Fang Zei

Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment need to do right by the fans! The excuse of not wanting the original versions out there doesn't work anymore because, guess what, they were officially put out there (just in 1993 quality).

If they seriously plan on streeting the blu-ray as early as next year, I really don't see how "Star Wars in hi-def!" alone will make it a bestseller. DVD was a much different situation. It was people finally upgrading from vhs and laserdisc (formats from the mid-70's) to "everyone's favorite format."

The smart move would be to release the films individually (like in '06) but include the original version on a second disc in the same quality as the 20xx version. Just slap a sticker on the front reading "For the first time ever, the remastered original version in hi-def!" There's no way that won't guarantee way more copies getting sold.

The prequels' discs could easily include the theatrical versions with seamless branching, no need for a second disc. Phantom Menace is the obvious example, since they are likely to replace the weird-looking puppet Yoda with the much more Empire/Jedi-looking digital model from Clones and Sith. I would still want them to include the '99 version of the movie, if only for preservationist/historical reasons.

Speaking of which - and I don't wanna get too ahead of myself here - what are your thoughts on including the '97 SE and making ANH, Empire and Jedi three discs each? They'd still have plenty of room across the three discs for whatever extras they wanted to include (Blade Runner only would've needed the three blu-ray discs if they hadn't also put it out on hddvd day-and-date, and we don't have that problem anymore now that the format race is over). I certainly think it would be interesting from a historical perspective, to let people see where all the controversy started. If the '97 interpositives are still lying around, all LFL would need is to make a fresh hi-def master.

Seriously, I find it just a tad ridiculous how Blade Runner, the movie that got swept under in the summer of E.T., can get the ultimate home video treatment, but Star Wars can't because the rights are owned by LFL and not a major Hollywood studio. It's been said before, but George Lucas' career has been rife with irony.

Lucas' role in the prequels should have been the same as Empire Strikes Back:

Write the story and pay for it, let other people do the rest.

Instead, he decided to write and direct it all by himself (Jonathan Hales co-wrote the Clones screenplay, credit where credit's due).

The Special Edition in '97 was Lucas going "I am the auteur of these movies even though I only directed one of them."

But that's the thing. Giving the OT an update in the form of the SE wouldn't have been so bad if it didn't mean going onto a PT where close to every last shot has some sort of cgi effect in it. It's pretty ridiculous when you consider how each of the original films only had a year of post-production whereas the prequels had two years.

Wow, just wrote out several paragraphs and then accidentally closed the tab, blast. Must remap the mouse pad and left/right clickers at some point.

Anyway, the gist of what I was writing is this:

Do you think Lucas' reasoning for leaving the SE at 1080 comes from the fact that the prequels' effects were mostly rendered at only 2K (if even that)?

Wow, first I heard Bradley Cooper mention that he'd seen him and James Cameron on the red carpet, but now the show has started and George is literally at the front of the closest table to the microphone!

If WB chose to release a bd with the original version of THX or if Uni chose to do the same thing with Graffiti, would LFL be able to legally stop them?

Zombie, you're mistaken about the opening of THX-1138. It's "American Zoetrope," Coppola's company, that you see at the very beginning, not LFL. LFL doesn't own any kind of rights to that movie, WB does. WB actually announced in a transcribed live chat on digitalbits that they were looking at a 2010 blu-ray release for it.

It's the same kind of situation with the first American Graffiti. That's Universal's property.

That reminds me, I should totally put a link in my avsforum sig. I post over there from time to time (same handle).

How many signatures did the old petition get?

I'm surprised how dead this thread is considering .... well, considering what it is.

Are any of you guys actually gonna buy the blu-ray if it doesn't have the remastered OOT in it?

Fooled me once with dvd, shame on you Lucas. Fool me with the next format, shame on me. That's the problem here. Lucas thinks that "Star Wars in 1080p!" will be enough for even the biggest hater to go out and buy it. The sad thing is that he might be right. Guys, the big message we need to send is all the potential money LFL will be losing if they don't include the OOT. They're gonna have to include an entire additional 50 gig disc with each movie in order to give us what we want anyway. Sure, I'd be thrilled if they gave each movie anything remotely approaching the Blade Runner / CE3K treatment, but this is Star Wars and it has become a mere product after all these years. They put out a four-disc set, charged $70 for it, and made the highest single-day sales in the history of the dvd format.

Blu-ray is a different story. For one thing, we have to wait and see what the deal is with the 3D conversion. I'm really starting to think it won't happen, if only because I just don't get how they're going to re-release SIX MOVIES in theaters and still make a profit after such an expensive conversion process. The industry just standardized 3D blu-ray though, so maybe we haven't heard the last of all this.

