Fang Zei

EDIT:

Sorry, wrong forum. It's been so long since I've dipped into either of the other Star Wars subforums that I neglected to check them out fully before I wrote this long-ass post.

I would just like to say, though, that I hope George really did sign away everything to Disney, including the rights to any and all versions of the movies.

We'll find out sooner or later.

Hey, it's me. said:

imperialscum said:

Well Disney will sure make it as good as possible. But that "good" is defined by today's mainstream expectations (which does not reflect mine).

I could be wrong. Maybe the films will be good after all.

I understand your doubts. But JJ aside, the likes of Arndt, Kasdan, Kinberg et al are reasons for optimism. And they're all massive fans. As for JJ? he will probably get the best script and screenplay he's ever had to work with from Arndt. It's going to be interesting to see what he does with it.

Ep7 will (hopefully) be JJ making a 1977 Lucas movie in the same way Super 8 was JJ making a 1977 Spielberg movie. I haven't rewatched it since the theater, but I'll have to do so one of these days. The trailer was on a blu-ray I was watching the other day. Some of the shots really jumped out at me as "wow, those literally look like they could've been straight out of Close Encounters."

If he can do the same thing with Ep7 (simply replace "Close Encounters" with "Star Wars '77"), we'll be in good shape.

It's a foregone conclusion Paramount will put one out in 2016 for the big Five-Oh. With Ep7 likely hitting in May of 2015, Abrams could conceivably come back to direct Trek 3 in time for a November/December 2016 release.

Oh, and Chewie's dead. Mayhew got his chance to come back in ROTS.

Like I've said again and again regarding all the post-Jedi continuity: it's one thing to ignore, but it's another thing to pretend it never happened.

I could see Han and Leia playing similar roles to Sarek and Amanda in Star Trek '09. They'll be more than mere cameos, but probably still relegated to the background.

Oooo, maybe Abrams will unexpectedly kill off Leia!

CO said:

I really don't see what the big deal about their age is as long as they play their respective ages in the movies.  Now if they were setting Episode VII five years after ROTJ and they were trying to pull of Han, Luke, and Leia in their 30's, then I would understand everyone's anger.  But it sounds like Episode VII will take place 30-40 years after ROTJ, and Han, Luke, and Leia will all be in their 60/70's, so it won't look ridiculous at all on screen. 

 

Exactly.

In the novels, 45 years have now passed since the events of ANH. When Ep7 starts filming next year, 38 years will have passed since the start of principal photography on Star Wars. Hamill and Ford were both playing characters six years younger than their respective ages. So, the ages of Han and Luke are probably synced up to their actors now.

Nineteen-year-old Carrie was playing a nineteen-year-old Leia in '76. She now looks older than she is? Doesn't matter, Leia's gonna be older than she is anyway!

I kinda hope they're not the main characters anyway. Part of me wants to think Abrams - whether or not Kennedy even had this in mind when hiring him - is gonna introduce us to a whole new cast of characters just as he did in Star Trek. Yes, I know what you're thinking, "but, those characters in Star Trek already existed." Yeah, but the way JJ pulled it off made it feel like we were meeting them again for the first time.

Sure, it's a little more of a challenge to introduce characters no one's ever met before, but I would absolutely love it if halfway through the movie our protagonist is saved by a mysterious, cloaked figure who is then revealed to be Luke Skywalker. Yeah, I'm just theorizing, and all of this ultimately depends on Arndt's script, but it's fun to speculate....

Young twenty-something and late twenty-something guys says to me "an attempt to recreate the dynamic between Luke and Han," but who knows? I could totally see a Luke/Biggs dynamic playing out between the two late-teens female characters (again, this is going off of nothing but an ultra-vague casting call).

Still plenty of unknown factors, though.

Lucasfilm confirmed it's real, but maybe only some (or none) of these roles are main characters.

Davnes007 said:

What Disney could do is to tell 20th C. Fox that if they don't sell back the distribution rights of the saga, they simply won't allow any releases of any (6) Star Wars movies until after 2020. Simple.

 

And...why do some people still say Fox owns Episode IV?

Hmmm, quite true, hadn't thought of that. Good point.

Oh, and I just meant the distribution rights. By this point, we all know about Fox's gifting of Star Wars 77's rights to Lucas in exchange for distribution on the PT. It's just that Fox still owns distribution on Star Wars 77 in perpetuity. I'm guessing Lucas' lawyers couldn't work this out back in the mid-90's???

doubleofive said:

 

Fang Zei said:

With Episode VII, I would think Disney would do the same thing and just open with the Lucasfilm logo.

