Fang Zei

One could only hope. Fingers crossed as well.

It's 192kbps because it's only 2.0 and not 5.1.

The 2004 version is 5.1, which I presume is 448kbps.

Lowry's 2004 digital restoration was to get rid of every last scratch or piece of dirt on the negative. This couldn't be done back in the photochemical days of 1997, when all they could hope for was stabilizing the color and cleaning off the film with a sponge.

Well, according to Lowry, they did just about the best job they could for the amount of time they had (about a month per film). I doubt LFL would bother to pay for anymore cleanup, the only thing they really need to fix is vfx errors they didn't get around to fixing in '97 or '04 (I'm talking matte boxes and the like). Hopefully they'll also realize "okay, the color correction is interfering with how things are supposed to look in certain shots (the lightsabers), we should probably fix that."

As for the OOT, well, the only explanation they offered back in '06 was "existing prints are in bad condition." They could retcon that to mean anything they want if/when they suddenly choose to dig up and restore the interpositives and do 1080p transfers of them.

The funny thing is that Kersh apparently has no problem with the altered version of Empire Strikes Back. That's arguably one of the biggest things going against the OOT ever getting properly remastered since Star Wars' director is Lucas and Jedi's is dead.

C3PX probably is right and a new petition wouldn't make a bit of difference in the grand scheme of "Star Wars on blu-ray" being all that's really necessary for people to go out and buy it.

However, I am hoping that Lucas - seeing the kind of treatment some of these catalog titles have been getting for their BD debuts - ends up doing the right thing. I think he could AT THE VERY LEAST manage to make each of the original movies a two-disc set with the (hopefully final) newest cut on the first disc and a remastered original cut on the second. I really don't think that's too much to ask and in fact at this point I think it would be silly not to include it.

Unless of course he thinks the money he'll be saving by not having to stamp out that second disc will outway the money he'll be making from all the OOT fans who will only be interested if the original version is included. Otherwise, omitting the OOT makes no sense.

No, that's not what I meant and no, I don't think for even a second that the petition is what got us the GOUT. Sorry for not being clearer.

First we got Close Encounters and Blade Runner, with the original versions included. Now we're getting the original versions of all the Star Trek films. Call me naive, but I'm getting more and more hopeful that GL won't get away with simply pressing out an SE-only Star Wars BD set.

Well, even though the Indy trilogy is rumored for a BD release this year, I'm now starting to wonder whether it'll be a few years before we see Star Wars. The Live-Action show will apparently not be on the air until 2012, which - being the 35th anniversary (not the roundest of numbers, but it works) - might make sense. Heh, that quicktime trailer for the Alien: Director's Cut saying "24 years ago" and the ROTS commercial "for 28 years, the Star Wars saga has blah blah blah" come to mind. Anyway, if they really are going to release all six movies in 3D cinema beforehand, I doubt they can get all of them done by next year. I don't think there are enough digital projectors in the cinemas anyway. Didn't McCallum say they were waiting until there were like 10,000? It might make sense to let the clone wars show run its course in the meantime, and then have a huge year for the 35th anniversary with the 3D re-release, the blu-ray and the live-action show.

What I seriously think we should do is agree on what EXACTLY we want, by which I mean lets all come to an agreement on what should be in the blu-ray set. I guess what this basically translates into is: someone should draft a new petition. If we can all agree on an exact petition, we can then all send our videos to the people making this documentary. Maybe we could even get in contact with them and ask if they could please, please, please emphasize in the doc that this matter of the OOT is a pretty large part of why we're so frustrated with the guy.

Y'know, the "dark times" didn't really begin for me until that night in May of '06 when I loaded digitalbits' main page and found out the unaltered dvd's wouldn't be enhanced for 16:9.

In all seriousness, don't you think we should ALL send in videos telling George why we're fed up and what it is we really want?!

We could all take the time on this forum to make sure that we're all telling him the exact same thing! When the guys putting this thing together get all of these videos saying the exact same thing, they'd be hard pressed to not do some sort of montage in order to get that message across to Lucas.

"It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt .... over so small a thing ....

.... such a little thing ...."

I really, seriously think Lucas should just dig up those interpositives and make a high-def transfer of the OOT and the theatrical TPM so that both he and the fans can just move the hell on. It's such a large part of why anything Star Wars is thought of the way it is today.