We also have to remember that the live-action show will be hitting around the same time and Lucas still doesn't have a distributor for it. I can't help but wonder how 20th Century Fox's distribution rights to the six-film saga is gonna play into all this.

I don't know when the old petition got started, before '04 or after, but this time around we're getting it out there well before the initial blu-ray is hitting (Bill Hunt puts it at 2011 at the earliest). This gives us time to get more signatures.

Jay, the twitter message is a few characters too long. You might want to revise it. I simply deleted the part where it says originaltrilogy.com since that's in the actual address already.

Gil Taylor, Star Wars' DP, was a "special effects photographer" on Dam Busters.

Yeah, but this is the GOUT we're talking about here, a transfer of an old transfer. There's information being lost on all four sides from what I can see.

Yes, you're correct that - according to my logic - we should be seeing more on the GOUT than the 70mm and not less.

Kinda random tangeant here, but:

I just re-watched the restoration mini-doc on the newest Godfather set today. In my wildest dreams as a film fanatic, This is the exact kind of treatment the OOT would get.

Yeah, but the only example I can remember of a 70mm print being used to transfer a scope movie is the old Blade Runner dvd. They zoomed out in order to keep it appearing at its original scope ratio and filled in the space on the sides with .... well, with nothing but more black bars. Most tv's overscan the image slightly, so most everyone with that dvd probably doesn't even notice. Watching stuff on an hdtv is a different story though.

The 70mm prints wouldn't be an option for restoration since there is lost information on the sides. The source is 2.35:1, but the 70mm blow-up is 2.20:1.

Baronlando said:

It's interesting the way these things are characterized at different times. In 1993, the IPs were good enough to be the source of an elaborate 100 dollar laserdisc box called "DEFINITIVE", and 2 years later the whole thing is on the brink of death if not for the heroic measures of doing a re- release. (and now we're getting to the point where some dude on youtube with a beat up old trailer can get very nice results. look how cool this is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_OhgiNE0Dw

yet also strangely frustrating)

Wow, that's amazing. Strangely frustrating, indeed.

Anyway, the IP isn't what was suddenly falling apart a couple years later. It was the actual o-neg itself.

Baronlando said:

Didn't Lucasfilm later (in 2006) claim that the IPs had been somehow physically "stripped for parts" or something for the SE, making them unusable for anything now?

 

Actually, they didn't even say that.

What they said in '06 was "existing prints are in poor condition," which tells us absolutely nothing. Plenty of other best-quality prints of the original versions of other films were in "poor condition" until they were RESTORED. If - after finishing the '97 project - Lucas had the IP's he used destroyed for no good reason, he's an asshole.

Gaffer Tape said:

But why would anyone want to dress up like a lame clone?!  Why wouldn't they want to dress up as Luke Skywalker or Han Solo?!

Because they're watching the show that takes place before Episode III. The clones are still the "good guys."

Tomorrow I'll finally be able to watch the new Avatar trailer in good quality. My guess - way back when - was that Lucas would attach a teaser for 3D Star Wars to Avatar when it hits in December. Yeah, looks like that ain't gonna happen (I mean, we would've heard it by now, right?).

All of his talk about it has probably only been that - talk. Obviously they converted a few scenes from ANH but that's just a few scenes. For all we know, that's all they ever did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHsn_PPDrEw

This will likely get found and taken down by the end of the day, but there will only be more people to come along and post it again!

Sluggo said:

I think the slugs are getting an unfair treatment.  Slugs are people, too.

-Sluggo

 

And LFL: Just release the trilogy in it's original form in HD.  Warts and all.  What are you so afraid of?  It might be a surprise to you, but people like Star Wars.  They will buy it.

Literally the only legitimately good reason I can possibly think of for why LFL wouldn't want to is that they wouldn't just be able to mass-produce the initial blu-ray release as easily if they have more than one disc per movie. With the '04 release, for example, they came up with a very simple system.

Ziz said:

Which was where, exactly?

I didn't have the chance to memorize all 200,000+ frames of the film in the theater like Sky and VINH did, which is apparently what enables them to critique the films so specifically in spite of constantly claiming that they refuse to watch them.

The 35mm and D-Cinema versions of ROTS are 100% identical (I think). There is at least one alteration on the dvd, though. Instead of there being a wipe to transition from Padme's ship flying away from Mustafar to the shot of Anakin's hand, there's just a straight cut.

