Star Wars (1977) original Blu ray. Crappier than ever.

Hey, at least there’s no jar jar to ruin the movie.

 

Aka, you’re only watching the Magnificent 4.

 

My joke with the 4x3 pan/scan on the original Star Wars was, they left out Chewbacca and R2D2 from 90% of the movie, because you had to show Han, Leia, and Luke in the frame.

 

I've watched the Grindhouse version of ESB yesterday and it really is the best SW movie ever made, IMO.

It somehow goes the most deeply into the SW universe. The whole thing is more believable and interesting than other movies. Probably because it is very dark, both literally and thematically. I think the kiddy VI wouldn't be so pissed on if it didn't come after something as lurid as ESB.

 

OK, well I must admit I am not likely to read that book - although I agree with most people that it's the best installment of them all (although although that also says a lot about the rest).
But even so, to come back to your painting analogy, people would also have the right to critically pan the painter if he went back and added Jabba in the background. (And no-one will ever be able to explain why Han casually (and literally) steps on Jabba's tail, which surely is a bit like punching Don Corleone in the face in mid conversation and then pretending like nothing happened.)

 

Having recently read JW Rinzler’s Making of Star Wars book (on iPad, so with embedded vintage audio & video too), I found to be so illuminating and so satisfying a read that I’ve got the Empire & Jedi books lined up to devour over the summer.

Beyond matters of established fact (history of SW on home video, film stocks used, edits created, what happened during the prep for the SEs etc), this thread has proved to be an interesting read through. I’m sure that I can’t be alone in having grown tired of certain key individuals being ascribed reductive, over simplified motives for ‘denying’ demand for the original films on home video and that they somehow lack ‘awareness’ of how much money is being left on the table. Whilst I believe (but in no way no for sure) that some of those key individuals began to misunderstand the appeal of their own creation as time went on, a lack of understanding of potential revenue from the franchise hasn’t been one of them. Disney did not pay 4bn+ without the numbers having been crunched to within an inch of their lives.

I don’t think for one minute that anyone at Lucasfilm, Disney, Fox or any other connected entity has somehow overlooked a potential for money making on the films and the franchise as a whole. The complicated rights around the first film currently being between Lucasfilm & Disney and Fox is a matter of historical contract agreement. Each cannot be unaware of the fan demand for the 77-83 films but no one is capable of delivering it today due to contracts with another.

J Michael Straczynski had a Q&A recently on Twitter discussing the potential for either new Babylon 5 material (films, TV, books) or a remastering & reissue of the original TV series. He described the company holding the TV & book rights to the franchise as a monkey with its hand in a jar holding a nut. It can’t pull its hand out and its not for letting go of the nut either. Ergo we’re getting nothing from those who hold the rights and nothing from those who might be minded to do something with the rights if only they could acquire them, as those holding the rights aren’t for letting them go. When asked if this situation must somehow be resolvable, the answer came that it hasn’t been for the lack of trying.

Many of the posts in this thread have been enlightening, particularly @Vidiot , so as well as understanding much of the technical antics that have gone on in relation to various generations of prints, its also helped illuminate the mindsets of many of those involved to date.

By comparison to Star Wars, the tortured history of Blade Runner’s production, assorted cuts and the contractual obstacles that had to be overcome to get Final Cut restored and reissued looks like plain sailing in comparison.

If nothing else, 70mm 2001 is coming to my neck of the woods next month.

 

They totally underestimate the potential interest in releasing the original unaltered saga for home video. They think the BDs with altered versions are good enough for most people, which isn't true. Even casual fans don't like them for various reasons.

Plus, it's a technical problem by now because the films deteriorated to an extreme point, which is entirely Lucas' fault. I'm sure Disney would have seen it differently if they had well-preserved unaltered footage.

 

Yes he is a m0ron who became brainwashed in the 90s and ruined 3 beautiful movies and made them garbage!!

 

I think you also have to weigh in the fact that Fox and Disney have battled bitterly over the rights to the Marvel characters, and Disney was incensed at how the Fantastic Four franchise was destroyed by a bad director and terrible creative decisions. But they are cooperating somewhat with Deadpool, so I think there's a thaw there. Still, Disney and Fox are fierce rivals on many levels.

