Original/Unaltered "Star Wars" Trilogy on Blu-Ray in 2017

He does have that, "I want my Mommy!" Look. Poor Mr. Lucas.

 

Is it going to have Aunt Beru's original, undubbed voice?

 

If they were to include all of the different audio mixes, there would be dozens of choices. A lot of the self-proclaimed "purists" don't realize how many changes there were before any changes were made to the picture.

 

I know, right? The film I saw at the Glenwood Theater in Overland Park Kansas was called Star Wars, dammit! None of this A New Hope nonsense!

 

Depends on who you ask; you'd be surprised. The Harmy Despecialized editions have the following audio selections (spoilered for length):

Spoiler: STAR WARS

TRACK 1) 5.1 DTS-HD-MA [English] (1977 70mm six track mix)
TRACK 2) 2.0 DTS-HD-MA [English] (1977 35mm stereo mix)
TRACK 3) 1.0 DTS-HD-MA [English] (1977 35mm mono mix)
TRACK 4) 2.0 Dolby Digital [English] (1985 Laserdisc mix)
TRACK 5) 2.0 Dolby Digital [English] (1993 Laserdisc mix)
TRACK 6) 2.0 Dolby Digital [German] (1978 dub reconstruction)
TRACK 7) 2.0 Dolby Digital [French] (1977 dub)
TRACK 8) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Spanish] (1977 Castilian dub)
TRACK 9) 1.0 Dolby Digital [Spanish] (1980 Latino dub)
TRACK 10) 1.0 Dolby Digital [Portuguese] (1980s Brazilian dub)
TRACK 11) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Japanese] (1978 Dub)
TRACK 12) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Italian] (1977 dub)
TRACK 13) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Polish] (1995 Voiceover)
TRACK 14) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Czech] (1992 dub)
TRACK 15) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Hungarian] (1984 dub)
TRACK 16) 2.0 Dolby Digital [English] (1993 LD Audio Commentary - silence filled with 1993 LD 2.0)
TRACK 17) 2.0 Dolby Digital [English] (2004 DVD Audio Commentary - recut to fit this release)
TRACK 18) 2.0 Dolby Digital [English] (2004 starwars.com Audio Commentary - recut to fit this release)
TRACK 19) 2.0 Dolby Digital [English] (2011 BD Archival Interviews Audio Commentary - recut to fit this release)
TRACK 20) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Isolated Score*]
TRACK 21) 2.0 Dolby Digital [English] (Commentary For Visually Impaired)

Spoiler: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

TRACK 1) 5.1 DTS-HD-MA [English] (1980 mix)
TRACK 2) 2.0 DTS-HD-MA [English] (1980 mix)
TRACK 3) 1.0 DTS-HD-MA [English] (1980 16mm mono mix)
TRACK 4) 2.0 Dolby Digital [English] (1993 Laserdisc mix)
TRACK 5) 2.0 Dolby Digital [German] (1980 dub)
TRACK 6) 2.0 Dolby Digital [French] (1980 dub)
TRACK 7) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Spanish] (1980 Castilian dub)
TRACK 8) 1.0 Dolby Digital [Spanish] (1980 American Spanish dub)
TRACK 9) 1.0 Dolby Digital [Portuguese] (1980s Brazilian dub)
TRACK 10) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Japanese] (1980 dub)
TRACK 11) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Italian] (1980 dub)
TRACK 12) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Polish] (1995 Voiceover)
TRACK 13) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Czech] (1992 dub)
TRACK 14) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Hungarian] (1982 dub)
TRACK 15) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Slovak] (1997 dub)
TRACK 16) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Russian] (1989 dub)
TRACK 17) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Russian] (1980s Voiceover)
TRACK 18) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Ukrainian] (2004 Voiceover)
TRACK 19) 2.0 Dolby Digital [English] (1993 LD Audio Commentary - silence filled with 1993 LD 2.0)
TRACK 20) 2.0 Dolby Digital [English] (2004 DVD Audio Commentary - recut to fit this release)
TRACK 21) 2.0 Dolby Digital [English] (2011 BD Archival Interviews Audio Commentary - recut to fit this release)
TRACK 22) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Isolated Score*]

