MonkeyLizard10

canofhumdingers said:

I like the way Nolan handled the shifting aspect ratios of his films for the blu ray releases. It was the closest he could get to replicating the IMAX theatrical experience on current home theater tech.

HOWEVER, I think ALL of these blu rays should’ve included the full frame IMAX footage as bonus features.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to see all four of these films at a 15/70 presentation (even got to see TDK twice thanks to a revival screening!) and there is nothing else like it in the world. Interstellar on IMAX was possibly the single greatest theatrical presentation I’ve ever experienced. The escape from Jakku on 15/70 was mind blowing. It was so visceral and nearly overwhelming. You felt like you were right there, in that chase. And you DEFINATELY lose something in the cropped scope version.

agreed

Dek Rollins said:

My problem with IMAX scenes is that the AR shift wouldn’t have to happen if they just did the whole thing in IMAX. Either use IMAX or don’t use IMAX.

I like the shift, it was like wow boom you immersed into the MF escape sequence scene.

Mavimao said:

PS: Did anyone see the Dark Knight in 15/70 IMAX? I didn’t care too much for the film, but the EXPERIENCE was out of this world. The detail was jaw-dropping.

no, but I saw Dark Knight Rises in 15/70 IMAX, it was insane, so sharp, you felt like you were right there on the streets of NYC looking around, incredible

Papai2013 said:

I think What Abrams could have done is include the full uncropped 1.44:1 sequence as a bonus feature in the Extras section of the Blu Ray (in addition to the shifting ratio on the 3D BD). In that way we could see both the standard 2.39:1 version of the film as well as the original IMAX framed sequence as it was shot. 2.39:1 to 1.78:1 is not bad but we are still missing a lot of image vertically from the original IMAX framing.

From the IMAX stills I have seen, the 1.44:1 framing is beautiful and has that sense of vertigo and immersion, but a 1.78:1 crop will lose all that feeling.

yeah complete agree
it’s so frustrating to not at least get them as an extra!
and a branching option would be nice, you could chose to see it all 2.40:1, switching to 1.78:1 or switching to 1.44:1

that scene was astonishing seeing it on a giant IMAX laser screen!

jzilli said:

In my experience, downscaling a 2160p UHD Blu-ray doesn’t look as good as a 1080p Blu-ray on a 1080p TV.

depends, using custom PC software/MadVR and such for playback it can often look better including crisper, but it depends upon how extreme the HDR grade for one

Force-Abel said:

MonkeyLizard10 said:

mykyta-R4 said:

MonkeyLizard10 said:

In ESB when Han says “Then I’ll see you in hell.” that line used to be “Then I’ll see you in HELLLLL!!!” with the “hell” part really screamed and loud, later on they seemed to mute that down a lot.

Is this true, a fact?

Well at the least it is true that I heard it in theater way back with the “hell” sounding a lot louder. I suppose there is always some chance it could just be that some theaters had speakers that had some sort of spikes that matched his voice and the way he said that and it made it sound more boosted, although that seems far less likely and reasonable of an explanation than that they just dampened it down a bit to not stress a semi-swear word as much or something.

This seems a little anecdotal to be included as a change here? Maybe it is more likely to be an issue with the theater you were viewing the film at, with nobody else apparently having this experience?

My little town cinema struggled with some TLJ scenes - there was pixelation during key scenes with explosions. At the larger cinemas there were no such pixelation problems.

Well this was film, no digital projection issues and such, 70mm with 6 track mag sound at the famous Stanley Warner, within a few days of ESB being first released. I don’t recall noting that part being different when I later saw at it at some different 35mm theaters either although those had much worse sound quality. All I really recall is wondering why that part sounded so muted when they first put it on TV and later on home video.

Maybe nobody paid enough attention? Maybe others have noticed it? Maybe a single word changing in volume a lot didn’t catch attention as most were looking for changed diaglogue and major changes??

mykyta-R4 said:

MonkeyLizard10 said:

In ESB when Han says “Then I’ll see you in hell.” that line used to be “Then I’ll see you in HELLLLL!!!” with the “hell” part really screamed and loud, later on they seemed to mute that down a lot.

Is this true, a fact?

