Fang Zei

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.

Somehow I completely missed that article from October.

It certainly doesn't gel with the stories we've heard about Abrams going in a completely different direction from Arndt's screenplay.

Maybe there were just certain beats Episode VII's script had to hit?

skyjedi2005 said:

Star Wars changed how films were made and marketed and i love the movie to pieces but it not the most important American film ever made.

Hardly surprising it was supposedly so because Abc is owned by Disney.

No bias there.

It wasn't "most important," just their list of the 15 "most influential" movies. Sixteen Candles made the list for Christ's sake.

I watched it.

Unsurprisingly, Star Wars was #1 on their list of the most influential movies. Of course ABC's parent corporation couldn't pass up the chance to get in a shameless plug for The Force Awakens. It was interesting seeing footage from the two movies intercut, albeit cropped to fill the 16:9 tv frame.

Forgot to pay attention to this, but I don't remember noticing any obvious-to-the-layman SE shots aside from the Alderaan and Death Star explosions. It seemed like they were focusing more on character and dialogue anyway, but it's nice they at least tried keeping it to what people actually saw in 1977.

Pretty sure it was the existing Lowry transfer.

The interview clips with Ford were interesting. I don't think I'd ever heard about him telling George "move your lips as you type, it might make it easier for us somewhere down the line." Unless that was just his cleaned-up-for-tv version of the "you can write this shit, George, but you can't say it" story.

After re-reading the stories, my reaction feels a bit premature.

It could be that they're merely putting the movies up for sale on iTunes (or something) in May, well in advance of a potential new blu-ray in September.

If this rumor is true, it should be very interesting to see if the download version is the same old Lowry transfer yet again or if this will be the debut of the newer 4k master.

Every time I hear another rumor about this "digital release," I get more and more concerned that Disney might try bi-passing Star Wars on physical media altogether and only sell the OOT as a download and/or stream from now until eternity.

As that dude from Wired magazine said back in September of '06 during the GOUT debacle:

"They're not going to make the fans happy because the happy fan has everything he or she needs."

I would love to be wrong about that, but these rumors don't inspire much confidence.

That's not really the point of 4k, though.

Upscaling a 1080p signal to 4k won't substantially improve how it looks, just as upscaling a dvd to 1080p won't magically make it look like a blu-ray.

moviefreakedmind said:

Fang Zei said:

I think the '97 version has a better chance of being included than the '04 version (or the '11 version for that matter).

We don't know the details on this 4k transfer, but the evidence points to it being the SE. Presumably, it's the "final" SE and maybe also the basis for the 3D conversions if they are in fact in the works.

If that's the case, then the earlier '11 and '04 versions would be rendered kind of redundant. The 2015 version will probably just redo most of those changes and might even add a few more crazy changes on top of that. Some of the '04/'11 changes could even be reversed. Lets not forget that one shot of the truck going over the cliff in Raiders that was redone digitally for a tv broadcast only to go back to the way it was for the blu-ray.

There's been a lot of discussion here about how "Disney isn't beholden to George's wishes, they bought his company for $4 billion, etc," but I don't think we're going to see a restored OOT release that doesn't also include the "final" version in just as nicely a restored condition, at least not while George is alive and his friend Kathleen Kennedy is in charge.

Also, we can't discount the number of SE fans out there. Y'know, the tfners foaming at the mouth for even more changes with each new release.

The most likely scenario, if we do in fact get the OOT on blu-ray this year, is a two-disc set for each movie with the 2015 version on the first disc and the unaltered on the second.

A more-than-reasonable idea for a "collector's set" would go like this:

Disc 1: The Final Cut

Disc 2: The Special Edition

Disc 3: The Original Version

 I agree that the 97's have more chances of seeing the light than the 04 versions, but I still would be shocked to the point of having a heart attack if they ever actually released anything but the originals and the recent version. I also would bet money that they'll never make any new changes ever again either, unless it's just recompositing or something along those lines because any more changes would piss off the entire fan base because it "disrespects" Lucas' "vision" and it's changing the movies more which pisses off everyone else. 

Something I forgot to make clear in my post:

The "2015" version, presumably from RMW's 4k restoration, would also presumably be finalized with GL's approval.

Danfun128 said:

Heres to hoping for a semi specialized release with updated cgi...

