captainsolo

skyjedi2005 said:

There is a theory its just a theory mind you.  That the supersaturated colors on the 2004 are supposed to look like the technicolor dye strip print Lucas has in his vault. 

I myself don't buy it.  Those who saw one of the few available prints in the seventies never complained about blown out colors and crushed blacks.

Sigh.  I would pay a lot of money for Lucas to hand over his technicolor print to the same team who restored the adventures of robin hood, it would be the first time since 1977 people would see star wars true color palette they have been missing on home video.

License the oot to criterion for a low rate since Lucas cares nothing for the originals and have Robert Harris restore the oot.  Lucas gets to make huge royalties on sales and everyone is happy, the end.

The Lucas fear is probably that a true restoration of the originals would make no one want the 2004 set.  At least for me he's right,lol.

Lets see a set with botched colors and swapped audio channels and incorrect lightsaber colors and garbage mattes more noticeable than they have ever been, or the real theatrical colors and the garbage mattes digitally removed cleaned up or re-composited optically.  The real sound mix from 1977 on six track,  the mono and stereo.  The best reason of all no added cartoon cgi or prequels bullshit.  Since Hayden was born in 1981 he does not belong in a 1983 film like Return of the Jedi.

 

I don't buy the garbage excuse that because star wars is sci fi/fantasy it is allowed to be ruined with newly added cgi.  Notice how they don't go back and add cgi to Wizard of OZ, Casablanca, gone with the wind or Citizen Kane.  The original star wars trilogy is one of the biggest if not the biggest modern classic of all times.  To me it is a crime against art (figuretely speaking) for the films that represent those years and technologies implemented in 1977, 1980, and 1983 not be preserved as they were.

Lucas does not want dueling versions of his films and only wants the one out there he considers to represent his artistic vision the closest.  What about leaving some choice to people what version they want to see.  If i want to not watch the 2004 then i don't have to, and those who prefer that version for some strange reason can watch it as well and everybody is happy.  No split fanbase.

I don't understand why all these "restorations" change the colr timing etc. When watching the GOUT or VHS tapes, the OT seems softer and more realistic than the digitally colored travesties. Even the 1997 SE still looks real because the color was not changed! If additions are added, the original should still be available! Robert Harris offered to restore the film-for nothing! Come on! We seriously need to consider getting a hold of the print in the National Film Registry. (It was acquired in 1989!) The 04's are like watching some kid goofing around in photoshop with a paintbrush. A Criterion release would be absolutely beyond all hope. The home video prints are relatively close to the pallette. They're not perfect, but you can at least tell what things are supposed to be. Lucas is just doing all of this because he was never "satisfied" with the film.  You can't keep going back and fixing every little thing!

Knightmessenger said:

They had plenty of screw ups with the Bond dvd's as well. Unfortunately, the older dvd's came out in 1999 and are so old that the digital compression is very noticeable in motion. I think some of the Bond special edition dvd's almost look as bad as the Gout.

you can find Bond comparisons and many more here.

http://www.bulletsnbabesdvd.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1900

 

In ways, yes. However the Bonds were actually put out in 1999/2000 with some effort into making them acceptable. The GOUT has a softness that comes straight from the laserdisc. The old Bond SEs are the advanced versions of the mid-90s VHS tapes. It really comes down to a metter of preference. Sometimes I'll take softness like a tape or laserdisc out of nostalgia.  The GOUTs work like this for me sometimes.

I just went back and watched a 97 Widescreen VHS set. I forgot how much I liked the 97 SE. My qualms are only in Greedo shooting and a little too much activity in Mos Eisley (squabbling droids for example). The battle of Yavin leaps off the screen in the 97 ANH where in the original some things are only implied. Most of this probably stems from the fact that my first SW experience was the 97 SE. Most complain about the Jabba scene-while I agree with it being cut out-its not that bad of a scene. I like this Jabba because he actually seems like Jabba (albeit way off from ROTJ) and not the abomination on the 04 DVD. ESB and ROTJ are perfect to me.  If the originals had not been locked away in the "Lucas Vault" the SE negative backlash wouldn't be so intense. I wish that the 97's would be more commonly acknowledged instead of brushed off as just the the pre-DVD version. They are not perfect, but they are worthwhile additions to the trilogy.

One of the ESB asteroids is a potato. Still can't find that darned shoe in ROTJ!

For the 97 SEs, lasers would be the best copy to have, right? The VHS set I have is good, but I'm considering a laserdisc version for preservation. I just want a good version to hang onto.

