sade1212

I quite enjoyed that clip; though I don’t disagree that “they fly now” is fairly goofy dialogue. To some extent, each trilogy chronologically gets sillier dialogue - the prequels are stilted, the OT is fairly casual but still has some George Lucas clangers, and then the ST is kind of quippy. You can handwave an in universe explanation for that if you really want; but it doesn’t bother me as long as the overall story still delivers on Rey/Kylo/Palpatine well. But some of those comments - people are claiming it looks like a fan film, or that it has terrible obvious CGI or whatever - there is no possible way a fan film could get a high enough budget to do a scene like this, and to me most of the stuff looks like real filmed greenscreen elements at least (even if it is composited together afterwards) though I don’t know how anyone can be passing judgement on that in such a low quality compressed video.

ray_afraid said:
About the “worse” compositing, can some kind soul explain? I don’t really see it…
Maybe in the 2nd shot, but I think the first looks a bit better…
(also, what’s 19SE mean?)

19SE as in 2019 Special Edition, as in the version of the Star Wars special editions made available through Disney+ and other digital distribution services in 2019. The Blurays are sometimes called the 11SE, the DVDs the 04SE, and the original theatrical release of the special editions the 97SE - mostly by DoubleOFive on twitter. Though maybe we’re going with 4KSE instead; or perhaps when they get a physical media release we’ll start calling them ‘the UHD Blurays’ or the 20SE instead…

Anyway, compositing is a VFX technique where you basically add all the stuff together to make the final film frame. The reason I reckon the 19SE has worse compositing of Hayden is the black levels - meaning the darkest blacks on his face. The shadow under his neck seems much darker and browner than any of the darkest shadows on Yoda or Obi-Wan, which are more of a medium blue. Less technically, his head generally seems less ghostly and less well integrated with Shaw’s body and the other two Jedi masters.

The blacks are less crushed for most of the film, as far as I can see.

One redone change which I think is a huge improvement is the removal of Vader’s eyebrows. They’ve much more realistically created a shaved brow appearance, with darkness and wrinkles there to get back some of the expressiveness which was somewhat lost with the eyebrow removal. I also really like the slightly pink colour correction for Vader. This shot is worse though because you can clearly see the eyebrows alteration glow with a slightly orange tint.

EDIT:
I feel sorry for the poor VFX artists who had to redo all these changes. Here’s the transition from Tatooine to Naboo redone (because Naboo was added in 2004). It’s a slightly cleaner edge. Naboo looks super desaturated in these new versions; I hope the HDR versions have sufficient colour information for us to get a more vibrant grade out of them without gross artifacting. If we can get them to look like they do on Dre’s TV on my computer monitor, I’ll be chuffed.

Here’s the undone funeral pyre change.

EDIT 2:
No visible change whatsoever in the R2 malfunctioning shot, except the colour grading of course. Maybe they just still had it lying around and could copy it across wholesale?

EDIT 3:
I don’t know if this is anything other than colour correction (Ben’s ghost).

I see no evidence of changes to the Rancor.

Some of the confetti effects are out of sync with the Bluray during the Coruscant portion of the SE Victory Celebration. There’s no clear signs that they redid the Temple and Senate, though, which was what I was looking for. Also, the horrendous Bluray red glow over Vader’s funeral pyre (and the subsequent reddening of the bottom half of the sky) are gone.

EDIT:
I can’t believe they made the compositing of Hayden worse. And why is he wall-eyed? It’s the same in the Bluray but surely his eyes aren’t actually doing that in the original footage they used; it must be edited. I think his left eye (closest to Obi Wan) is legit and the right eye must be ‘adjusted’ so he looks more forwards. Cover up the (his) right side of his face and it looks like he’s looking at someone stood in front of Ben.

Awesome! I really love what you’ve done with the sabers especially. Are you doing this edit in 1080p, ~30gb Bluray quality? I’d love to cannibalise those saber shots for my personal edits for my rewatch before TROS, so if you have renders of those shots in good quality lying around, I would really appreciate you sending them my way, if that’s cool with you. No need for any of the shots where you’ve given Obi Wan a green saber (though I love the idea and how it looks, I’m sticking to canon this time around). Cheers.

