Mielr

Originally posted by: 20th Century Mark
Well, someone who is close to Lucasfilm to keep the cost low. Everybody can mail their discs along with some cash to help pay for the big shipment. Or maybe we create a PayPal account and start collecting or something. I'd volunteer to do it, but I'm in Canada, so it will cost a lot to ship to California.

Originally posted by: Uhfgood
Has anyone thought GL might have wanted to wait until the hidef thing was in full swing, and then magically produce really awesome cleaned up hidef versions of the original trilogy on hddvd or blu-ray? But because we kept crying about it instead he's going to release a bunch of shoddy original trilogy re-releases in order to milk more money from us?

Originally posted by: marioxb
So it really doesn't bother me EVER about non-animorphic. Ever since I first discovered the joy of widescreen, (probably with the VHS Star Wars Trilogy- the one with the holofoil cover and From SW to Jedi tape) I always tried to track down the widescreen version of movies. Which, having never owned an LD player and never owning DVD until The Matrix was released, was pretty difficult. Eventually the black bars grew on me until I really didn't notice them. Many years later, I got a widescreen TV and now I can't watch movies without seeing the bars there. It just feels more "cinematic" to me with the black bars. I tried setting my DVD to 16x9 every once in a while, but I just hate it. It feels like I am missing something. And I swear on 1:85:1 movies, a little itty bit of the top and bottom is missing. I noticed this with Resident Evil. I can't be bothered to constantly change the settings, so I just leave it set 4x3 letterbox all the time. I really and truly love seeing those crazy black bars framing my movie. I know I sound like the total opposite of "Joe-six-pack" who loves his full screen movies and hates the black bars, but I really would rather watch movies on my widecreen TV showing some sort of black bars at the top and bottom. I don't even care if the bars are larger than the picture, or how large the bars are, it just makes me feel better knowing I am for sure watching the movie the way I am supposed to, in widescreen. Part of this could be that I watch full screen in stretched mode (which I don't notice the stretching anymore)- the mode where absolutly nothing is cut off of the screen. If I don't see the bars, I kinda think I may be watching the movie in full screen by accident. I also would rather have subtitles always appear in the bottom black box.

So anyone else actually prefer seeing black bars framing the widescreen picture, even on a widescreen TV?

Originally posted by: generalfrevious
will there be four black bars if I would play this on a computer? Cause Im uneasy owning a product that got two stars out of 5 from amazon.

Originally posted by: THX
Sending the SE discs back is an appropriate statement with an inescapable meaning.
Rendering them unplayable appears spiteful and is likely to make the statement be ignored.

Originally posted by: CO

My whole point is I have loved other movies growing up so I can dispel the nostalgia factor that is thrown in so many times: Raiders of the Lost, Superman, Back to the Future, The Terminator, etc., but I cannot watch those movies as much as the OT, or I guess I don't love those as much as the OT. I have seen them alot of times through the years on HBO and video and now on DVD, but I do need a break every once in a while, as I am always afraid I will just get sick of them. Sometimes if I haven't seen Back to the Future in a couple of years, I enjoy the movie more, not with the OT.

What is 'it' about these movies? How do they have this replay value that no movie I have ever seen possess? I mean ROTJ is not the greatest movie in the world to me, surely not better than the original Superman or Back to the Future, but I would pick that any day of the week to watch over them.

29 years later, I still love these 3 movies more than ever and still watch them just as much today. (Well not as much, I am too old to stay home from school sick, I have to go to work every day now!)

How did Lucas do 'it'? Sometimes I really can explain 'it'
I understand what you mean, CO.

I've been a fan of the movies since 1982 and my love for them has never wavered.

For me, the "IT" you refer to is a kind of organic beauty, a sparse, simple "hand-crafted" feel, which the digital effects in the SE completely destroy.

I also love how so many of the shots in the trilogy, are composed like they were still photographs- and they tend to linger on those shots for a while, unlike many of today's films that are just RUSH RUSH RUSH.

That, plus the original John Williams scores = perfection.

Originally posted by: Darth_Evil
Wait....Now I've figured out what IT is!!!

In the OT, almost every last thing you saw on screen was real, even if it was a minurature or model. It was all stuff you could touch and feel and was really there. In the PT, almost everything you see if CGI, and you can tell it. The PT doesn't feel real at all. Deos Jar-Jar look like someone you could reach out and touch or interact with? No. Does Yoda look nearly as real as he did in ESB? No. In the OT, everything was there. No CGI.

Originally posted by: CO
If we boycott this release then Lucas claims victory and says, "See I told you nobody wanted the original versions." Then the O-OT dies a slow death that Lucas always wanted it to , then what about the next generation of fans?

Originally posted by: CO
I made a thread about this a few weeks ago, about watching all my non-anamorphic DVD's. I was honest, and said they weren't that bad, and I believe just because of DVD resolution, even a non-anamorphic image will look alot better than Laserdisk.

I put in about 15 movies that were non-anamorphic, and was able to compare them with some of the same titles that were anamorphic, and yes there is a difference, but not a huge difference where it is that noticeable, except for someone who really knows his stuff. Now in saying all this, I am not saying the images were great, the fleshtones were a little faded, and the colors didn't jump out at me, but I am dead serious when I mean they were actually not that bad, in fact they were pretty good.

Do I want Anamorphic? Yes. Do I think they would look 10 times better in Anamorphic? Of course. But this is all we have now, and my bootlegs always freeze up, and I am tired of looking on EBAY for new ones, and I just can't stomach Hayden at the end of ROTJ as force ghost, cause I shake my head everytime.