I think with that show, WB would have to basically do what Paramount did on Star Trek: The Next Generation and completely rescan all the film to HD, then recreate 100% of all the effects digitally. The problem there is that the VFX files are scattered and incompatible with today's VFX software, and it would cost a fortune to just create them from scratch (provided the live-action material survives). I'm guessing on the low side, it'd be $150K-$200K per show to redo. (I have heard it was around $100K for TNG, which had fewer effects, and the mastering costs were around $15 million+.)

My guess is that WB doesn't think the show could recoup its costs. If it were up to me, I'd say, "screw it -- spend the damned money. The show could have an extended life on HD." But that's me.

 

I wonder that myself, why has the Star Wars Original Trilogy been treated so bad? I really dislike the BD of Episode IV, color correction is awfull with that pinkish look, all grain has been scrubbed and I guess some detail with it, and even it looks clean without film grain there's plenty of compression artifacts, look at the scenes of R2-D2 and C3PO at the desert of Tatooine, there's plenty of artifacts, edges are plagued with mosquito noise.

 

Just have to have a look at what they did to a franchise they also own: V. They did a cheap and disjointed plot-wise remake that almost nobody liked. When the 2 episode original Mini Series was release on DVD Kenneth Johnson insisted on a 5.1 audio remix, all the money Warner Bros. gave him for that was for a late 70's technology matrixed Dolby Surround mix. The Final Battle didn't even had an audio remix and was released on plain mono. And the rest of the weekly series episodes were not even re-scanned for DVD release, they are sourced from the composite NTSC video done in 1984. I'm sure there's money to be made with V on Blu ray, at least with the Original Mini Series and The Final Battle but Warner seems to ignore this franchise. I'm sure the film masters for those 5 episodes are in quite good condition, sure they'd need some tweaking but nothing that would get Warner Bros. go bankrupt, and yet they don't release V on BD and I don't think Warner Bros. is the kind of company that licenses their movies or T.V. series to be released by a third party like it was done with Knight Rider or Miami Vice.

 

I'd absolutely buy the original 1983 V mini-series scanned in 2K, beautifully remastered, and re-released with both the remixed soundtrack AND the original 2.0 mono soundtrack... Ken Johnston altered some cues for the new DVD soundtrack that I don't like, but it would look amazing on Blu ray... and it would sell too, it's a very popular series that original mini-series.

It's just a pity that Johnson was fired - or left, depending on who you ask - for The Final Battle mini-series; he said those scripts he worked on prior to leaving were even better than the original mini-series, but WB refused to put up the dough needed for it because there was no money to be made in mini-series' back then. Even with that sequel mini-series as it is, I'd still buy it if WB properly remastered it in 2K and re-released it on Blu ray... it's not as good as it could have been, but it's still pretty darn good with some exceptional action sequences and terrific scenes throughout (Ham Tyler for the win!).

The weekly series was utter pants anyway, so I'm not worried about that... even the original cast couldn't wait to get away from it as fast as their contracts would allow them.

 

No, because he OWNS the painting. He only loans it to the museum for the public to come in and view it. A motion picture is still a work of art, owned by the filmmaker. (Technically, Fox owns the copyright to the first one, but Lucas retained full creative control of it up until October 2012.) When you buy a movie on DVD or Blu-ray, you don't own the rights to it -- you only have the rights to watch it. Think of it as buying a photograph of a painting: you still don't own the painting and you have no say how it's photographed, although you have the right not to buy it if you don't want to.

Motion pictures have unique copyrights unlike music, photographs, paintings, and the written word. because of the nature and history of the process and culture. This is backed up by copyright law going back many, many years. You can make an argument that the filmmaker has a moral right to not change it for the audience, but if the filmmaker has this creative control, he or she could say, "F you, it's my movie, I can do anything they want." I can think of quite a few cases where filmmakers have made fairly noticeable changes in their films from the way it was originally shown; Michael Mann and Ridley Scott are just two others I can think of.

I was told by a WB exec I knew in the 1980s that Kenny Johnson was fired for going overbudget and overschedule.

