J0E

Moiisty said:

was 4k99 ever gonna come out? cause I saw on the forum that a 4k scan of the prequels was happening

That’s on hold indefinitely. Poita (the guy doing the scans) went radio silent about a year ago. He was having a lot going on in his personal life and I imagine he just got burnt out. That, and on the first attempt scanning the film he got ill from the print itself. I really hope the cat is doing well.

Side note: I seem to remember ZigZig mentioning somewhere he got his hands on a 4k scan of a print but upon looking around again, I can’t seem to find where he mentioned it. If anyone could find that for me I’d be very appreciative. Take this with a grain of salt. I might just be having a burnout moment.

JEDIT: Oops didn’t even see page 2. Sorry about that guys.
@jzilli
Thanks for finding that. I knew I wasn’t crazy.

RUKUSBUILD3 said:

Only after the criticism do people realize how good the prequels actually are.

I re-watched it the other day, sorry for going a little fanboyish. I hadn’t seen it in years. (Let me shamelessly plug my boy Bobson for a minute. I watched the test version of his theatrical project and it’s pretty good. I’d keep an eye on his project and ZigZig’s/ChewieLewis’.)

I’ve always maintained that Phantom Menace was okay. The biggest problem is that the characters don’t command the presence they did in the OT. I don’t know if it’s writing, directing, acting or all three. But the end result is the same, the characters feel kinda bland and lack charisma. That’s really the biggest sin of the movie. Overall though, It’s slightly lower than Jedi.

Again, it’s not great but it isn’t terrible. It’s a fun watch every once in a while.

Vladimon man, I’m with you. It’s a childhood favorite of mine despite it’s flaws.

@Vladimon
I definitely agree that Phantom Menace holds up the best out of the prequel trilogy. As far as it’s pacing, tone and visual effects. The CGI doesn’t look quite as nice as Sith, but the use of practical effects, model work, miniatures, costume design and real sets more than makes up the difference. The ships and space battles look the best they ever have for a Star Wars movie (even more so than the new films) and the Pod Race is amazing. It was also a nice touch that it was shot on film as well. Don’t even get me started on the sound design. It makes me

The movie has a nice flow to it (in the theatrical cut). It’s very fast paced and the action set-pieces are genuinely fun and exciting. They don’t linger any longer than they have to and you move from one to the next quickly. Everything is well choreographed. There’s nice subtle character moments all throughout the duel (I don’t know where that went with the Anakin/Obi-Wan duel but that’s a discussion for another thread), everything in the Obi-Wan/Qui-Gon/Maul duel is purposeful and executed with surgical precision.

Setting aside Jar Jar and the Gungans, the biggest flaw is the characters. As stated above, the have their moments when they shine through the stiff acting. The stiff acting is really what brings it down to me, all the characters just feel bored and disinterested. They don’t have that life to them the did in Star Wars. They don’t play off of each other like they did in the OT despite little moments where you can tell they’re trying.

Also, #ReleaseTheImaxCut
That is all.

I completely agree visually. But as far as the original edit goes, this is still the most accurate version released so far aside from the laserdisc.

Also Bobson, I have to reiterate ChainsawAsh’s post. This is very nicely done. The LD footage blends very well with the blu-ray footage and the pod race looks phenomenal. I think it blends better than Ady’s version. I’m very excited to see what you do with this going forward. Much love and many thanks.

Vladimon said:

TPM is a great (and greatly underrated) movie and I support any project that tries to bring us closer to its theatrical presentation. Sadly, we have yet to see a true 4k99 (1080p will more than do), and I hope we will some day. To me, the mood and atmosphere of the film as seen in its original form is something quite different from what we get in all the official releases. Colors, lighting, film grain, the uniformity of image quality throughout the whole thing,… these all play a huge role in how we feel about the story and have a great impact on the mood those movie images evoke in all of us.

Personally, I do not mind the CGI Yoda, but any future projects that attempt to restore TPM from a good theatrical source should definitely retain the puppet as a first choice.