By the way, I have a 50" RCA HDTV (Widescreen). So the fact that is non-anamorphic really affects me.

I still respect someone who isn't buying the DVD's out of pure principle.
Thanks for that. I agree with you about ROTJ - I can't bring myself to watch the mess that was made of that movie on the DVD. I have the LaserDiscs of the OT (the "faces" CLV versions), and I've made my own DVDs of them (using one DVD per LD side in HQ mode for best quality). I don't yet have a widescreen TV, so the issue doesn't affect me that much- yet. I do plan on buying a widescreen TV in the future. My current 4:3 TV does have a widescreen mode for 16:9 DVDs, but I don't use it that often.

I know that these DVDs aren't going to be as good as anamorphic - by using so many of the available resolution lines for the letterbox bars, they simply can't be, but I was just wondering if there's going to be any improvement, in direct comparison to my LDs (since the same masters are being used).



Yo, right here. If they're going to half-ass it after making such a big deal, I'll stick with the VHS.

Originally posted by: boris
They can be and they were.

Originally posted by: Obiwampa
Remember that? The Ewoks? The banal dialog between Luke and Leia?, ("But why must you confront him?!"), The musical number in Jabba's palace? The musical number in the Ewok village? Muppets. Muppets everywhere. (A plethora of puppets, if you will.) Vader unmasked? ANOTHER Death Star?! I find it amusing that everyone now considers ROTJ to be an equal member of the original-original trilogy, and a 'classic'. I just seem to remember a time, hmmmm, when was it? A time when ROTJ was considered the worst of all the SW films...hmmmm, when was that, AHA! Before Episode I!!!!!!!

Originally posted by: zombie84
Here is what appears to be a fairly accurate post from hometheaterforum:

"At first, the intention was simply a re-release of ANH only, using new elements struck from the o-neg. But when they had a look at it, they discovered that much of it had "gone pink". Much of the film had been shot on a new Eastman stock that, as it turned out, was unstable (I recall reading that the Jaws negative also suffers from this).

This shows that when the film was originally conformed, original camera negative was cut, and not dupe negative as is sometimes done instead.


A few bits of negative were too far gone and had to be replaced using new neg struck from existing postive(s). One such source was a three-strip Technicolor (yes!) print Lucas had had made back in the day for his personal archive. I know that sounds unlikely as late as 1977 but that's what I came across in my research.


New negatives of these shots were then cut into the negative, replacing the deteriorated portions.

This process inspired Lucas to let ILM warm up for the prequels by creating new material for the re-release. So all the necessary shots (not the entire movie) were scanned in at 2K, the new CG elements added, and were then shot back out to film and cut into the negative. A few 1976/7 special effects shots were scanned in for the sole purpose of cleaning them of printed-in dirt and whatnot; I have b-roll of an ILMer clone-stamping out dirt blobs from Luke training with the lightsaber aboard the Millennium Falcon, a shot that was not plastered with new CG elements.

You see what's happening to the negative all this time? It's being subsumed by new material, bit by bit. Some of it avoidable, some not. Somewhere I have a sound bite of Lucas saying the negative now contains something like 250 (I don't remember the exact number but it's in the 200s) pieces of new negative. This is the reason Lucas has said the original "doesn't exist anymore", because from the perspective of original elements as the ideal, it doesn't. The fact that one could always go back to existing positive elements is of course what made the statement truthful only from a certain point of view."

Originally posted by: Guy Caballero

So, it's sitting there. I'll scale the wall. I need people outside The Ranch to create a diversion. Ready...break!

Originally posted by: zombie84
The original negative ITSELF was what was deteriorating because of the film stock. Sometime dupe prints are made but in this case the rotting of some sections of the emulsion indicates that it was not a dupe but the original negative. The interpositive from 1985 is fine AFAIK --it was even used for the 1993 Laserdisk.

Originally posted by: zombie84


No, if it was used it would have been cut, not scanned and copied. Hmm. I had also heard that the 85 interpositive was used to fill in the rotting section. But then someone told me it was the technicolor print. I wonder which one it really was now (both? neither?)

Originally posted by: zombie84
Wasn't the technicolor print used to restore the OOT? Shouldn't it have frames missing?

Originally posted by: Yoda Is Your Father
How do you know this?

Originally posted by: canofhumdingers


Sorry to go off on a tangent, but, after the stupidity with which the "Da Vinci Code" has blinded the general populace, i have to correct you. (No, i'm not saying you're dumb, just that people have been fed all sorts of falsities from that book/movie) & this is one i just can't stand. Leonardo da Vinci's name is LEONARDO. Da Vinci is NOT A NAME. It simply clarifies that you're talking about Leonardo from the town of Vinci, and not some other Leonardo. It'd be like if you knew a guy named Bob who was born in Chicago and contantly referred to him as "from Chicago"..... "hey, from Chicago, wanna go catch a movie tonight?"

Originally posted by: ricarleite

Are you telling me that there are no copies of STAR WARS left? Lucasfilm and Twentieth Century Fox, two multi-billion corporations from the United States of America, who produced and distributed the most popular movie in the world, cannot provide ONE SINGLE COPY of the movie in it's original form? They have to resort to a LD because there is NO other way? And he has used the original films to make the SEs? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see how it's possible to overwrite celluloid. What did he use to make the 1993 and 1995 sets? It obviously didn't come from an inferior form. Did he BURN it afterwards? Maybe they just burned it as an accident and are too embarassed to say, because that is the only reasonable explanation that comes to mind.