CT Will Disney Re-Release Theatrical Cut Of The Original Trilogy?

I appreciate that sentiment but don't agree with it.

People who actually worked on the movies also don't agree with that view hence the changes that came from them.

The battle of Yavin SE version is objectively superior because they replaced shots that they had to make do with ones that were what they wanted at the time but couldn't manage to get.

Now whether they did the SE with CGI or if they had pulled out the models and redid it that was makes no real difference. Either way the shots were going to be better.

I feel quite the opposite. I can enjoy the original versions and like them as historical curiosities but they are simply inferior works.

I don't know that anything is "automatically" superior as such. Something that was impossible before was not possible. So it's not about superiority as much as being able to do it in the first place. Puppets and people in masks can only go so far (and not really that far in the first place) so CGI characters allow you to do what was impossible before. If Lucas had the attitude of "let's just have someone in a suit" then Yoda never would have been a puppet in the first place.

The consistency of Lucas pushing forward is the same but for whatever reason some wanted a cap on it.

The original work of ANH was not created to stand up to scrutiny but to be just effective enough to work for the movie. That afterwards some people treasured this work as being great is understandable but Lucas knowing all the short-cuts was not going to buy in to that.

That original work of ANH is simply at a lower standard than any of the other movies. I don't know what seamless is supposed to mean since it means something very different to different people. The OT has lots of seams that are quite evident due to the lack of blending they could do then. It just wasn't possible compared to modern movies. Any SE version of ANH's battle of Yavin that blends properly by today's standards is going to be "out of place" as it were because they couldn't do it back then.

 

Would I be right in assuming that if Disney wanted to just drop the unaltered versions of Empire and Jedi on a streaming or download service, they would be able to do so without cutting a deal with Fox? Fox owns the distribution rights for physical media, not digital downloads as evidenced by the absence of the Fox logo for the download versions of Empire, Jedi and the prequels.

 

Indeed. They would have to omit the Fox fanfare and logo though.

 

They actually wouldn't have to do that, but they probably would.

The problem with this sentiment is that it's entirely subjective; yes, even what George Lucas, the director, thinks is superior is still subjective. You can argue that his subjective opinion holds more weight, but it's still subjective. A lot of people disagree that the original versions are inferior.

 

I thought the BluRay of Revenge of the Sith is exactly the same as the Theatrical version. The DVD however has at least one transition that was different from the theatrical release. I'd love to read more info on the added dialogue and enhanced effects you're talking about. This stuff really interests me.

I've never heard anyone complain about the changes made in TPM (Except for the longer podrace.) For me puppet Yoda was the worst. It doesn't' even look like Yoda but a different character from his species. Yaddle looks more like Yoda. It's amazing what adding the CGI Yoda did for my appreciation of the film.

I'm not sure the film print of Attack of the Clones was actually the final cut of the movie. Seems more like a fine cut and the theatrically released digital version which has the "To be angry is to be human line" is the final theatrical cut.

 

I read an article that basically said we should be careful of what we wish for in getting the OOT on Blu-ray. That the effects would seem really outdated given the special edition tidied things up over the years, and our impression of the originals would diminish. I can't understand that logic myself. I think people forget they ARE films made in 1977, 1980 and 1983. That's the reality. I don't have a massive gripe with the special editions, but I think we should have the films as they were originally released as well.

 

At least one customer got screwed by the "Theatrical Version" tag.

3.0 out of 5 starsNot The Theatrical Version
ByKyle S.on December 21, 2016
Format: Amazon Video|Verified Purchase
I wish I'd realized this was the version with those terrible extra scenes cut in. These "bonus" scenes cut in during popular scenes and overwrite the best part. They changed the music and the original video.

 

He'll probably get his money back though, as Amazon falsely advertised it, even though I'm sure that it was a mistake it was still false advertising.

 

If you'll look at when he posted that review, he bought the movie in late December. It seems as if the mistaken "Theatrical Version" addition happened within the past 36 hours or so. This appears to be a guy who bought the movie a couple of months ago and simply didn't realize it would be the SE, not that he had been mislead into thinking so by a false "Theatrical Version" in parentheses next to the title.

