Fang Zei

What they could've done, if they had so desired, is simply set Episode 7 at wherever and whenever they were up to in the novels. It would've certainly been possible. The only real problem would've been Chewie's absence, but even that could be communicated to the layman audience with a moment of Han looking at his photograph or something. But they literally could've gotten away with just not bringing up whatever's happened in the 30-40 years since RotJ. It's not like previous stuff hasn't "ignored" what came before. They could've simply "ignored" once more, but instead decided to jettison everything George didn't have a direct involvement with.

I disagree that "the old EU was never considered canon." Everything from Zahn onwards was certainly considered canon. As I recall, it wasn't until 2008 clone wars that the idea of the different "levels" of canon was introduced. That show set such a giant precedent of overwriting EU it was covering the same ground as (in this case the previous clone wars stuff from 2002-2005).

It actually had nothing to do with that. Mark Webb bailed on his two-picture deal with Fox after 500 Days of Summer and so Columbia agreed to slap that X-Men scene at the end as recompense.

This is kinda random, but one of the HBO channels was just now showing The Abyss in actual HD. I'm dog sitting for my grandfather's caretaker this week while they're with my aunt and uncle at their beach place. I checked to see if they were subscribed to HBO and just happened to notice The Abyss in the lineup thinking it would just be the usual 4:3 SD master upscaled, but nope, much to my surprise it was actual hd and 2.35:1. To my knowledge there's no previous hd transfer of the movie, which means this is undoubtedly the one RMW worked on that will be used for the blu-ray.

I must say it looks great. It's got all the staples of a modern 4k/2k transfer with lots of fine detail muddied only by the broadcast compression. There's a very slight teal push but it's nothing egregious and all of the other colors are still there.

If I could watch the OOT like this I'd be thrilled.

Maybe that's exactly why the prequels haven't been released individually: They know Eps I and II wouldn't sell nearly as well as III.

I'm the crazy guy who would buy all six films on blu-ray if the theatrical cuts were included. The blu-ray of RotS already is the theatrical cut if I'm not mistaken.

I've seen several movies projected digitally in theaters over the last couple years that I could've sworn were shot on film and weren't. Digital's capabilities are now close enough to film's for many of the directors and cinematographers out there. Certainly it's become hard to tell the difference as far as 35mm goes.

It's the things Abrams and Nolan and Tarantino are doing with film that can't be done digitally, like shooting in 65mm. Yes, there is currently a 65mm-sized Phantom camera that Imax uses, but it's only 4k and still not nearly as big as real 15/70.

yoda-sama said:

And no, Fox would not be the right place to ask, as they would never spend the money to restore a property that will be handed off in a few years, at this point it is up to Disney/Lucasfilm to fit the bill for any new transfers and then tell Fox how high to jump.

It also isn't up to Fox what gets released (and when) in the first place. That's entirely up to Lucasfilm. I bet an email back from Fox would read "Are you kidding? We'd love to put out the original versions if only they'd let us!"

I'm assuming that the 2013 bd/dvd trilogy combo packs were something Fox was simply within its rights to reissue. Technically there's nothing on those discs that wasn't in the 2011 set. Yeah, it's the first time the 2011 versions were on dvd, but that's splitting hairs.

For some reason, the fact that the movies haven't been released individually on blu-ray gets my hopes up. It could mean that we might eventually get the blu-ray equivalent of the 2006 release, only done right this time.

I guess this means we can expect Rian Johnson's Episode VIII to be shot on film as well.

AntcuFaalb said:

Fang Zei said:

The Spike tv deal expires this year

When?

It was a six-year deal and the first airing was Spring of 2008, so it might've already expired for all we know.

I remember the USA Network and SciFi Channel airings pretty vividly as well. They were also some of my earliest exposures to the films (I turned 9 in June of '94). 

I still remember the bumpers at the end of the USA commercial breaks. It would just be several seconds of footage from a scene with the announcer guy going "we now return to" whichever movie. When they came back from the final commercial break for Jedi, the announcer guy would add "and may the force be with you."

For the letterboxed SciFi Channel airings, I still remember how the bumpers for Empire's commercial breaks would be Billy Dee Williams walking out into a room filled with the miniatures from the movies (iirc) and sharing bits of trivia like how the Executor model had however many thousand light panels. I distinctly remember he pronounced it like you pronounce "execute" and not "executive." They did something similar with Takei and Koenig for the Trek movies, which is how I first heard the story about the Starfleet Academy movie that never was.

Good point about Netflix and 4k. I hadn't even thought of that. They were making a big deal about how you can stream House of Cards in 4k with the right equipment, even though that's 4k at bitrates below even blu-ray, but I digress.

The Spike tv deal expires this year, if I'm not mistaken, so the timing of this would make even more sense.

Ah, Black Angel is the movie I was trying to remember the name of.

Here's my best guess at what's going on:

This rumored digital release in November will probably be the 2011 versions of the movies and nothing more. The big deal about it that LFL/Disney will probably make in the advertising is that this is the first time these movies have been made available to buy/rent as a digital download (which, to my knowledge, would be true). Maybe they'll throw in some itunes extras as an added bonus. We already heard Roger Christian say that his movie (forgot the name of it) might be included in said digital extras.

