Just got the new boxset last night (yeah, yeah, I know…Lucas got more money from me ), and after running through EP4 once, I was left happy and sad. The picture quality is jawdropping compared to what has been available until now. I did notice little things throughout that seem to have been added (extra laser shots here and there) that I’m not sure were on the SE tapes. The worst thing I noticed, IMO, was a lot of what I can only describe as ‘flaring’ (being the non-specialist that I am). The first scene is right at the beginning with the 2 large spaceships fighting.
When the Imperial ships engines come into view, I noticed that not only did the engines glow brightly, but the surface of the planet below also glowed brightly all-of-a-sudden. Weird. I checked a OT version today and this didn’t happen on his. It also seemed to me that many colors were over-saturated (unless my TV needs to be recalibrated…which may be the case).
Also, the reflections of the sun on Tatooine throughout the movie is annoying as there are big, glaring starbursts everytime this happens…like someone overusing one of those lens filters to achieve a cross wherever there is a point of light. I’ll have to go back to the originals and check that as well to see if that’s a new thing. Never noticed it that much before.
Hated the Greedo scene, still. Really, the guy is almost at point-blank range and he STILL missed Solo?? I aso thought that the Jabba the Hut scene was still poorly done. I thought it funny that lots of foley mistakes that I’ve always noticed on the film were not corrected (why not…he’s changing everything else?). Some water splashes in the trash compactor were still missing for instance.
In all, it just seemed that some of the colors were too ‘pumped out’ and some places (like when the stormtroopers and Vader start blasting the door of the Princess Leias ship at the beginning) were almost washed out. In ending, the box is flimsy like others had said. So for my initial impression, I liked the added color, just seemed like too much in parts. The sharpness and detail are impressive. The added stuff is still bogus. At least there are the originals to watch
xpfshost