catch people's attention unless the unaltered originals are included as well. Maybe that's when we'll see the grand "all versions" edition rolled out on both regular and 4k blu just as we saw blade runner on the hd formats and regular dvd.

With the right compression, 25GB of space might be all that the final encode really needs.

The newer codecs (AVC, etc) are more efficient than dvd's implementation of mpeg-2. HD is six times the resolution of SD, but only really needs 4-5 times as much space thanks to the improved compression tech. HEVC further improves on this so you only need twice as much space when you jump from HD to 4k.

John Doom said:

I'm not sure: we would possibly get better composited special effects (which would stand better with the new incoming trilogy), but then would we be ever able to see the originals ever again? :\

Well, that's pretty much what the SE should've been in the first place. Instead it ended up more revision than restoration.

What we want is a high quality preservation of the OOT exactly as it was.

IIRC, one of the reasons why the recomps were done was because those shots on the o-neg were irretrievably faded.

Wazzles said:

Fang Zei said:

Yeah, a restoration should and in all likelihood would have the '77 version of the crawl.

I honestly don't care if they include the '81 crawl as an option or not, but since it would be the easiest thing I guess they should do it simply out of completionism for the theatrically released versions of the movies. Although, if we're gonna go down that slippery slope, where do the 70mm edits and the various sound mixes fall on the importance scale?

 I would really love it if Empire was released with both the 70mm and 35mm versions, but I don't think that will ever happen.

Didn't Star Wars ('77) also have a whole bunch of picture edit differences in its 70mm version or am I remembering wrong?

Jedi didn't have any differences if I'm remembering my Wikipedia binges correctly.

Yeah, a restoration should and in all likelihood would have the '77 version of the crawl.

I honestly don't care if they include the '81 crawl as an option or not, but since it would be the easiest thing I guess they should do it simply out of completionism for the theatrically released versions of the movies. Although, if we're gonna go down that slippery slope, where do the 70mm edits and the various sound mixes fall on the importance scale?

moviefreakedmind said:

It'd be interesting if it would be played in theatres; if so then they would definitely be released on blu ray for profit. Perhaps it isn't necessarily going to be a Disney sponsored showing in theaters, but maybe they will start allowing people to show the unaltered versions in theatres, like in events showing the best movies of the 70s etc etc

That would be very nice indeed.

The AFI Silver shows the '97 SE prints every now and then. Recently they showed ANH as part of an Alec Guinness series and RotJ as part of their 80's series. It would be great if, going forward, they could be allowed to show the true originals.

CatBus said:

DominicCobb said:

People aren't stupid enough to think that that's the original crawl.

I disagree--people are extremely stupid.  But more importantly, even when they're not stupid, they're imprecise.  They will use terms like "original" when they actually just mean "pre-1997".  I know a number of casual fans who really want a pre-1997 release, but they really don't care about the crawl, color timing, inauthentic sound effects, missing sound effects, etc--but they call what they want the "original" versions.  They just want a version of the Star Wars they used to know before it sucked, and many only knew it from VHS.  I suspect they easily outnumber us.  And I know Disney will cater to the largest audience first.

If the original crawl, sound mixes and colors are all that separates the true originals from "what most people know," then I would certainly hope Disney strives for authenticity above anything else.

Wow, nevermind, I just watched the youtube video and he actually says "the way it was," meaning the original version.

I'm guessing that gap in the recording is when he said GL told him personally. One of the other panel guys is joking about a "seven second delay" so maybe they really seriously didn't want it out there.

So then the only doubt would be if George actually meant the original versions when he told this to Landis, but I don't see why he would mention this - at some random panel somewhere for AAWWIL of all places - if he wasn't absolutely sure.

So I just heard about this John Landis quote late yesterday afternoon. Naturally it was after a weekend where my internet access was rather limited.

It's great to hear something on the subject from an actual reliable source, but as pointed out he never actually specifies the original versions.

We'll see....

emanswfan said:

Also still holding out for Lucasfilm to confirm whether they are using the Ultra Panavision 70 lenses for this.

If they are, I'm wondering how that's going to look in the finished film.

I was just listening to an interview with Harmy on the Undressing Underground podcast.

In my opinion, the more publicity it gets the better.

There's no way Lucasfilm isn't aware of it by now.

The more attention it gets, and the more people download it, the more incentive LFL/Disney/Fox will have to do an official restoration themselves.

When the old EU was officially discontinued last year, I heard some people saying "chill out, this isn't gonna be any different from what the Marvel or DC movies did."

That's a very flawed comparison when we consider the fact that the new movies share little in common with the last twenty-odd years of material. On the other hand, since all of the new media going forward will exist on the same level of canon, maybe they're just going to let the new movies do their own thing* and use the ancillary stuff to salvage certain elements of the old EU.

When I first read joefavs description of the big reveal at the end of Aftermath, it seriously sounded like the end-credits stinger of a Marvel movie that only the "true fans" would pick up on.

*speaking of which, do we know if the new Lucasfilm story group are having any input on the creation of these new movies, or are they simply there to connect all of the other media back to what the movies decide to do?

