Fang Zei

GlastoEls said:

moviefreakedmind said:

That's a main reason for why I think we'll see the HD OOT soon. Lucas was the only one opposed to its release. Even Rick McCallum said he hoped Lucas would release it someday

The lads from makingstarwars.net, for whatever it's worth, told me at Celebration that there was "no chance", as albeit selling commercial rights, "Lucas retains final cut".

So we shall see. Fingers perenially crossed!

To bring this thread back around, this is what makes me think the 4k version (undoubtedly a new 4k SE) will be released in some form or another in the near future, even if it was only done as a fresh image harvest for the 3D conversion. Even if there was no mention of it at the convention, I wouldn't be surprised if they announce closer to TFA's release that there will be all-day saga marathons in theaters on December 17th.

Even if Lucas retains "final cut," I don't see that precluding an OOT restoration necessarily. I mean, he released it on dvd, didn't he? He just refused to spend a single dime remastering it.

Well, I'm one of those crazies who wants the SE done right and an OOT restoration (or at least a rudimentary cleanup job comparable to a Criterion release).

I'd most likely have to buy the most recent version just to get the unaltereds anyway, so why not demand quality from both?

captainsolo said:

As we know, Vidiot over on the SHTV forums had done some work on the 2004 trilogy ans has given some insight in the past as to how things were done. Recently, he's mentioned a few things which make perfect sense: That it was a bit rushed, understaffed for the scope of the project and continually tweaked and re-tweaked. This would account for many of the issue we have bemoaned for years and years.

But he did say that both the claims of no negatives existing, or that they were conformed to the SE were pretty much bogus.

Nice to have some confirmation for a change isn't it? ;)

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/star-wars-the-digital-movie-collection.427154/page-8#post-12232532

Could you please quote directly what he said?

I don't see any mention of him saying the o-negs weren't reconformed to the SE. Didn't Zombie confirm that they were?

The new color timing of Aliens doesn't bother me, honestly. I never saw a print of the movie and the leaps in picture quality more than make up for any problems I may or may not have with the color. It like the new look, even if it might not have looked that way in '86. At least I know for sure that Cameron wanted it looking this way for the blu-ray. We're still here several years later debating whether the color-timing (and lack of contrast) on the extended blu-ray of Fellowship of the Ring was actually what Peter Jackson intended.

What does annoy me is Cameron digitally erasing things like Lance Henriksen's visible torso in the final scene, or getting rid of the visible marks on the window from earlier takes when Ripley tries to break it with a chair. It's especially disappointing after his remarks on the SE of Star Wars. Apparently he draws the line at "cgi dinosaurs" as a revision of history, but erasing things that were already there is a-okay?

But even things like that don't pull me out of the movie. You'd have to know the film pretty damn well to notice it, something that cannot be said about the very obvious updates made to Star Wars.

Speaking of Raiders, was the erasure of the snake pit reflection Spielberg's idea or was it Lucas'?

Even if Disney was planning to announce an OOT on blu-ray tomorrow, the company line would still be "there are no plans at this time."

Indeed, it's nice to at least see them acknowledged.

Still anyone's guess as to whether it'll happen this year or if they'll wait until 2017 or until the entire ST is finished. It might even be some random time we're not expecting just so Kathleen Kennedy can show a good quarterly statement to the suits at Disney.

The fact that we're not getting BS jargon from Lucasfilm like we were in '06 gives me some faint glimmer of hope.

Nocturnaloner said:

Fang Zei said:

Even if that rumor about Han shooting first again in the 4k version is true (and it very well may be, Devin is pretty sincere about his sources), I don't see why reversing that one change has any bearing on an OOT release. It could still be the SE in every other way, and they've reversed changes before (Luke's scream in ESB '97).

 That was debunked, Greedo still shoots first: http://badassdigest.com/2015/04/09/the-digital-edition-of-star-wars-could-make-a-major-change/

I know, that's why I specified "in the 4k version."

Even if that rumor about Han shooting first again in the 4k version is true (and it very well may be, Devin is pretty sincere about his sources), I don't see why reversing that one change has any bearing on an OOT release. It could still be the SE in every other way, and they've reversed changes before (Luke's scream in ESB '97).

yoda-sama said:

It is just a damned shame they're choosing to miss this opportunity.

 I'm right there with ya, but at the same time, I started to have "a bad feeling" once they released the digital version only a week before the con. There was no way they were gonna say jack shit about even the possibility of an OOT restoration only a week after this new digital release with "never before seen bonus content" (oh, golly). It would've been like shooting themselves in the foot, not to mention it would've pissed off apple, vudu, Amazon, Google et al who were expecting to do business off the digital version.

Which brings me to my second point, which is that we really don't know how long Disney is planning on milking these movies for the umpteenth time in the form of these digital versions. It's certainly not a good sign that they're only just releasing it now, and with exclusive bonus content for added incentive. We could be waiting years until the next release (in any form) for all we know.

