Lord Starfish

Dek Rollins said:

I managed to find that set and grabbed it. Is there a particular reason the broadcast audio is mono? I thought it was originally aired stereo, but perhaps the source captures weren’t in stereo?

No, Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z were only ever in mono. Toei didn’t switch to stereo audio until a few episodes into GT. Well, aside from the thirteenth Z movie. That was stereo too.

I’m not sure I agree with cutting Azog entirely and having Thorin get fatally wounded off-screen. Like, I know that’s true to the book and all, but to me the idea of having one of the central cast just suddenly show up dead seems terribly anti-climactic. Then again, I’m saying this as someone who was never overly fond of Tolkien’s writing-style to begin with… He did the same thing with Boromir in Lord of the Rings and I thought it was just as underwhelming there. So personally I’d probably keep enough of Azog to at least clearly establish him as the enemy general, probably cutting out all the backstory stuff because it’d bog the story down too much, and try to trim down the battle between them to get rid of the ridiculous stuff such as the whole part where he’s plunged underwater and somehow manages to jump back through the ice and all that.

Still, sounds like yet another promising take on making these movies more watchable. Definitely interested to see how this turns out.

I would just like to point out that the movie never said Ares was responsible for everything; in fact he himself outright said that all he did was give a bunch of people who already wanted to cause massive amounts of destruction ideas on how exactly to go about it. Ludendorff would still have been a pure evil monster even if Ares hadn’t given him and his assistant some ideas for how to kill people more efficiently.

I mean, I won’t deny that the Ares reveal does cheapen the movie’s overall impact somewhat, but I don’t think it’s quite as bad as you say it is. That said, this does at least sound interesting.

Vader21 said:

Is this the same as Harmy ROTJ 2.5…? or was this a different release.?

Harmy’s ROTJ 2.5 is a reconstruction of the theatrical version based off the Blu-rays, in an attempt to create a version of the movie as high quality as possible. On the other hand, this release is just a straight-up scan of a film reel from the movie’s original theatrical release. It has a lot more film-damage and doesn’t have quite as much detail and clarity in the image, but it does have the advantage that what you’re seeing is 100% the same as what was shown in theaters in the eighties. Which one is better is really up to personal preference.

Radar Rider said:
With all the edits they did I was surprised at how they didn’t seem to update the lightsaber effects in many scenes. I don’t know much about video production but I’d think that would’ve been one of the more easy things to revise.

Agreed. While I do think the lightsaber effects in Empire and Jedi still hold up, they look absolutely terrible in the original, and with all the other stuff Lucas has changed for better or worse (but mostly worse) over the years, it’s odd that he’s never tried to fix those. Or that he never noticed how the so-called color-correction in 2004 resulted in them being completely miscolored in many shots… Like, even as a twelve-year-old I was just like “…Luke’s lightsaber was green just now. Why was it green just now.”

On one hand I feel like it’s a bit early to give a final verdict on Rogue One given how I’ve only seen it once, and it hasn’t even been a week… but meh. I’ll try anyway.

1. The Empire Strikes Back
2. Star Wars/A New Hope
3. Rogue One
4. Return of the Jedi
5. The Force Awakens
6. Revenge of the Sith
7. The Phantom Menace
8. Attack of the Clones

I feel like Rogue One kinda beats TFA by default simply because it’s something new, and while I like Jedi it has a bit too many obvious pacing- and tone problems for me to consider it among the absolute best. So yeah, my feelings might change down the line but for now, I consider Rogue One the best SW movie since Empire.

Harmy said:

There’s this red flashing in the imperial fleet introduction (and I’m guessing a few other places), which I’ve mentioned before, which makes those shots virtually impossible to use. It’s also a lot dirtier than Poita’s scans and it is pretty heavily cropped. But anything’s better than the GOUT!

I was going to ask about the slight discoloration on the right side of the frame and if it would be an option to crop the frame just a tiny bit to get rid of it… but I suppose if the print is already noticably cropped to begin with that might not be an option. Oh well, if that somehow ends up becoming a serious problem to me while watching, I guess I could always just use MPC’s “Increase size” option to cut off the edges myself.

