danny_boy

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Tighe said:

Thanks!  I don't even care if it is restored, a direct transfer would be fine with me.  Dirt, scratches, and dots are all fine!  That is what it was like in the theater! ;-)

That is what it was like in the theater AFTER the films had been played hundreds of times and got worn.  The best prints in the best theaters on opening day would have looked sharper than blu ray, and sounded better too.

I would suggest spending some time reading the various threads in the preservation section.  There are many different versions depending on what you're looking for.

Not according to George Lucas:

The audience will get a brand new print(1997 special edition) that’s very clean and actually better than the original release(1977 print) in terms of technical quality. It’s less grainy, it’s less dirty, and it’s just a better print.(than the 1977 print)

Regarding the sound:

Now we’re able to deliver  even better than the seventy-millimeter quality with the new digital release in a range of sound that was not possible before.”

http://starwarssuperfans.wordpress.com/

The main part of McCallum's job was to oversee the film's restoration. The original negative had been stored since 1977 in a subterranean vault in Kansas at an optimum temperature of 50 to 53 degrees. But because of a type of color film stock that was used for most films in the '70s, the negative had deteriorated dramatically, with a color loss of up to 30 percent in some parts, McCallum said. Dirt was embedded in the six reels of the negative and frames were scratched and pitted. McCallum said that before anything new could be done to the film, the original had to be restored. He said a group of about 30 people worked for three years cleaning the negative with a sponge, frame by frame, using a special chemical bath heated to 100 degrees. Some portions of the negative were too faded to be restored and had to be recreated. The old footage had to be digitally scanned into a computer and then matched to new footage, until finally a new negative and print were made. McCallum said the process can be used in the future to restore negatives from any old films that mayhave similarly deteriorated. All the new and enhanced stuff, which cost about $15 million, then had to be "degraded" to match the original images, McCallum added.

OK---here is the definitive proof that the O-neg is in good condition----enough to generate a 1st generation interpositive print that Rick McCallum himself described as perfect to a foreign magazine way back in 1997:

Question: The scenes which were not digitally remastered, but only chemically restored are still looking faded or have a color tinge. You see the shift between the the new scenes and the original material.

Rick McCallum: Here is what we were talking about this earlier. One of the most frustrating things is, if you could see the print that stuck of the original negative that we have done - it's perfect. It's not perfect in terms of the colorrestauration, because we still have a long way to go. We will need to scan the movie. In propably five years, when scanning technology drops at a cost that isn't so prohibitive anymore. Now it would cost 10-12 millions Dollars only to scan the whole movie. We just can't do it. Possible we take 2-3 years to be able to restore the color back to its original. We did the best that we could within the technology we have today. This is one of the big challenges for us in the future. The problem is, film is a chemical process and it's like alchemy. It's magic. If you do a print and the developer bath isn't as clean or whatever it is - it's very hard to stain, because it's a photo-chemical process. It lives, it breath, it changes on every print. We are hoping to drive the technology to a level to distribute movies electronically. So we can incode in digital data the color, the contrast and the level that the soundtrack has to do. No theater owner can screw us up again. It's not just the theater owner, it's this bizarre process called filmmaking that is still so fragile. It's hard to believe that we actually had to restore a film that's only 20 years old. Film is an inherently instable medium. It's there and it's changing every day. It feeds on itself,  it destroys itself. But it's not only Star Wars. The whole films of the 70s are at risk. With the success of Star Wars all the studios are rushing back trying to protect their films. They are inherently what gives them value. But I apologize for the shift. It's something that goes beyond us. That is the thing what is most frustrating.

http://www.maikeldas.com/SWrick1eng.html

According to this study  an  internegative(described as IN 3rd Generation in diagram) holds roughly 1.5-2k of information.

http://www.efilm.com/publish/2008/05/19/4K%20plus.pdf

This is  the reason why Star Wars was subjected to a 1080 x1920 transfer because this was the maximum amount of info that the internegative has.

Hence this explanation from THX engineer Rick Dean(who was in charge of the transfer):

"A technical scan like this allows you to capture the entire body of the image,You're not losing anything, and you're not clipping out whites or losing detail in the blacks, which you'll otherwise never retrieve."

http://business.highbeam.com/3770/article-1G1-122874997/restoring-star-wars-trilogy

Mavimao said:

IMO, if Star Wars were to be restored and re released, they would have to use a combination of different elements. The original negative might be able to provide shots that don't have effects, and then you could splice in SFX footage culled from other sources. Of course, you would notice a more than usual drop in quality between the shots.