But at the the end of the day we really have no idea. The digital release might've simply been a "let's get it out of the way" kind of thing, maybe just timed to take advantage of the convention. Like I said elsewhere in the forums, we've still got Comic Con in July.

Besides, it became pretty clear to me that Disney wasn't gonna blow their load and announce the OOT at the same time as the new TFA trailer. Their stock went up by $2 Billion on Thursday. They obviously wanted Ep7 to be the big talk of the con, followed by Battlefront and Season 2 of Rebels, in whatever order.

In regards to your 4k comment, Disney could very well be timing a new release to coincide with the upcoming 4k blu-Ray format, which is supposed to roll out by the end of the year. It would be Mind-blowing if one of the launch titles was an actual 4k transfer of the OOT. Imagine how many people would run out and buy a 4k TV and a 4k blu-Ray player just to see that. I'm not holding my breath on something like that happening, but when they do eventually put out the OT in actual 4k-on-disc (and they will at some point, even if it's just a 4k SE), I suspect they'll put it out on "regular" 1080p blu-Ray as well and not keep it exclusive to a fancy new format.

Even if we don't hear anything by the end of Celebration, the fact that Battlefront isn't streeting until November gives me some hope. Star Wars dvd releases lined up with videogame dates (The OT and Battlefront, RotS and Battlefront II, the GOUT and Lego Star Wars II, etc). If Battlefront was releasing in September, we'd be hearing right now if a new blu-Ray was on the way. We didn't hear about the GOUT until only four months before its street date. November is still a long way off.

If they are indeed planning an OOT blu-Ray, they may very well be waiting until Comic Con in July to announce a November release day and date with the new game.

As has been said, it would be weird to announce a new blu-Ray only a week after the digital release, even if they're targeting two very different audiences. It just wouldn't make sense business-wise, and they've been advertising the digital version constantly during the livestream.

Wasn't there a fresh scan of Jurassic Park done just for the 3D conversion? I wonder if that's what's going on here.

Maybe that's how this 4k job of Star Wars could've been done years ago without ever seeing the light of day. They might not have wanted people to see any of it, not even in nice 4k 2D, until the 3D conversion was finished.

Titanic's "dimensionalization" took more than a year. The total runtime of the OT is roughly twice Titanic's. If they'd held to their original schedule, we would only just have seen ANH 3D hit theaters a couple months ago. Maybe they "doubled their efforts" to get the entire OT done by the end of 2015.

If it's the now eleven-years-old Lowry transfers for the umpteenmillionth time, I'll be disappointed but not surprised.

Maybe they'll announce that all six movies are being theatrically re-released in 3D this Fall ahead of Episode Seven?

As I've said before on these boards, I'd love it if the main episodes from now on (7,8,9 and any possible future numbers) could open with the Fox logo/fanfare even though it's Disney distributing. I was naively hoping that Fox's ownership of distribution rights on the existing films (and Disney's desire for them) could lead to a deal where that might actually happen. But if Disney is willing to just chop the Fox logo off the other five films, yeesh, not a good sign.

The Paramount logo showed up in Avengers and Iron Man Three, but that was different. Marvel had signed a distribution deal with Paramount years earlier, before Disney bought Marvel. When Disney wanted to buy Paramount out of the last two movies in their distribution deal, Paramount stipulated that their logo remain in those movies. Fox has no such pre-existing legal leverage over Disney.

The spin-offs (Rogue One, Josh Trank's untitled and any future ones) can do their own thing logo-wise for all I care.

I'm curious now as to why they didn't just leave well enough alone. Obviously they wanted the Fox logo completely gone, but I'm guessing they wouldn't allow it to be taken off ANH as part of whatever deal they made with Disney.

So now when people watch these digital versions in "saga" order they go from three movies of just the Lucasfilm logo (now with an edit of Williams' music from the end of ESB's end credits) to one movie presumably opening the way it always has (more or less) to two more movies with this new intro.

I stand corrected, then.

If the rumor is true, I guess we'll find out whether the deleted original frames really were put into storage or not.

Darth Id said:

DominicCobb said:

...I have an itching feeling they're talking about the Reliance master

This is the forerunning hypothesis, by a mile.  Especially since the Reliance transfer would presumably have "Han shooting first" just because it would be scanned from physical elements, rather than the electronic house of horrors where Rubberhan resides.

(and, by the way, the colors are very effed in that just in different ways than the blu-ray).

 How so?

 

Mike Verta elaborates on the issues with the Reliance master in his vimeo clips. If you click on the one of R2 and 3P0 on the Death Star or the one with the stormtroopers running down the hallway, he does some interesting screenshot comparisons between the official blu-ray, the Reliance 4k job and his own restoration that uses a 4k scan of a technicolor print. The R2/3PO comparison even throws in the GOUT for good measure.

His conclusion is that while the Reliance work does improve things from the blu-ray somewhat, it's also a step back from some of the things the blu-ray actually got right.