 

I think, we've long since established, there is no objectively superior. It's all subjective opinions. Even so, you look at the shot and judge it by itself. My view is, that Star Wars is a 1970s film from start to finish. IMO the CG shots do not mesh with the existing footage, hence they are not superior, but inferior to me, compared to the original shots, which fit the era.

However, even Dennis Muren recognizes it's only oke to alter an original work, if that original work remains available:

"DM: I wasn't too excited about spending the time working on it, but I was really glad that we had a chance to fix it. So many of the shots in the films were not quite up to it - we ran out of time and everything else you could possibly think of. The technology, at the time, was as good as it could possibly be, but I've always cringed at a lot of the effects. I saw it as an opportunity and, I think on the first film, George came up with 50 shots and I came up with 50 shots to redo and we put a lot of effort into that and did most of them with computer graphics. I oversaw them, but didn't actually get into doing them day to day.

I felt that as long as the original versions were still around for people to see that redoing them was okay - it didn't really bother me, mainly because I had been so frustrated with a lot of it from the beginning. There were time constraints, money issues and also the fact that the technology was not available."

Source: http://www.sci-fi-online.com/Interview/04-08-16_DennisMuren.htm

 

Things like Garbage Mattes, compositing opacity, and other blemishes in the OOT on VHS were very distracting in a completely different way than the Special Edition changes. You could see the seams of how special effects were put together in a way that took away from the illusions of reality. Effects they were just able to pull off in 1977 were starting to not working in 1990. The movies were so ahead of their time everything else felt current. I remember thinking -- it'd be great if they could go back and clean up the effects -- that would make these movies timeless.

 

Thats exactly right, its all subjective, but unfortunately you're talking to someone who loves everything Lucas has done to SW and will defend them no matter what.

Someone in an earlier post hit the nail on the head, in that the changes made from 97 onwards have made the films different to what made SW such a huge phenomenon in 87-83 that people fell in love with. That may not seem like a big deal to some, but it rightly annoys long time fans who grew up with these.

 

The thing is, in their current state, they would still have been that huge phenomenon that people fell in love with in 77-83.

 

Those LSD colours and unnatural skin tones could never have been "achieved" back in the day. It takes digital grading to make a film look that bad.

 

I disagree in terms of actual shots there is an objectively superior result. That doesn't mean anyone has to like the superior shot over the inferior one of course.

Muren himself talked about when they were switching over to digital how he showed a guy two shots. One done digitally and the other done optically. The clear objective better one was the digital but the guy wouldn't admit it and then Muren knew there was going to be problems to get people to buy in because they didn't want to change.

For example the digital composited version of the Battle of Hoth is objectively superior in terms of matte lines and transparency compared to the original. One can prefer the inferior original.

In the case of optical work it became extinct because something far better was created which could be applied to the old work to make it better than it ever could possibly have been.

I understand that idea but that is placing a subjective view to start with on the whole thing. That the CGI shots added in ANH for the Battle of Yavin are superior to the original is not in question neither is any work redone digitally as opposed to the original optical work. What you are talking about is mixing them in together.

To me the shots mesh seamlessly. Watching the originals which were replaced is interesting in that you can see why they wanted to replace them because they don't work as well as the rest of the work done at the time.

So again someone who can objectively judge these things as an expert talks about this.

As for his wanting the originals to be around that's fine but doesn't change anything in terms of the replaced shots.

Exactly.

As we know fans have been working over and over again to find those "natural" tones and when they think they cracked it they find out they got it wrong again. Yet when they think it's right then it's natural.

Until it isn't.

 

You're right that the digital compositing of the original effects looks more seamless than the optical, I don't think anyone disagrees with that, but I personally don't think that the Special Edition CGI (which is what we've been talking about) is superior. I think it looks a lot worse in many cases than the original stuff.

 

Sorry, but many of the CG additions objectively stand out and make the SE's both an inauthentic and (objectively) inferior experience. That doesn't mean that anyone has to like the superior originals over the inferior SE's of course.

The space battle CG is pretty good, I agree. Although that initial shot with all the ships in formation does tend to stand out nowadays, but the Battle of Yavin otherwise looks really good in the SE. That being said, so many of the other CG additions just don't blend well with the 70s footage. I mean, just take a look at this again and notice how Han is looking past Jabba instead of at him. Even Who Framed Roger Rabbit managed to get this aspect of live action/animation blending correct.

