Just rewatched parts of the 1997 SE Behind the Scenes featurette and saw the clean up shots that I was remembering. I had a distinct visual in my head of the Hoth scenes with big red arrows and I guess I had always attributed that to the THX remasters. I should have known it was part of the SE’s.
I don’t think it was specifically THX. I think it was a minimum quality of projection and audio. For instance my hometown theater had to upgrade their speaker system and installed a number of new speakers for better surround sound. Before TPM it was screening The Matrix which I had seen there a few times. And on the opening night of TPM I went to the final screening of The Matrix with the upgraded system and it was definitely a noticeable uptick in quality. And according to the quote I posted above it sounds like this was something that was universally required for any theater wanting to screen TPM. I’m just struggling to find much info about it other than the article above (partly because of the recent re-release of TPM spamming the internet with articles about the 2024 release)
Perfect. Thank you!
I remember hearing that Lucasfilm required certain minimum A/V standards for theaters to be allowed to screen Phantom Menace when it released in 1999. I know for a fact that the single-screen theater in my hometown had to shell out for some upgrades prior to the release. However I’m struggling to find much information about this on the internet. I found this quote:
“Phantom Menace” is getting a far smaller initial theatrical release than your typical blockbuster would usually get, because exhibitors must have a projection system, sound system and environment that meets Lucasfilm’s standards. Lucasfilm wanted to make sure this film was shown with the best possible projection and sound, in order to take full advantage of the film," - Paul Dergarabedian (http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Movies/9904/21/lucas.laws/index.html)
Are there any details about the specific requirements?
I always thought that the THX Remastered versions of the trilogy had a visual pass done to clean up the garbage mattes and some of the blue/green screen borders. I remember seeing some kind of behind the scenes video that showed how they had just cleaned up a lot of those effects for that release. But in doing research now I’m finding that they were just essentially a copy of the 1993 Laserdiscs. So maybe the clean up pass was done then? Or am I experiencing some kind of Mandela Effect?