Heck, Disney may throw a few million at Fox to let them use the fanfare.

 

Or Disney could use it as a bartering chip to get the distribution rights to I-VI right now instead of waiting until 2021 (and until never in the case of epIV).

Seriously, if I were Disney, I'd see that as a pretty sweet deal. Maybe they could work it out this way:

In exchange for Fox getting theatrical rights to the ST, Disney would immediately get full rights to all non-theatrical distribution of the existing Star Wars movies. If I were Disney, I would even let them hold on to theatrical distribution of those movies as well, at least until they expire in 2021. Remember, Disney would only be losing the distribution fee on the ST's theatrical release, which would be no different than lfl's situation on Empire, Jedi and the PT, only this time they'd hold on to everything else (home video, etc).

Like I said before, in my ideal movie geek world, 20th Century Fox would have theatrical distribution rights on any Star Wars movie with "Episode" in the title from now until the end of time, just so anyone doing a "saga" marathon would hear that fanfare at the beginning of every movie.

Either way, something needs to eventually be agreed upon if only because of the situation with epIV. I mean, when the other five movies expire I'm assuming Disney's gonna at least want those five back. What are they gonna do then, pay Fox a fee just so they can include ANH in the I-IX blu-ray? I would think they'd want it back as well.

Or I'm delirious, Disney will simply let Fox make their money off any new release of I-VI Disney wants to do for the next eight years (which, in any event, will hopefully include the restored OOT), and keep any new future Star Wars project - ST or otherwise - completely under their own umbrella from beginning to end.

I can't properly explain why this is such a big deal to me, but an Episode VII without that fanfare .... it just doesn't seem right

Also, when Abrams was hired as director didn't someone from lfl say they'd be working with bad robot on ep7? Jeez, I hope that doesn't mean we're seeing that logo pop up at the beginning as well.

timdiggerm said:

Ryan McAvoy said:

The most mind-blowing release of an old film back into cinemas in recent years...???

Answer... 1985's 'Back To The Future' in stunning Digital 2D for it's 25th Anniversary. The remastered picture quality was so sharp, you almost needed 3D glasses just to make the image all blurry and dark, so that your view wasn't obscurred by tears of joy.

If you release SW in crystal clear Digital/70mm film 2D, on today's big-ass screens with a thundering soundtrack who needs Stereoscopy?

Digital, huh? I saw it on October 23rd (they gave me a free poster!) and it was almost certainly projected from 35mm - I think I remember the characteristic wiggle and shake.

But it was worth the money to see that movie on the big screen.

It could've still been (probably was) a digital projection. The wiggle and shake could've simply been from the film going through the camera "on the day," unless you definitively remember cigarrette burns and splices, of course.

I wasn't able to catch a screening of BTTF (did they do one here in the States?), but I remember hearing about it. A new 2K master was created for the blu-ray release and thus could be shown in theaters in an up-to-modern-standards digital form.

The 4K projection of the final cut of Blade Runner I saw on opening night at the Ziegfeld back in '07 gives pretty much anything else a run for its money, though.

SilverWook said:

I still think they could work something out. Disney has partnered with other studios before in the past. None of the current Marvel films actually has a Disney logo at the beginning do they?

No, they don't, although you'll notice the Marvel logo shows up before the Paramount logo at the head of The Avengers and Iron Man 3 instead of the other way around. Disney bought Paramount out of the last two movies in the distribution deal they'd signed with Marvel, but one condition was that the Paramount logo still be used. So, they got paid something like $150 million and still got their logo in the movie (and the trailers, of course), without technically having to do anything. Must've been nice.

In any event, no, there was no Disney logo at any point in those movies.

Also, I noticed the Thor 2 trailer only has the Marvel logo.

With Episode VII, I would think Disney would do the same thing and just open with the Lucasfilm logo.

As I said earlier in this thread, I saw the RotS blu-ray projected onto a 100"+ screen at my relatives' place and it was mind-blowing just how three-dimensional the movie already is. If they take their time and don't screw up the conversion, they've got their work cut out for them.

The only problem, as has been stated, are people's memories of the movie itself, memories kept fresh in our minds by Mr. Plinkett's reviews.

People will turn out in significant numbers and pay actual money to see the OT-SE in 3D in theaters (not me). That's how much good will those movies have earned.

The prequels will always be the prequels.

At least they've already gotten Episode I out of the way.

A 3D re-release of the OT is an inevitability at this point. Titanic and Jurassic Park have already gotten that treatment. Just the other day it was announced the 3D conversion of Wizard of Oz will screen in September. Ya think Disney and Lucasfilm wouldn't want to add Star Wars to the list and finally knock Gone with the Wind from its #1 all-time adjusted box office record?