Looks like they've finally fixed all the Falcon toy problems. This does look definitive. It's Amidala's ship on steroids. At least we don't have to put stickers on by hand like I did as a kid in '95. The best parts about this are the landing ramp that comes down by itself and more landing gear! I can't count the number of times my figures would topple over because of the crummy old ramp and supports.

Is there really a flying shoe somewhere in the battle of Endor? Ive read numerous times that this and other hidden items are floating around in the OT.

Yes they are compression artifacts. I'm going to try and recapture using a lossless codec. I'm only using FCP because my school has Macs so this is really trial and error.

Well the transfer to final cut pro has left everything very pixeled and digitized.

Is this Anthology CD of ROTJ from the early 90's? I have the 04 of ANH, but was unsure which versions of ESB and ROTJ are best. It feels just like the versions of the films themselves! Can anything Star Wars be easy?

Vaderisnothayden said:

Where's my old post on the topic? ::rummages around:: Here it is! You father wanted you to have this... -wait, sorry, wrong film.  

Post:

See, I think the Mustafar duel was atrocious. In the prequels they got to doing this thing with lightsaber duels wherein the characters go on and on and on repeating pretty much the same action endlessly with nothing really happening. If you look at the OT lightsaber battles that doesn't happen. It's all meaningful action. Whereas in the Mustafar duel you feel you could could go away from the screen for a while and come back nothing important would have happened in the time you were gone. It makes the action meaningless and boring. The Mustafar duel stretches on endlessly and is boring as hell. And the music is way overdone. In OT battles the music is generally a background thing. In the Mustafar duel the music is damn near the main star of the scene. It's overpowering. And the tone of the music is as if to say "You MUST feel strongly here. This is an EPIC and TRAGIC moment. Feel!" The OT made you feel rather than telling you to feel like that. The Mustafar music is not only pushy, it adds to the pomposity and overdone showiness of the scene.

And we don't just have guys standing on droids. They're swinging back and forth on ropes while fighting each other over the lava. Maybe that's where they got the tarzan swinging around idea for Indy 4. Give me the Indy 4 version any day over the Mustafar version. It's seriously overdone. See, all this is while they're dancing around in the lava without getting burnt and we're being asked to buy that as plausible. It's just ridiculous and overdone. The whole thing is done up way too grand. The OT managed so much more involving fights with so much less show and pomposity and buildup. The Mustafar scene bludgeons you with how grand it's supposed to be. Way too heavy handed. It's shouting at you "This is a GRAND moment!" and I just want to say "I got that. Stop fucking shouting already!"

And then we have Anakin's ranting. When he rants about how from his point of view the Jedi are evil he looks like he's about to burst into tears like a little kid. When he screams "You underestimate my power!" the lameness factor is mind-boggling. And then later after he's been chopped up and fried he screams at Kenobi "I hate you!" like a little kid who's been denied a treat. I half expect to shout "If you don't say I won, I'll hold my breath until  you do!" Between the script and the talents of Hayden Christensen the character of Darth Vader is totally rubbed in the shit in this scene.

Also, Anakin's defeat is seriously anticlimatic. After all that fighting going on forever with nothing really happening, suddenly Anakin makes a stupid jump and Kenobi cuts off three of his limbs in one go and Annie falls flat on his face and get fried up. It doesn't work. And it's almost slapstick.

Also not helping is you have no real connection with either of these characters. Ewan McGregor is a good actor but if you compare his Kenobi to Alec Guinness's or to Han, Luke and Leia, you can see how he fails to make that close connection with the audience that the OT characters do. Plus it doesn't help that Ewan's Kenobi comes across vaguely like he's a pretentious poser. As for Anakin, between the writing and the acting this character is made unlikable and unrelatable and pathetic in a totally non-endearing way. So, watching this fight, I really didn't give a fuck what happened to either character. Which doesn't help the scene. 

And the artificiality of the scene doesn't help you get genuine emotion out of it either. This scene should have great feeling, but mostly it just TELLS you to have great feeling rather than actually making you feel it. A classic example of the prequels failing at depth of feeling.

Overall I think the scene is one big load of meaningless pompous overdone show and one of the worst scenes I've ever seen in any film ever.

The Emperor and Yoda fight was awful. Horrible overacting for the Emperor. Annoying CGI Yoda with his macho posing that's so totally inappropriate for the character. It was hard to decide which character was more annoying. I wanted to flush both of them down the toilet. And that was intercut with the Mustafar scene, for maximum lameness.

Vader's nooooooo was a terrible moment. Between it being so totally unnecessary and cheesy and poorly judged and James Earl Jones's voice acting being uncharacteristically bad there. It was a real cringe moment. And let's not forget it was Hayden Christensen in the Darth Vader suit.