In this case, it might be wiser, cheaper and more efficient to just scan technicolor prints, or recombine the seperation masters of the whole film, do a simple cleanup and release it like that. This way, the quality stays more or less consistant and we would also have a very purist form of the film as it was seen in 77.

As far as ESB and ROTJ are concerned, I can't say for sure, but I would be willing to bet that better care was taken in pre-production and that dupe negatives exist, as well as high quality IP prints. If the article that Danny Boy pointed to is correct, they did not even touch the O neg for the SEs of episodes 5 and 6.

Correct.

A scan of a 1977 SW technicolor print at 2K would hypothetically yield more satisfactory results in terms of filmic continuity------than a 4K scan of the O-neg where there would be noticable  jumps in quality from scenes without effects to shots with optical VFX.

"The problem is that film optical effects are a minimum of two extra generations away from the original negative, so there's more dirt, more contrast and more grain, and they're not as sharp," says Lowry. "Every time they went to a light saber shot-boom-there goes the sharpness, the grain came up and the contrast came up a little." As Rick Dean notes, "The problem is that nobody was ever expected to watch it directly off of negative. Projection prints are the result of four optical processes and photochemical processes, which naturally even things out."

http://business.highbeam.com/3770/article-1G1-122874997/restoring-star-wars-trilogy

TServo2049 said:

Yeah, it was a dark time for color film stock. When I saw Star Trek II in 70mm in L.A. last year, the host warned that it was a print from Metrocolor, and that prints from that lab were notoriously fade-prone. This print was faded enough that they put a blue filter on the projector to "correct" it.

Last year, I also saw Ghostbusters at the American Cinematheque. Also 70mm, also printed at Metrocolor, except it was on LPP. No fading. The age difference between the two prints was only two years, but the difference in the color was like night and day.

Back to the subject at hand, other effects-heavy films from the same time period as SW, which used the same kinds of negative stock, have been restored and presented in their original form. Close Encounters had similar issues with its O-neg, and was also full of optical composite shots on CRI, yet the restoration that's on Blu-ray looks darn good (and it has three different cuts of the film.) Superman had similar issues, and it also looks very good (though there was some digital color correction and recompositing done on that film). Both of them have a couple color flaws and noticeable grain (though I'm sure a lot of that was due to the cinematography), but they look very very good nonetheless.

The point is, I believe that the same *can* be done for the OOT, and that the fact that it hasn't been done is due to unwillingness, not inability.

Also, remember that all the hubbub about the restoration centered around the first film; I'm willing to bet that the original elements of ESB and ROTJ are in better condition.

Yes.

Superman and Close Encounters are good comparisons.

Interestingly a section of Superman's O-neg was lost/destroyed many years ago.

To compensate for this lost/destroyed section a new dupe negative was created using the separation masters(also made many years ago) .

But the difference in quality is apparent:

There was a big chunk that was a dupe negative section, when
Lex Luthor pulls the Kryptonite out of the case all the way until he pushes
Superman into the pool. The original cut negative had been damaged by some lab, and somewhere someone combined YCM separations to make the dupe section. The colors were slightly out of registration. We never did find the negative for that. There was a dupe section for all of that and then there was
damage in other places, torn frames, stuff like that which had been backed by
mylar They would put clear mylar on the back of the negative so that the tear
wouldn't pull any farther and it would hold the film together. "

http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/mohenryfanclub/message/298?l=1

The discrepancy in quality during this  section of the film was not apparent in the VHS/Standard def DVD video transfers.

But if you watch the blu ray you can see an increase in grain and contrast as well as a slightly altered color gamut just after Supes opens the lead container with the kryptonite----and it lasts all the way until Luthor throws Supes into the pool.

And this is at 2K resolution----a 4K transfer would be even more brutal in exposing these differences.

Mavimao said:

According to the article:

"Sadly, after 17 years, the CRI material had lost so much dye that every shot realized on that reversal stock had to be removed and recomposited from scratch in order to bring Star Wars back to its original glory. Soon, Kennedy had Star Wars Special Edition film editor Tom Christopher (at Skywalker Ranch) and visual effects editor Dave Tanaka (at ILM) searching to come up with the original effects elements so that these shots, as well as other less-than-perfect opticals, could be recomposited digitally."