The fact is that in 2006, in a world where we now had high-definition video discs (hddvd and blu-ray), George Lucas literally gave us 1993 quality transfers of the star wars trilogy and acted like he was doing us a favor.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If George had simply waited until he was going to show the original versions proper treatment, I would've been fine sticking with the '04 set in the meatime. The fact that he went "oh, here you go, some nice little bonus content for you. Wait, what's that? You mean nostalgia isn't the only reason you wanted the OOT on dvd?!" is what got to me.

If he would just dig up those interpositives and master the original versions (the OOT and theatrical TPM specifically) in high definition, seriously, that's all it would take to make me a happy SW fan again.

In regards to that Spider-Man 2 display, TLSO:

I'd be wary of displays like that. Most of the ones I've seen haven't really been optimally set up. I actually know what all the settings and specs are on my hdtv, so I have the blu-ray connected over hdmi with 24p mode turned on and I keep the tv's picture settings on the "standard" preset (it's "vivid" out of the box) with cinemotion turned off. It's a fairly new set also, which helps. I think the stores aren't really giving people a good idea of how blu-ray can look.

Personally I've thought for a while now that a good scenario would've been to have some sort of combination of Spielberg, Johnston, Darabont and Fincher, with no two prequels being directed by the same person. Maybe three of those guys could be the directors and the fourth guy would basically be the PT's Kasdan. Maybe it could go:

Episode I: Johnston

Episode II: Spielberg

Episode III: Fincher

Darabont could write the screenplays. Lucas would write the story, but maybe Frank would have some input. I guess McCallum would still produce. The directors would have final say on who the cinematographers would be, so for Spielberg that would obviously be Kaminski (which, seeing how his CinemaScope debut on Indy IV turned out, would work PEFECTLY).

Vaderisnothayden said:Are the OT box sets limited time only like the 2006 GOUT dvds were supposed to be?

After enough time had passed from December 31st of '06 with the GOUT very clearly still on sale all over the place, I don't think people lent much credence to the "limited" caveat. That's probably why LFL didn't even bother saying it this time around.

TheBoost said:

Fang Zei said:

Meanwhile, LFL launches that massive multimedia clone wars project with the six books, the genndy series, the comics, the digest comics, etc, and people got even more pissed as it became clear that GL intentionally left everything people wanted to see out of AOTC (tell me that's not the most commonly voiced complaint about the PT) just so he could make more money by spreading it out over that huge multimedia campaign. Cash grab though it was, the various creative minds behind it arguably did a better job than GL did with the prequels because they embraced what had come before in the EU and the OT.

 

In regards to Lucas leaving what people wanted to see out of AOTC (intentionally none the less!!!), what did people want to see in that film? I'm not sure what aspects of the Clone Wars 'cash grab' would have been better in the films.

The ludicrous action of the cartoon? The existential search for identity of Jangotat? Another disposable villain like Ventress or Durge? Obi-Wan's chestplate? Or were we all dispointed that AOTC didn't include MedStar Battle Surgeons!?? Which of these great plot points exactly were intentionally left out because of their overwhelming greatness?

As for most commonly voiced complaint about AOTC, it seems to me that it's between 'the love story blew' or 'the mystery subplot blew.' 

I guess it's just the little things like the IG droids in the cartoon or dreadnaughts and the chemical spill on Honoghr in the comics. What really got me was how amazing the Anakin/Obi-Wan storyline in Labyrinth of Evil was compared to the Nelvaan story in volume 2 of the cartoon.

Even without the cartoon comparison, I remember hearing that Labyrinth of Evil was an idea that started as what was originally the first part of ROTS' screenplay. Like I said in the other post, I was reading that thinking "this is the best Star Wars novel ever."

This is straight from the mouths of the Lowry guys:

"We were working at 1920 by 1080 at full RGB." So that throws out the 4K theory. I remember asking at least twice in the same thread what resolution the Indy trilogy was restored at and no one answered my question. I'd thought I read somewhere that it was 4K, but if one of you guys knows then please clarify 'cause I'd like to know.

-lossless compression or none at all: probably true

-saving the cgi files: I've been curious about this for a while. When I first watched the '04 dvd's, it looked to me like the '97 cgi shots had simply been scanned from the negative just like everything else. I only say that because I thought I noticed a very, very slight flicker and/or framedrift in shots such as the asp knocking the floating droid to the ground right before Luke's speeder zooms into frame. The shot of the Falcon about to touch down on the Cloud City landing pad (right before it cuts to the miniature) is another example. Then of couse there's also the example of the color that got sucked out of a '97 shot during the battle of yavin (when wedge flies through the exploding tie fighter he shot). So I don't know if he saved the files.