Anyone ever attempt to edit the instances of Obi Wan calling Vader ‘Darth’ to ‘Vader’ instead? I know arguably he could be mockingly addressing him by his Sith title, but I am cursed with the knowledge that Darth Vader was his real name when ANH was released and I am reminded of this fact every time I hear those lines. Of course, fixing it would just add another step to that thought process, as I would inevitably recall that the original line refers to him as Darth and be taken out of the universe anyway…

I still think I-IV-II-V-III-VI is unironically a decent way of watching the movies, because of the twists it ‘preserves’ (Vader in ESB, Leia in ROTS), the contrast between the state of the galaxy (and Obi Wan) in I and IV really driving home the idea of the dark times, and having III and VI combine to feel like a satisfying ending to the overall saga.

Lots of excellent sounding changes, can’t wait to watch it.

Wow, Dre’s shot of his TV seems much sharper and more detailed than the screenshots of the same shot posted earlier. Is that a 4K vs 1080p disparity?

The Silver Screen Edition has been superceded by 4K77. Try The Star Wars Trilogy forums for more information.

I’m still holding out hope for fresh deleted scenes on the inevitable 4K Skywalker Saga Collection boxset; or at least the existing deleted scenes which were only available on the DVDs in better quality. Every AOTC and ROTS fanedit relies on 480p->1080p upscales, and there are scenes from both movies as yet unreleased, including one in which Obi Wan admits to Padme that he knows about the romance.

Anyone got screenshots of that new TPM colour grade? The Bluray colours are all kinds of awful.

I don’t know of any. Dre is working on a ROTJ colour correction but it’s not done. Adywan has done one for ROTJ Revisited but I don’t think it’s been released. Your best bet is probably the new Disney 4K releases, which have a more natural colour grading. Unfortunately they’re currently exclusive to Disney+ and therefore only available at all in the US and Canada. Hopefully we’ll get them on discs by mid-2020.

How do the Hayden scenes look in ROTJ? I’d be interested to see if they’ve improved that or made it worse, and whether the bottom left corner in the wide shot is still a duplicated mess.

4throck said:

sade1212 said:
My point is that I moved Luke’s death to the end,

Ending a movie on a death scene doesn’t work. You need to see what was achieved by the sacrifice. That’s why you have celebrations on ROTJ and TPM…

I see where you’re coming from (though personally I like TPM to end on that closeup of Palpatine at the funeral…). To some extent, you do see what Luke’s sacrifice achieves - the Resistance gets away and Kylo feels the futility of his attempts to lash out. You just don’t realise that the effort has killed him until afterwards. I’m not 100% sold on it either, but I’m just looking for a way for Luke’s death scene to feel less like it’s rushed over in that reasonably fast paced ending sequence.

Until the physical media releases some point next year, we can’t use these for fanedits, can we?

Roobyoo said:

Thanks for the screenshots, Han Solo.

But man… that looks nothing like a 4k remaster. Just like another color grading.
The Solo/Greedo scene is like an abuse of an old rotten corpse, at that point. How many changes did they make to this scene until now?

Yeah, it looks worse than 4K77 if those screenshots are telling the full story.

ChainsawAsh said:

In case anyone was curious, the Clone Wars movie is on there (listed under “specials,” separately from the rest of TCW), and it does not have the Warner Bros. logo at the start.

The OT and PT all have the Fox logos and fanfare. TFA and Rogue One still don’t.

Ash, would it be possible for you to post screenshots of the new versions? I think Disney+ has a browser version so you ought to be able to just print screen from that. I’m in the UK and I’m really eager to see the new colour grading but Disney+ isn’t available here. Thank you.

jrock1185 said:

ChainsawAsh said:

Yeah, I’m curious if it’s a new transfer or just upscales of the existing ones.

Just checked and they’re all in 4K DOLBY VISION + ATMOS. Watching A New Hope now… color grading is vastly superior to the blu ray color grading and more similar to 4K77 and/or the technicolor prints albeit with special edition add-ons.

