TK-949 said:
Just 15 to 18 days until the official announcement that the OOT will be released.
It's what we're all thinking, right?
Apparently both Gareth Edwards and Josh Trank will be there.
pittrek said:
What are the 2011 Blurays?
Something like : Original negatives -> 1995 scan -> SE digital version -> 1997 SE prints -> 1080p scan with colour "correction" -> Lowry "restoration" -> 1080p DVD master -> more stupid digital changes -> 2011 Bluray master
So yes, the BDs are done from an early century 1080p scans of SE masters, but no, they didn't do it because "original negatives are nowhere to be found" but simply because GL for some reason considered the old horrible looking scans to be "good enough" and didn't want to spend money for doing it correctly.
Even if the rumours that the original negatives were modified to contain 1997 SE material (which I doubt, I simply refuse to believe they were THAT stupid), they still have finished prints of the original theatrical editions (including some Technicolor prints if I remember correctly). Even scanning these prints would be "good enough" for most of us
I think it's been documented that the o-neg was in fact re-conformed for the SE. That is why they were able to just scan it in '04 and all the '97 changes were already there. If you look closely, you can still see some filmic anamolies in the cgi shots from '97, even after Lowry's cleanup job. This leads me to believe that the filmed-out negative is the best surviving source for the '97 cg shots and that the final 2k renders were not saved on hard drives at ILM or Lucasfilm.
Well said, msycamore.
The quote in your sig only drives the point home.
Do we really think, even for a moment, that she actually wanted to type those words as part of the form reponse letter?
While we're once again on the subject of THX-1138, I continue to wonder if there is anything legally barring WB from releasing the original version, ditto Universal with American Graffiti.
towne32 said:
Harmy said:
Well, that's what I've been saying from the beginning - that I'm afraid they'll release some bastardized "close enough" version of the OOT and then when we once again complain, everyone will call us petty fanboys who are never satisfied, like with the GOUT.
Even a disappointing release will be a fantastic source for projects like yours. Little to no rotoscoping, no low res elements, no issues with 35mm color and fade. Although neg1's RotJ prints seem damn near good enough.
When comparing SW restoration to the love and attention *some* other major films get, much time has been spent discussing the limitations of restoring the original film. The negatives and elements are obviously in a sorry state. But as far as ESB and Jedi go, is there any reason they can't perform restoration as good as, for instance, Jaws? There is no such thing as flawless, and as stated above, there will always be complaints. They'll have to make decisions that can never please everybody. But a professional quality release should actually be possible for those two, right?
Robert A. Harris has said otherwise re: Star Wars '77.
If I remember correctly, he commented on the home theater forum around the time of the blu-ray release that all of the assets/elements for these movies are "well-protected" and that there is no need for concern.
Clive Revill making an appearance?
Shaw Anakin pins being sold?
I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but it's hard to not take this as some kind of sign....
Anything short of the best treatment possible is pretty much inexcusible, isn't it?
I mean, Paramount spent quite a bit of money (more than a million dollars, I think) restoring The Godfather movies at Spielberg's behest, and the go-to authority on these things, Robert A. Harris, was consulted.
When we consider the fact that the first Star Wars alone made over a billion dollars after inflation, by that measure the second highest grossing movie of all time after Gone With the Wind, "close enough" of a restoration job certainly doesn't cut it.
Lucasfilm is under a larger corporate umbrella now, just like Paramount. I would like to think Disney doesn't see money as an object when it comes to proper preservation of these films.
Danfun128 said:
moviefreakedmind said:
Fang Zei said:
The convention in Anaheim is just a few weeks away. There will doubtlessly be a lot of people there wondering the same thing we are. Disney/Lucasfilm can't expect it to go by without at least saying something about it. It's been almost two and a half years since the buyout and they haven't said a word. The elephant in the room has become too big to ignore.
This is why i think that we'll get some sort of quality presentation of the OOT on blu ray, maybe not a restoration on the same scale as 1997, but at least a transfer on par with most acceptable blu rays released today.
In other words, a fresh transfer...by Lowry.
That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. It depends on whether Reliance Media Works (who bought-out Lowry) still uses the old Lowry's restoration methods.
He smiles and gives a coy response of "y'know, that's a pretty good idea," implying that that's exactly what they're planning but can't say anything about it yet.
