Speaking of Bespin, it would be cool if they added all the crazy stuff from the McQuarrie paintings for a future "ultimate" SE. As it stands, it's the only planet we see without any indiginous life whatsoever. Yavin IV at least had trees.
This is why it wouldn't be surprising if Disney/Lucasfilm simply commissioned an SE 2.0 to not only redo stuff that wouldn't work in 3D but also fix blatant vfx errors still present in the 2011 version.
John Doom said:
What about ROTJ in 3d?
"Masters of Teras Kasi takes place between ANH and TESB."
Sense: that video makes none.
It will happen eventually, if only because they've finished converting the PT and the ST will also be in 3D.
If we consider that RotJ would be hitting theaters in 3D less than a year and a half from now (if they'd actually kept to the original, pre-disney schedule), it wouldn't be surprising if they simply decided to get it done now, ahead of Episode VII.
So here's a question, unanswerable at the moment but I'll throw it out there anyway.
Do you think Disney will put out Episode VII on 4K blu-ray day and date with the regular blu-ray or are we looking at a similar situation to TPM where they stagger the releases on the different formats?
Granted we'll be much earlier in the life of this new format than dvd when TPM came out, so it actually wouldn't be unreasonable for Disney to hold back on it. They did something similar with that second Pirates movie on regular blu-ray.
Crystal Skull and the Clone Wars movie were both day and date blu-rays back in the earlier days of the format, although - at least in Crystal Skull's situation - it helped that the format war had officially ended and Paramount was no longer putting out movies on hddvd. With no format war this time around, Disney might just want to get their biggest title out there in the best available format as soon as possible.
In any event, I see the release of the other six movies on the new format as an inevitability. Yes, even the prequels. Most of the initial titles from Fox were only finished in 2k anyway, it's the expanded color and hdr they want to show off. The prequels can still benefit from the former but maybe not the latter.
CatBus said:
I've found torrents to be a perfectly adequate substitute for patience.
You'd think Lucasfilm would've caught on to that by now.
Just as the proliferation of the ld-to-dvd fan preservations led to an official unaltered dvd release, we're now at the point where we have a perfectly serviceable substitute for an unaltered blu-ray.
Not clicking on that link as I don't want to go in knowing too much (didn't I say I was gonna stay out of this thread entirely?), but I do recall the early rumors saying something about the third act having a huge "I am your father" level twist/reveal.
The overall sentiment I've been getting from those in-the-know has been that TFA is most similar to ANH tonally but has a very cliffhanger-y, Empire style ending.
SilverWook said:
Would be a way for Lucasfilm to make the 3D conversions finally pay off.
Were all six shown in 3D at Celebration this year?
No, just the PT.
It was the first time RotS was shown in 3D if I'm not mistaken. I wasn't there, not even on the same coast, but I've shared my thoughts in the past about how three-dimensional RotS already looks in regular 2D projected on blu-ray. Assuming they didn't drop the ball on the conversion, it must look amazing.
Meanwhile, several signs point to this new 4k remaster of the OT having been done years ago, maybe even as early as 2008-2010. It takes a year to really do a thorough conversion of a two-hour movie into 3D. Titanic, a 3-hour movie, took more than a year. If the new 4k scan/remaster was ready before Disney even bought Lucasfilm, then they've had three years to convert the three movies.
On the other hand, I feel like we would've actually heard something about it by now.
I'd actually forgotten about that, joefavs. I could go and double check but I'm pretty sure you're right.
The bigger question in my mind is whether the rumored in-theater saga marathons on December 17th will be DCP's of the 2011 version or an unannounced debut of the 4k SE.
If they're showing the marathon in 3D, I would fully expect the latter.
Can you imagine the crowd's reaction seeing Han shoot first again?
Either way, it still won't be the OOT.
The steel books and the complete saga reissue will undoubtedly be fresh pressings of the discs, so it's not impossible for there to be differences from the 2011 version.
But it would be pretty weird to just make that one change (or rather, a reversal of a change), and to make it now, only a month before the new movie's release.
I actually do give credence to the original rumor from April, but I honestly don't expect to see Han shooting first (shooting only?) again until the 4K remaster makes its way out there.
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.