CT Is there any real reason why the OT will never get an unaltered release?

Just take the SE have Han shoot first, and release them. Hey, it's not the originals,and we'd still have to deal with a lot of pointless CGI, but atleast 97 percent of the movies would be the same.

 

Someone please help me understand this. When George made the 2004 DVD's, didn't he remaster the picture from the original film elements? Since the special edition changes are additions (mostly), couldn't they simply be removed to get back to the OOT? It seems to me the OT minus the special edition changes equals the OOT (mostly). Or am I missing something here?

 

We will get them eventually... not on blu-ray, and not for another ten years or so, but we will get them. It's just not on this years marketing plan.

And you guys no longer know how to ask nicely.... the more vehemently you declare he raped your childhood, the less likely he is going to want to accomidate your wishes.

And I own "unaltered releases"... On 16mm, VHS, and DVD (and strangely, each of those is slightly different). What your complaining about is not having Sept 16th 2011 Blu-ray quality in an "unaltered" format. If Star Wars to you is forever Pre-1997, then cherish those memories, and enjoy it as you would have Christmas of 1996... On VHS. If you no longer have a VCR, You can get it on DVD (as stated above), and recreate the experience of your childhood

EDIT: Unnecessary

 

I think the story is that the scenes that were enhanced were printed to new strips of negative film, which were then cut into the original negative, thus replacing the original, unaltered segments of the film. This new negative is what was then scanned for restorations.

So those un-enhanced strips are floating around somewhere (presumably archived by LFL), but there is no longer a physical negative of the film to remaster/rescan that DOESN'T feature the post-97 additions.

I could be oversimplifying or leaving something out, but I think that's mainly it.

 

That sounds totally backwards to me. I would think they'd have cleaned up the original, unedited versions prior to making changes to them. Otherwise you'd have really dirty prints with pristine additions when you went to remaster it all. A cleaned up version of the originals would make a much better starting point to make additions to. Maybe they do it differently in film. I work in pro audio, what do I know.

 

That does make more sense; I might be all mixed up.

 

Fox paid and completed restoring the original negatives to the films in 1995 and 1996, to the tune of millions of dollars. But the pieces that were changed for the 1997 SE weren't restored completely. It's a bit complicated the way it worked because it wasn't linear, the changes were being worked on at the same time the film was being restored rather than waiting for one to be finished. But probably a lot of original shots were restored, but then Lucas decided to change them, so the original now-restored pieces were removed. This is because the original idea of the SE only involved a few shots, but it kept growing and growing, mainly because they wanted to try out shot ideas for the prequels as a test run since Fox was picking up the bill.

Anyway, at the very least, you can say that any shot that wasn't digitally altered in 1997 has been fully restored. So, like 90% of the films. The altered shots have been pasted into the original negative assembly, but it doesn't matter because you would never be taking apart the negative these days, it would be a digital edit. So you would scan the negative, get those missing 10% from storage and scan them, and then just digitally edit them back in their right place. It would probably take about three weeks of work at less than a million dollars for the whole package, as far as I can ballpark it. Pretty straightforward when you think about it.

They also made separation masters in 1977, which is basically a non-degradable copy of the original negative that could be used in place of going to the negatives. Copies of these were used to fill in damaged sections of the negative for the 1997 restoration.

 

Awesome, thanks for the technical breakdown, Zomb! Fascinating stuff.

I wonder if there are other considerations beyond those you've listed? Might there be some technical obstacle to one or more elements of that process? And might it be more or less expensive or time consuming than your estimate? What of the sound and score -- surely those considerations will increase the man-hours and expense?

Keep in mind I am no expert on the subject. I ask because I like specifics, not because I doubt you.

 

Yeah, I care too! That's why every time I sit down to watch a CT movie, I ask myself if I'd rather watch the OOT or the SE!

For me it's usually about 80% OOT, but my wife prefers the SE versions (God bless 'er, poor thing ), so I do occasionally go for the 2004 DVDs instead of the 2006 LD ports.

 

There could be, as I don't work for Lucasfilm and haven't inspected the original elements myself. It could be a bit more complicated than that, or it could be even more straightforward than suspected.

One complication would be that there may need to be an additional cleaning phase even if they use the negatives, just because they've been handled in the 14 years since the SE. This would just be a normal bath, sometimes labs do this for free if they are working on a project like this and there isn't anything heavy duty involved.

Another complication is that the missing pieces might be damaged, and so require hunting down duplicate sources.

