NeverarGreat

Harmy said:

Well, it seems like you may have had the same idea as I did a while ago - I thought about layering the theatrical BD over the Extended one for the Theatrical scenes and then setting the blending mode of the theatrical BD video to color but I did some tests and it wasn't quite so easy, because the cropping is very different, where the OT BD is more cropped on the right and less on the left than the EE BD (or the other way round, I don't temeber exactly), so you have to crop the EE footage quite a bit for this approach to work, plus the cropping difference isn't consistent troughout, so you'd have to readjust the overlay shot by shot and even the warping is slightly different, so this approach is problematic at best.

What if you just replaced as much EE as possible with the theatrical BD? Restoring the original color to the extended/deleted scenes would probably require good image registration software, but is there a quality difference between the two Blu-rays which would make this unfeasible?

I remember that they did this with the podracers in Episode 1, at least before they got torn up in a storm.

twister111 said:

I'd say yes and no. Yes in that it introduces an incredible piece of music and it was probably the most engaging part of the movie on the big screen. No in that it fails in fridge logic terms. After a while they're just fighting to fight. This is apparent when there's a freaking wall that puts a complete halt to the action and there's no attempt to negotiate things. Regardless of the choreography and whatnot story wise that's the perfect time for the Jedi to at least try to come to terms with Maul. Zero attempt, absolutely zero. Even if it's a long shot they could've at least tried but no.

TV's Frink said:

Interesting that not a single fanedit has attempted it (to my knowledge).

Plenty of people on YT have edited it as a single fight though here's one.

 I never really thought about the Jedi talking things through, but I don't think that the scene needed that. Lucas seems to work best when he focuses on the music and images. Perhaps in the hands of a good screenwriter some dialogue could have worked, but with Lucas at the helm, the less dialogue the better.

unamochilla2 said:

Seems like I've seen those outfits somewhere, too... including the ladies.

moviefreakedmind said:

TV's Frink said:

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

The really big BIG news that you missed, was that there is an alleged rumor from a unknown source, that the OUT might someday be released on blu ray, or not, although that hasn't been confirmed.

 And that we needed two 40-page threads about it.

 One for each rumor/rumour. There were two separate ones after all.

One which was far more interesting than the other. All the useful speculation occurs in the first twenty pages of the 4K Restoration thread.

...

Drumroll please...

I was never much a fan of either the fight or the music, since they both seemed to have little to do with the rest of the movie. And I'm usually a fan of John Williams music, but the song never grabbed me.

moviefreakedmind said:

I'm shocked he didn't add a bunch of ships flying around when Luke looks out into the sunset. 

 Maybe he did. That scene is now so dark that it's hard to tell!

WedgeCyan said:

-Ghost scene shows Qui-Gon putting his hands on Anakin's shoulders and smiling to Yoda and Obi-Wan

 ...which means that ghost Anakin is now Jake Lloyd.

Other changes:

-Deleted footage of Luke training with a lightsaber on Dagobah is included, as well as inserting a CG Yoda wielding his ROTS baby lightsaber.

-In order to make a more 'kid friendly' movie, the burnt corpses of Owen and Beru are now obscured by digital rocks, and a CG ronto now conceals the bloody severed arm in the cantina.

- The movie is color corrected again, this time turning each scene into a sea of teal and orange.

I was also looking forward to this, shame that it received so little attention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSlsxKjVVFU

"IT'S NOT LITTLE! I've just got a big backyard."

lol

Go watch The Adventures of Robin Hood and then tell me that older films had less color.

SilverWook said:

I think CGI may have finally come of age. I got emotionally invested in a trigger happy raccoon and a talking tree this summer.

Have you seen Gravity? That was one where my brothers and I both left the theater wondering what was CGI and what was real sets. That's never happened to us before.

RicOlie_2 said:

I need to see Spaceballs again sometime....

 Close your eyes and the feeling will pass.