Well this is still using the official blu-ray as the main video source so the DNR/sharpening are still going to be present. And I believe Bobson intends on releasing another version with puppet Yoda.

Color me interested as well. I’m loving your work on the prequels.

AD576 said:

Can you pm me a link please if possible?

ChainsawAsh said:

Why is everyone suddenly asking for links to a project that hasn’t been completed yet?

Be patient, jeez.

There’s someone else on the forum with a completed project in a similar vain as this one. Look around.

JakeRyan17 said:

As many others have mentioned, I would love access to these. I’m always worried about scratching the double-sided DVD… a paranoia from childhood that never went away, and the unavailability of the discs now makes me extra cautious.

If it makes you feel any better, the side with Battle for Endor on mine never worked. I had to track down a VHS copy. Then about a year later Caravan of Courage quit working without a single scratch.

Double sided DVDs are great.

ShamanWhill said:

There are a lot of different ways I would change Return of the Jedi. I think it’s still an enjoyable film, but it’s definitely the weakest of the OT.

First off, I think the writers completely forgot about Darth Vader’s motivation in Episode V. If you can recall, Darth Vader seemed to be misleading the Emperor into thinking that he would either turn Luke or kill him. But instead, we find in the famous scene where he tells Luke he’s his father, that Vader was actually plotting to get Luke to kill the Emperor for him. Come Episode VI, this plot line is completely abandoned, and I think that’s a real shame. I think it would make the movie 10 times more interesting if Vader was constantly bothering Luke, trying to get him to turn to the dark side so he can kill the Emperor. And at the same time, everyone on the light side can be telling Luke the same thing; kill the Emperor! We can then have Luke plan to turn his father back to the light side, and Vader will ultimately become the one who destroys the Emperor. After all, this was Vader’s problem. He had been living as a pawn of the Emperor for decades. It would be ultimately cowardly of him to get his son to get him out of this mess. And it is his Son that ultimately redeems him. So firstly, the movie should be more about Anakin’s relationship with Palpatine, and how it has soured.

Secondly, I think it would be best to change Endor back into Kashyyyk. In Episode III, the Battle of Kashyyyk is presented to the audience as one of the turning battles of the Clone Wars. We see the Wookies free and fighting in the beginning, then annihilated and forced into slavery at the end. It would be poetic if come Episode VI, the Wookies are the ones to turn the tide of the War again by defeating the Empire.

Thirdly, I think the whole Jabba’s Palace adventure needs to be toned down. Ultimately, Luke’s plan makes NO sense. In the movie, Luke sends R2 and 3PO to Jabba as gifts. Why? Now we have more hostages to save. Then Luke sends Leia disguised as a bounty hunter, and sells Chewbacca to Jabba. Why? Now we have more hostages to save. You see the pattern here? If not, then Leia gets captured rescuing Han, and now we have another person for Luke to save. And thru all of this, Lando happens to have infiltrated the Palace and does… nothing. Wow. What a BS plan.

Fourthly, I think we need to have a more political plot line in the movie. Why is the Emperor building another Death Star? In Episode IV, Tarkin reveals that the Original Death Star was to be used to keep the Regional Governors in line with the Empire. So since the rebels destroyed the first one, are the Regional Governors not following the Emperors will? Just throwing a couple of lines that explains the state of the Galaxy would help tremendously.

Although I think there still needs to be more to change, those are some of the more basic things I can think of.

THIS.

I’ve always given the Jabba’s Palace stuff a pass just because of how fun and exciting of an action set-piece it is. I love the sleazy atmosphere there. The space slug mob Don running rackets, smuggling guns and drugs, enslaving people, putting hits on people, etc. It’s such a cool den of vice which really sells how lawless the galaxy is outside of the Empire. Dagobah was a nice touch too.