Density said:

The original voice actor was awful and the hologram–setting aside it’s a hybrid of an old woman and a chimpanzee–looked absolutely nothing like the Emperor in ROTJ, even less like him than ROTS McDiarmid does.

I don’t know, while it’s true that Theatrical Empire Palpatine ‘‘sounds’’ nothing like Ian McDiarmid, the visuals… Well we barely even see what he looks like in the first place. His face is almost completely covered in shadows. I’ve seen the argument made that showing his face as clearly as the redone version does sort of takes away from the mystery of the character, and I don’t think the original shows him clearly enough that it ends up becoming particularly jarring in Jedi to begin with. Like, if they had kept the original hologram and merely redubbed it with McDiarmid’s voice, I think that would have worked fine.

That said, yeah, I prefer actually having the same actor in all the movies, even if the implementation of the change was… less than perfect. I guess Adywan’s version ends up being the best by default here.

UnitéD2 said:

Wasn’t the use of Blu Ray footages to build correct HD versions of the OT a stopgap until we have good original sources ?

I thought it was just because the Blu-ray is still the best version available despite its flaws? And looking at that comparison you posted… well it’s quite close, but the BD is still noticably clearer, so from where I’m standing it still makes sense to use the BD-footage where possible. Though with the film prints looking like that, we are at a point where it can be pretty seamlessly combined with the BDs I suppose.

UnitéD2 said:

When that Jedi print is completely cleaned, will there still be a point to use the Blu Ray ?

The Blu-ray still generally has a sharper image and more detail. Like, if you compare the Silver Screen Edition of Star Wars to the official BD, the former might have better colors but there’s still a fair amount of fine detail that can only be seen clearly in the latter. Which makes sense, LucasFilm did have the original negatives to work with, whereas all fan-editors have are copies of copies.

…Of course, in Return of the Jedi there was that one segment of about 10 minutes where the Blu-ray was completely out of focus so Harmy just used cleaned up 35mm footage all the way in Despecialized 2.5. It’s when they land on Endor and the first few scenes taking place there, if I’m not mistaken. In that one case, the multigenerational, worn out 35mm prints were actually superior to the BDs.

darthrush said:

Physical media (specifically Blu-Ray) because…

-you can actually physically have a collection with nice shiny discs in nice shiny cases with nice shiny cover art.
-it is permanently yours.
-it’s bonus features/audio commentaries are assembled on beautiful menus
-Full HD quality with amazing surround sound tracks

And to some of us, like myself, there’s also…
-Streaming services having an overall pretty pathetic selection in Norway (I’m sure the same holds true for quite a few other non-US countries as well),
-Internet streaming being a total crapshoot due to an extremely unstable connection.

I mean I have Netflix… I use it to watch The Flash these days, and they have some other stuff here and there that might interest me… but streaming still has a long way to go before I’ll consider it a good alternative to BD.

MalàStrana said:

Lord Starfish said:

Lord Haseo said:

Good. Since 2/3 of the other main female characters were sexualized it would be refreshing to see one that doesn’t get the same treatment. She can still have a romance but keep her attire PG.

At least The Force Awakens clearly respected her enough to not use her for any blatant fanservice.

Are you serious ? Every piece of dialogue when she’s with Han and with the Falcon aren’t fanservice by your books ?

By the way: Padmé wasn’t sexualized either, although she was hot. It would be impossible to sexualize Rey.

1: Obviously not the kind of fanservice I was referring to.
2: Sure. It is physically impossible for Daisy Ridley to be sexualized. She has the mythical power of Anti-Objectification, preventing her from ever being in a revealing outfit and magically preventing any camera-angles that could potentially accentuate her features.

Lord Haseo said:

Good. Since 2/3 of the other main female characters were sexualized it would be refreshing to see one that doesn’t get the same treatment. She can still have a romance but keep her attire PG.