CRI was a then new reversal film adopted by special effects crews. Unfortunately, the film was extremely unstable and it fades extremely fast compared to other film.

Ahh---indeed--good catch from that article.

It seems kind of ironic---according to this rare  LA Times article from 1995--CRI stock was introduced to stop fading!

The main problem, says Lucasfilm producer Rick McCallum, who is hard at work on the restoration, is that the duplication stock developed in the '70s by the major film houses was supposed to last a lifetime. The specially treated stock, called CRI, was created because films from the 1960s were already losing their color.

But when Fox pulled "Star Wars" from the vaults, it was discovered that "the duplicate, from which the release prints were made, as well as the negative that its stored on, were corrupted," McCallum says. The main defects in "Star Wars" were found in special-effects optical sequences, which sometimes contain eight to 10 layers of film.

http://articles.latimes.com/1995-07-09/entertainment/ca-22054_1_star-wars

Mavimao said:

Unfortunately, the original optical shot negatives have faded away, so yes, George was right in saying that the original Star Wars doesn't exist.

Mverta was probably right in saying that the Technicolor IB prints are the highest quality prints available to us.

Also, your article pointed out something interesting. It mentioned that Empire and Jedi only used scanned IPs for the SE....

Hmm.

I am not so sure if they faded away.

It is more likely that the quality was never good to begin with(by modern standards).

It sufficed for 1977 because that was the best they could do at the time.And audiences were still blown away because nobody sat in a theater in 1977 and analyzed the increase in grain very time an optical shot came up.

I have used screengrabs to illustrate the procedures used to convert the original negative into a brand new internegative without effecting the configuration of the original negative.

Here is the original O-neg, untouched and unaltered since 1977.

It is composed of Original camera negative(OCN Live) pieces and optical composites(Optical Neg).

*note some of the OCN pieces are in great shape-----others not so good---hence the use of the term "deteriorated".

It is disassembled into the differing film stocks and washed.

Once washed it is re-assembled and graded(using Lucas's personal technicolor print)

The grading allows a brand new 1st generation Interpositive print(IP) to be struck from this cleaned O-Neg:

This IP is then disassembled:

The shots which featured optical composites are removed from the IP:

Now the original camera negatives that were used to create the opticals in 1977 are retrieved from the archives---for our example:

The original camera negative of Luke holding an as yet unpictured saber:

And the Original negative which featured an animated glow:

Both of these 2 pieces are scanned at 2048 x 1080 into a computer where they are converted into effective positives.They are then  superimposed(rotoscoped) to create a new digital composite that does not exhibit the degradation that is associated with traditional photochemichal opticals(such as the one just removed from our freshly struck IP):

This digital composite is then converted back to negative and scanned out to film(it will be inserted into the new master internegative):

Parts of the new Interpositive print which contain deteriorated  footage:

...... are also excised.

An equivalent frame is extracted from(most likely) an eastern european theatrical IP print(made in the late 1980's).

It is scanned at 2048 x 1080 into a computer.It is degrained and digitally cleaned up:

It is then converted to negative and scanned back out to film:

All the good material that is left on the interpositive:

Is now converted to a new master internegative:

The new negative digital composites and cleaned up 35mm negatives(that were sourced from those eastern european theatrical IP's)  are inserted Into this new master internegative:

This new internegative will then be used to create theatrical IP's for the january 1997 re-release.

the Original negative of Star wars could have been disassembled(and re-assembled) without losing any "exposed" frames.

Star Wars was an A-B neg cut, which meant that they could actually lift and slug original negative and send it back to ILM whenever we were enhancing a live-action shot.

http://www.theasc.com/magazine/starwars/articles/sped/ssws/pg1.htm

Ziz said:

You're trying to find proof that the original cuts really do still exist somewhere in LFL's basement.  The proof has been there since 2004.

Empire of Dreams.

All the shots of ANH in the sequence where they're talking about the initial release are of the original 1977 print.  How do I know?  Simple.

It doesn't say "Episode IV A New Hope" on top of the crawl.

That's the first and most obvious.  I think they even have a shot of Han shooting first in there and I'm pretty sure it ends with the DS blowing up with NO shockwave ring.

We don't need to figure out IF the original cuts still exist.  THEY DO.  What we need to focus on is getting Lucas to admit it.

Indeed---good point.