Honestly it’s a really jarring tonal shift how we go from that to cute fluffy teddy bears in the woods. The middle act of the movie REALLY drags. Basically Luke, Leia and Han are bumbling around on Endor not doing anything until Luke gets bored and decides he’s done with the cynical product placement and wants to return to the plot. It’s a shame Leia and Han don’t do the same.

All the Vader/Emperor/Luke stuff is fantastic and is the high point of the series. Nothing will ever come close. It’s not the perfect book end for the series but it’s a fantastic closure to Luke’s story.

I’d argue that’s what the whole trilogy was, Luke’s story. He goes from being a whiny insecure young 20 something year old dude living with his parents, to a cocky over confident brat after blowing up the Death Star, to growing up, saving his friends and mending his dysfunctional family.

JadedSkywalker said:

It is far from a perfect film. But i always liked the duel of the fates and how the original edit worked. The original 35mm version. I hate the DVD and Blu ray cuts with added things that slow the pace of the film, and i really despise cgi Yoda in every version since 2011. I also think the original theatrical audio mix of the film was better than every version since. The only thing that came close was the Laserdisc.

This. The post '01 cuts are completely unwatchable.

The Phantom Menace: Not good, but not bad. It’s a shame all of the releases after the DVD completely kill the flow of the movie. The extended Pod Race is the worst offender.

The horrible red shift of the DVD and the DNR/sharpening of the blu-ray is just awful. It’s looks like complete shit visually because of the horrible video transfers.

DuracellEnergizer said:

DominicCobb said:

I understand your POV just fine, but you’re forgetting the end of the movie. Or, you would be if you had gotten to that part.

Luke astro-projects himself to Salt Lake Planet, gets shot at by gorilla walkers, has a non-lightsaber duel with Darth Millennial, then dies of a broken heart, inspiring broom boys throughout the galaxy to get creative with their sweeping.

Making this my sig

JEDIT: I succeeded.

DrDre said:

J0E said:

Darth Lucas said:

While I think it’s looking pretty darn great so far, I think I ought to throw my two cents into the teal walls debate. I’m sure some of it would have been visible in '77, but it would have been projected with very warm bulbs, which would have counteracted the teal in the walls a bit, not a ton, but a bit. I don’t have much of a preference, as I think either way is going to be “accurate” in one sense or another. However, I do think you’ve gone a bit overboard on that teal look in certain shots. For instance, I’m seeing quite a bit of teal in Leia’s dress in some of those shots, which I don’t think would have been the case. It may have picked up a bit from the walls around the edges of her dress, but it’s not reflective enough of a material, I think, to have the wall color drastically affect our perception of the dress color itself.

Just a little nitpick, but I think it’s worth addressing.

The teal walls may have been painted like that so they’d show up as a cool white on film. Like how the Superman suit was teal so it would look blue on film. IMHO set photos as a color reference isn’t always accurate when it comes to movies shot on film. A lot of things are colored a certain way on set so they appear the way the director wants them to look projected.

That’s why I only use set photos to support what is seen on film, and what is seen on film both on the frames, and projected is a bluish green color for the walls with creme colored panels.

Projected Derann print:

Despecialized 3.0:

Oh okay, I definitely see what you mean now.

Also sorry, I haven’t seen the '19 cut yet. I’m still not familiar with the color of that version.

Darth Lucas said:

While I think it’s looking pretty darn great so far, I think I ought to throw my two cents into the teal walls debate. I’m sure some of it would have been visible in '77, but it would have been projected with very warm bulbs, which would have counteracted the teal in the walls a bit, not a ton, but a bit. I don’t have much of a preference, as I think either way is going to be “accurate” in one sense or another. However, I do think you’ve gone a bit overboard on that teal look in certain shots. For instance, I’m seeing quite a bit of teal in Leia’s dress in some of those shots, which I don’t think would have been the case. It may have picked up a bit from the walls around the edges of her dress, but it’s not reflective enough of a material, I think, to have the wall color drastically affect our perception of the dress color itself.

Just a little nitpick, but I think it’s worth addressing.

