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

It's not impossible for them to be remastered to 2K if they were shot on film, and since they were shot in the 1980s (1984 & 1985), I'm almost positive they were. If the effects were done partly or completely in standard-def video, they would have to be redone from scratch, but that's not ridiculously expensive. My fear is that Disney/Lucasfilm has bigger problems to deal with at the moment. I think the Ewok movies were really cheap and terrible, but I get that there are fans out there who want to see them, and from a historical/preservation standpoint, I think they should be redone and re-released.

That is pretty much what he told me on several occasions. He basically said, "the original films were only about 60% of what I wanted to see on screen, and now we're close to 90%."

 

I've always found this to be a somewhat silly excuse, as though you couldn't possibly release a "Theatrical edition" without getting rid of George's special editions. I've also begun to questions George's motives a bit since a lot of the changes he's made since the special editions came out are things he probably could have done while they were making the movies when they were made in the first place. Others because I guess he walked all over the original trilogy when making the prequels.

 

In George's defense, he really couldn't do everything he wanted onscreen for the 1977 film... you have to understand that they were literally having to invent the technology as they went along in order to create the unprecedented visual effect shots they were aiming for, so some shots that George had in his head were simply unachievable with the prototype and laborious tech they were working with. Plus, they had a budget (around $10m) that was barely adequate for their requirements, meaning George had no money for stop-motion dewbacks, a larger Mos Eisley, and the first Cantina sequence shot at Elstree was a disaster because all the creatures looked cheap and unconvincing... Lucas had to re-shoot it in Los Angeles in early 1977 just to make it look half-way decent, using make-up effects supremo Rick Baker. He also had to re-shoot, among other things, the Landspeeder shots in Death Valley at that same time, because the Tunisian-shot footage just didn't work or they weren't able to shoot in the first place because of dust storms and the like.

Making Star Wars nearly killed George - he almost had a literal heart attack because of the stress! - so I don't begrudge him going back and 'fixing' what couldn't be achieved back in the day (within reason, I think he has went too far in those additions though)... but his denial of a properly-remastered digital format release of the OT theatricals is just petty and churlish; if he was so embarrassed by them then he could have let someone else oversee a new scan of the IP's and remastering of those versions... all he had to do was sign off on them without even watching them, like he evidently did with the numerous home video releases through the 1980's and early/mid-1990's.

The biggest dirty little secret behind the Special Editions is that it wasn't necessarily just about the restoration and preservation of the 1977 film's deteriorating negative (although that was a primary concern), nor was it entirely about George 'fixing' those films to reflect his original vision (although there was that, but it's interesting to note that it was ILM's Denis Muren and Tom Kennedy who selected the shots to be revised, not George Lucas!) because there's plenty of mistakes and shots in the 1997 Special Edition releases that weren't 'fixed' until 2004... rather it was more expensive R&D for the upcoming prequels that Lucas, under the guise of the 20th anniversary restored and revised re-releases, got 20th Century Fox (R.I.P.) to put up the whole bill for ($20m if reports are to believed!), because they wanted to be in Lucas' good books to hopefully distribute the upcoming prequel trilogy... and George seized that opportunity like a pro!

Say what you want about George's deficiencies as a film-maker... but you can't argue that the man wasn't/isn't a dynamite businessman!!!

 

Give me a quote that says so. Don't forget, she was part of the team that antagonized Lucas by reading his ideas for Episodes 7-8-9 and throwing them all out and starting over from scratch. They're under no obligation to do anything Lucas wants: he's walked away and is concentrating on his charitable efforts since 2012, like the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in downtown LA (still under construction).

There's some twists on your interpretation of the story. Lucasfilm had spent a lot of the 1990s perfecting over 100 projects for other studios, which greatly upped their game in terms of compositing and 3D simultations. I think the biggest inroad was Young Indiana Jones, which was a show Lucas agreed to basically do for free and in exchange, ABC would ive them a budget that guaranteed heavy video effects work (rare in those days). Lucas knew the kind of lean & mean processed for TV were going to help keep costs down on his ideas for at least another 3 Star Wars films.

I personally was there when Lucas ordered new shots and revised shots from existing scenes, all of which forced the process to take 3 months. We also heard estimates floating around of $20 million per film, but it changed every day. Also, when Lucas personally owns the company, it's hard to force him to put on the breaks or speed things up.

 

Funny that "Star Wars" caused that much stress to Lucas and "Apocalypse Now" did the same to FFC - and both movies have undergone substantial revisions over the years since initial release.

However, FFC still allows the original to come out on video, so at least he doesn't force us to stick with his updated version...

 

I'm not talking about visual effects, are you telling me he couldn't have had Greedo shoot first in 1977? Macklunky? I know he wanted to finish that Jaba sequence in the first film but that scene just repeats everything that is said in the Greedo sequence so it's redundant to keep it in the movie after the fact. He couldn't have shown Vader needlessly arriving on his ship in Empire? He couldn't have had Vader say "No!" before picks up the Emporer?
I get cleaning up matte work and adding visual effects, it's the stuff where he's changing the story that bothers me.