Spoiler

Well another objective expert, John Landis, who is a film director, says here that George hurt his movies by doing what he did. I guess we can always find "experts" who will agree with our viewpoint.

 

It's such an interesting take everyone has on this. There is no correct version of the movies or point of view -- only the version we can easily buy and the version you can't get. When will this rumor turn up again. When is the last time we'll hear it? It will probably be a thing for the rest of my lifetime, but with more and more new Star Wars content coming out each year it's going to make up less and less of what is Star Wars -- but will always be the start of it all. And lastly -- when are we going to get what is essentially the final cut of Star Wars? We've actually gotten new versions of these movies like clockwork every seven year since 1997. It's almost been another 7 since the BluRays.

 

Landis also said (according to Empire magazine) that George told him that the original versions are coming out some day. The first post of this thread actually said that he got Empire Magazine to confirm that Landis told them that. He could have misunderstood, but I doubt it since he seems to know a lot about the Star Wars movies (as films, not a fan), and he's friends with George.

 

Sorry, but now you want to have your cake and eat it, since in the color timing discussion you took the opposite view. At that point I argued the bluray color timing is objectively inferior to the original color timing, because of all the color artifacts it introduced. You were more than happy to reject my expert view (I do image processing professionaly) in favour of a position, that it's all subjective. However, I now see I should have used a version your argument:

For example the color timing of the theatrical release is objectively superior in terms of color bleeding compared to the SE. One can prefer the inferior SE.

Additionally I already argued, that I believe a shot should be judged in the context of the others, not just by itself.

 

But, having seen some of these attempts, I know that some colour gradings look more natural than others, and that even if a certain grading solution ends up being off, it can still look more natural than the current S.E.

The thing is that they weren't, which is a matter of historical fact. Your argument does not rebut the idea that the original versions should be preserved so that the rest of us can watch those films which were so big a few decades ago.

 

DrDre - You're a professional image processor. Fantastic!!! Want to help me on my student film? No pay but it will look great on your resume... Just Kidding.

Someone with your expert view is just who I wanted to ask this question about the color timing on the Original Trilogy Blu Rays. Apparently the 2011 Bluray release was made using the same transfers created in 2004 for the DVDs. So they didn't go back to the Film Print for those. Did using an older transfer have an impact on how the aggressive color correction turned out? Was actual film grain removed digitally and fake grain added back in later?

And if we are in fact getting some version of Star Wars this year that comes from a brand new 4K scan or higher-res transfer - would that state of the art transfer be more likely to have natural looking color timing even if a similar aggressive color correction approach was used?

 

How tongue-in-cheek do I have to make a post for people to recognize it as tongue-in-cheek?
I mean, if a smiley doesn't do the trick, then what am I supposed to do? Post a picture of me sticking my actual tongue through my actual cheek?

 

Double post

 

One thing that's interesting to note, is that the negative for Star Wars was in a pretty bad state by 1994, when they started the process of restoring the films for the 1997 SE release. Star Wars always had a fair amount of color noise, and color fading generally reduces the signal to noise ratio, meaning the color noise will get worse. The color timing with it's high saturation look used for the DVD/bluray master further exasperated the problems inherent to the raw scan of the negative. Lowry, the company who remastered the films for the DVD release, indeed used what was then state of the art techniques to reduce grain, and later added fake grain later.

What does this mean for a modern 4K restoration? First of all, digital image processing techniques have evolved, such that a modern transfer would look better than the most recent transfer. Secondly, Mike Verta has created a 4K master for the OOT Star Wars, using at least 5 different 35mm prints, including a number of technicolor prints. While some might argue the original negative holds more detail/information than 35mm prints, this is only part of the story. The original negative has faded, and while it was restored in the mid-nineties, much image information was lossed. Technicolor prints don't fade, so while they natively contain much less image information than the negative, the image information that is present is actually more accurate than the image information on the negative. Consequently, the possibility cannot be excluded, that a restoration based on the combined detail of a number of technicolor prints exceeds the detail and quality of a restoration based on the original negative.

 

Yes, some of them stand out so much they drop you out of the movie. Maybe its a different experience for people that never grew up with the originals and they don't notice, but for me the difference between the mid 90's cgi and the effects of the 70's and 80's is too jarring.