The convention in Anaheim is just a few weeks away. There will doubtlessly be a lot of people there wondering the same thing we are. Disney/Lucasfilm can't expect it to go by without at least saying something about it. It's been almost two and a half years since the buyout and they haven't said a word. The elephant in the room has become too big to ignore.
Was something like this used on the pre-2010 episodes of The Simpsons for the fxx version? Granted, they also cropped and stretched them, but they definitely used some sort of super-duper upscaling algorithm to make new transfers out of the existing ones in lieu of an actual fresh hd scan of the original elements.
Speaking of the prequels, Bill Hunt theorized in his review of the bd set that something like this might come along to do a deep analysis "guess and render" for a new 4k version. It's already been almost four years since then.
I don't know why some no-name website I've never heard of would just randomly post about about some other site's news from months ago.
Aside from whoring for hits, of course.
Cthulhunicron said:
I saw this article linked from some other article that had a date of 3/13/15.
Would you mind posting that?
I'm actually curious why they felt the need to link a months-old story in their article.
4K is chump change compared to the 6K that House of Cards' third season was finished in.
http://nofilmschool.com/2015/03/netflix-house-cards-shot-post-6k-red-epic-dragon
If I had to guess, I would say that depicting the battle referenced in the opening crawl of Star Wars '77 is this movie's entire raison d'être. It could function as a direct prequel to the OT.
Baronlando said:
It will be cool to read the really in-depth, behind the scenes dirt on this period. Some articles out there have mentioned a big power struggle between JJ Abrams (who wanted Bad Robot to steer the ship for all these sequels and spinoffs) and the Disney/Lucasfilm side of things, with Abrams losing.
In the meantime I'm weirdly fascinated by the different reactions out there, especially my favorite crackpot blog, the Prequel Appreciation Society, rejecting the spinoff because the writers didn't pass the Star Wars purity test (they said mean things about the prequels).
Speaking of the "purity test," wasn't Rian Johnson pretty outspoken about the SE's?
skyjedi2005 said:
I just hope all the new films, spin offs included are not hastily thrown together rush jobs.
All the other films took 3 years each to produce.
Maybe its possible since Disney has enough money and a huge studio that Lucas did not have.
I almost don't buy that though since Lucas was and is worth billions.
All I can think is that we've gotten two big announcements on the same day and we're only a month away from Celebration Anaheim.
Could they be getting this news out of the way now because they're saving the really big news (OOT on blu-ray) for the convention???
SilverWook said:
It's possible they had the bare bones of a time travel story, and just lacked a good reason for them to go back to 1986. Or at least a reason not done before on the series.
There also might have been budgetary reasons to do a movie mostly set in the present.
I wonder if a Gary Seven cameo was ever thought about?
It's been so long, that I don't know if talk of Kirk and company becoming an intergalactic version of The A Team, was a real thing, or just a joke that was going around. Ditto the Eddie Murphy rumor.
The Eddie Murphy rumor was real. He's a huge fan in real life. Koenig and Takei mentioned it during one of the commercial bumpers when Sci-Fi channel aired the movies back in the 90's. Eddie Murphy made The Golden Child instead and then wished he hadn't after it flopped. The role he would've played, a UFO nut who spots the Bird-of-Prey, became the whale biologist character in the finished draft of the script.
Never heard this A Team rumor before, but that sounds awesome!
Basically, what I'm wondering is if there were other story ideas considered aside from time travel, if that was always the basic plan or if the success of Back to the Future only a year later had anything to do with it.
I looked up Voyage Home on the Trek wiki and the only interesting thing I could find to this effect was that the comic books immediately following Search for Spock had the crew leave Vulcan in the Bird-of-Prey, only to be caught by the Excelsior. When the writers heard that the next film would find our heroes still on Vulcan, they had Spock come down with a virus so the crew could commandeer the bird-of-prey from the Excelsior's (apparently quite large) hangar bay and fly back to Vulcan for the cure. Thus the comics and movies could stay within the same continuity.
Speaking of which, I wonder if the time-traveling "save the whales" story was always what they had in mind for Star Trek IV. I've never heard anything otherwise, of course. All I can remember from the making-of retrospective on the dvd was that Nimoy wanted it to be about time traveling back to "now" and Harve Bennett came up with the plot device macguffin of the humpback whales.
Nimoy also mentions at the beginning of the commentary that there was a feeling of wanting to get away from the grimness of the previous two movies.