 

No argument from me there ...

 

Indeed; in fact the line about "even I get boarded sometimes" is the audio as recorded in the Jabba scene. Note that we never see Han's face while those lines are heard in the cantina.

Maybe that audio was inserted there to provide the character background when its source scene was abandoned. Who knows, if before that, Han said something else, that either does not survive or that no-one realised should be reverted to how it was at first.
This is all just theory and speculation, of course.


And of course, like I said some pages earlier, stepping on Jabba's tail is the equivalent of throwing your drink in the Godfather's face.
And then carrying on like nothing happened.
Well, from an audience point of view, that guy can't be too dangerous then. You can literally walk over him.

 

Never realized that. Very cool.

 

Taking aside that from 1997 on the Special Editions are the versions of the Star Wars OT we have, do you think that Lucasfilm and Fox made money by screening the movies on cinemas alone?

 

I think the Executor box is one of the best SW sets out there. Absolutely gorgeous.

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Star-Wars-Peecher-Paperback/dp/B010715NNA

I forgot it's written by someone and then has a section by the producer. This is one of those rare one print only making of paperbacks from back in the day with tons of fly on the wall info. It's the followup to the even rarer making of ESB paperback which I finally found and is also great.

I need to finally pick up the Rinzler books. I've read library copies but just never got around to getting my own due to the high prices.

It's not just GBU but practically every Leone film is fraught with problems on video compounded by lack of research and care by powers that be and to this day fans find out about even more different/alternate foreign release edits.


George gets far too much unnecessary flack thrown at him for some things but then people completely ignore or don't know about the constant revisionism of the company and SW history.

The only issues I've ever had outside of the refusal to release the original versions were over the historical revisionism and the shift into focusing more on the company building and less on the stories. If you read Secret History or the lovely Lucas biography by Brian Jones it's easy to understand how this happened over time. I totally understand his reasons for selling the company and keeping everyone job secure-but when he sold to Disney it was emotionally painful for me because it's the exact opposite of what LFL was started for in the first place. Then how they treated SW and George's ideas must have made him feel like dirt under someone's boot.

There is no reason to not have the original versions available and it is a disservice not only to film history and the public at large but also to all the talented people who slaved and suffered to make these films-some of whom whose work has been forever erased in the new versions. Disney knows there is a windfall to be made with the OT but who knows when they might act on it.
THX 1138 is just as bad in the director's cut if not worse. George has ownership rights but I think so does WB. I truly hope everyone might be convinced to let Warner Archive do a new scan of the 1971 and 1978 release versions for a limited Blu-ray release. And yes there are three versions of THX: 1971 Warner re-edited release version, 1978 post SW Lucas corrected version with minor tweaks that is on VHS and Laserdisc, 2004 abominable director's cut.
And of course American Graffiti really needs a new scan with the original opening shot and mono mix. (I think the end text was changed too to match the sequel.) The mono with Walter Murch's sound design has been gone since the late 70's reissue. (Just as the DC of THX has a sound remix which changes most of Murch's sound design.) The dolby stereo mix sounds pretty good on the old Universal LD which was the last release prior to the opening shot being changed but I'm sure a number of differences were introduced when they remixed it back in the day.

Apparently LFL has all of the alternate sound mixes for the OT and I'm sure other films archived. One day it would be really amazing to see those get official releases. Everything through Raiders got custom mono mixes and there are interesting alternates out there. ROTJ has a mono mix but there aren't any noticeable differences like the prior ones.

 

Which versions? They made money on the 1997-1998 reissues, if that's what you mean. It's a good question what the revisions cost, but I'd say for sure they cost more than the original Star Wars' budget of $10M+.

 

I'm talking about the re-release on cinemas in 1997 of the Star Wars OT as Special Editions, if they really made money by screening worlwide movies that were 20/14 years old.
Don't count me in as I went to the cinemas four times to see Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back and one to see Return Of The Jedi.

 

Well, as I said in my reply: "They made money on the 1997-1998 reissues, if that's what you mean." And that would be the revised versions.

 

Thank you Mark. I did my part, went several times to the cinema to watch them and as they were not released on Laser Disc in Spain I imported the fake leather box with the three movies from the US. I paid around 45000 of the old Pesetas, something like 450/470 US $ not adjusted to inflation.

 

In 1997, "Star Wars" made $256 million WW.

"ESB" brought in $124 million.

"ROTJ" earned $89 million.

So yeah - they made lots and lots of money, especially the first one.

It took in enough to be the 9th highest grossing US release in 1997, and 11th highest worldwide.

All for a 20-year-old movie most of us had already seen a jillion times!

 

If all he was doing was re-composting the VFX from the best source elements together to create a better picture without matte lines and then reconstituting that back into either the OCN or IP for release. I would have no complaints.


but instead we got... what we got

 

I have another question for our all mighty Vidiot!

So you have discussed how when you worked on Star Wars (ANH) the OCN was in pretty ratty shape and it took a lot of work plus patches from the IP to repair damage.

but what about sound? Star Wars has been remixed probably half a dozen times, what are they going back to? Is there a master reel of say: 24 track? Or was at some point a new digital multi created from the various source tapes.