So, the only question now is how they roll it out. I'm sure they'll figure out something.

Also, with all-day franchise marathons in theaters becoming a thing now (Avengers, Dark Knight Rises and Twilight all did it last year), I'm betting we'll see something similar happen the day before Ep7's release (again, count me the hell out).

The only other big question is how Disney and Fox will work things out.

It's my NSHO that 20th Century Fox should at the very least have perpetual theatrical distribution rights to any existing or future Star Wars movie with "Episode" in the title. The thought of an Episode VII without that fanfare is kinda depressing, honestly.

That's the other big issue.

Even though I'm hopelessly optimistic based on their releasing of a laserdisc master on dvd seven long years ago, I have to remind myself that it's the SE that was released on blu-ray and it's the SE that plays on spike.

Contrast that against E.T., which for several years now has only been played on tv in its original form. Spielberg regretted doing the SE so much, he didn't bother to include it in the blu-ray release last year. While the original cut was included in the first dvd release way back in '02, I remember a single-disc reissue that was the SE-only.

That's actually kinda similar to the situation with Star Wars on video in the late 90's / early 00's. Sure, we didn't have two-pack vhs sets with both versions (impractical), but both versions were out there in equal quality. Also, as far as most of us were concerned (aside from stuff like the ANH crawl and the audio mixes), there were only two versions of the movies: the original and the '97.

Then there was that 2000 vhs reissue with the roman numerals. Uh-oh, what does this portend? Then just a few years later, not only are we denied the original version, we're given yet another revision of the movie!

So, yeah, pretty good comparison considering which formats were dominant when each movie's "special edition" hit home video. It's quite amusing how these two colleagues have totally different views on what they themselves consider their masterworks. Spielberg is embarrased by his Special Edition while Lucas is embarrased by his original version.

Of course, it's a slightly different story with Star Wars' SE, which was a "test-run" for the prequels Lucas realized the original versions would never be compatible with. Of course, he could've chosen to make a more restrained, less effects-intensive PT to better fit with the OT, but that's all in the past.

There's no petition I'm aware of to get the SE of E.T. released on blu-ray. Meanwhile, there's quite a vocal group who want the OOT on blu-ray. Even if Lucas hadn't pulled that GOUT stunt and properly remastered the films, we'd all still be sitting here now in 2013 waiting for it to hit blu-ray. Disney must know this. They can't be that clueless.

It's not like similar things haven't happened. When WB put out Superman Returns, the HD disc formats had just debuted and a marketing opportunity presented itself. When the movie hit video later that year, they not only put it out on all three formats, but did the same for the Donner cuts of I&II. They did not put out III, IV or the theatrical cuts of the first two, although there was an all-out, all movies and versions collection released on standard dvd. Several years later, they finally upgraded this collection to blu-ray.

Blu-ray is still in the early years of its lifespan. Most of the big titles have been released, but there are still plenty that haven't. Just today I was reminded that The Right Stuff still hasn't hit blu-ray. Two of James Cameron's movies aren't hitting the format until next year (The Abyss and True Lies, both of which, it's worth noting, are currently stuck at NON-ANAMORPHIC dvd quality on home video (yeah)). Me, I'm naively hoping Paramount will someday do proper remasters of the Star Trek films, some of my favorites (at least Wrath of Khan got the proper treatment, but that's not enough).

We keep pointing to some quote someone said and then throwing up our arms and screaming "we're doomed." Guys, the situation isn't nearly as hopeless as we're making it out to be.

Lets face it: each film deserves its own special edition with film-specific extras. I'm hoping Disney sees the potential there.

 

Been thinking the exact same thing for a while now.

Even before the Disney deal happened, I was thinking this would be a great way for LFL to ease their worries of "we'll never make enough profit off a proper release of the OOT to justify the amount we'd need to spend on restoring it."

msycamore said:

Baronlando said:

More 35mm film from the archives getting scanned and sold that isn't the actual movie. They're just screwing with me at this point.

 They have been screwing with us for a very long time....

digitalfreaknyc said:

 

Mielr said:

Just more bonus stuff to eventually get released on the OOT Blu-Rays. ;-)

Imagine if they released 1 every 2 years to coincide with the new films? Damn.

 

Lucasfilm publically stated seven years ago that they don't have any future plans to restore these films.

Lucas himself have stated that they are dead to him and that he wish they disappear, when being confronted with this question he always give weak excuses not to do it.