Not that it makes any difference to me (it's the SE), but it would be nice if they finally got cg Jabba looking right. I actually like the way he looks in the '97 version. Their attempt to redo him to fit with the TPM model only made it look worse.

There are also some pretty huge vfx mistakes still visible in the '04 version, changes I'm assuming weren't fixed for the blu-ray. The big one I'm thinking of is the fleet of ships in the background rolling with the camera during the Endor space battle. They were able to fix mistakes like tie fighters and cloud cars appearing in front of the Falcon instead of behind it. Maybe they couldn't fix the fleet shot because it involved rotating an otherwise static element?

I think the '97 version has a better chance of being included than the '04 version (or the '11 version for that matter).

We don't know the details on this 4k transfer, but the evidence points to it being the SE. Presumably, it's the "final" SE and maybe also the basis for the 3D conversions if they are in fact in the works.

If that's the case, then the earlier '11 and '04 versions would be rendered kind of redundant. The 2015 version will probably just redo most of those changes and might even add a few more crazy changes on top of that. Some of the '04/'11 changes could even be reversed. Lets not forget that one shot of the truck going over the cliff in Raiders that was redone digitally for a tv broadcast only to go back to the way it was for the blu-ray.

There's been a lot of discussion here about how "Disney isn't beholden to George's wishes, they bought his company for $4 billion, etc," but I don't think we're going to see a restored OOT release that doesn't also include the "final" version in just as nicely a restored condition, at least not while George is alive and his friend Kathleen Kennedy is in charge.

Also, we can't discount the number of SE fans out there. Y'know, the tfners foaming at the mouth for even more changes with each new release.

The most likely scenario, if we do in fact get the OOT on blu-ray this year, is a two-disc set for each movie with the 2015 version on the first disc and the unaltered on the second.

A more-than-reasonable idea for a "collector's set" would go like this:

Disc 1: The Final Cut

Disc 2: The Special Edition

Disc 3: The Original Version

skyjedi2005 said:

The blu ray set made tons of money and the boycott did not work.

... which somehow means they're done making money off of these movies? I don't follow the logic here.

towne32 said:

 Although I would only care about .2% as much as an UOT release

 99.999999% of the populace wouldn't even care at all, which is exactly why - short of another reissue of the 2011 discs - the OT will not see another blu-ray release unless it includes the unaltereds.

Lucasfilm literally has no other selling points left.

That doesn't mean such a release couldn't also include a new 4k-sourced transfer of the SE (in fact, I would hope it did if they're gonna force me to buy the SE yet again), but it definitely wouldn't be marketed around anything other than the inclusion of the unaltered versions.

XWing4492 said:

It's odd though because 9/21/2015 is a Monday, and I'm under the impression new releases come out on Tuesdays, though there's no reason they couldn't come out on a Monday...

 Midnight Madness Maybe?

I really wouldn't be surprised if they re-release all six films theatrically in 3D in September as part of the build-up to Episode VII. Maybe they're not done converting the OT yet but they'll use this occasion to make the grand announcement?

At the very least, I could see them doing all-day marathon screenings in theaters leading up to the midnight release just like Marvel did for The Avengers.

A random thought I had the other day:

Lucasfilm always made sure to time their dvd releases of the movies with a video game. The '04 OT set hit the same day as Battlefront. RotS dvd hit the same day as Battlefront II. The GOUT's release was the same day as one of the Lego Star Wars games.

Anyway, we know the new Battlefront game is releasing by the end of this year. It would make sense for them to schedule some kind of blu-ray release for the same day.

Smithers said:

 

Considering George Lucas made a point of mentioning the amount of money it would cost to restore the OT, and that being the reason for him not doing it, outside of the fact he says they no longer exist, ............ no.

:)

 I don't understand this reply... are you joking around or what? Money is no object when George Lucas wants something (CGI was pretty expensive stuff in the late 90's) and they DO exist because... Harmy put together a complete theatrical release of the original films and has way less than half the material that George Lucas had to make it. And... what does this have to do with the thread anyway? 

Jetrell was just being facetious.

George notoriously said back in 2011 that the unaltered versions would be too expensive to restore. We all knew that was total BS, of course. As you said, money was no object.

Yeah, pretty hard for me to justify spending $100 on 1993-quality transfers in 2015.

I vote for just getting ahold of Harmy's version like Frink suggested.