Well at the least it is true that I heard it in theater way back with the “hell” sounding a lot louder. I suppose there is always some chance it could just be that some theaters had speakers that had some sort of spikes that matched his voice and the way he said that and it made it sound more boosted, although that seems far less likely and reasonable of an explanation than that they just dampened it down a bit to not stress a semi-swear word as much or something.

I’ve seen a bit of a full US 1997 trailer reel and some frame cuts from a 1997/1998 trailer, probably also US, all the latter and so far the bit of the former seem duller than my 1990 stuff, I could see them being perhaps describes as grayish and a touch subdued in some ways at times as you saw, nothing at all like my 1990 stuff which just pops like mad, but still more color than the new scan samples here.

Well, I found out how to decode more symbols and it seems that my TLM stuff from 1990 was actually on Eastman stock manufactured in France so it seems likely it’s to do with original trailers/release print for France in 1990 most likely.

I also got a bit of Labrynth from same person and it is on Eastman stock from 1986 also made in France so probably from France 1986 original trailer/release print.

Just went back and looked at the stretch that had the talk about Oscar wins and can’t believe I had missed it, but I just realized that one stretch has a different stock and it’s not from the same set as all my other stretches. I guess it was late at night, noticed the fading in text about Oscars and only paid attention to that. This one little stretch actually has cyan analog audio track backing, digital and a more recent film stock, so it has nothing at all to do with all the rest of the pieces I have, the ones printed on 1990 film, which all have the same look, all have black backed analog sound, no digital and whichever ones do have the date code symbols all have ones that decode to 1990.

Now I wonder if maybe they are actually not various bits from an original 1990 print (either a late in the game US one or a UK one) and not a trailer. They are not remotely grayish or under-saturated as you say the 1990 trailers that you saw were and it seems to have scenes from across the entire movie, more than I might expect trailers to cover (although trailers have been known to basically cover and spoil almost every main scene or briefly glance at them all).

On youtube, so far, I only see a single trailer posted for the original release, but since the 1997/1998 re-release had at least 4 different trailers, there were probably more than one for the original release. FWIW, while some scenes I have are in the 1989 trailer, I also have quite a few that are not in either the 1989 or single 1997 trailer on youtube. Of course if they are bits from an actual release print, you wonder what the heck happened to the rest of the print. All my little stretches probably don’t total beyond 3 minutes together. Full film is a heck of a lot of frames. I suppose over 20 years maybe it could have been slowly cut up and sold off in scattered sets of chunks?? But you’d think first reel by reel, but this would’ve have the reels kept together. So maybe it is some mix of all the 1989 trailers or something.

If it is release print bits it would have to be, I guess, either some late in the game US release print that got printed on super fresh stock made near the start of the year or a UK print.

Thanks.

Ah, so was it a mistake in the original cartoon then? and not a mistake in some early maybe mid to late 1980s restoration carried forward then?

The one other different I noted was the frame I saw had the owl with white instead of yellow eyes. But perhaps that is also some original mistake only apparent in a few frames?

one curious thing regarding Sleeping Beauty is that the home releases, for the frame where all the birds and animals are sitting on the tree branch as she looks on with her basket also resting on the branch seems to have the leftmost bird blue and then next one green but I see on a photo of a print (not sure when it is from, but it looks to be not more recent than mid-70s) that it seems to have a the leftmost bird green and then the next one blue, the opposite of the home releases. Now it is faded, and that leftmost one really looks more like olive yellow, i wouldn’t think it’s so faded as to make blue end up looking more like green and green like blue, although I suppose, maybe it’s possible, but it seems unlikely.

Rodney-2187 said:

When I watch the despecialized I don’t see anything at all wrong. I never would have changed a thing. If Lucas were a better filmmaker he would have concentrated on making more movies instead of fiddling with the past. He wasn’t even confident enough to write the prequels without R2 and 3PO wedged in and ruining continuity.

wedged in? R2D2 and C3PO were always supposed to be in the prequels, even back in the 70s
in fact, it was said 4 decades ago that R2D2 and C3PO were supposed to be the only characters to appear in and survive the entire 9 (12, etc.) main sage films.

suspiciouscoffee said:

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

Perhaps he raised the question because the prequels turned Darth from a cool name into a lame title.

Why not both? I say we need a sith named Darth Darth.