It would be a shame if there isn't a ST '13, if only because the cast has the potential to be great. Give them something to work with, and I bet they could best most of the original timeline films.

Most of the color looks very good to me, however it seems like there is not much variation in the blues, and they've been pushed to an almost turquoise color. This is most apparent in the engine glows, but it can also be seen in R2's panels. There is usually some red in R2's panels, though in the original Star Wars the color can change somewhat based on the lighting. I don't recall them ever being quite that green though.

MaximRecoil said:

NeverarGreat said:

In many accounts of Near Death Experiences or OBEs, deceased loved ones are often seen as in the prime of their life, even if the OBE-er couldn't ever recall seeing them that way. So actually, having a young Anakin Skywalker ghost makes more sense than seeing the image of an old man who could have only appeared that way if he was not horribly mutilated decades ago. Of course, that would mean that the ghost of Obi-wan would need to be played by Ewan McGregor, and they would need to make a CGI version of Yoda of him in his vigorous tadpole years.

Those sort of anecdotes vary wildly, and of course there isn't any proof that the stories are true. However, mythology and religion are both well-documented with regard to the claims, and the hope to be "made whole" again in the afterlife is pretty much universal among people who believe in an afterlife.

In any event, the specific requirements of the movie need to be taken into account as well, i.e., the audience needs to recognize the ghostly characters, so it follows that the same actors who portrayed the characters in their natural life would portray them in their afterlife appearance.

Agree with all the above. My point was that I would find younger ghosted forms reasonable in theory, but I certainly wouldn't want it to be in the movie for the reasons you say. And obviously because the originals shouldn't be changed.

I think that people's perception of CGI does change over time. When My dad and I went to see The Two Towers, he came out of that movie thinking that Gollum was a real guy with makeup. I could have been fooled as well, except that I knew he was a digital effect going in. Now I look at Gollum and see the signs of a digital creation, but that's because I've seen so much of it that I have greater awareness for that sort of thing.

It's not that people aren't good at recognizing trickery, it's that we often don't know where to look to find it, at least upon first viewing. To make another Two Towers example, I had watched that movie probably a dozen times before I realized that in Theoden's final cavalry charge down the causeway, the horsemen in the back of the procession are flailing their swords at imaginary orcs. Now I cannot unsee that, if only because I now know where to look to see the seams showing.

Yeahhhh, I'm just messin with ya. ;)

Harmy said:

Well, I was one of those people, as I said above but I already knew the story from a book before seeing the movies, so it wasn't like I was missing the information.

It wouldn't need to be a long book. Here's the cliffs notes version:

Luke trains with Obi-wan's old master, and Vader tells Luke that they are both Skywalkers. Oh, and Luke loses a hand.

There are several here who first saw ROTJ before ESB, and it seems like a really strange jump. You go from seeing Han being applauded in Star Wars to "we need to rescue him from carbonite!" in Jedi. Though upon second thought, we already know that Jabba wants him dead, so it's not really that confusing. The biggest thing would be the "I am your father", which is a really strange thing to have happen off screen. Though the series started with Episode 4, so it may have been an interesting experiment to continually skip episodes.

In fact, there's not that much which has been missed. All that happens in Empire which is important in ROTJ is the introduction of Yoda and Luke's training, Luke considering that Vader could be his father, and that's it. Even Han's belief that Leia loves Luke is more understandable without the intervening installment, as well as Yoda's insistence that Luke confront Vader, as if Luke hasn't done that yet. Lando's arc contributes little to the overall story, and it may even be more understandable that ROTJ Lando, who seems to know Han and rescued him from captivity, is now a general, rather than ESB Lando, who previously betrayed a leader of the rebellion. An interesting thought experiment indeed.

MaximRecoil said:

Easterhay said:

Spare a thought for my boy. Since watching ROTJ the other day and questioning why Anakin's spirit was wearing clothes he never wore in life, last night he saw a picture from the original ROTJ with Sebastian Shaw as the ghost.