Meanwhile, we know pretty much for a fact that Reliance MediaWorks has done a 4k remaster of the OT. The comparison of the Obi-Wan/Vader duel with other transfers of the movie seems to indicate these are not the unaltered sabers. Since the sabers were still unaltered in the '97 version, this would suggest that at least some of the '04/'11 changes are in fact being redone. My best guess is that this was to be (and might still be) for the 3D conversion and theatrical re-release of the revised OT, an "SE 2.0" if you will.

Good God!

Nice going, Neverar!

Heh, I was actually gonna ask if someone could look up that shot on the blu-ray but I wasn't expecting such a perfectly lined-up comparison.

Darth Id said:

I certainly hope they're not doing a new sound mix for a purported "OUT".

More likely taking footage for a demonstrative special feature for Episode VII that will compare/contrast OT and ST techniques/technology.

This early?

I'd say this is either for a new SE or they're getting the audio just right for the OOT.

Or could they just be tweaking the existing 2011 audio for this rumored digital release?

Speaking of which, if the digital release is in November it would make sense that we haven't heard an official announcement just yet.

It's Comic Con.

They were probably just showing it just to have something to show on the big projectors in the background while everyone partied it up on the convention floor.

That's why I'm wondering if they were even cleaned up at all and not just the masters used for the '04 bonus disc.

He has to mean restored trailers. We would've definitely heard something within seconds if was an announcement of a restored original trilogy.

Harmy said:

All those 4K remasters I mentioned are also the same old versions already released on BD before. When Blade Runner was released, nobody cared about 4K, heck, most normal buyers wouldn't even have known what 4K was, now, even the average Joe knows what 4K is, as they are creating a big hype around it.

I only brought up Blade Runner to highlight yet another hypothetical comparison, where the final version gets a 4K DI from the o-neg while the older versions get a 2k transfer from an IP but still look great in HD.

Even if they marketed it as "mastered in 4k" it would still be just another SE and, more importantly, still a regular blu-ray.

Remember, Blade Runner's final cut was mastered in 4k and you didn't see that anywhere on the packaging.

The only thing I could see this new transfer selling on home video would be a 3D blu but again, who cares? There's an extremely small market for that.

No, they need to restore the OOT if they want a selling point for another blu-ray release.

Another thing to consider is that the movies have yet to be released individually on blu-ray.

hairy_hen said:

Given that anything they put out will make lots of money simply by having the name 'Star Wars' on it, regardless of whether or not it's any good, the likelihood of them bothering becomes vanishingly small.

But what do they have left to sell? Another SE? Everyone who was ever gonna buy any version of the SE has that already. The unaltereds' absence from the 2011 blu-ray did not go unnoticed or uncriticized, not by the media and not by the fans. The SE is probably the most notorious and well-known alternate version of a movie, ever. To a pretty big chunk of the audience, the ones above a certain age anyway, there's the true OOT and then there's the SE.

The o-neg, in its current conformation, is still 85 to 90 percent of the OOT. With today's digital technology it would be relatively straightforward to use a new scan as a starting point and then just scan in the missing pieces and put it all together.

Minority Report was scanned in at 6k and finished at 4k for its 2009 remaster. Since it was shot in 2001 (for a 2002 release) in Super 35, it probably had that much "resolution" on the neg to work with.

They did the same thing for Raiders in 2012.

Since we know that this RMW job was done at 4k, it could very likely be from a 6k "oversampling" scan of the o-neg as well.

gizzy2000 said:

Fang Zei said:

Right, but also I was thinking about how '97 was the last time we got any kind of re-release coinciding with an anniversary. They don't seem to care about that kind of thing anymore when it comes to re-releases of the actual movies.

 That's true, there was no 30th anniversary thing either. Plus, I bet the only reason we got 20th anniversary stuff was because GL wanted to use it as a gimmick to sell the SE. Hopefully we'll get the OUT before Episode VII, by 2015 we'll be overdo for an SW re-release.  Seriously I can't remember the last time we went more than 4 or 5 years without a release of the OT, it was even more often when leading up to the PT. We got the OT released in '95, then the SE in '97, and then another SE in 2000 with the only difference being that Episode IV, V, and VI were added to the box art.

Yup. The SE was originally gonna happen in '96 and Episode I in '97 for the 20th, but when George realized Episode I was gonna take a lot longer he pushed that back to '99, pushed the SE to '97 and they came up with Shadows of the Empire to have something big in '96.

Now we're getting Episode 7 in ..... 2015.

gizzy2000 said:

Yes Star Trek was very half-assed. And I think you're right about the lead up to Episode VII, and I doubt Disney would muck it up like the GOUT. They'll at least make it look acceptable in HD. I always said that if George ever released the OUT again, it would've been the 40th anniversary/20th anniversary of the SE. I sometimes forget he's not in charge anymore

Right, but also I was thinking about how '97 was the last time we got any kind of re-release coinciding with an anniversary. They don't seem to care about that kind of thing anymore when it comes to re-releases of the actual movies.