The 2004 videography article also makes a clear distinction between the 1977 O-neg and the 1997 Special edition neg that was scanned to create the 2004 DVD(and 2011 Blu ray):

Interestingly, the negatives that were scanned were not those of the original releases but of the 1997 Special Edition reissues, because of their additional effects sequences (more of which are said to have been added in the DVD releases). Defects such as dirt and scratches from the original negative, then, had made their way through to the 1997 negative

Restoring the Star Wars Trilogy.

Article from: Videography | September 1, 2004 | Hurwitz, Matt

A special edition negative can only be an internegative.

In my opinion the O-neg has not been altered.

Anyway---at least a 3rd of the so called O-neg of SW was not really "original negative" in the truest sense---- due to the amount of footage that was optically composited.

But for simplicity I will call it O-neg to distinguish it from the original negative pieces that did not make it into this very same O-neg!

The O-neg was disassembled in 1995 so it's differing constituent stocks could be cleaned.

Once that was done Robert Hart re-assembled it.

All of it.

Period.

Once it was re-assembled the O-neg was then colour timed using  Lucas's technicolor print as a reference.

A new 1st generation IP was then struck directly from this negative.

It was this IP that was then disassembled to remove most(if not  all) the shots that involved the optical dissolves/wipes and effects(lightsabers/laserblasts/pilots in cockpits with starfields behind ect ect).


For the original optical shots that involved effects:

The original negative pieces that themselves were NEVER part of the so called o-neg but were used to create optical composites in 1977(that subsequently became part of the O-neg) were  scanned at 2k/HD.

They were composited and colour timed in a computer and then scanned back out as negative onto film.

For the other shots that involved wipes but were not effect shots(e.g Vader saying "I must face him alone" and turning his back to the camera---wiping to Obiwan hiding in a corridor)-----the original camera negative pieces were given to pacific titles to generate new optical dupe negatives that were higher in quality than what was possible in 1977.

Meanwhile parts of the new 1st generation  IP that exhibited damage because of the poor condition of the O-neg(sprocket tears/scratches ect) that were live shots(e.g a close up of Han's face on the falcon) were also excised and replaced by corresponding shots that were sourced from 35mm theatrical IP's .They were  scanned at 2k/HD into computers before being degrained/enhanced .They were then scanned back out to film in negative form.

*These theatrical IP's were culled from various prints found in eastern europe(and were still in good shape having been created a few years before)---this is what Lucas indicated in his interview with Nolan.*

This frankenstein IP(made up of 1st generation live action IP's direct from the OCN + these scanned and restored 35mm IP's) was then converted into an internegative.

The new negatives involving digital composites were also inserted into this master internegative.

The other new dupe negatives(involving new optical wipes/dissolves) were also attached in their designated places in this new master IN.

And voila'.....this internegative was then used to generate theatrical IP's .

The same process was repeated to generate more internegatives and thearical IP's for the January 1997 re- release.

 

Tobar said:

Yeah you get a slightly higher resolution while sacrificing the presentation of the film. I've compared the two before and found the speed up unbearable.

Hmm--- I agree---having said that PAL users here in Europe have become so used to the slightly faster speed that it's barely noticable unless as you say---you do a side by side comparison.

PAL VHS players that could be compatible with NTSC started to become prominent towards the end of the 90's----I have one myself----I also have a NTSC 1982/83 VHS 1st  release of SW(snapped up on ebay) aswell as the PAL equivalent.

And hands down---it's no contest---PAL all the way for me mate!

Tobar said:

danny_boy said:

This is the 1982 VHS PAL version BTW-----which is certainly better if not superior to NTSC(sorry my American friends!)

Riiiiiiight....because making everyone sound like chipmunks is an improvement. =P

However, PAL offers a higher resolution image and better color stability than NTSC. Countries on the PAL system include the U.K., Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, China, India, most of Africa, and the Middle East.

http://hometheater.about.com/od/televisionbasics/qt/ntscpalframes.htm

lpd said:

And the size of the image was roughly 1.5 in width by 2 meters in height---If I sat too close then the VHS's video noise(or even film grain!) became too distracting----but sitting further back yielded excellent results----+ the nostalgic factor of actually playing a physical cassette  from the era is something that not even holding a 2011 digitally restored high def Blu ray can replicate.

 

 

Danny what projector is it?