Also - there’s more edits/additions… after Han says “I bet you have” to Greedo, there’s another close up shot of Greedo saying something before Greedo shoots and misses.

For real? Could you possibly take screenshots of the colour grading, or film a clip of the changes (or even just do a quick phone recording if that’s not feasible)?

Seems all the movies are 4k HDR on Disney Plus. I’m stuck in the UK so I can’t access it (Disney hates us - March 31st 2020…). Anyone got any screenshots?

Seems all the movies are 4k HDR on Disney Plus.

I love your idea Rogue Leader, it certainly helps reduce the feeling that the Rebellion deleted scenes just peter out into nothing. And that Obi Wan/Padme scene is like my personal holy grail of footage left completely on the cutting room floor - from what I know most of the rest is inconsequential things like Anakin killing Wat Tambor, Mace Windu having a desk etc. (though apparently there was once a super long cut of TPM - what was cut?).

Still though - and maybe it’s just because I think of Clone Wars Anakin as “Anakin” and try to justify his actions in ROTS with my understanding of that character, rather than the weirdo Lucas wrote - it’s hard for me to imagine Anakin siding with Palpatine over Padme even if he did find out she’d been secretly plotting against him, because of Palpatine being a Sith Lord. Absolutely it would be a huge source of tension before that revelation, but I just can’t see Anakin siding with Palpatine rather than the Jedi just for political reasons AFTER discovering his true identity, or choking his wife to death because she didn’t tell him about the fact she was entirely justifiably plotting against him. Dom’s suggestion would work well in just the context of the film, but personally one of my main goals with this film is to make it fit the vastly superior TCW, and that Anakin would probably be more likely to kill Palpatine on the spot.

In my eternally WIP edit, I’m leaning in hard on the desperate to save Padme angle, going as far as to mostly reduce the inconsistent tension between Anakin and Padme and Obi Wan. (Mace and the council are absolutely fair game for being vilified to help justify Anakin’s actions against Windu, of course.) I’m going to try to imply that Anakin is motivated entirely by his inability to let go of Padme since I feel that’s the only believable reason he would betray the Jedi, with it spiralling out of control from there as he has to become more and more delusional to justify his actions - Palpatine urges him to strike the Temple because otherwise the Jedi will kill the pair for what they’ve done to Windu, and Anakin is already so deep that he feels he has no other choice. Basically, a reluctant Vader, acting out of fear of having to face the consequences for what he has done, only forced to face reality when Padme rejects his suggestion that everything will be okay and leaves him instead. He killed all those Jedi while thinking to himself “I’m doing what I have to do for Padme”, right? He’s doesn’t even consider that she wouldn’t be grateful for it, and that she might even leave him over it. And when she does, he’s forced to confront that he has committed all these terrible acts and destroyed the entire life he had built with the Jedi Order for essentially no reason. Faced with the choice between collapsing into despair and accepting the death he deserves (we see him consider this in Charles Soule’s Vader comic) or doubling down and lashing out in anger, he goes for the latter (because of the dark side, perhaps) and chokes out Padme and attempts to destroy Obi Wan. I think most people have irrationally lashed out at loved ones in times of great stress when they really should’ve admitted they were wrong, though hopefully not at quite the same level of severity, so I see that as being a more relatable way for things to go. As always with fanediting, the hard part is bending the footage to my will.

Sorry, I typed all that and just remembered the thread we’re in - I’ll make my own thread for my edit in the future rather than going off in Octorox’s!

Your edit works very well, but it reminds me of a general issue I have with ROTS: it’s inconsistent with the tensions between Anakin and Padme/Obi Wan. The deleted scenes create a fairly compelling tension between Anakin and Padme - Padme has started the Rebel Alliance but Bail and Mon Mothma don’t want her to risk involving Anakin so she has to hide it, and Palpatine exploits this to make Anakin distrustful of her, so he blows up at her when she hints that she is actually plotting against Palpatine (“You’re sounding like a separatist!”). But then this doesn’t go anywhere. He goes on to kill Windu and join Palpatine just to save her, and we don’t see any conflict between them again until Mustafar, when he believes she has brought Obi Wan there to kill him. I get that Lucas needed him to somehow cause her to die for his tragedy to work, but the obvious cause for that conflict is him feeling like he’s destroyed everything just to save her and her totally not being on board with it, not her hiding something from him half the movie ago.

