CT Will Disney give us the OOT?

Now that we live in a post-Lucas Star Wars era (never thought I'd say that),

MAYBE

just maybe

Disney will prove Lucas's lies about the OOT being destroyed can be tossed on the scrap heap, and we can get the unaltered OOT to see the light of day.

 

No, we won't. Fox holds the distribution rights to all six original films, and there's no amount of money that'll convince them to let go of that.

 

They'd still have to distribute the movies through Fox, but as the owner of Lucasfilm, isn't it Disney's call to release the OOT through Fox?(if the negatives are still available)

 

No, it's not. Fox holds the distribution rights. That means they distribute if and when they like. Which they wouldn't do for a release that literally nobody outside these forums even cares about.

 

Since Fox holds the distribution rights, what is their reasoning for not releasing the O-OT? I've tried to investigate this but can't really find a clear reason other than Lucas just doesn't want them to.

 

Going with negligible mass-market interest. The SEs have their dislikes here...but the films themselves, changes and all, still all rock extremely good ratings on sites like Rotten Tomatoes.

Just for proof: ANH hits 94% fresh

TESB hits 94%

ROTJ hits 93%

And that's across 750,000-950,000 individual ratings. People love these movies and the SE/2004/BR changes aren't enough to impact that, so why should Fox/LFL go to the trouble of restoring the originals (which wouldn't be cheap) for basically a niche market? I'm sure LFL feels the same way-it just doesn't make sense from a business point of view, and Lucas himself has no desire to release them, so I'd say the OOT is pretty much a dead topic at this point.

 

But wasn't the 'original' version restored? Just remove all the added stuff and you have a very nice restoration.

 

No, it wasn't ever restored. It's been stored in the National Archives, but that's not the same. The SEs, iirc, are digitally stored and again, there's a cost-benefit analysis to every business decision. The OOT doesn't matter enough to the general public for them to do that.

 

It's hard to say what the 'original' actually was - especially when you consider the various audio mixes.
But the original visuals from the negative, were cleaned up, restored, corrected etc., for the SE - before all of the unnecessary CGI nonsense was put in. True?

I would have thought that releasing that - after a pretty simple re-edit - would bring in lots of cash.

Unless, what people are begging for is a print from the absolute original negative version, scratches, colour degradation and all?
John

 

If you're looking for people who care about the OOT, you are on the wrong forum.

 

I'm not, because I don't.

 

Oh, here we @#$%ing go...

A high quality release of the OOT would be just fantastic, I'd buy it first day of release - that said, I do understand that it'd be very much a niche release, and probably not financially worthwhile for those in the position to make it happen. Doesn't mean it shouldn't happen, and it's quite possible that the clock is ticking for doing it in the best way it could be done.

My own position on the OOT is that it is an utter tragedy that there are countless original cuts of films that have been lost to the ravages of time, as well as other factors - the original cuts of Greed, The Magnificent Ambersons et al - not to mention the massive number that have been lost in their entirety, and can't even be viewed in butchered cutdown versions. The OOT can still be preserved as it was originally released, and deserves to be.
I do hope that GL has understood this all along & just can't be bothered releasing it to the public. His old mate Francis Coppola made a point of striking a high-quality archival print of Apocalypse Now before he embarked on cutting up the original negative for Redux, and AN is widely available on Blu-Ray in both versions.

Something tells me that the OOT is still there, it's being preserved in an LFL archive, they just don't want it muddying the current franchise.

Fine. Just take bloody good care of it, dingbats.

 

Fox isn't in love with the Special Editions. Neither is Disney. They're businesses, and they'll press dics of whatever they think will sell.

George doesn't want the OOT released? Then he shouldn't have sold Star Wars to Disney. But he did, and after a decent interval during which House of Mouse will blow sunshine at Lucas and insist that they'll never, ever, ever do anything with those films that their close personal friend George wouldn't approve of, they'll go right ahead and do whatever they want with their property, including releasing whatever versions of the Star Wars films they think people will buy.

 

Which is exactly why they won't invest a heap of cash to restore the OOT, solely to cater to the very small niche market they can count on buying copies of it. It deserves a proper release, it always has, but when it comes to the bottom line, it's very unlikely that it will be profitable, given what would be involved in putting it together.

Idealism and history aside, this is what so many fail to understand. GL himself has been bemoaning how movie studios have been turning into corporations for decades, now he's turned his 'independent' studio over to one of the Empires. Movie studios are in it to make money. The End.

And yes, the MGM logo still bears "Ars Gratia Artis" upon it - "Art, For Art's Sake".

HAH!

 

Let's not pretend that Lucas isn't as guilty of this as the rest of them, because he certainly is.

Depends. Star Wars fans are a big market, and even a small percentage of them represents a lot of people.

My guess is that a proper restoration never would have been as difficult or as expensive as Lucas made it out to be - he just wanted people to stop asking for them.

Also, the truth is that even the Special Editions need Special Editions. The CGI of 1997 was pretty janky compared to today. That's understandable - I've heard Alex Lindsay say on MacBreak Weekly a few times that the iPhone he has in his pocket now has something like twice the CPU power and four times the RAM of the computer he was doing rendering on for The Phantom Menace back when he worked for Lucasfilm. There's lots of stuff in the Special Editions that needs a revamp now. The CGI Jabba from ANH looks particularly horrible - it did even in 1997, and it does even more so today.

I expect to see Disney - not now, but in a few years - release a Super Duper Special Ultimate Edition that would be pretty much what the fans have been clamoring for for 15 years: the plot and dialog changes from the Special Editions reversed (Han shot first, no "Nooooooo" in RoTJ), and the CGI and effects cleaned up to modern standards.

 

It's an interesting topic, and I honestly don't know what the future will hold. I accept both versions, but I also respect the historical significance of the original versions shown to theater audiences that changed history.

But these versions are readily available. Not in quality today's audiences are accustomed to, but they're still there. If people are concerned about the original negatives being neglected and rotting, I can guarantee that's not the case. LFL has been good about preserving their Star Wars artifacts... I'd imagine the films themselves would take a certain priority in that preservation.

If memory serves, I think the whole Special Edition process started with simply restoring the original film negatives. But then other additions got thrown in there. It would be nice to see them actually carry out the original purpose of simply delivering the OT as is, but it's all up to Fox.

 

Locking, as we don't really need two threads to discuss Disney and OT releases.