Spoiler: RETURN OF THE JEDI

TRACK 1) 5.1 DTS-HD-MA [English] (1983 mix)
TRACK 2) 2.0 DTS-HD-MA [English] (1983 mix)
TRACK 3) 2.0 Dolby Digital [English] (1993 Laserdisc mix)
TRACK 4) 2.0 Dolby Digital [German] (1983 dub reconstruction)
TRACK 5) 2.0 Dolby Digital [French] (1983 dub)
TRACK 6) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Spanish] (1983 Castilian dub)
TRACK 7) 1.0 Dolby Digital [Spanish] (1983 American Spanish dub)
TRACK 8) 1.0 Dolby Digital [Portuguese] (1980s Brazilian dub)
TRACK 9) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Japanese] (1983 dub)
TRACK 10) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Italian] (1983 dub)
TRACK 11) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Polish] (1995 Voiceover)
TRACK 12) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Czech] (1992 dub)
TRACK 13) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Slovak] (1997 dub)
TRACK 14) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Hungarian] (1983 dub)
TRACK 15) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Russian] (2004 dub)
TRACK 16) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Russian] (1980s Voiceover)
TRACK 17) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Ukrainian] (2004 Voiceover)
TRACK 18) 2.0 Dolby Digital [English] (1993 LD Audio Commentary - silence filled with 1993 LD 2.0)
TRACK 19) 2.0 Dolby Digital [English] (2004 DVD Audio Commentary - recut to fit this release)
TRACK 20) 2.0 Dolby Digital [English] (2011 BD Archival Interviews Audio Commentary - recut to fit this release)
TRACK 21) 2.0 Dolby Digital [Isolated Score*]

I of course just muxed my copies to the 5.1 DTS-HD-MA, the 2.0 (and 1.0) DTS-HD-MA, the laserdisc music, the audio commentaries, and the isolated score. Cuts down on that file size, y'know.


Realistically I wouldn't expect any retail release to go to that depth. You'd get a remixed 6.1 DTS-HD-MA that may or may not resemble the original 70 or 35mm mix, depending on whose ears were plugged at the time of mixing (or some executive's extravagant bill for some thing that meant the team responsible didn't h, maybe an original mono or (Dolby) stereo mix or two, and either a new commentary or a slice-and-diced variant of such. Commentaries seem to be on the way out, though.

Isolated score? On an official Disney/Fox/Lucasfilm release? pssht. keep dreaming. what'd'ya think this is, the Criterion Collection?

*It should be noted, if I recall correctly, that the isolated score sources are the 2CD soundtrack releases which are not-so-favored on this forum. But hey, you do what you can with what you have.

 

God Eric Carmen looks awful.

 

uh.. he's all by himself on Dagobah!

 

Thank you. I haven't seen the film since the '90s. I'll have to check out this longer version.

 

It's Star Wars to me as well. However, I kind of like the A New Hope subtitle. It's charming in its subtlety.

 

All these people saying "Let us have the original!" seem to forget that Lucas was fiddling with it during the first run and made changes to the first set of replacement prints. I'm pretty sure the first version I saw was mono, had Aunt Beru's real voice, and had both "Close the blast doors!" followed by "Open the blast doors!" when the Rebels got through the blast doors. My wife saw the original film in the theater more than 50 times, and remembers all these things. All that was long before Empire was planned and A New Hope was added. Heck, I can remember a novelization where Darth Vader was a creature from a planet with a methane atmosphere.

 

I don't think that was even in the original theatrical release. A ton of location dialogue tracks had to be dubbed due to noise and location problems. This was very typical for that era.

Yeah, my memory is that the 1977 6-track mix was done first, then the mono, then the Dolby Stereo... and I think Lucas made subtle changes on all three. And they got changed again around 1981-1982 when the first home video release was mastered.

 

Really? As far as I know, we did master the 4-hour version of Dances with Wolves with subtitles, but anything can happen by the time the disc is authored. I don't what Costner wanted -- we talked more about color and brightness.

 

Vickie insists it was the case. Dubbing another actor's voice never works - we apparently are very good at matching voices to faces, and Beru's voice never fit. (Commercials pull this nonsense all the time.) From location photos I've seen, most of the dialogue was recorded with tiny Nagra tape recorders strapped to the actor's legs, fed by Sony ECM-50 microphones hidden in their clothing. Most of Beru's lines were interior anyway.

 

The tiny Nagra SN technically did exist around this time, but it was extremely rare to use in film production. Besides, there are tons and tons of pictures showing the boom op on Star Wars clearly holding a Sennheiser 815 in a Rycote windshield over their heads:



(And no nasty remarks about the guy's outfit -- it was 115 degrees in the shade in Tunisia.)

I'm not sure what you mean by "3000 vertical lines." All the new VFX for Star Wars in 2004 were done at 2K, just 2048x858. (Even today, a surprising number of "4K" movies have VFX done in 2K because there's just no time to finish 4K by the movie's release date.)

Cleaning up VFX is a slippery slope: first you fix stuff, then you want to make it better, then you want to redo them a little bit, then you add one or two things, and then suddenly it turns into the revised Star Wars. I have no problem with just releasing the movies exactly as they were in theaters and do nothing except make the color and grain consistent, then remove all the scratches and dirt and splice-marks. Let the bad opticals look just the way they did 40 years ago, no better and no worse.

I think doing that and then also including the final "George Lucas Revised" versions would be fine as a boxed set. I think this would be respectful to Mr. Lucas, and also give the fans what they want.