The teal walls may have been painted like that so they’d show up as a cool white on film. Like how the Superman suit was teal so it would look blue on film. IMHO set photos as a color reference isn’t always accurate when it comes to movies shot on film. A lot of things are colored a certain way on set so they appear the way the director wants them to look projected.

CourtlyHades296 said:

Phantom Menace is the best of the prequel trilogy. ROTS is killed by the poor handling of Anakin’s fall, and AOTC is completely unwatchable.

This but unironically. I’d go as far to say that the theatrical version of The Phantom Menace is actually kind of good. I’d give it a 5.5/10. For me Jedi is a solid 6/10.

The biggest problem with the film is the characters are 2 dimensional cardboard cut-outs of people. And of course the slapstick Jar Jar stuff doesn’t hold up. Visually the film holds up the best out of the entire trilogy except for the underwater city interior and the Gungan-Battle Droid fight at the end. They used a lot more miniatures, sets, costumes, models and stunt work. The pacing (of the theatrical version) is actually really good and I see why so many people liked it upon a first viewing. The action set pieces are fun, exciting and they don’t linger any longer than they have to. It moves to the next set piece relatively quickly. So on a first viewing your mind doesn’t really linger on the plot or the characters. It drags on a little bit when they get to Coruscant, but it still isn’t as bad as Endor in Jedi.

Literally the only good thing that was filmed in Attack of the Clones is the less than 5 minute sequence when Anakin goes on the hunt for his mother, finds her and kills the Sandpeople. I’ve never seen an edit of Clones I like because that is the film’s only redeeming quality. Rich Evans is right. Relative to it’s budget, it’s the worst film ever made.

Hal has a good edit of Sith, it would be a good replacement version if not for the ending and renaming the film. There’s a lot of good edits of Sith though.

oojason said:

J0E said:

(kind of but not really) Off Topic:
Any word of a physical release? I can’t find anything out there. Same with Clone Wars.

Not yet mate.

A few people seem to think we may see a blu ray release around the time the 2nd season of The Mandalorian airs on Disney+ - in October?

(which kind of makes sense - lots of Season 1 blu rays in the shops and online… with large stickers on the boxes with ‘Season 2 out now - only on Disney+’ text on them…)

Okay thanks, I’ll be posting in here then lmao.

(kind of but not really) Off Topic:
Any word of a physical release? I can’t find anything out there. Same with Clone Wars.

JadedSkywalker said:

I saw them in high school so they have a certain nostalgia, though i find nearly every single change objectionable. Except for restoring the picture, removing matte lines and expanding and restoring the sound of the films for multi track digital audio. I’m sympathetic to fixing the Landspeeder shot, but very little beyond that. The dinosaurs in the city are a joke. The quasi videogamey 90’s effects don’t hold up one bit.
The Jabba scene relays the same exact information as the Greedo scene. Preserve it for those who want the 1997 cut. I also want the original version of Phantom Menace so i can finally retire my Laserdisc.

I’d love to see the '97 versions be properly preserved. I’ve been dying for it for YEARS man. Same with Phantom Menace. The closest we have other than ZigZig’s LD upscale and his PAL SDTV cap is Adywan’s version which uses outdated LD footage (in the sense we have better upscales) and it still has one or two shots from the original DVD release. I still greatly prefer the theatrical pacing/audio though. Apparently ZigZig got his hands on a 35mm print so fingers crossed on that one.

TN1 plans on doing scans of the '97 cut after the 4kxx projects are done. I’m excited for those as well.

As a response to OP, the '97 cut is important because it was widely theatrically released for the 20th Anniversary. It was also released to satiate our appetite before the prequels were released. And they’re the only versions we don’t have proper a HD preservation of yet. For that reason alone they’re important.

In all seriousness though, this looks really cool. This with the ADigitalMan Episode 2.5 Edit of Star Wars: Clone Wars would make a definitive almost 5 hour cut of Revenge of the Sith. What’s cool about the ADigitalMan version is that it’s already edited around the Shaak-Ti part so there would be no continuity errors between that and this. That is 2hr 13min and this is 2h 29min.