I would think (or at least hope) that Rey being the main character of the sequel trilogy would be reason enough for the studio to let her retain her dignity. At least The Force Awakens clearly respected her enough to not use her for any blatant fanservice.

I can see both sides of the argument here and agree that the 2004 Emperor didn’t really work as well as it could have… but I still think at least in concept, the change is harmless. I don’t mind that much that it’s clearly the RotS Emperor and not the RotJ Emperor, as I still find having the same actor portraying him in all the movies to be a step in the right direction, but I can see how that would bother people. And the added dialogue… Yeah no, get that shit outta my face.

Adywan’s edit is clearly the best version of the scene tho.

bjwanlund said:

So… Stupid question incoming but here you go: Is this more of a preservation of how it originally was shown in the cinemas than the “original theatrical version” they’re supposedly putting onto that new Blu-Ray come this September?

The current Blu-ray already has an “original theatrical version” alternative… The only difference between it and the extended cut is that Human Again is not in the movie. Every other change they made is still there.

I remember seeing a complaint against the BD’s colors in that the brightness made the Beast’s design far too discernable in the early scenes, taking the impact out of the “Step into the light” scene, which was originally the first time the audience gets a clear view of what he looks like…
Being that this movie is older than me and I never saw it in theaters though, I obviously can’t say for sure. But the idea of a 35mm scan of the film still appeals to me because I really don’t like how the BD looks. It looks to me like they applied some rather aggressive edge enhancement or something to it, and the gradients look really messed up at points.

Recomposited bluescreen shots are kind of a given, and stuff like the hallway extension or the CGI stand-ins in the ceremony at the end of A New Hope are perfectly fine changes. Just fixing up a few immersion-breaking Special Effects Failures? Sure, go ahead. Also the CGI spaceship shots still blend in pretty nicely with the old footage and I can’t say I really mind those. New establishing shots of Ben’s hut or Mos Eisley (by which I mean the shot of Luke and Ben looking down on the port from a distance, all the added establishing shots IN the spaceport can go die in a fire) are also perfectly fine with me.

Empire I honestly feel is mostly devoid of particularly offensive changes. The worst I can think of is the pointless added dialogue in the Emperor scene indicating that Vader had no idea that Luke SKYWALKER was his son…

For Jedi… I much prefer the 97 version of the ending scene. Other than the previously mentioned recomposited shots, I honestly can’t think of anything else that was made better in this one. It is by far the one that’s suffered the most from unnecessary and detrimental revisions.

IsanRido said:

But he looks nothing like the Return version. Its inclusion implies he looked for 20 years like he did in Revenge then changed completely in 3 years.

This is true… but then the original Emperor in that shot was an old woman with the eyes of a chimpanzee, dubbed over by someone who didn’t sound even remotely like Ian McDiarmid. The change could certainly have been executed better, but I think I prefer the new version to the old here (minus the afforementioned stupid dialogue change).

Completely serious question here… Is precisely replicating the look, timing and placement of the alien subs really that important? Maybe it’s just because I live in Norway and rarely get the English subs hardcoded into my movies anyway, but I feel like the only case where subtitle formatting is a serious issue, is where the subtitles in question are animated or otherwise elaborately designed, which… really isn’t the case for the alien subs in Star Wars. I mean I get that you want to be faithful to how it was seen in theaters in 97, but is it really worth holding the entire release back, just because you’re worried that the subs might not be frame-accurate or placed exactly right on the screen?

Well that aside, nice to see the 97 cut get some love around here too. For all the things that were wrong with this version, I do think that the 97 release of Return of the Jedi had the best version of the ending celebration, with both my preferred soundtrack and the… not as weird Anakin-ghost. (I still have an issue with the original having hair and being only barely recognisable as the man we saw under the mask, but Hayden Christensen just made no sense at all.)

yhwx said:

2. Return of the Jedi
   The needed sequel to The Empire Strikes Back. You can’t have one without the other. I can tolerate some of the lower points of the film. Overall, a great end to the trilogy.