Also, I think you're mistaken about "Greedo shooting first" being a completely digital change. That was done for the '97 "restoration" and would've therefore been filmed out to fresh 35mm negative and conformed with the movie just like the rest of the '97 changes. However, IIRC that change was simply an addition of frames from what was already there. So if we're to assume the reliance 4k job returned the Han/Greedo scene to its original form, they could've easily deleted those extra frames after scanning in the o-neg (which would still be conformed to the '97 version).

Darth Id said:

Devin Faraci sed:

But in the Lucasfilm vaults there is a 4k remaster of the original trilogy that has been tweaked and changed from the latest release, and that 4k version has Han shooting first.

I have a baaaad feeling about this...

Even if it's another SE, I don't see that as cause for worry. IIRC, evidence came up at some point in the 70-page 4K thread for this transfer having been done back in 2009, when George was still in charge. Maybe he wasn't done tweaking it by 2011 so they used the '04 master. Maybe it's done now but Disney doesn't want to unveil a new 4k transfer in the form of a compressed, 1080p download, so they're using the blu-ray version once again.

Even if a 4k SE has been finalized, maybe Disney is simply saving it for later. Perhaps they've realized it won't sell without a restored OOT to go along with it, and so they're biding their time.

Our suspicions of this being a new version of the SE seem to have been semi-confirmed:

http://badassdigest.com/2015/04/09/how-did-i-screw-up-that-star-wars-story/

Ohhhhh....

http://badassdigest.com/2015/04/09/how-did-i-screw-up-that-star-wars-story/

Correction to what I said earlier: Apparently there were no tweaks made for this release. Content-wise it's 100% identical to the blu-rays, unless someone notices otherwise.

Devin's sources thought they were looking at the version for this digital release. What they were actually looking at was the 4k version we've been talking about since July in that other thread. That version does contain tweaks, and Han shoots first.

Hasn't the Han/Greedo shootout been messed with on each new release post-97 (both '04 and '11)?

Maybe they finally said "screw it, just put it back to the way it originally was."

EDIT: Wow, nevermind. Oh, well. Like moviefreakedmind said, that might've been a bad thing anyway (changing the more "annoying" things but still leaving the SE as the only version out there). I'm not surprised to hear there've been tweaks made for this release, though. I guess we'll start hearing what they are over the next couple days.

Han might shoot first in the digital version:

http://badassdigest.com/2015/04/09/the-digital-edition-of-star-wars-could-make-a-major-change/

generalfrevious said:

I feel like the last person alive who cares about saving the pre-97 trilogy. So to everyone else my rants are seen as nothing more than ridiculous, because no one else seems to care.

...I care...

But in all seriousness, I highly doubt that Disney would've bought the company without securing the rights to all versions of the films from George, in as much as Lucasfilm (not Fox) legally owns them. Now we can see they've worked out a deal with Fox to distribute the films digitally. It's the SE once again, yes, but if they were going to start selling the OOT there's no good reason they wouldn't wait until the next physical release to include it as a selling point.

Besides, as someone so eloquently phrased it in this thread, releasing a remastered OOT for the very first time in the form of a compressed download file would be the 2015 equivalent of the GOUT.

They're continuing the tradition with this digital release of using bonus materials as a selling point, continuing to keep the OOT in their back pocket. I'm now starting to doubt we'll see another release this year, if only because they'd be hurting their own sales of the just-released digital version. They may also be waiting to see how UHD ("4K") blu-ray shakes out before doing another physical release.

generalfrevious said:

They're just the SE being released digitally (I looked at the run times). This means that the SE is here to stay in the digital age. No way iTunes is going to release the original editions...

Yeah, but how much importance should we really treat that with?

The director's cut of Close Encounters is the only one on itunes despite all three versions being on the blu-ray.

doubleofive said:

This being pushed out this week gives me hope. Digital copies of the existing Blu's are no big deal, and Disney/LFL apparently knows this. So if they were going to announce something at Celebration, it won't be a giant countdown to who cares, because it's already out.

On the other hand, if they were going to announce an OOT blu-ray at Celebration then why would they wait until barely a week earlier to put out the digital release?

"What's that? Star Wars is out on iTunes now? I think I'll "buy" it. Wait, what's this? There's a new blu-ray coming out later this year with the unaltered versions? Nevermind, I think I'll save my itunes money."

Disney would really be shooting themselves in the foot business-wise by announcing it now. I'd love to be wrong, though.

Honestly, I don't see how they can get through the convention without at least addressing the issue of the OOT's unavailability.

Well, if they are secretly planning a grand announcement of a restored OOT, I'm guessing they're gonna wait until at least the second day of the convention. Apparently JJ and Kathleen are debuting the new TFA trailer the morning of the 16th. 

Funny how all of those grievances are directed at Disney.

Where were they when George said years ago in interviews that none of it counted?

Lucasfilm said from the Thrawn books onward that this was the official continuation of the story, and they were apparently lying the entire time.