If someone would re-record all of the Grevious’ lines in Episode 3 in the style of Grevious '03/'04/'05…

Send help…

My Spleen, it’s not there…

I need help finding it…

Please, I think I’m dying…

Bluto said:

J0E said:

The only reason 4k83 wasn’t GOUT synced is TN1 wanted to use the original audio track on the release print because of how well preserved it was. There was no need to sync to GOUT for audio tracks. I don’t know why that prompted a conversation of whether or not we should jump ship to a new standard. And if someone wanted the 4k83 track synced to GOUT, they could do it. Not only that, but it would also break timing of a lot of our subtitles. IMHO it isn’t worth it, literally no one is going to notice a handful of frames.

I don’t think that’s the main reason. From what I have read in the other forum, the underlying reason that 4K83 wasn’t GOUT-synced was that TN1 wanted to preserve the entire film: not just the audio, but the actual frames too - even though there were only a couple of extra ones. IMHO, they have made the right call in the long term, provided that the leaders of other major projects are in agreement going forwards. But I take your point that in the short/medium term, it may be a lot of work for those involved in subtitles/audio tracks to convert everything to a new standard.

Oh okay, I understand. I completely agree for this release. I think it is pretty important to preserve all the frames of a restoration if they’re available. I get it from that angle.

On the other hand, It seems pretty common to loose a few frames between reel changes in theatrical showings and in official restorations.

@catbus
Noted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ussCHoQttyQ (also someone please do your part, it’s one dislike off from being neutral)
JEDIT: No one touch it. There is balance in the Force…

Bluto said:

It’s a tricky one, but I agree with Hal9000 that looking forwards is key. If there’s (say) a 99% chance that all the frames have now been found from the various 4K prints and UHD/Disney+ editions AND everyone is on board with switching to the new sync format, then I think it’s a really good idea. It would be a nuisance for a short time for the audio people to convert GOUT-synced tracks to the new standard, but afterwards there would be a new “gold” standard for all projects going forwards. (And in the future, the old GOUT-synced tracks would still be available for “legacy” projects such as Harmy’s current DE v2.x editions.)

However, if new frames are going to continue to be discovered every couple of years (*) OR different groups are going to adopt different sync standards, then things will get terribly messy and we probably would be better off just sticking with the GOUT standard.

(*) It is extremely unlikely that there are any more frames out there to be found, according to Team Negative 1.

Either that, or everyone’s going to get the project, and re-up it GOUT synced. That eliminates all the issues with getting the old tracks synced to the new video source. There’s already a GOUT synced version of 4k83 out there.

The only reason 4k83 wasn’t GOUT synced is TN1 wanted to use the original audio track on the release print because of how well preserved it was. There was no need to sync to GOUT for audio tracks. I don’t know why that prompted a conversation of whether or not we should jump ship to a new standard. And if someone wanted the 4k83 track synced to GOUT, they could do it. Not only that, but it would also break timing of a lot of our subtitles. IMHO it isn’t worth it, literally no one is going to notice a handful of frames.

Water sausage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMk4SPd8wmk

Have fun down this rabbit hole.

SilverWook said:

Doomcock

The first place my mind went.

Rancor022 said:

Sorry to revive an old thread, but just last month I completed my own upscales of both Ewok films (under the pseudonym “Project Ewok”) and both are available on the SWT forums. I see they’re starting to spread around other sites now as well.

Just out of curiosity, did you use the NTSC discs or the PAL discs as a basis for the upscale? Or did you get some other source?

I can’t help but feel as though this is a wasted opportunity. The Republic Commandos make several appearances in the show. It would have been awesome if they were used instead of the Bad Batch for Season 7. If we got a series about them, it could have picked up where the game left off seeing as how it ended on a cliffhanger. It would have been really cool if we got a remake/remaster of the game to coincide with it.

Now I’m sad 😦