gmarsh1996

I know this is a somewhat older thread, but can someone explain to me what is the obsession with having a digitally-created movie on 35MM? For older titles that were shot on film, I totally get it, but if it was digital to begin with, why the need to recreate the film feel, if that was never the intent in the first place? The Blu-Ray does a great job of showing the film as it was originally created, the only reason it was ever printed onto film for theaters back in 2004 was because of necessity. I’m not trying to down this project or anything, I’m just genuinely curious about why it matters so much.

Marooned Biker Scout said:

gmarsh1996 said:

The changes to the prequels are very minor, nothing comparable to the special edition debacle with the original trilogy. That being said, D+ will give you the highest quality. I’m partial to the 4K Blu Rays, personally, as I like physical media.

Disney+ is better quality than the 4K discs? Is that for all the films, or just the Prequels?

OP was asking about Disney+ compared to the original DVDs. But to your question, 4K Blu Ray will always provide the best quality without compression.

Harmy’s Despecialized, though I’ve recently been interested in trying out the 4Kxx versions. I’ve got a 75’’ 4K TV now so I’m trying to transition everything to 4K where I can.

I just don’t know if I’ll like the “rougher” look of them, so we’ll see what happens. I look forward to when Harmy or someone else releases a more “clean” 4K edit that is based on the official 4K Blu Rays.

Before the fan edits such as Harmy’s and 4Kxx came along, what was your preferred way of watching the trilogy? Did you put up with the low quality of the GOUT, watch on an old VHs or LaserDisc, or just give up and watch the special editions?

For me personally, I first saw SW in the early 2000s on an old 80s VHS tape, that was obviously pre-special edition. After that though, I mostly would rent the DVDs from Blockbuster, without even paying attention to whether they were special edition or not. I was still too young to care.

Around 2012 or so when I found out about the special editions and all the changes that had been made, I was determined to only watch the theatrical cut from them on. I went on eBay and bought the GOUT DVD for Star Wars. I was unimpressed with the quality (I was watching on an HD TV), but I was happy to be once again watching the theatrical versions, at least.

Before I could get to the other two though, I discovered that Harmy’s Despecialized was a thing. That’s been my go-to way to watch the trilogy ever since. I prefer the “cleaner” look over something like 4K77.

The changes to the prequels are very minor, nothing comparable to the special edition debacle with the original trilogy. That being said, D+ will give you the highest quality. I’m partial to the 4K Blu Rays, personally, as I like physical media.

Anyone saying we would have still been upset, is just lying to themselves. If all he had done was restored the footage and added one deleted scene, everyone would be satisfied with that. That kind of restoration work happens with movies all the time.

The 2019 Disney+ releases (and later put onto disc) were the 4K masters that were going to be used to create the 3D versions. So even if the 3D versions themselves may not exist, we have the 4K versions of them.

Those of you who are defending the special editions’ existence, let me just say , you’re missing the point. We have no problem with them existing, or even that you prefer them. I for one think it would be interesting to have a choice every now and again. But the problem is that Lucas denied us that choice, and we had to depend on fans like Harmy to restore the old versions. So it’s not a matter of whether or not the special editions should exist or not, as I think most of us would agree that the special editions would be fine as long as they existed alongside the originals.

It’s not going to happen, at least not anytime soon. As the rumor goes, Lucas made it part of his contractual agreement with Disney that the theatrical cuts were not to be released (we know how badly he felt about the special editions being the “only” editions). Even if the rumor isn’t true, the next best theory that I can think of is that, even though Lucas is retired, he still has friends at LucasFilm who likely want to respect his wishes. People forget that LucasFilm has control over Star Wars, not Disney proper. Disney has a history of letting their subsidiaries do their own thing for the most part (same with Pixar, Marvel, etc).