Mavimao said:

Definitely a change from episode 1 where it came out the following October. Ahhhh. The wait was painful (as was the final product)

I wonder why there was such a long delay. AotC was released in France around the same time as here if I'm remembering correctly.

Like I mentioned in the spoiler thread, I was in Paris visiting my sister the week JJ's Star Trek was released in France and Belgium two days before anywhere else in the world. So we got to see it a little early with very small and non-distracting French subtitles.

unamochilla2 said:

adywan said:

UK release date brought forward to the 17th December

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/34183688/uk-star-wars-release-date-brought-forward

"In France, Italy and several other European countries, the movie will debut on Dec. 16. However, a Middle Eastern market has won the earliest opening for the film: The United Arab Emirates will screen it as early as Dec. 15."

http://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/%e2%80%98star-wars-the-force-awakens%e2%80%99-to-release-early-in-europe/ar-AAe46pU?ocid=spartanntp

I was in Paris visiting my sister the week JJ's Star Trek opened in France (and also Belgium IIRC) a couple days before anywhere else in the world. So we got to see it a little early with very small and non-distracting french subtitles.

SilverWook said:

George wanted to have all the Dagobah scenes for ROTJ shot during production on ESB, (to avoid having to rebuild the massive set again) but they just ran out of time.

Suddenly that story about Marquand convincing George to return to Dagobah in ROTJ makes a lot more sense.

http://www.ibtimes.com/star-wars-force-awakens-next-trailer-may-be-released-next-week-new-posters-surface-2080839

Story is already several days old, but apparently the BBFC has passed a new trailer with a running time of 1 minute and 39 seconds. That would make it about twelve seconds shorter than the one from April.

Ah, I need a jump to conclusions mat, remembering now that the initial description simply said not long after Endor but not when exactly.

Very curious what Shattered Empire brings.

Interesting....

Full disclosure, I never actually finished the Thrawn trilogy. Got about halfway through book 2 IIRC. Last Command sits unread along with more books than I'd like to admit from the old EU, including the Hand of Thrawn duology.

I tried reading Outbound Flight after checking it out from the library almost a decade ago but never finished that either.

So my memory of Thrawn is fuzzy but this reference to artwork probably would've tipped me off as well.

Funny how they're (evidently) making reference to a character from the very first novel of the old post-Jedi EU in the very first novel of the new post-Jedi EU.

I am correct that this is the very first thing released so far to take place between episodes 6 and 7 in the new canon, yes?

Also, if this takes place the day after RotJ is there any reference made to Luke? One of the earlier Ep7 spoiler reports mentioned something about him not having been seen at all in the 30 years since Endor.

One more question, and I'm pretty sure the answer is no. If this is set immediately after RotJ and it follows a new group of characters, is there any chance the events of Truce at Bakura could still be taking place? Until your mention of a possible Thrawn reference I would've said the answer is definitely no, but now I'm starting to wonder if they're not wiping clean but simply "ignoring" some of the old timeline like Zahn first theorized.

joefavs said:

All right, I just finished it and things got very interesting at the very end. Not sure if the TFA thread is the place for full-blown Aftermath spoilers, but suffice it to say that someone shows up in the epilogue that I'm extremely interested to learn more about.

As you can see by my continued replies, I'm fascinated enough to want to know more.

My vote would just be to spoil it here and maybe put spoiler tags at the top and bottom if people really want to avoid them. Aftermath is specifically part of the lead-up to TFA anyway so I'd say it's relevant to this thread, unlike some other recent stuff in the NuEU unless I'm mistaken.

On a partially related note, there's a recent article on /Film about how the official databank (remember that?!) was queitly updated recently with a bunch of new entries pertaining to TFA.

All I have to say is that JJ must've been determined to get a Beastie Boys reference into the GFFA because Ello Asty? Really?

Y'know, the fact that it's gotten almost 7900 sigs and counting is at least somewhat heartening, but the fact that it's taken almost six years makes it pretty unsurprising that we've heard next to nothing on the subject from lfl.

I like how people are still signing and leaving comments. With any luck, the right person at lucasfilm will read them and pass it along to whomever will eventually be in charge of a restoration.

The new regime aren't idiots. The hiring of Kasdan and moreso Rian Johnson is proof to me that someone is reading people's online comments. I heard a story the other day that Spielberg of all people is actually a big reader of the geek sites and sometimes even has to be pulled away from the computer by his assistants.

So anything's possible.

By comparison, do we know how many sigs - and over what span of time - the original OOT on dvd petition recieved way back whenever?

joefavs said:

I like that it's re-canonized a lot of stuff

 Could you elaborate on this?

Or maybe he simply doesn't want the original versions restored until he no longer has to be around to see it happen?

Although I don't know what's weirder, demanding the OOT stay locked away until he's dead or demanding it stay locked away forever.

I'm pretty sure I remember reading somewhere that it was the nighttime scene on Tatooine with Anakin and Qui-Gon.

If you look at that shot where Anakin says "I want to be the first one to see 'em all," there's just something .... off-looking about it.

I'd also be curious to know just what make/model of camera was used. If this was part of principal photography it would've been the ancient past of 1997.

EDIT: Jaws beat me to it