Thank you in advance, I was always curious about that detail

 

There are definitely some bad composites in the original Star Wars where the starfield background leaks through the spaceships, matte lines, things like that. Not all the blue-screen pieces survive, but some of them do. All of this is possible, but I would say from a historical restoration point of view, you have to present the movie exactly the way it was in the theater, warts and all, with all the mistakes preserved. That way, you can say, "here's how it looked, and here are the mistakes they made because of the limitations of the technology of the period."

There are cases where it's just a case of making it look good for home video, and in the case of Disney's Black Hole, I was so appalled by the matte lines and bad composites, I fixed about 90% of them on my own, just because they bothered me. That means it's not "historically accurate," but the Disney supervisor agreed with me that the point was to make good pictures above everything else. We didn't change or add or alter anything per se, but I did eliminate and touch-up what I felt were technical mistakes. I do that on a ton of current projects, but there are limitations: some clients want issues like "boom mics in picture" left in because, on some level, it's funny and fans look for that stuff. We let a lot of that stuff go in Dolemite, as one example. The bad filmmaking is sort of part of the entertainment.

 

In the 1970s and early 1980s, they were generally mixing with multiple 6-track 35mm mag track machines that looked like this:


Imagine a room with 100 of these mag players, which is what they had at mixing houses like Todd-AO in Hollywood and Skywalker Sound in Northern California. Now you potentially have 600 tracks you can mix on a mixing console. The mag tracks all roll in precise synchronization with the picture -- usually cut in 20-minute reels -- and three mixing engineers, one each for Dialogue, Music, and Effects, work in tandem to create a single unified mix for mono or stereo or surround sound.

By the early-to-mid 1980s, they did start using 24-track 2" machines, but they'd have to use multiple machines in order to get the track count up. By the mid-1990s, Pro Tools digital recording on hard drive became the standard, but many mixers still preferred to use analogue consoles because of familiarity and some perception that the consoles sounded better. Within the last 10-15 years, I think pretty much all film & TV sound mixing has gone to Pro Tools "in the box," meaning a virtual console where the sound comes in digitally, gets mixed digitally with control surfaces (no more analogue), and goes out digitally.

There are websites that have charted the mixing changes for Star Wars and the other films, and I believe Ben Burtt did some of the remixes in the 1980s:

https://www.savestarwars.com/theatricalaudioresources.html

Note that the original mono mix, the original Dolby Stereo mix, and the original 6-track mix are slightly different from each other and contain different elements, so Lucas was second-guessing himself and making changes even back in 1977. Some of these were obvious mistakes and unwanted sounds; others were creative choices. It's a good question which to include, but it would "in theory" be possible to include all of them on an ultimate 4K restored version, if the studio wanted to.

 

Ummm... is the guy who wrote the prequel scripts the right guy to be in charge of a Museum of Narrative Art?

 

He's the right guy if he donates one beeeelion dollars towards building it, pays for the property and the building, has a trust fund to keep it running for a hundreds years, and has free admission for anybody under 18. Lucas himself is an extremely bright and thoughtful man, and he actually knows quite a bit about history and philosophy. Go check out Joseph Campbell's The Hero Has a Thousand Faces, and you can see that Lucas took several of these legends to heart in both Star Wars and Indiana Jones. He's very much aware of how different works of art and literature have influenced other kinds of art (particularly film) over the years.

Here's what the museum will look like, located in downtown LA near USC:



No comment as to what it looks like, but there are parallels to the comedy show Veep (if you know what I mean).

 

Do you, as an insider, have any comment perhaps on what I said earlier about the audio re-use which then became repetitive once the Jabba scene was reinserted?

Does anyone know (from scripts perhaps) what the dialogue was supposed to have been?

(I'm sort of proud of having worked it out by myself even if it took me years; although others had found it before me.)

 

Here's the scene from the revised fourth draft:

GREEDO Going somewhere, Solo?

HAN Yes, Greedo. As a matter of fact, I was just going to see your boss. Tell Jabba that I've got his money.

Han sits down and the alien sits across from him holding the gun on him.

GREEDO It's too late. You should have paid him when you had the chance. Jabba's put a price on your head, so large that every bounty hunter in the galaxy will be looking for you. I'm lucky I found you first.

HAN Yeah, but this time I got the money.

GREEDO If you give it to me, I might forget I found you.

HAN I don't have it with me. Tell Jabba...

GREEDO Jabba's through with you. He has no time for smugglers who drop their shipments at the first sign of an Imperial cruiser.

HAN Even I get boarded sometimes. Do you think I had a choice?

Han Solo slowly reaches for his gun under the table.

GREEDO You can tell that to Jabba. He may only take your ship.

HAN Over my dead body.

GREEDO That's the idea I've been looking forward to killing you for a long time.

HAN Yes, I'll bet you have.[/QUOTE]

 

And now, Wired is making this point:

Disney+ Should Offer the Star Wars Original Cuts—All of Them