That’s a good point actually. Jedi might be inferior to Empire, but without Jedi, Empire would be a thoroughly unsatisfying sequel. It’s actually rather similar to my favorite anime Madoka Magica; The current end to that series is the movie Rebellion, which I’d say is fine if taken as just another installment in a larger story (though its mere existence did ruin what I consider one of the most perfect endings to any story ever…), but if that movie is to be the final end of the story… Well then it’s pretty much the most blatant waste of time I’ve ever seen, borderline infuriating in how much obvious effort and thought went into it only for it to end on a blatantly unfinished and unsatisfying note… Thankfully they did announce another sequel a while back, which should hopefully be the Jedi to Rebellion’s Empire. Because no matter the interesting ideas and impressive set-pieces you put into a movie, if you’re gonna end it on a blatant cliffhanger, you owe it to the fans to eventually resolve said cliffhanger. Especially if the cliffhangery sequel turns out to be one of the most ludicrously successful things you’ve ever put out… which Rebellion did.

1: Empire. I debated for the longest time whether this or… the next entry, would win out, but in the end I found myself agreeing with the majority here.
2: A New Hope. The one that started it all and the one I’ve rewatched the most over the years, to the point where I could probably recite damn near the entire movie from memory. I rank it below Empire mostly because I feel Empire doesn’t have as many unintentionally funny or just plain weird moments. Which leads me into…
3/4: Return of the Jedi. EWOKS. JEDI ROCKS. FORCE KICKS. BOBA’S HILARIOUSLY ANTI-CLIMACTIC DEATH. This movie is honestly kinda rich on the unintentional comedy. The bits on the Death Star mostly save it though. A tie with…
3/4: The Force Awakens. Yeah it’s pretty much a total rehash of A New Hope. Yeah Rey’s motivations are a bit all over the place. Yeah I think I’ve only ever met one person who enjoyed Starkiller Base. Still, a lot of this movie’s flaws are forgivable to me just because of how much fun it was, and how for the first time since Jedi, we got a movie that actually felt like Star Wars. Also I like Finn. He’s a pretty likable and compelling character. Oh, and it looks phenomenal.
5: Revenge of the Sith. Man, those action scenes are awesome… Man, the writing is horrendous…
6: The Phantom Menace. …I actually kinda like Qui-Gon Jinn. I find his whole “I am right and everybody else (especially Jar-Jar) is stupid”-attitude highly entertaining.
7: Attack of the Clones. The worst romance I’ve seen and not a whole lot else besides empty spectacle. Empty spectacle that isn’t even particularly fun to watch.

The Aluminum Falcon said:
The first change is removing the silly scene at the start of disc 2, the one where Peter Jackson gets shot by Legolas by mistake when Gimli nudges Legolas´s bow when he shoots, then Gimli has a very silly Oops reaction. It was removed for two reasons, the first being that its very cheesy and silly and comes across more as a Peter Jackson and crew cameo fanboy scene than a proper scene in the film that serves a real purpose. The second and more important reason is that it reveals the Army of the Dead too early, taking power away from their dramatic entrance into the battle of Pelennor Fields later in the film. The theatrical release did this much better without this superfluous scene IMHO so I have returned it to how it was in the theatrical release.

While I feel that removing scenes seems to go a bit beyond the scope of what you seem to have been trying to do here (couldn’t you at least have also released a version with those scenes intact, if color-correction was the main point here?), I do agree that this particular part took away from the movie. Ever since I first saw the extended cut, I just felt that actually showing us 1: that the Army of the Dead accepted Aragorn’s offer, and 2: them commandeering the corsairs’ ships, really took away from their eventual Big Damn Heroes moment in Gondor. Especially seeing how it was already fine the way it was in the theatrical cut, just “What say you?!” and then we don’t see Aragorn again at all until he arrives during the battle. Just… the moment he jumps off that ship, we already know everything we needed to know about what happened in-between. And this is a thought I had when I was twelve.
I prefer the extended cuts in general, but for this particular moment… yeah it was better in the theatrical cuts.