I suppose it comes down to my major issue with ROTS: Anakin gives the impression that he earnestly believes the Jedi have betrayed the Republic, and him, and are evil - all because they turned against Palpatine. That fits with his loyalty to Palpatine earlier in the film, certainly, but completely overlooks the fact that Anakin discovered Palpatine was a Sith Lord, claimed he himself wanted to kill him, and then encouraged Mace to go and face Palpatine. From that point onwards, Anakin has no reason to believe Palpatine is the right man to be leading the Republic or anything like that - that’s all been thrown out of the window. This guy has been lying to him for years! The only motivations Anakin has to go along with anything he says is a) his desperation to save Padme and b) his desire to not be killed by the Jedi for dehanding Windu in a moment of panic. He shouldn’t have any kind of actual loyalty to the Chancellor he thought he knew. But then Palpatine starts talking about how the Jedi are going to attack the senate next and Anakin seems to fully buy into it. Is he just pretending so Palpatine doesn’t kill him? He basically tells Padme that he was planning on overthrowing the Chancellor once he’d learned his “new powers”. But then his dialogue with Obi Wan really seems to strongly suggest that he isn’t just playing along with Palpatine’s narrative about a Jedi betrayal, but actually legitimately believes the Jedi are evil. I suppose you could just say he’s deluding himself to feel less bad about what he’s done but it seems like such a cop out for what could be an emotionally compelling and relatable fall to the dark side.

Sorry for the irrelevant rant, but it seems like Lucas just couldn’t decide between two different storylines, one in which Anakin joins Palpatine without realising he’s a Sith Lord due to Palpatine turning him against his friends and the Jedi, and one in which he joins Darth Sidious as a desperate act to try to save Padme to follow up on his fear of loss and guilt in AOTC. Anakin’s loyalty to Palpatine in ROTS after the Sith Lord reveal just seems bizarre and makes him seem stupid. It makes sense that Vader is loyal to Palpatine by the time of the OT - he outright states he can’t disobey his master, he’s essentially a broken man who obeys Palpatine as a slave because he has nothing else left until Luke shows up - but in ROTS he’s a powerful force user trying to save his wife. His actions are almost relatable up to him chopping off Windu’s hand - he really didn’t expect Windu to outright kill Palpatine and had to make a split second choice - and I can follow his thought process through “What have I done? I’ll do anything, just help me save Padme’s life, I can’t live without her.” but then after that he just acts like a brainwashed sociopath, rather than a man forced to double down on a bad decision he made while overwhelmed with emotion.

Sorry, rant over.

“I thought that I could instruct him just as well as Yoda. I was wrong.”
This quote would make more sense if he said Qui-Gon, clearly, but we’d have to establish somehow that Luke knows who Qui-Gon was or else it’d seem odd that he didn’t ask. Putting the name Qui-Gon in “was I any different when [Qui-Gon] taught me” in ESB probably helps this a bit but it still seems odd.

Not particularly radical, but these three threads are pretty much used for all edit ideas at this point, aren’t they?

I quite like the broom boy scene but I think it makes TLJ feel too much like a definitive ending. Combined with the fact TLJ follows on so soon from TFA, I think this contributed to the feeling of not caring about IX which a lot of people felt immediately after seeing TLJ. I also felt like Luke’s death was brushed over too quickly - Leia and Rey seem kind of sad about it, but I think the death scene stands alone far better than it does as part of that ending sequence. My point is that I moved Luke’s death to the end, replacing the broom boy scene. What do you think?

RoccondilRinon said:

I believe he did confirm that the ESB:R Blu-Ray is on hold and will be released alongside the others.

That’s fair enough, I get why he would want to release all the Blurays at once, complete with consistent menus and everything. But it means it’ll literally be years before we get to see a version of ESB:R with fewer compression artifacts, even though it’s already done.