Nevertheless, sky brings up a good point. If George Lucas' movies come out on blu-ray, I want the original versions. In the case of the Indy trilogy I don't care about the snake pit reflection and something in the big rolling ball shot being gone. The blatantly cgi shot during the truck chase in the HD broadcast is a different story. As long as it's the exact versions on the dvd that we get on blu-ray I'll consider buying it, but if Lucas and Spielberg (really, I guess it's more up to George isn't it .... blast ) actually intend to keep that 2008 cgi shot in the movie, sorry guys, you ain't getting my money. They really should know better, but as has been said, I guess George needs to blatantly alter at least one shot in all his classic movies.

Anyway, yeah, I don't know where McCallum is getting this idea of five simultaneous shows. That quote has been flying around the internet for like, what, two years now?

Guys, lets stop thinking that the OOT getting a decent release is beyond the realm of possibility.

I was just reading the blog on their website and apparently Jay has a new OOT petition in the works.

Bump-and-a-half here, but I was actually trying to find the thread started by the guys who are making this documentary and I couldn't seem to find it (the forum search seems to be broken so if anyone can find the thread and post the link to it I'd appreciate it).

They're still taking submissions until September 30th. Here's something that recently occured to me:

How many movies can you think of that have been significantly altered from their original form, eventually released on dvd in excellent quality (but still in that altered form), only to have the owner come out with a laserdisc-to-dvd port of the original version - only available packaged with the high-quality alteration - and say "Sorry, folks. That's the best you're ever gonna get."

Yea, I can't think of a single example outside of our coveted OT.

This is the real issue for me.

It's not that we got the OOT in 4:3 letterbox several months into fucking hi-def optical discs of movies being available on the market. There are still movies out there that are in the same condition (The Abyss, for example).

The real issue is that Lucas put out the high-quality alteration on dvd first and said the original version would never hit dvd, only to put out those very same original versions just two years later sourced from 1993 transfers and available only if you buy the high-quality alteration.

For dvd releases, it doesn't get much more shameless than that.

LFL basically said "People will give us their money because this is the original version of the most popular movie of all time and most of them won't even realize they're buying an inferior-quality product because they probably don't even know that 99.99999 percent of widescreen dvd's are enhanced for widescreen tv's because most of them probably don't have hdtv's yet and don't even know what anamorphic video is. They probably think they don't have any choice but to stretch out the 4:3 letterbox picture over that wider screen. Hey, this is a brilliant business strategy! Why put a single dime into restoring or even so much as remastering the OOT? This is Star Wars, they'll eat it up!"

Meanwhile, we get a Blade Runner set with all five versions on it plus deleted scenes.

"Is he fulfilling his destiny or has he destroyed his legacy?" is a line from the trailer for this doc. When you allow your franchise to gradually become nothing but a product, even to the extent where the film that started it all is reduced to being a curious piece of "nostalgia" (LFL's words, not mine), then that's certainly "destroying your legacy" in my opinion.

Baronlando said:

I wonder if Warner Bros could release the original THX1138 even if they wanted to. Maybe Lucas gained control of it when they made the deal for the rerelease (by Lucasfilm paying the bills for an extensive restoration and new effects for a movie that has never been a big catalog title)

On side note, the making of documentary on the THX dvd has an anamorphic clip of Star Wars and it's the original version (Luke looking at the sunset, before the little mountain in front of the lower sun was digitally erased). I wonder what the source was, it looked pretty good.

Well, that's certainly what I fear, and with our luck it's probably the case. Although I should point out that on the dvd packaging there wasn't a single copyright notice for GL, Coppola or anything. It was all WB. Of course, that doesn't mean they didn't sign some kind of deal saying "we'll never release the old version."

Oh, and I never knew until now just exactly what was done to that sunset shot for the SE (or the '04, whenever it was). I only remember someone commenting on the family guy star wars episode that "they used the '93 colors" for the sunset.

SilverWook said:

TCM has shown THX a couple times,  and it's the new version. Not a good sign.

Yeah, but don't they simulcast in HD now when they can (I don't get cable channels in HD, that's why I ask)? In that case, since there is an hd master of a version, they'd show that. Besides, they'd probably show the newer version anyway. Like the other week they showed the not-original version of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Robert Osborne pointed this out in his intro. Wish I'd known they were showing THX, would've loved to hear what he had to say (assuming it was during a timeslot where he does an intro). Actually I don't get TCM at all anymore as of two weeks ago. My cable service (Cox) scrolled a notice across the top of the screen for the last month or so leading up to it, saying we'd have to get a new cable box just to continue getting TCM at all, and I don't even like using one in the first place (QAM ftw).