Though to prevent this from just being a pointless revival of an ancient thread, I’m curious, since this seems to be a recurring problem with these movies… Was Battle of the Five Armies also excessively green? I would just check, but being that I honestly never noticed a problem with any of the previous movies anyway, I probably wouldn’t even be able to tell.

Well Disney would have access to the actual source material and better equipment, meaning that if done right, a restoration of the originals by them would easily trump anything Harmy or any other fans could do. Also there’s the fact that the Despecialized edition is, at the end of the day, nothing but an impressive fan-edit that only dedicated SW fans would even care enough to seek out in the first place. An official release would clearly give the originals more exposure. So no, I do not think Harmy’s work, as great as it is, is more important than an official re-release of the theatrical cuts.

Mind you, with all the different editions of Star Wars that are available now, I feel that the only way to truly satisfy everyone would be to remaster and release all of them with the same amount of care. I mean, I’m still pining for a high quality version of the 97 Jedi ending scene…

SputnicK said:

Quick question: How does v2.7 improve upon v2.5 of SW despecialized? I’ve watched both and feel that the technicolor coloring of v2.5 looks alot better (in my opinion)

Doesn’t it also replace several GOUT-sourced shots with equivalent shots from 35mm film prints? That seemed to be the more relevant tidbit to me at least. The colors… I think 2.5 looked fine on that front.

TV’s Frink said:

Jeffgale26 said:

One CGI shot of the millenium Falcon leaving Mos Eisly at takeoff.
Recomposited effects shots w/o black lines.
Afew of the cloud city open spaces.
And alien languages on the power core of the death Star.
Bobba Fett’s ship following the millenium Falcon to cloud city.
And maybe Lucas’ Wampa costume scene’s.
But other than that, I’d. Prefer to hear Bobba Fett’s original voice again.
And The emperor’s hologram from Empire.
Anakin’s eye color being changed to hazel in ROTJ, for the sake of continuity.
And a new special edition change.
Vader throwing Rick Macullum in the reactor core.
And nothing else.

“One” change is a difficult concept, I see.

Well the question was “Which SE change do you hate the least”, and the suggested scenario was that we were forced to keep one… Unlike this thread’s evil clone, there’s nothing about this scenario that prevents one from keeping more than one change, is there?

yotsuya said:
I went back and reread the definitions you provided and that is EXACTLY how I would describe both those scenes. Both critical to the story and in both places it jerks me out of the movie, disrupts the flow of the story, and both are logical inconsistent. That makes them plot holes. And by those definitions, my personal perspective is inherent to whether I consider it a plot hole or not. Your opinion as to whether it is a plot hole or not is irrelevant to whether or not it fits the definition in my viewing experience. It matters to you and your viewing experience, but not mine.

There is nothing about Rey and Finn managing to evade the one Star Destroyer in orbit around Jakku that is inherently impossible or inconsistent with the way the Star Wars universe works. Nor is Han conveniently being close enough to pick them up as soon as he did. Heck, with how this franchise has worked before, you could easily just chalk both those up to being “the will of the Force” or something. And when it comes to the gang seeing the destruction of the Republic system… Technically speaking, that is a plot-hole in that it blatantly breaks the laws of physics, but it’s clearly done for dramatic effect; Would that scene really have the same impact if someone just walked by and said “Guys! The First Order just blew up a star system!!”? (Putting aside the matter of me literally never having seen a single person who genuinely cared about the destruction of those planets…) I mean both that and what the movie itself did would have served the same purpose in the narrative, but one makes the scene more dramatic.

No, you want a legit plot-hole? Leia remembering her mother. That is blatantly impossible considering how Revenge of the Sith showed us that she died immediately after she was born. The “plot-holes” you’re complaining about are more on the level of saying that Luke’s plan to free Han from Jabba was really convoluted and stupid and claiming that that’s a plot-hole.