-saving all the old VFX elements: they're right about that. Any making-of on the SE will mention this.

What I was trying to express in my first post but couldn't quite organize my thoughts around was this:

GL reserved that span of time in the Star Wars galaxy to tell the prequels, but that didn't stop authors like Zahn from referencing certain things long before George actually got around to making the PT. Then along comes TPM, and then three years later AOTC, and that's when people notice that it doesn't have much to do with anything that was previously mentioned.

Meanwhile, LFL launches that massive multimedia clone wars project with the six books, the genndy series, the comics, the digest comics, etc, and people got even more pissed as it became clear that GL intentionally left everything people wanted to see out of AOTC (tell me that's not the most commonly voiced complaint about the PT) just so he could make more money by spreading it out over that huge multimedia campaign. Cash grab though it was, the various creative minds behind it arguably did a better job than GL did with the prequels because they embraced what had come before in the EU and the OT.

See, after the Zahn trilogy hit in the early 90's it's almost like Star Wars fans got used to the universe being chronicled in that written medium. That and the fact it was limited by GL to only being post-OT didn't help lend him credibility, because by the time TPM was released it seemed even less connected to the OT than the actual EU did.

A world where the SE never happened kinda goes hand in hand with a world where the PT was done in a drastically different way, specifically much less reliance on effects. But even if the PT wasn't done any differently, I'd accept it as long as we never had an SE. At least in that scenario the PT is what it is and you can either take it or leave it.

The only positive side of this syndrom is that since Lucas must realize his impending mortality he'll get the final versions of the movies out in 3D sooner rather than later, hopefully by the end of the next year like I've been predicting.

I mean, at the King Kong premiere in December of '05 a reporter asked him if he missed Star Wars and he replied "no, I don't." At this point it's just a matter of practical business, but I get the feeling (and this is just my opinion) that the money-making possibilites of just the six movies is starting to decline, and the 3D and the blu-ray might as well be the last hoorah.

Really, even putting aside whether or not we'll finally get the good OOT, I just hope he stops tinkering with the revised version (of the revised version) of the movies and just says "this is the definitive, six-part saga that I've been talking about for years despite the fact that I still sell the dvd's in seperate trilogy boxes." Obviously I hope LFL finally comes to their senses for the blu-ray and throws in the original versions of the six movies in addition to the final drafts, but I think if anything we can rest assured that the tinkering is coming to an end.

Couldn't agree more, Janskeet. I can certainly vouch for sighting the '04 set just about whenever I'd go over to a friend's place.

ESHBG said:

The thing that works for me is to look at the PT as almost EU, so you can take it with a grain of salt and accept it or no.

These have been my exact thoughts on the prequels for a while now. They came to me a few months before ROTS came out and I got Labyrinth of Evil from the library. I was thinking "holy shit, this is by far the best Star Wars novel I've read." I'd been collecting the clone wars trade paperbacks over the previous year and a half, but after reading LoE I proceeded to get all six of the clone wars novels in paperback (had to wait until the summer for Jedi Trial) and read through just about all of them by the time May 19th rolled around.

An analogy came to me around that time.

I haven't read the Harry Potter books (seen the first four movies), but I imagine the way at least some of their fans must feel about the movies is the way at least some of the pre-'99 EU fans must feel about the prequels. I mean, one of my friends was pissed about the total lack of Jorus C'Boath and Spaarti cylinders and just about anything else mentioned about the Clone Wars before the PT came along. Even Maul's dual-bladed saber annoyed him because Exar Kun had already done that and to him it was basically GL going "Oh yea, I've got your Expanded Universe right here (makes hand gestures over crotch)."

zombie84 said:

Fang Zei said:

It's not like that would be a first: from what I've heard you need to do that on the '03 T2 dvd just to watch the theatrical version.

 

 That code was to see the film with the originally-shot but never released ending incorporated.

Ah, now that you mention it I'm remembering what I read on that message board once upon a time. It's just that I also remember reading that the main feature is the extended version only, whereas the 2000 dvd (which I still own) has both versions.