Funny side notes, doing genealogy, I found that in a certain country, in some parishes, the scribes wrote a local girls name in the books as “Darth” (which is also contrary to all the claims that the word “Darth” has never appeared before and was made up for Star Wars) coming from Darthe or Darte which is Dorothy in English so Darth Vader is really Dorothy Vader 😃. Also amazingly I found farms called Jawa, Tatoone, Tosche, Jaku! Part of me almost wonders if someone he didn’t once see an old church book from this place, although it seems hard to imagine.

I even have a female direct ancestor whose name was written out as Darth in baptism record!

And talking about Darth Darth… that reminds me of the 80s and Mr. Mister which reminds me that I also found in those church books a few Mr. Misters listed.

Molly said:

The Little Mermaid had the priest’s knee, Aladdin had some minor tweaks to some of the CG, and I think some of the earlier movies had some paint or some cuts?

Also some bits of paint clean-up and such at the least starting in 1997. Possibly more. In 1997 they scanned it all into computers, every frame, and then touched up paint crawl and dirt. Did the colors also get changed during that process? Maybe, not sure.

Each home release has somewhat different colors. 1989/1990 and 1997/1998 trailers seem to have a bit different colors for what that is worth.

looking at the first post
looks pretty good, although I feel they have come out a bit too dark shadow heavy and probably mostly a trace too warm and I have a feeling the DS walls were made a touch too neutral (contrary to all the early claims I saw about how they messed up the colors for home releases and ruined the pure gray, the walls were never pure grey as seen in theaters)

camroncamera said:

DrDre, I don’t think I’ve read you mentioning it… have you heard of the Digital ROC color-restoration processing plug-in by Kodak subsidiary Applied Science Fiction?
http://www.asf.com/products/plugins/rocpro/pluginROCPRO/
I don’t know that the product has been updated for many years. My Nikon film scanner came bundled with a version, but it only works during the scanning of film. Worked fairly well. Reminds me of your work on restoring color to red-faded motion picture film scans.

ah damn, they just discontinued them and no longer allow downloads after June 2019! just missed this, darn

yeah, i won’t bother to respond (although there is tons to say about the incredible amounts of things RLM video misinterprets, gets logically wrong, gets wrong since he doesn’t know enough about American cinema history, etc.) since will just turn into another bash fest, something I try to avoid (mostly by to largely ignoring all SW forums for years) and don’t want send this nice restoration thread down that path, I was actually going to say we better quit this before you already said it just above

back to restoration talk!

[adywan said:]It’s pure bull that the additions were part of Lucas’ original vision and that technical limitations at the time stopped him from doing the thing he wanted. You only have to look at most of the additions/ alterations to see that this isn’t true

you go far to extreme in the other direction

plenty of the stuff he had wanted at the time, but had either no money or tech or both for it at the time, and you can find writings of his from back in the time of the OT where he mentions stuff, it’s not at all all pure bull

that said, plenty of stuff he did think up later as well

And to say that if you complain about the SE then you should also hate every directors cut is ridiculous. For one the SE’s stopped being called that and replaced the originals as the only version.  With directors cuts you usually get the original along with it or available as a separate release. Not so with the OT.  If Lucas had just kept them as special editions and not tried to bury the originals, then you can bet the hatred towards those films wouldn’t be half as bad as it is now. You could just ignore them. As it stands now you are either stuck with crappy DVDs of a non-anamorphic laserdisc master or fan made preservations/ recreations . The more Lucas refused to release the originals, restored in HD, the more the hatred towards the SE’s grew

I certainly don’t like that the OOT got hidden away.

joefavs said:

^eeeeh, I dunno. I guess if they’d done it before his characterization went completely off the rails it could have been cool, but the original Emperor hologram has always been one of my absolute favorite parts of the saga. Continuity be damned, it’s so pleasingly spooky.

yeah the original emperor there was pretty cool

slask said:

fandom’s vision is not lazy, it’s stuck in time, and that’s worse.

some truth to that

some went nuts because the prequels dared to show crowded cities
what? what? all this nonsense, cars, taxis, ships all over by the dozens? just a bunch of fake show off garbage!

but really, come on… the entire galaxy is supposed to be nothing be barren wastes just because that is all we ever got to see in 4-6???