Questions such as "Why has he got hair? Where are his scars? Why has he got both arms? Why has he got both legs?" What could I do but shrug and say - once again - "They messed up."

They didn't "mess up". It is pretty standard in mythology and religion that people are "made whole" in the afterlife. The only precedent I know of for the idea of people retaining infirmities and/or wounds in the afterlife is from works of fiction in the "horror" or "thriller" genre.

The main reason that the concept of an afterlife has had such a long-term and widespead appeal is the hope that things will be better there, which obviously includes getting back lost limbs or otherwise rectifying other forms of disfigurement/impairment/infirmities. Who would dream up an afterlife for "good" or "redeemed" people where things suck just as bad as they did during the natural life, you know, other than people like Stephen King? That would be great for people who e.g. died in a fire or a high-speed car accident; they'd get to spend eternity looking like a charred corpse or a piece of hamburger.

Easterhay said:

45-ish with no hair, no arms or legs. Just a floating torso, really.

See above.

Also, why should he look "45-ish"? I never got the impression from SW, TESB, or ROTJ that he was supposed to be a generation younger than Obi-Wan Kenobi. Kenobi described him as having been a "good friend", and people's good friends tend to be in the same age range as they are. Darth Vader does say to Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Your powers are weak, old man," but "old man" is often used ironically/sarcastically, and if I had a dollar for every time I've heard an old man call another old man "old man", I'd be rich.

In many accounts of Near Death Experiences or OBEs, deceased loved ones are often seen as in the prime of their life, even if the OBE-er couldn't ever recall seeing them that way. So actually, having a young Anakin Skywalker ghost makes more sense than seeing the image of an old man who could have only appeared that way if he was not horribly mutilated decades ago. Of course, that would mean that the ghost of Obi-wan would need to be played by Ewan McGregor, and they would need to make a CGI version of Yoda of him in his vigorous tadpole years.

*Shudder*

Jonno said:

I hope you don't mind my giving this a shot, PDB, but that Ripley shot was bothering me and I thought I might have a go at diagnosing the problem.

I hauled out Premiere's channel mixer (a filter that's probably been there since version 1!) to see if I could deal with the red a bit, and the results are surprisingly effective.

Here are the settings I used; a boost of the red channel, and restoration of some greens back to reds and blues:

I'm sure there are tools that can achieve this with a great deal more finesse (a visual histogram would solve a lot of guesswork) but it's good to see that the colour information can be recovered.

Edit: forgot to mention, I also tweaked the levels to bring them more in line with the contrasty look of the 35mm. I guess that's another personal taste thing - I can see why some would prefer to keep as much detail as possible, but it's another area where the BD (having been scanned from the o-neg if I'm not mistaken) differs from the original look.

If you really want to get the most out of the channel mixer, I'd suggest layering the same video on top of itself and changing the brightness/contrast/gamma of each to allow fine tuning the shadows, midtones, and highlights. If you have access to Premiere Pro, using the channel mixer with a curves adjustment should allow you to manipulate the color almost to its maximum extent, and this is much simpler and faster as well.

RicOlie_2 said:

Doesn't Anakin help an injured Sandperson, or something like that, in that book? If I recall correctly, Jar Jar is less annoying--but still annoying.

 Apparently so, though I don't remember it:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Wars_Episode_I:_The_Phantom_Menace_%28novel%29

I don't remember much else of the book past the opening, but I do remember that it made more sense than the film.

SilverWook said:

That might have have been a better introduction to him than we ultimately got. Wonder if Brooks worked from an earlier draft of the script?

I don't think so. Here's what I could find on the "revised rough draft" of the Phantom Menace, simply called "The Beginning": http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/thebeginning.html

This opening scene is a fleshed out version of Anakin's near-fatal podrace crash which was only referenced in the script/film. It made for a more immediately engaging start to the book (which you should totally read on Amazon). I still remember that opening, it's so much better than the film.