Rick Mccallum said in an interview a few months ago that "officially it will never happen."

About four years until we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the death of the Original Trilogy.

This is the first I've heard of McCallum saying that. Was it before or after October 30th of last year?

Also, yeah, LFL officially said that to all of us almost seven years ago (how could we possibly forget?), but didn't Lucas himself say just a couple years ago at some convention that it was a matter of the OOT being too expensive (as of that date) to restore?

Let's be honest. If George had wanted the OOT to (eventually) die with the tapes and laserdiscs, he never would've put it out on dvd. It renders his quote I read in someone's sig kinda meaningless. The GOUT may have been garbage quality by 2006 standards, but it was still technically speaking the highest quality official transfer of the original versions ever (essentially the '93 lasers viewed directly from their digital source). More importantly, it was now on a completely digital format that could be preserved bit for bit exactly as it was, ad infinitum. If it'd been about anything but money, Lucas wouldn't have put it out at all.

It's entirely possible Lucas stipulated the OOT remain buried when he sold Star Wars to Disney. You would think $4 Billion would've earned them his permission, and I would certainly hope it was enough money to make him no longer care.

Hello and welcome, cdbarnes!

Your post sent me on a trip down memory lane, back to the 56K dial-up days seeing those first photos from the set of Episode I on the official website (a full-sized AAT sitting around what must've been the backlot at Leavesden, Jake Lloyd as Anakin at the dinner table in the slave quarters, Ewan McGregor as a buzz-cut Obi-Wan, etc). Oh, and there was that Doug Chiang sketch of the Naboo N-1 if I remember correctly....

Then there was that first teaser trailer in November of '98, wow. It'd been almost two years since the SE's were in theaters, and I think somewhere in the back of my head I saw the dewbacks and rontos, the updated lucasfilm logo and thought "yup, the SE's are gonna be considered the official versions now, to match up with all the cgi of this new prequel trilogy."

I still never, ever in a million years would've expected something as lame as the GOUT from a company like Lucasfilm. That was what finally made me wish the SE's had never happened and that we'd gotten a less effects-intensive trilogy of prequels (made in as close a way as possible to the OOT, which we'd now just be calling the OT) from three new directors, with Lucas simply writing the story as he did on Empire.

But, that ship has sailed.

There are things about the SE's and the prequels that I like, and zombie's "Secret History of Star Wars" finally allowed me to take a step back and see these movies for what they are.

I'd actually love it if Lucasfilm released the theatrical cuts of all six movies. I think Revenge of the Sith is the only one to make it to blu-ray in its original form (even the dvd had that wipe switched with a cut). TPM was substantially altered from the dvd onward, as was AOTC.

Something I've been vocal about on this site is the small alterations that slip under the radar when a movie gets "restored." The Wizard of Oz's most recent restoration is not a true one. Wires were digitally erased in at least one shot, with the justification that "audiences in 1939 would've never seen the wires since they weren't looking at a direct scan of the negative like we are today."

The thing is, I still hate that justification. Just because audiences didn't see it doesn't mean it wasn't there. There was a restoration/remastering done only four years earlier for a special dvd edition which left the wires in. That one was finished at 1080p, so hopefully there's an hd broadcast of it floating around the internet somewhere.

All of this is to say, alterations are a slippery slope IMO. James Cameron went crazy "correcting" Titanic for its most recent release, erasing things that would've been clearly visible to audiences in '97/'98, and that's an erasure of film history. But the prevailing attitude these days is that the director, if given the power, gets to make that call.

The work done by Charlie de Lauzirika and Warner Bros for Blade Runner's 25th anniversary remains the standard by which all archival releases should be judged. I've long said of a hypothetical ultimate release of the Star Wars films that, at the very least, all theatrically-released versions should be included. This would mean the original, the '97 and the inevitable 3D I'm sure they'll force us to buy in order to get the original and the '97 ;)

For the prequels, this would obviously mean the theatrical cut of TPM and either of the theatrical cuts of AotC (neither of which are the version on the dvd, which extended the scene where Anakin confesses to Padme about the Tusken slaughter). Also, give us the Imax cut of AotC!

So, yeah, this post got away from me.

I'll just wrap up by saying that I've yet to see The Phantom Edit, even after hearing about it for all these years.

I'll have to rectify that sometime soon.

Well, that's finally a piece of news on some main member of the crew aside from who's writing/producing/directing.

It's worth noting that Nilo Rodis did the costumes for RotJ several years before doing the costumes for Star Trek 5. I remember seeing those movies when I was growing up and noticing how similar Luke and Kirk's shirts looked in those movies and thinking it was just coincidence or "my imagination."