Another complication might be that the separation masters have shrunk at varying rates and so won't align.

Another complication is that matching the colour timing of the original IP would require various passes of quality control and checking it against reliable archival material, like a Technicolor print, but even that has some problems due to the dyes never really looking quite the same from one print to the next.

Another could be that if they used some sort of IP or print master it would probably require some heavy dirt removal and colour retrieval.

These sorts of things could add an additional couple of week and a couple thousand dollars more to the pricetag.

But these are worst case situations, and the solutions to them are easy, and sort of the norm when restoring vintage films. Star Wars is lucky because Fox already did most of the work in 1997.

In the case of hunting down duplicate sources, Lucasfilm already had to do this for the 1997 release, as many shots were filled in with duplicate pieces and matched well without any digitally trickery. In the case of separation masters mis-aligning, restorationists like Robert Harris have developed digital techniques to make them re-align. In the case of matching the colour timing, YCM labs already solved this problem in 1997 by colour-timing that restoration to match a Technicolor print Lucas loaned them. In the case of IPs requiring heavy duty colour and dirt work--well, either be prepared to have a flawed presentation or else just go the other routes which would require less work.

None of these are really big issues. Like I said, this is a pretty good situation for a vintage film because almost all of the groundwork was already done for 1997. Most films these days have to start from scratch; that's why when Robert Harris restored Godfather a few years ago that one film cost like $8 million to repair, because it had never been done, but Fox already spent that $8 million investing in saving the Star Wars negatives back in the 1990s, and most if not all of that work should hold up.

If Lucasfilm waits another twenty years, however, then there will be problems. The source material will continue to degrade and may require an equal amount of work to 1997. Right now is really the cheapest it would ever be to restore and present the films.

Like I said, based on the facts available, it seems like it would be doable within the space of a month or so and to the tune of a million or less. There's a reason why films like Frankenhooker can do 2K scans from vault material, as it isn't particularly time-consuming or expensive. I mean, Criterion does this for five or six titles every single month, in high-definition, for obscure foreign art films that most people haven't heard of and for which there usually isn't even original negatives anymore, and for which the original archival material is spread a

 

There are heroes on both sides.

 

Jorge could just restore Star Wars: ANH first and release it as a single release. Then later restore ESB and ROTJ.

 

The real reason there will never be an unaltered release of the OOT is that Lucas hates those versions and doesn't want to give them any more attention. We were lucky to get the 2006 DVDs! There won't be any more.

I feel sure that Lucas has fixed it legally so that even after he's gone, the OOT won't get a legal release. He doesn't want people to remember those versions. He's made that pretty clear, and he sure isn't going to spend time and money fixing up versions of his work that he isn't happy with. I think as far as he's concerned, they're dead and buried.

The Blu-Ray collection set sales records. That's all Lucas needs to be able to say, "See? People prefer the new versions, they don't want the old ones. If you want the unaltered versions, go watch the 2006 DVDs."

 

This illustrates why I wish the 1977 Star Wars film had made only a little bit of money. Then we'd all be able to get top-quality DVDs and Blue-Rays of the 1977 film for $5 or $10 at Wal-mart and all the other places that sell movies.

 

I think there's an important distinction to be made about the various changes to the films. Quite a few modifications have been made, and while the line is sometimes that "this is what GL wanted but couldn't accomplish at the time," that cannot be the case. For some things, sure; the mirrors under the landspeeder, the scale of the sandcrawler, the snubfighters taking off from Yavin, maybe the windows in Cloud City even... those types of things. (Even making ewoks blink, perhaps?)

But things like Vader's "Nooo!"s or slug Jabba in the docking bay cannot be what was originally intended because they come from ideas that were only developed much later - slug Jabba for ROTJ and Vader's lines in ROTS. Lucas has quoted the line that "films are never finished, only abandoned," and there is definitely some truth to that. Some. But the OOT is not "unfinished." It's finished for its time (with a few minor details Lucas was not 100% pleased with, as with any work of art).

This means that the bigger reason the OOT is maligned/forgotten is because the story (and, to some extent, technology) continued to evolve after those films were made. A lot of things were changed, redefined, fleshed out in ways unexpected to both audiences and the auteur himself. Probably the most significant was making Anakin the main character, which is something that developed slowly throughout production of the prequels. First, Obi-Wan's role in TPM was split into both Kenobi and Jinn, allowing Obi-Wan an arc but taking away his centrality to the story. Anakin was also made into a kind of savior/fated hero, though this doesn't necessarily place him (as a character) in the center of the story yet. In ROTS, Lucas purposely pared down the narrative he was creating by cutting things that didn't relate directly to Anakin. Changes like the "Nooo"s and young Anakin in ROTJ are, I think, clear instances of trying to elevate Anakin's role in that film, to emphasize his recently-acquired status as the protagonist of all six films.