Growing up watching these movies on vhs I didn't really think about these things, but watching them again on dvd gave me a new perspective.
I can't help but wonder if it was always going to be a time-travel story or if there were other possibilities being considered in the days following Search for Spock's theatrical release in the summer of '84.
Something I'd like to see happen is Universal pulling the trigger on the second and third installments of the trilogy David Twohy and Vin Diesel had in mind when they made Chronicles of Riddick back in 2004. Yes, they did pull off another film with their own money a couple years ago (Universal just happened to end up being the U.S. distributor), but that was more of a smaller side-story. The ending of the director's cut pretty clearly sets up the premise for part 2, which they always said would be The Underverse.
Vin Diesel said something about having talked with the people in charge at the studio, and that they'd said it was still a possibility. Obviously the box office failure of Chronicles wouldn't inspire much confidence in signing more checks, but IIRC it was the dvd sales that eventually led to another film being made. Maybe they can make it happen if they keep the budget just low enough.
I figured this might happen. Alan Horn had said the later movies might return to a May release date.
Only half as much time between "Episodes," eh?
TheBoost said:
As a dude who read EVERY Clone Wars novel between Ep 2 and Ep 3, I'll be skipping these.
I want the film to feel fresh, exciting and magic. I don't need anything to get me ready.
+1
skyjedi2005 said:
Fang Zei said:
As for Dune, well, I'm surprised there hasn't been any talk of getting James McAvoy back for a God Emperor of Dune miniseries.
That won't happen they see him as Professor X now.
That's the least of their potential roadblocks, imo.
At the time of the Children of Dune miniseries he was a complete unknown. They needed a big name like Susan Sarandon to anchor everything around, just like with William Hurt in the first one.
It seems like such a natural choice to get James McAvoy back now that he's become a big star. This time, the big name in the cast would actually be playing the main character!
The producers of the two miniseries were trying to get another movie of the first book made several years ago. Paramount got a four-year option on it starting in 2007, with Peter Berg and then Pierre Morel attached to direct, but nothing ever happened.
Frank Herbert's grandson Byron Merritt is the moderator of the official Dune messageboards. Not long after Paramount's option expired, he mentioned that a big name production company (he couldn't say who's) wanted to make the first three books into a film trilogy. But that was already a couple years ago.
It's worth mentioning that Dino wanted David to come back and film the next two books, something which proved all but impossible after the first one flopped hard at the box office.
I kinda see that movie as the Ralph Bakshi LotR of Dune. I think it's gonna take someone as passionate about the material as Peter Jackson and his cohorts were about Tolkien for us to ever see another big screen adaptation.
The recent Jodorowsky's Dune documentary got the director of Waltz with Bashir thinking about a potential animated movie adaptation.
In the meantime, television has become a much more viable medium. With Syfy channel taking on bigger stuff like 3001 and Childhood's End, the Game of Thrones producers doing Red Mars as a series and Jonathan Nolan spearheading a Foundation series at HBO, it would seem like an ideal time to revisit Arrakis.
I'm not gonna lie, though. I'd much rather see this get the big budget, big screen redo like LotR had. But even with the right people it's gonna be tricky getting it made and getting it out there into theaters with a hundred different franchises already competing with each other.
On the other hand, we're potentially getting four whole movies made of Stephen King's The Stand, so I guess anything's possible....
Pretty funny reading back through this thread, considering some of the things that were going to happen but didn't (Buffy reboot, Dark Tower) and things people wanted to see that actually did (more direct adaptations of comic book storylines, 3001).
Then there's stuff like Hyperion, which Scorsese and DiCaprio were talking about years ago but nothing ever came of it. Last I heard was that Bradley Cooper (yup) was taking a crack at the script but that was a couple years ago.
As for Dune, well, I'm surprised there hasn't been any talk of getting James McAvoy back for a God Emperor of Dune miniseries.
I'd also like to see more original, not-based-on-anything movies as someone in the thread suggested.
I wouldn't take these production stills as any particular sign that the OOT is on its way. After all, there was plenty of bts footage in Empire of Dreams of stuff that had been thoroughly altered on the accompanying discs of the actual movies. The irony is no doubt lost on whatever interns posted these photos.
Yeah, but even if the SE ending still happened, that doesn't mean they weren't just a few little groups of rebel sympathizers put down the very next day by stormtroopers.