 

You've said this before... and it's been pointed out to you numerous times by several people (not least of whom being Vidiot, who actually worked on Star Wars and Jedi at Skywalker Ranch) that nothing is deteriorated as to be irretrievably lost; the O-neg for Star Wars was extensively repaired and restored in the mid-1990's, any cuts and trims taken from that negative have been stored away in the LFL archives, the O-negs for Empire and Jedi have remained in great shape since they were made and likely weren't even used for the Special Editions (the most that was done with them with regard the aforementioned SE's was probably striking a brand new IP print from them to use as source), and even if all of the previous were degraded, deteriorated, disintegrated, blasted off into space on a rocket ship to the Sun, there are numerous secondary 35mm sources that could be used to create a strikingly good, brand new 2K transfer that would rival any current release.

If you don't or won't listen to what's been told to you, that's fine, but don't spread disinformation...

 

None of this is strictly true. You're wearing pink glasses when talking about this matter. It wouldn't be as easy, nor as cheap, as you make it to be.

The sentence about numerous secondary 35mm sources being in good shape was perplexing, BTW. They are anything but in good shape. Fans will accept blemishes from film degradation, but the market as a whole would probably raise a scandal if Disney actually used a secondary 35mm source. I guess the whole problem is that they can make the hardcore fans from the 1970s and 1980s happy, but they can't really put together a release which could safely hit the mass market.

 

Sorry but thats's completely irrelevant. Nobody ever tried to argue that it was literally illegal. (Actually I had always wondered how I could be the sole, full, and unreserved owner of the films that I bought, given that many other people had bought copies as well...) Anyway, the owner and the (foremost) creator just happen to be the same person here. But that's not necessarily always the case.
Everyone is merely arguing that he is a bit of a fool. It started out as a nice idea in 1997, putting Jabba back in, but it quickly derailed. At least I haven't heard anyone defend ewok eyelids, extra rocks, etcetera. For one, the overemphasis on all these tiny details seems slightly ludicrous if you consider how little they influence the story. (The deleted scenes from RotJ - now some of those would have made sense to reinstate, because I had from the very first time wondered if the control room was straight behind the back entrance or what? But Boba's new voice in Empire? Bad choice; the old, gritty one was much more fitting. Also, no matter how much you update the special effects, you can't take the late seventies out of Star Wars. It's in their looks, their hair. The darth-obi duel is a joke when you see it today!)

Ridley Scott - if you mean Blade Runner, well, the box set contains five different cuts of it. You can see the US theatrical original edition, the version that everyone complained about, a workprint, and a new cut. (I believe some people still aren't happy because the international cut also contained extended takes of scene blabla. Or something like that. But still.)

 

Sit further away from the screen

 

You did that? Cool! Was there any talk about reincorporating the "Swan Song" footage?

 

Yes. Plain and simple. They know they can re-release it again in a few more years and you will buy it again.

 

There is a tremendous amount green in the 4K77 version that isn’t present in the other 3 versions. It’s everywhere in the 4K77 clip. It’s much more prevalent than the oft-complained about pink hues in the official release.

 

True, but it's still the best version available so far. Skin tones in 4K77 are far more natural even with that green tint than in the official releases, which are just over-saturated to hell.

Color grading isn't the biggest problem with the official releases, though...

Personally, I find the DNR-free version of 4K77 to be very pleasing. It looks like I remember the original movie before the SE.

 

They claim it's faithful to how the prints were timed back in '77.

 

The new Christopher Nolan UHD BD movie releases are not sourced from the original negatives but from interpositives of the films and except for some softness due to DNR on Batman Begins nobody has complaint about their quality. I own Interstellar and the Batman Trilogy and the issues mentioned on Batman Begins, the rest look outstanding. I borrowed Inception UHD BD from a friend and it looks great also, and all these releases are sourced from interpositives not OCN's.

 

No, none of the filmmakers ever came in, so we just did it all on our own in 2011. We only had the released theatrical version and no extra material. I have it on good authority that Fox did the restoration because co-star Jessica Harper was married to then-Fox head Tom Rothman (now the president of Sony Pictures).