George Lucas was still learning what the films were about while he was making them - anyone who is a creative person will understand this as normal. This situation is made unique, though, by the large span of time between the releases of the OT and PT. It's not often that finished films are or can be redefined by sequels produced more than a decade later, and then re-edited to compensate.

I think the biggest reason the OOT hasn't been given a good release is not because it's not what GL wanted SW to be when it was made (though that may be part of it); the biggest reason is because it's not what he wants SW to be now.

 

So... you wish SW had been a failure, and that the other five films never got made, so that you could save money when buying that one movie on DVD or Blu-Ray?

 

If I remember correctly, Binary is only a fan of the original film.

 

I should point out that not every commercially unsuccessful past film is currently available on DVD or Blu-ray.

 

Excellent post, Lt.Cmdr.Thrawn--it matches my own understanding as well.

Anyway, I personally enjoy the SEs and PT very much, and I think that the BD release reflects how the modifications to the OT have helped create a cohesive six-film saga. I'm a big fan of SW as a hexology.

However, I'm a much bigger fan of SW as a trilogy, partly due to nostalgia and partly due to a respect for the hands-on craftsmanship on display. The SEs are not "The Star Wars Trilogy"--they are the second half of the six-film saga, which is a different beast.

I can't say enough good things about George Lucas as a person: it's not a judgement against him, just his decisions on this matter. I would just like a pre-SEs version of the OT to enjoy at home, just as I can with Blade Runner. Better TVs (e.g. a 50" plasma) actually make the 2006 laserdisc transfers look worse than they would on a 27" CRT, highlighting all the flaws. And the subtitles really screw up and attempt to zoom in for widescreen. It's a mess.

The OT as the OT deserves its own release.

 

Also, how much money would it really bring in? Mostly everybody is happy that Star Wars got released on DVD at all...

 

I am so happy that I have all the SW films on laserdiscs. The sound was remastered and at that time, it was better sound and picture because it was laserdic. I had something called Pro-Logic II Home Theater System back then, and boy was that the bomb back then. Lucas tinkers with his films like it's an opportunity to improve them because technology is so advanced now. But what he DOESN'T realize is that new technology doesn't always equate to better. I have affection for the original versions because up until I was about 26 years old, that was ALL we had. ALL my childhood, ALL those years and hours of watching SW the reason why I'm a fan was the original versions. Now I don't mind extra footage put in, with extra scenes restored, etc. That I do like; that just makes the movie longer which is fine. But altering I have a problem with because it just seems so weird to me. When I first saw young Anakin at the end of Jedi I was sooooo not liking it, it looked extremely awkward to me. Sebastian Shaw was an old man, and so why is Anakin forever young? Anyway, I'm about to rewatch the entire series on Blu-Ray and have a SW marathon. It is nice that Lucas wants or feels he needs to improve them, but at LEAST make it a good improvement and not a poor one that ruins the movie.

 

I'll reply backwards, starting with Spielberg; agree about ET and even then he released the original version along with the new alterations.

As for Lucas, his "improvements" seem random and they're not even really improvements. Clearly he's lying when he says things are the way he "always wanted them".

Examples include: The addition of Luke screaming when he jumps off the platform in Bespin; and later removing it. Han shot first, then he shot 2nd, then he shot at the same time. Just STOP it. Watching Star Wars has become like looking at Joan Rivers under all that plastic surgery. At this point I am convinced many (most) of his changes are a big middle finger to the fans.

The original material was transferred in the first place to make the SE so his lie that the originals no longer exist doesn't hold water. I think we're within a few years of someone with high quality originals doing a transfer.

 

I'll bet that the longer fans complain about the lack of a DVD version of the old OT, the more Lucas will resist. It's his choice. One can lecture about it or complain until the cows come home. But in the end, it's up to him. And if he doesn't want to release the old versions . . . I guess it's just tough.

 

I love these threads.

I've seen these movies in their first run theater release. I enjoy the bluray editions more than the untouched editions. and I enjoy the prequels equally with the sequels.

 

Because he already released it on DVD and people still complained.