 

In an aborted Lucas project(There is a God!), Apocalypse Now, Brando put it best: "The horror."

You were once the guardian of intellegent filmmaking in the old system. Before the dark times. Before the CGI takeover.

And/or:

Remember: THX-1138 will be with you. Always.

If there hadn't been a tale of the fight taking place on a lava planet then we would have no Mustafar. Obi-Wan and Anakin are shown fighting-completely impervious to the lava. Just from their close proximity they would be in pain just from the intense heat! the intercutting with the Palpatine/Yoda fight is annoying and lessens both encounters. The Yoda battle suffers as it is cut short and the epic battle of the masters is left pointless.

On this subject, Palpatine should never have fought. He constantly makes little funny faces and looks pathetic. If he didn't fight in ROTJ why does he all of a sudden have to flip around like Yoda?

I wish the battle had not been intercut, and been more confrontational. As it stands we see two guys in a massive overkill of CGI doing the same fighting repeatedly. It is not epic: it is monotonous! We waited to see this for years, and all we get is this one thing? Anakin becoming extra crispy fried?

Hopefully George will come to his senses and repent for his sins by making a film entitled:

Obi-Wan's Damn Fool Idealistic Crusade

One thing that I have never fully understood is how betrayal is dealt with in the OT. People get pissed at Han because he wants to leave and pay off Jabba the Hutt. This is so he can erase both the debt and the death mark on his head! General Riekan knows this, yet everybody else gets pissed! Why? Lando is forced to give up his best friend in order to protect and save the citizens of Cloud City. Leia and Chewie would understandably be angry, but Lando had no choice!

I have a good quality 1997 Widescreen Trilogy set that I would like to have on DVD or my computer to watch. When I tried to use a VCR and DVD recorder it wouldn't work due to copy protection. Soemone told me that this was macrovision. Is there any good way to transfer and get around this protection? I would have gone the laserdisc route, but this was cheaper. I've imported them into final cut pro using log and capture footage as one would with a regular dv camera, but just wondered if anyone knew a better way.

As a kid in the early 90's I heard of Star Wars and Star Trek, and had no idea of what they were. I played with the action figures because of all the sci-fi gadgets, but aside from that I had no comprehension of SW.

Then came March 1997. I was taken to see a cetain film called Star Wars. I remember wanting to see VI first because of the trailers. My mom was adamant about me seeing them in order though. This was so I didn't ask a bunch of questions that she didn't know. So I dejectedly went to see A New Hope. I remember going in, buying tickets, seeing the little plastic sign above the theater saying Star Wars. After that everything is a blank. I'm told that I was almost comatose afterwards and that I had to be shaken out of it to get me to leave.

I haven't looked back since. Seeing the film in a theater was a life-changing event for me. I missed seeing Empire and Jedi in theaters, and have regretted it ever since. For years I lived off rental tapes and always wondered why some tapes were different from others. This was when I discovered the Special Editions. I had no qualms here, as it meant more SW! To me SW is VHS.

January-May 1999 was like a dream. a new SW film was coming! I couldn't believe it! After the hype, I found I enjoyed it as a 9 years old. However it had no lasting power over the years. Episode II hit and felt like extreme tedium that was painful to behold. I even saw it twice more in theaters to make sure I was seeing the right film! Episode III was just uneventful and boring simply because you knew what was going to happen For all three I waited in line to see them at midnight. I thought that seeing them this way might make them better but this was not to be.

He was going to do the entire "saga" (hate that phrase) in "Lucas 3-D" (ok it wasn't really called that.) in 2007. It was supposed to be for the 30th Anniversary, but that fell through. I hope it does not happen. I would much rather see a general rerelease of the OT as in 1997. This would mean that George would release the 04 HD version to be digitally projected. The horror. 1997 was probably SW's last breath.

The problem of restoration would actually be getting the materials themselves. 35mm prints and access to the negatives. I don't believe for one second that Lucas would have been stupid enough to splice the 97 footage directly into the 77 original negative. It wouldn't have looked as good as if he had put it in a 97 restored copy print.

Robert A. Harris offered to do the restoration, and got no response. I think our only option may be to go to the Film Preservation Board/Library of Congress and make an appeal. SW entered the National Film Preservation in 1989-before any changes. This must mean that they have a pristine 35mm archival quality print-one that George could never get his hands on. They might listen as they did on the issue of B&W film colorization-for the issue is very similar. At the very least it should be decided that all versions should be available in acceptable transfers ala Blade Runner.