I've got an Optoma hd65 (720p) projector on a 2.5m wide screen in my living room and my VHS copies look awful on it! Its like watching them thru a pair of womens stockings over your head(which I usually only wear while watching the prequels) Give me a Blu Ray or DVD copy any day. One day GL will release the originals untouched on blu ray without a doubt. An Xmas coming soon I reckon there'll be a mega mega superdooper collectible box set which will have them in it and it'll cost an arm and a leg.

Although GL beter hurry up as I've heard he thinks the worlds gonna end in 2012!

 

Hi---yeah---it's an Optoma EW533st which scales up to 1080p(it's native resolution is 1280 x 800).

http://uk.buy.com/PR/Product.aspx?sku=217115923

I bought it for my Blu Ray----discs like Avatar do look amazing when you blow them up to 3 meters wide.

But I thought it would be an interesting experiment to pump the VHS through it.

Other factors to be wary of are the quality of the VHS player and of course the condition of the cassettes themselves.

But watching the unmastered and luminiscent 1982 transfer of Star Wars through this projector  was amazing.

zombie84 said:

I just watched a 1984 VHS tape of ANH that I bought a year or two ago. The film looked suprisingly great, very nice and vivid colours, but the tape broke at one point and got chewed up. Managed to fix it pretty easily but that one part will have noise over it forever now. Just goes to show that every time you watch these, they die a little more.

he he

I plugged my VHS player through an Optoma short throw(it can beam images 3 meters in width from as short a distance as 2.5 meters) projector that I bought a year or so back.

Stuck in my 1982 VHS of ANH and boom!!---a revelation----details that I had not seen before were very prominent with just the right amount of depth between foreground and background to instill a filmic sense to the proceedings----plus the fact that this unmastered version has a lot of dirt and scratches---it all adds up to quite an experience.

Because the 1982 transfer is quite bright there really is a feeling of a full picture(all be it in 4:3)-----as opposed to a transfer where a lot of the image is in shadow(ala the 2004 DVD)

This is the 1982 VHS PAL version BTW-----which is certainly better if not superior to NTSC(sorry my American friends!)

And the size of the image was roughly 1.5 in width by 2 meters in height---If I sat too close then the VHS's video noise(or even film grain!) became too distracting----but sitting further back yielded excellent results----+ the nostalgic factor of actually playing a physical cassette  from the era is something that not even holding a 2011 digitally restored high def Blu ray can replicate.

This is a heavily pink shifted 35mm reel of SW being sold on ebay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/35mm-STAR-WARS-clip-Original-Version-/290616689245?pt=US_Film&hash=item43aa1ac25d

I am guessing that the library of congress print will be in roughly the same shape.

Don't forget there is George's own technicolour print.

There is also this:

Lucasfilm, founded by director George Lucas, has gone to great lengths to preserve film, paper records and artifacts related to its productions.⁵⁷ To use Star Wars (1977) as an example, Lucasfilm's distributor keeps the usual master cut negative and printing materials in a climate-controlled vault but, in addition, Lucasfilm has retained all other production elements. The firm has built its own archives building to house these materials.

SNIP

To return to the Star Wars example, the Library of Congress has copyrighted release prints and reference videodiscs, but the distributor Twentieth Century Fox holds extensive preprint materials and some circulation copies, and Lucasfilm maintains other production elements.

http://www.loc.gov/film/study.html

1982 PAL 20th century fox library rental VHS on left------PAL UK 1982 VHS premiere broadcast on right(mono optical audio track)

The burn mark is also missing from the 1982 UK TV broadcast of ANH.

It's significant because the print used for this telecine featured the mono audio track.

I am assuming the print was used for the April 1981 back to back 2 week theatrical engagment with ESB.

Now as to whether this was a print that was from 1977 with the new crawl spliced in-------or if it was a new IP struck specifically for this brief release is unknown.

ITV(UK broadcaster) may still have the video telecine or the actual print  kicking around somewhere in their archives.

zombie84 said:

So, I'm noticing that most of the OT deleted scenes are on Youtube, in HD to boot. Some of them are really interesting, some of them are not, but they are all cool to see. I actually wish the Luke-Leia Hoth scene had been left in the film, it's a really good performance. One thing that is really interesting about the ESB scenes is that you can see the quality of the performances and the way Kershner shoots his scenes, holding on shots for a long time and moving the camera. It's too bad some of the scenes are in black and white though, I guess they couldn't find the original colour negatives.

