Fang Zei

There are several huge reasons why there will never be a better time than now to restore the unaltereds and get them out there, but the biggest reason imo is so they can heal the division in the fandom as lovelikewinter said. They need to finally put this matter to rest so they can move the **** on with the franchise.

Also, I just don't see a more appropriate time to release it after Episode VII. This isn't Tron: Legacy where they didn't want people to be reminded of the original movie. This is Star Wars we're talking about here, the most successful franchise of all time. Putting out the unaltereds on blu-ray so everyone can spin them up during the wait for Ep7 is a no-brainer.

Could they continue keeping it in their back pocket for later? I guess, but it would be a little awkward cross-promoting with the spin-offs and sequels.

Even from a more general standpoint I don't see the point of waiting. Physical media will only continue to lose its foothold, although I'll admit Star Wars is something people will probably always want a physical copy of. My nightmare scenario is Disney deciding to finally release a restored OOT ... but only as a download.

News of a 4k blu-ray format hitting the market by the end of next year has quelled those fears for now. It's a sign that physical media is sticking around for at least a little longer. I'm not gonna get my hopes quite this high up, but how epic it would be if Disney decided to put out this 4k restoration on 4k blu-ray day-and-date with a regular blu-ray.

SilverWook said:

The trilogy sets with the DVD combos came out just a year or two ago, IIRC?

Just over a year ago, and the initial release was two years before that.

Indeed it's a good question just how long and how many times Fox can re-release the existing discs.

Man, if the supply shortages at Amazon and elsewhere are due to the holidays, then there are a lot of unoriginal (pun intended) gift-buyers out there.

Good God, we can only hope so.

Welcome, XWing4492!

Synapse is a distribution label, not a post-production house like Reliance. He was probably only mentioning them in regards to that one title. The "super secret project" is most likely one of Synapse's titles and not anything having to do with Star Wars.

Even if there's no grand announcement by April, they're gonna have to say something at the convention. These OOT blu-ray rumors have become one gigantic elephant in the room.

It would help if we were given some kind of context for the fb post.

towne32 said:

Not really.

First of all, I think there's a good chance they will release it. If they don't, it will likely be due to the fact that they're unable to, rather than unwilling.

But even if Disney makes the decision to never release the unaltered trilogy, it has nothing to do with the people making VII, and it remains separate from my desire to see the new film. So far, I'm interested. That may change over the next year, who knows.

I'm not sure if you're proposing an actual boycott. The film is going to be massively successful, financially, either way. I can understand not buying a 'complete' blu ray set that includes the Special Editions, though. If you're interested in boycotts, I recall a very silly thread where people proposed buying and returning blu rays. Worth reading for a laugh.

These are pretty much my thoughts on the subject as well.

Buying the existing blu-ray is a much bigger and better example of making the wrong vote with your wallet, which is exactly why I never plan on doing so.

At this point, I would honestly be more surprised if a restored OOT wasn't on the shelves by this time next year.

Mike O said:

If they put it in a giant-ass boxed set which forces me to get the SEs and the PT, and I read that this forum that it is as it should be, I will pay almost any price for it. I won't like it, but this this is something I want badly enough to make the sacrifice.

See, I'm the guy who would gladly buy a set like that if it also included the theatrical prequels and the '97 version of the SE. But yeah, hand over fist if it was just the umpteenth revision of the movies that also included a nicely restored OOT.

As for what they could easily screw up, well, I could see them applying too much DNR if they go the route of using IP's and seps. Really that's just a concern that comes from being dissapointed so many times by catalog titles I was looking forward to on blu-ray. If the unaltereds actually get restored, I'm sure they would keep grain management to a minimum and not go beyond removing dirt and dust.

What will be much easier to screw up is stuff like including all the soundmixes and making sure the film edit conforms to a single version of the unaltered original that was actually shown in theaters.

I look forward to seeing the results. Thank you for undertaking this preservation project, RU.08!

The theatrical prequels are a bigger deal to me than they probably should be, but for better or worse they were "my generation's Star Wars" that we were able to experience for the first time on the big screen. The official dvd version is significantly removed from the highest-grossing film of 1999, the blu-ray even more so.

The stuff that was added for the dvd was probably finished at greater-than-dvd resolution, maybe even full 2k, but those scenes exhibit aliasing and other issues compared to the rest of the blu-ray.

Which night shots are you referring to?

Also, just to avoid confusion (and I'm sure you meant to type this), the air taxi sequence is on Coruscant, not Naboo.

I always liked the blown-out whites in those Theed shots. It gave a more realistic feel to what was going on, like it just happened to be a particularly bright day.

What about RotS?

Were there any differences at all between the 35mm and digital versions in theaters? We all remember the wipe that became a hard cut on the dvd and then went back to being a wipe on the blu-ray. Was it a wipe in both the celluloid and digital prints?

Not unlike the anecdote about the guy who swore the arena scene had different versions, I remember hearing people claim to have seen variations in stuff like the background droids of the Mustafar duel and the end of Vader's Nooooo / the following shot of the blockade runner landing on Naboo.

Baronlando said:

Maybe it's a good thing, it certainly shows they are willing to sell absolutely anything that can be sold. 

And hasn't Lucas spent years and millions of dollars trying to open a museum dedicated to the importance and significance of pop art? Maybe all the exhibits can be smeared with generic looking photoshop.

In the Episode 7 thread on the chud.com forums, two people were recently debating the likelihood of the OOT getting a restoration anytime soon.

One person said it's unlikely to happen while Lucas was still alive. Disney wouldn't want to upset their biggest shareholder and they'll be making too much money off of all the merch to even care about spending the time and money on a restoration just to please a relative handful of people out there.

