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
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!
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
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??
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
^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
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???
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.
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?
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.
I liked “Close the blast doors,” but that wasn’t really an SE change. It was used on, I think the 70 mm and mono (or one or the other) original audio tracks, but it wasn’t used in a <span class=“Italics”>home</span> release until the SEs.
yeah that was awesome!
had been missing that ever since the original theatrical releases
that said, NONE of the home releases still show that scene the way it was originally shown, they all seem to cut some part of the original dialogue out and revoice other parts and alter the chase sequence in one way or another
Didn’t “Then I’ll see you in HELLL!!!” get changed to “Then I’ll see you in hell.” at some point? I think starting with or maybe some time later for home releases? Like the “hell” part seemed go from a scream to somewhat muted sounding?
I seem to vaguely recall there having been something a little different with the Wampa stuff between seeing 70mm ESB a day or two after opening day and then a 35mm showing a bit later on. I probably have old notes on some old computer somewhere back before all the various versions of everything and longer time made it all more muddled.
One other thing that makes it all the trickier, is I believe, at least for Star Wars (ANH) but perhaps for ESB as well, that the very initial batch of 70mm prints for the opening couple weeks at a few theaters had a slightly different edit than all the later 70mm prints they made and I don’t believe anyone has ever turned up a recording from the very initial cut 70mm SW shown at a very few theaters for a short time. I heard they made up a whole new batch of 70mm a few weeks in as they were getting the 35mm ready. (FWIW, many of the claims for the missed toss and extended scene where the door took longer to prop up seem to be from people who saw SW within the first week at a few specific locations only.)
(on another side note, has there ever been any home release of Star Wars (ANH) that has the original “close the blast doors, close the blast doors, open the blast doors, open the blast doors” scene in it? For a while that was all but erased and then it did get added in SE but not in the form it was originally although a bit closer in certain ways.)
I think that whole Red Letter Media nonsense about TPM is what really got it going. Before then you could go to SW forums and reasonably talk about TPM or the prequels, after… forget it. And all you see is people parroting RLM review quips and quotes, or if you say you like a prequel, they respond by saying, nope, you are wrong and then give a link to one of the RLM videos. (But those RLM videos, I mean there is plenty of stuff objectively incorrect in them, a bit ironic since he is laughing at what a stupid fool Lucas is. Although some of the farther post TPM RLM videos, I almost feel like maybe he is actually not even being so serious about anything he says but just mocking the RLM review lovers.)
(and yes, sure some hated TPM (and even many who loved it did still complain about some of the baby dialogue and scuh given to Gungan officials and he did get a bit more commercial in a few things, I wasn’t so crazy about some of that stuff myself, but in the end, the baby dialogue stuff is jsut a few minutes out of more than 120) and even AOTC and even even ROTS before any of that, but the numbers just seemed to explode after that video, again SW message boards went from somewhat reasonable to almsot total hate fests, couldn’t dare mention anything other than 4-6 after that video)
A lot of the stuff people bash about the prequels for being dumb, actually has decent reasoning behind it. Even the way Anakin and Padme were awkward in AOTC make sense, I mean he wasn’t some swashbuckling Han or worldly Lando, he was a monk! isolated at an early age and she became a leader at like 14 and then was off to the Senate. So hardly surprising they talk to each other in less smooth ways than Han or Lando. Also some of the wya they acted and talked was also modeled off very early US cinema romance. DOn’t forget the characters were in another galaxy, in anotehr time, not today.
“Once those are done, I will move onto AOTC, once I have the HDDs to store the scan on. It will be later this year, couldn’t put a timeframe on it at the moment.”
What is happening to the print reels once scanned later this year?