 

Exactly. Come on!

 

This really just reminds me of the wait for 09/09/09.

 

That seems to jive with what I recall reading from some of the fans discussing this.

Yup. For those that want their perfect version, the fan editors can take over at that point. I seem to recall you've said yourself that with a proper adjustment of the film presentation, most of the matte lines and such would be less noticeable.

 

Actually, if you search for the international release of "Dances with Wolves" on the region-free blu-ray from Warner then those who want it can get the 3-hour theatrical version of the film.

There is also an Anniversary edition from Kinowelt in Germany that offers both the theatrical and the longer cut but that one requires a BD player that can play Region B discs, that one ain't region-free.

 

Beru has an alternate voice in the mono mix. It's weird to hear at first but probably fits better.

It would be nice to see the 85 and 93 home mixes survive on BD for completeness: but if we get the mono, Dolby Stereo and Dolby 70mm for each that would cover everything theatrical. And yes there are monos for ESB and ROTJ, just as there is one for Raiders. (Primarily for 16mm and lower end runs I suppose.)

70mm was done first from the four track master, Dolby Stereo second and is a close if not nearly identical mix from what I understand. The mono was done from scratch last as it was intended to be the final mix for the vast majority of theaters who presumably would not have upgraded sound. Thus it has many tweaks, fixes, 3P0's tractor beam line (recorded by Anthony Daniels supposedly in a closet while he was due to fly out after production wrapped), and changes incorporated into the 1997 SE mix. (This also happened with the ESB mono). This mono mix is what Lucas was supposedly working on in the lab when he wondered what movie had lines over at the Chinese.

If you can't tell the mono has become my favorite mix of the film. Really an incredible single channel mix for all it has to contain-and the differences are all improvements.


Sidenote: Also, I've been meaning to get the theatrical UK Dances with Wolves BD mentioned above. But everything seems to be derived from the US master Vidiot worked on judging by screencaps. I will say I do miss some of the old color timing because I grew up with it. Nothing touches the gorgeous extended Laserdisc boxset however. It may not fit on any shelf..but it's one heck of a display piece.

 

I still have that LD box set.
You might want to jump on that UK BD as soon as possible, Amazon doesn't seem to carry it themselves and only 3rd party sellers selling it on the marketplace. I'm not really sure on the status of it in my neck of the woods or if it is actually going out of print.

 

I actually had to cover up some of those myself, and Lucas had us really darken the outer space scenes more than I wanted. His explanation was, "hey, they're not close to a sun -- where would the light be coming from?" I thought of asking, "there's no sound in space, either, so where would the sound be coming from?", but I bit my tongue and did my job.

The mid-1990s laserdisc version of Dances with Wolves is very, very yellow and noisy, and Oscar-winning Dean Semler was extremely upset about it. Bluray.com gave the later transfer 4.2 stars for video quality, which I think is fine:

Dances with Wolves Blu-ray

What's funny is they didn't notice all of the massive amounts of grain reduction and enhancement we did on it 10 years ago (for the release done in the last five years). The goal is to make it so subtle, you won't see it. I think what they're really saying is, "we saw no artifacts," and that's the way it should be. In this case, the later release was cleaned up further by Lowry Digital, and they do very good work; they also did the clean-up on the Star Wars films.

 

What's the line that she dubbed?

 

All of Aunt Beru's lines were dubbed by a different actress. See captainsolo's post: "Beru has an alternate voice in the mono mix. It's weird to hear at first but probably fits better."

Drug commercials are the worst about this, one actor doing the face, another doing the voice. It drives me nuts because they obviously don't fit - the shape of someone's face affects their voice. The real actress's voice was on the mono, and the voiceover artist is the one everyone has gotten used to from the Dolby Stereo, the Special Edition and the home video.

 

It's fair to say even the crazy fans aren't positive it's another actress, but it's definitely a dubbed line:

Beru's voice - Original Trilogy

To me, there are things worth getting upset about, but this isn't one of them. It was dubbed in the theatrical release, so screw it -- just release that mix on home video. I wouldn't fix anything except a click or a pop or a dropout that was obviously not intended to be there.

 

That's a good point. One of the most irritating things to come out of the Star Wars alterations is that a lot of these fans now think that they're experts on film preservation, because what you just said about clicks and pops would be condemned as revisionism by some of these diehards. I actually saw someone who was saying that they'd be outraged if Star Wars was released in its unaltered form but with a 7.1 surround sound mix, even though I'm sure that they watch hundreds of movies with mixes that faithfully recreate the theatrical mixes in surround sound. There's a similar mindset to stuff like color correction, which these fan reconstructions play around with in order to make it accurate to the theatrical look of the film, which I'm sure they didn't do and they ultimately just made it look strange from what I've seen.