The other person responded that Lucas was just paid a handsome sum of money in return for the franchise. Disney is going to maximize their profits, and the OOT would be very profitable. The question isn't "why should they," it's "why shouldn't they."

It's only becoming more and more shocking what they'll dig up and repackage with the OOT still languishing in laserdisc quality. First the deleted scenes and ancient BTS on the blu-ray, now this.

Y'know, if this 4k job was for the SE, I wonder how they would go about re-doing stuff like Ian as the Emperor's hologram and Hayden's head on Shaw's body.

Maybe they would just take those shots as they are and plug them right into the new version? The TPM blu-ray did the same thing with the lower-res added scenes from the dvd and, from what I heard, it still looked like that even in the theatrically-released 3D version.

What's causing the higher, more blue-ish color temperature in the 35mm scan? Is this simply a result of the age of the print?

The extended garage scene wasn't in the digital version either AFAIK. The alternate shot of Anakin's hand was the only difference I remember hearing about during the summer of '02.

There was one person who swore the beginning of the Arena scene (when they first bring out the monsters and Padme picks the lock) had slightly different editing at different theaters, but who knows?

I remember reading an interview with one of the vfx guys on the official website claiming there were actually several dozen alterations (such as the speeders in that Obi-Wan shot) in the dvd version.

Do bootlegs exist of both the 35mm and digital versions or do we only have one of them?

Harmy and Ryan McAvoy, what format did you see it in? 2D, 3D or hfr 3D?

They seem to be basing that claim off of pure presumption.

CGI looks pretty good now, as Abrams himself showed in Star Trek '09. The shaky-cam in the Falcon shot kind of reminded me of the imperfections in the miniature shots in the OT.

CG Jabba in the movies from '99 onward is like a bad game of telephone.

TPM Jabba looks kind of like ROTJ Jabba and '04 Jabba kind of looks like TPM Jabba.

The funny thing is that I still prefer cartoony-looking '97 Jabba to the '04/'11 version.

There are so many different scenarios that could happen. One big factor in all of this is Abrams and his nostalgic sensibilities. When it comes to an OT re-release I'm sure Disney/LFL have the final say in what happens and what doesn't, but this retro trading card stunt with the names of the characters is seriously making me wonder what their current thoughts are on the revised version of the true originals.

walking_carpet said:

hearing about stuff like this makes me more resigned that they will only show the SE versions of the OT next year when promoting TFA.

and since the rumors are leaning towards the Empire still running the show in this GFFA, they probably should do another version of ROTJ that removes the planet celebration montage...since apparently nothing was really accomplished.

 

i dunno...just sell us the damn OOT

When you say "show the SE" I'm assuming you're referring to a theatrical re-release?

To be fair, I never expected them to do a wide theatrical re-release of an OOT restoration, not in a million years. That would be great, don't get me wrong, but my hopes were never set that high. A wide re-release would be the SE version. It just lends itself to 3D conversion way more than the unaltereds. Like I said in another thread, that shot of cg Sni Snootles has been calling out for the 3D treatment since 1997! The irony is that we just last year got a 3D theatrical re-release of The Wizard of Oz, a movie that's not only way older than the original Star Wars but also almost completely unaltered!

I once had this idea that they could simultaneously re-release the SE in theaters in 3D at the multiplexes and make the bulk of their $$$$ that way, but also put out the restored OOT at the repertoire movie houses. Again, this was just a nice thought I had, something I knew (and still know) will probably never happen. Doing something like that would place both versions on equal footing, and we've seen in other examples that the most recent version of a movie tends to take priority. Disney might be in charge now, but George put his good friend Kathleen Kennedy in charge of Lucasfilm. I doubt she would want to totally reverse his policies and bury the SE while bringing back the originals. Spielberg did exactly that with E.T., but he's the director. I don't see George endorsing such a move with Star Wars.

So yeah, I don't think they'll put the restored unaltereds back in theaters. I'd love to be wrong, though.

Baronlando said:

Like the vintage trading cards as a way to reveal the names. Every time they pander to my old ass with nostalgia it completely works, I'm such an easy mark. (And gives hope to getting the originals out).

It made me feel the same way. I can't help but wonder if this was JJ's idea or if it was simply thought up by someone at Lucasfilm/Disney. Either way, it had to be ok'd by corporate before making its way to EW.

Man, I really hope they've been secretly restoring the OOT and are just keeping an extra-tight lid on it.

darklordoftech said:

Movie studios are always finding excuses to rescan and remaster. We won't be dealing with those 04 scans for much longer.

Like I said earlier, there are now much newer transfers of Willow and the Indy films than there are of Star Wars. Lowry's 2004 clean-up of the OT and 2003 clean-up of the Indy trilogy were impressive at the time, at least in terms of the clarity it brought out in those films, but LFL/Paramount/Spielberg still realized it wasn't good enough for Indy and I bet Disney realizes it's not good enough for Star Wars.

The Spike tv broadcasts have run their course, and maybe Disney is deciding whether they should start showing the movies on one of their tv channels or put them up on itunes or netflix.

As of now, there will be a 4k blu-ray format available by this time next year.

I've been in DC itself for the past couple years now (grew up in Falls Church, VA).

Yeah, Disney's never tried to alter their movies SE style. The Tron blu-Ray has one curious change where they added a tron-like border at the top and bottom of the frame in this one stationary shot of the actors. In a screenshot comparison with an older hd broadcast, the framing of all the shots in the movie lines up perfectly with the blu-Ray, but in that one shot the broadcast looks slightly zoomed-in. A couple years ago I saw a 70mm print of Tron that would've been made in the late 90's / early 00's and I actually noticed a splicing jump at the beginning of that shot.

My guess is there was something visible at the edges of the frame and they optically zoomed in just for that one shot. For the blu-Ray, they must've decided for whatever reason to just hide it with these polygon shapes.