Glad I don't have to spend ten bucks to rent this thing right away.

It's all subjective --- but IMHO that deleted Han - Leia scene on Hoth has a similar tonality and campy akwardness as the bespin deleted scene that surfaced on empire of dreams("you look nice in girl clothes")----I think it even has a prequelesque wooden quality to it---- I for one am glad that Paul Hirsch and Lucas  binned it back in the day.

And you really need to see these scenes in 1080/24p---not on youtube.

Why does he do it?

All these changes and all this tinkering do one undeniable thing----they keep Star wars in the news and relevent-----for good or for worse---probably for the worse artistically---but possibly for the best commercially.

A case in point--- you can see  Star wars outdoing(at least at the moment) Pirates Of The Carrabean 4 and Thor on the Blu Ray top sellers chart(on blu ray.com)----not bad for a 30 year old saga----especially as the saga is coming up against contemporary blockbusters like Pirates 4 and Thor---- will be interesting to see if Star Wars can compete  with Transformers 3 when that is released in a couple of weeks.

Although a film like Citizen Kane---which was also released on Blu ray this week---- retains it's artistic integrity----but does not appear anywhere on the top sellers list!

I think there is a moral in there somewhere!

on edit: Just realized that Pirates 4 won't be released in the US for another month---it came out here in the UK this week.

thedaner said:

timdiggerm said:

The logic doesn't follow, but I suppose it's a bit of a nod towards the fact that he knows what's going on in this end of the fan community.

I think it's also a nod to the fact that Robert Harris personally knows of a print in a existence that can be used for a BD version of the original Ep IV.  He's offered to restore it himself, with no response from Lucasfilm (surprise surpise).

But would the quality be that good?---- I am assuming Robert Harris has a 35mm interpositive release print.

And I say this because when Superman The Movie was restored there was actually a section of the o-neg that was not really the o-neg!:

There was a big chunk that was a dupe negative section, when
Lex Luthor pulls the Kryptonite out of the case all the way until he pushes
Superman into the pool. The original cut negative had been damaged by some lab, and somewhere someone combined YCM separations to make the dupe section. The colors were slightly out of registration. We never did find the negative for that. There was a dupe section for all of that and then there was
damage in other places, torn frames, stuff like that which had been backed by
mylar They would put clear mylar on the back of the negative so that the tear
wouldn't pull any farther and it would hold the film together. "

http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/mohenryfanclub/message/298?l=1

Now when the restored film was released on DVD in 2001 and again in 2006 that section of the film where Lex throws Superman into the pool was seamless(in terms of granularity and color reproduction) with the scenes that preceded and followed  it. The relative  low resolution of DVD did not have the ability to capture this discrepancy.

But on the blu ray release you can see a definite increase in grain structure aswell as a slight shift in the colour pallette during this scene.

1080p is very unforgiving on these kinds of anomalies.

And that is from a dupe neg that was generated from YCM  separations(spliced into the original negative).

I am just wondering if ROTJ is afflicted by a similar problem---(as has already been noted----when the Rebels land on Endor there is a drop in picture quality on the new Blu ray)----and maybe it's tracable to the camera negative(or a duped negative like the case for Superman The Movie).

I noticed a lot of the crap comes from either the droids ,Anakin or the naemodians.

"they must be dead by now--finish what is left of them"

"you uhhh are under arrest"

"roger roger"

"no point reporting anything to him unless there is something to report"(or something like that)

Anakin's mates spout a load of kiddie bollocks when he is testing his pod---can't remember the exact dialogue but it's woeful(that whole scene should have been edited out or down by a whole lot).

We(as in anyone who was familiar with the OT before the prequels were released)  all went into the prequels knowing exactly were it was heading and what was going to happen.

The original trilogy(as it unfolded from 77' to 83') was completely the opposite.

But it is always interesting to see the reaction of someone who has never seen any of the SW films----and how they react to the prequels:

That’s right. I have no problem admitting it. Here’s the thing. I’ve never really been into to the Sci-Fi genre. I’m sure all you Star Wars fans are probably cursing me right now.

Now, when I decided to watch them I decided to watch them in order. So, last night I watched the 3 prequels. Yup. Three Star Wars movies in a row. And you know what? I actually liked them.

http://dopeoplereallyreadthesethings.wordpress.com/2011/02/12/i-have-never-seen-star-wars/