The biggest question to me remains who will shoot it and how it will be shot.

Abrams has used Dan Mindel on three of his four movies. I'm guessing he would've used him on Super 8 if Dan hadn't been busy shooting John Carter. That one was shot by Zack Snyder's longtime DP Larry Fong (who, it's worth noting, did not shoot Man of Steel).

Abrams has shot all four of his movies - at least primarily - in true cinemascope, just as the OT and TPM were shot. Into Darkness was partially shot in IMAX (the 3D is a post-conversion job, although the cg effects were rendered natively in stereo). I'm sure Abrams will at the very least push for the movie to be shot in true cinemascope. This is of course assuming film stock will still be available to use by the time this starts rolling next year. Not that shooting in digital would be a problem. Certain shots in STID were captured with Red Epic and Arri Alexa cameras. Digital movie camera sensors are finally getting to the point of being able to mimic how 4-perf vertical pulldown 35mm behaves. For example, Arri finally made an Alexa with a full-height sensor for shooting with anamorphic lenses.

The start date for principal photography has been one of my big questions. If they want to go back to the old way of doing things, they won't even start shooting until next year. Most movies, whether big or small, don't tend to start shooting much more than a year in advance. Star Trek Into Darkness started shooting way back in February of last year, for what it's worth. That's still less lead time than the prequels.

SilverWook said:

Why 45 years though? It's only been thirty since ROTJ came out. Let's not make our heroes older than they are already! ;)

45 years since the original 1977 film, which is where the books are up to now. Sorry, should've specified. It will have been 38 years since principal photography on Star Wars when Episode VII starts shooting next year. They'd only be bumping things up a few more years.

Also, keep in mind that while there are three years between A New Hope and Empire, Jedi only takes place another year later. They didn't spend three years flying around the galaxy like Mort/Lando said they should in the Family Guy parody of Empire.

Anyway, I don't see Lucasfilm rebooting the post-Jedi EU. It would be much cleaner and more natural to just set the original story of Episode VII whenever they're at now in the books.

If not fake, definite proof that Lucas & Co. were planning on Episode VII before the Disney buy and that they won't just be not-using the existing EU for the ST, but will be downright contradicting/overwriting it.

Which has been my concern all along. I have zero problem with them basically "ignoring" the EU and just picking up 45 years or so after the original. Downright rebooting it would be a weird move though, even considering all the continuity shenanigans Lucasfilm pulled with TCW.

Jaitea said:

I'm prepared to break tradition, hopefully the new movie will exceed our expectations.

The established Fox Fanfare & Star Wars crawl didn't stop the Prequels from being a complete waste of time and money

J

I guess there's just a part of me that feels like you need that fanfare to be the very first thing you hear in a Star Wars movie with "Episode" and a roman numeral in the title.

Reading that story only served to once again remind me how weird the fox fanfare's absence will feel.

double post

SilverWook said:

IIRC, Ridley Scott used the same trick to make the landing leg of the Nostromo in Alien look even bigger.

Oh, yeah. I forgot about that!

As for photographic miniatures, well, it seems like that's going away. Star Trek didn't use them at all in the traditional sense. The ships were completely digital as far as I know. It shows how far we've come just over the last ten years when we go from actual big-atures on LOTR to digital big-atures on The Hobbit.

They built a model silo for a forced perspective shot in a scene of kid Kirk and his brother which was cut from the finished film. Also, the shot of Kirk running into the cave on the snow planet was a small child running through a small (and therefore less expensive) set. In the finished sequence, our eyes see it as an adult running through a full-sized set. As much as Abrams loves his "how did they do that?" vfx shots, he also loves using simple tricks the audience doesn't even know are tricks.

Hey, it's me. said:

The lived in look back. Especially Coruscant. The Empire being defeated has created a power vacuum (as with all dictatorships) different splinter cells all vying for power. Start VII with a street battle on Coruscant, big and epic, between two of the fractions. Who's fighting? Why are they fighting?! This is exciting!! Not everyone's still sitting around with their feet up after Endor reminiscing about the battle.

This is probably the first good reason for going back to Coruscant that I've read so far. It would certainly recall the Taungs and the Battalions of Zhell fighting for control of the planet "a thousand generations" ago.

Personally, I want the sequel trilogy to just stay away from Coruscant completely ala the OOT. The prequels spent way too much time there, especially the latter two. There's an entire galaxy to explore. I'd want each of the three sequels to take an Empire Strikes Back approach and show us worlds we've never seen before.