I guess Times Square in NYC is fake? It’s just a bunch of phony, over-crowded, CGI show off nonsense???

Easterhay said:

Quicker to list the changes I don’t like.  They’re all in ESB.

The dialogue change from “Bring my shuttle” to “Alert my start destroyer to prepare for my arrival, and have my smoking jacket and slippers ready.  Oh, and put the kettle on for I should like a cup of hot chocolate, too.”  And the butchering of the subsequent chase scene.  All unecessary and I’d love to see them removed.

Other than that, I’m fine with everything.

ugh I hated that whole change, they cut the single most fiercely deliver line by Vader in the entire series! and totally cut up the pacing and music

i’d call that the single worst change

I don’t like Greedo shooting first or both shooting at the same time. Makes no sense! I mean Han is jsut supposed to sit there and let Greedo kill him? Greedo is supposed to miss from 2’ away?

I sort of miss the original x-wings in the Death Star battle.

The expolding DS didn’t really need the ring added.

I’m actually fine with Hayden ghost though.

Wasn’t crazy about the new Jabba palace song.

I don’t mind the somewhat busier Mos Eisley. It was always supposed to busy and bustling from day 1, Lucas just ran out of money. All the talk that Star Wars has to be half empty, nothing going on locations doesn’t really make any sense.

I’m fine with WOlfman gone from cantina.

The new windows and such for Cloud City are fine.

I don’t mind the Jabba seen in ANH, although it’s not really needed. Perhaps it does make ROTJ less suspenseful for first time viewers.

I love that they sort of brought back the close the blast doors stuff, but they still don’t have it like it originally was, which was best of all.

The new celebrations at the end of ROTJ are cool.

Bantha herds were a nice addition

etc.

Plenty of stuff was fine. But I do wish they had always given us the original cut as well. Sometimes you jsut want to get the full nostalgic pull of the original version. Sometimes you want to see the new stuff. Let us see it both ways whenver we chose.

JacDan said:

None of them really. A couple of Death Star battle shots from Ep. IV but the quality of those shots were so inconsistent with the original footage that it was more annoying to watch than anything else. Also scenes in Ep. IV that SHOULD’VE been changed weren’t, e.g., Ties chasing Rebs in the trenches. One moment Ties but no Rebs, next moment Ties fire and Rebs just ahead explode to kingdom come. I also hate the remastered look of the SEs. They look nothing like the films from their runs during the late 70s - early 80s. The contrast levels are nice but overall it’s just so damn revisionist.

When R2D2 goes through the Jawa canyon it looks really dark in recent releases. In early home releases that looked almost like day time. I forget, when did the home releases change that? If it was with the SE, then the SE actually get that MUCH, MUCH more accurate. Back in the theatrical release, it did look really dark when he went through that canyon and did not look vritually like day time as it had on TV and so many home releases for years.

Perhaps they already fixed that before the SE though, maybe for some earlier THX release or something?

bactaOT said:

I really dislike the added Jabba scene in the SE, and not only for the obvious and poorly executed CGI either.

In my opinion Han would have managed to get off Tatooine WAY before Jabba even got the chance to catch up with him.

In fact, I don’t think Han would be careless enough to leave any trails to allow Jabba to discover where the Falcon was docked.
Han was better than that!

Just another thing to mess up Han’s character, and is right up there with the ‘Greedo shoots’ scene for me!

Well, the problem is the scene was originally made back when the rest of Star Wars was originally made. You make it sound it’s something Lucas thought up years later. He just didn’t have time to add in an effect to replace the stand in actor back in the 70s so the scene got cut.

But going back further, when that scene was written and filmed, Vader and Anakin probably weren’t the same person at all. Trying to think like Lucas makes my head hurt.

I don’t know. I sort of feel like he already had a feeling they might be one and the same.
Alec Guiness said that he insisted Lucas fill him in on background details so he could act his character better and I think he said he was told secret stuff.
Now note the whole meeting between Luke and Obi-wan. When Obi says Darth Vader killed his father, that whole bit, look at how Alec Guiness acts that, his eyes go all shifty, he is clearly stretching the truth (at best). He didn’t deliver the line and act it out as if that was simple flat fact.