Otherwise, I think the GOUTS will stand for years to come. Blu-Rays of the OT will be a long time coming as they were on DVD. If this release ever comes to fruition, original versions will only be present if: we keep up pressure on Lucasfilm, George relents, a restoration commences, or we will simply see the GOUTS in HD.

Lucasfilm: keeping Laserdisc and VHS alive well into the 21st century and beyond!!!

1. The Vader helmet's sight is limited.

2. I like the idea of Luke "masking" himself with the Force-never thought of that one.

3. It's the tradition of the camera frame defining what is in the character's conciousness. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly 's end scene takes place in a graveyard surrounded by vast mountain vistas for miles around. Yet somehow Angel Eyes comes up out of nowhere with a shovel to surprise Blondie and Tuco.  In the camera frame!

I always did wonder about this scene though. The set is so small that it is kinda obvious where Luke would be, but the "masking" effect gives it some credence-this may be why Vader was able to pick out Leia from Luke's mind as he was concentrating on not being found.

Bingowings said:

Docta Nick said:

Gaffer Tape said:

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Yeah!  it's just a kid's show...

 

Come to think of it, this has always made me wonder... what exactly did the Empire do to them anyway?  I mean, when we see Stormtroopers, they're usually just firing blaster rifles.  They singe a little bit... but this?  I mean, even Darth Vader walked away from a near lava dip in better condition than this!

O just showin kids the consequences of playing with matches. Either you set urself on fire or stormtroopers light up the living sh!@ inside you. Normal kids stuff

 

Receiving stolen goods, engaging in unregistered adoptions, restricting the ambition of potential conscripts, the Perps had it coming!

 

They were in a fire, but there wasn't enough time for their bodies to decompose. I wonder how they got that way then? Luke must have come up at most a few hours later. Maybe their bodies were eaten by decomposers, but it's the desert-there aren't any! Or the stormtroopers could have done the blaster torture thing where they essentially shoot off your flesh using a low power setting.  Ouch!

Any updates?

Does all of this work with the subtitles for Greedo/Jabba? I've just been using VLC to watch GOUTs and used the aspect ratio option to view in 16:9.

Described your dancing skills as those of a protocol droid.

Confronted people using Greedo's dialogue.

Created dialogue for R2's beeps and whistles?

Thought of SW characters in the real world? Jabba as a FedEx guy.

Gloated in full Palpatine swagger?

Pretended to strangle those with lack of faith and/or force lightning puny weaklings?

Gone into differences between SE and original versions with non-SW fans?

Wished you had a good Blastech at your side?

Dreamt of having the Falcon in your garage?

Wished to join Rogue Squadron?

Have a large SW action figure collection?

Tried to build a lightsaber?

Made fun of Lando?

Played Jar-Jar Hockey?

Played Star Wars Trilogy Arcade?

OzoneSherrif said:

Call me crazy but i thought the CG'd version of THX 1138 was an improvement. i mean there was actually some smart decisions there

Most are actually improvements in THX 1138, but it is merely the idea that George would go back and change it. THX is one of the most visually brilliant films ever made. Now one has to have a tape to see the original version. THX isn't so bad CGI-wise, but George seems to have problems being satisfied. Indiana Jones would have probably been messed with if it had been a entirely Lucas run production.

You do what you can when you can. I'm a big supporter of Director's cuts-when they merit it! When a film is cut by a studio or butchered by an outside party-then it needs a new cut. When scenes are put back in that are necessary-a new cut is acceptable. Not one every time you feel like it!!

I really wouldn't care about some new 2xxx version of the OT. As long as the original versions are preserved along with the 1997 SEs I would be happy. The 2004 versions should be obliterated from mankind, and everyone stuck with them should be awarded damages. A Star Wars Blade Runner style briefcase blu-ray would be beyond my wildest dreams. I'm not sure that I'd be quite happy with a blu-ray of the GOUT though. There should be a massive undertaking to restore the trilogy by actual experts like Robert A. Harris. Something as culturally siginificant as Star Wars should not be allowed to fade into distant memory.Then the masterstroke would be to theatrically rerelease the fully restored original versions of the Star Wars Trilogy.

Boba Fett is the mysterius background figure-the one man everyone knows, but is too afraid to speak of. This is the basis of his appeal. He has no past. He has no face. He is an enigma who speaks very little, saying even less. One could argue that Fett is Lucas's nod to the Man With No Name.

So why the hell does he have to be a freaking clone? Why? I have a mental block around this and Boba having Temura Morrison's voice.