And some stinkers.
Spoilers All Things STAR WARS - News, Speculation & Spoilers Thread
- Thread starter Reverend
- Start date
All four arcs were solid. If anything, they could have done with maybe two extra episodes, since 1) for first time viewers, Bail just pops in out of nowhere with little to no explanation as to who he is or why he so quickly becomes so important. And 2) we get so little time with K-2, it would have been nice to get a little more before the final arc.
Compilation video of OT official restoration clip leaks.
I appreciate that they're doing this, but at the same it it should illustrate quite clearly why Lucas had little interest in it himself.
Carefully, painstakingly, and sensitively remastering (note: not restoring, because this is not a thing that ever existed before) a flawed, incomplete, and compromised piece of work is the job of a museum curator, not the original artist. Which is essentially what this is, and that's is how it should be.
This is an important cinematic document that should be preserved so future filmmakers can see what was achievable at the time under the circumstances, warts and all. Yes, a certain type of fan will faun over and evangelise about it ad nauseam too. Fine. Let them. The reality is that for better or worse, the "Maclunkey Cut" will be the definitive version going forward, as it was the last one Lucas had a hand in.
Carefully, painstakingly, and sensitively remastering (note: not restoring, because this is not a thing that ever existed before) a flawed, incomplete, and compromised piece of work is the job of a museum curator, not the original artist. Which is essentially what this is, and that's is how it should be.
This is an important cinematic document that should be preserved so future filmmakers can see what was achievable at the time under the circumstances, warts and all. Yes, a certain type of fan will faun over and evangelise about it ad nauseam too. Fine. Let them. The reality is that for better or worse, the "Maclunkey Cut" will be the definitive version going forward, as it was the last one Lucas had a hand in.
Definitely agree we need it preserved.
Film restoration is also known as film preservation. Here's an article you can educate yourself with, regarding what it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_preservation
Here's an article about Disney's film restoration team: https://mickeyblog.com/2024/12/24/m...eserving-and-restoring-disneys-classic-films/
Can they do those kind of restorations with the original effects? Because I thought there was some issue with old school effects that they couldn't be upgraded to HD. I think I remember reading something when they did TOS Remastered about how they absolutely had to do the updated CGI effect because it was impossible to upgrade the old school effects to HD.
And on a side note, now I don't feel so bad about not going onto the Trek shows' sections of the board. Although my not going to those pages because they're just too busy for me to be able to keep up, not because I dislike the show. I've enjoyed all of the new shows, especially Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks.
I'll take a season of 8 - 13 great episodes over a 20+ episode season of mostly mediocre episodes with maybe 5 or 6 great ones in there if we're lucky.
Yeah, I was a little disappointed we didn't get to see more of the early days of K2 and Cassian's friendship. We pretty much jumped from them capturing and reactivating him, to where they were in Rogue One.
And on a side note, now I don't feel so bad about not going onto the Trek shows' sections of the board. Although my not going to those pages because they're just too busy for me to be able to keep up, not because I dislike the show. I've enjoyed all of the new shows, especially Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks.
I'm not going to talk about of my ass about what they can and cannot do. As far as I'm concerned, we'll have to wait to see what it is they did accomplish, when and if a version is ever released.
That said, there are original VFX shots in the leaked footage. For example, there's Luke's landspeeder entering Mos Eisley, and there are original matte shots. In addition, there's an asteroid field space VFX shot, and there are lightsaber and blaster VFX shots. I'm not an expert so I won't certify that those are all entirely original shots, but given that the landspeeder shot certainly is original it would be anomalous if they weren't all also original.
They can't upgrade your ass to HD?
There are a few different issues. Some of the techniques they used for Star Wars with compositing the visual effects (putting together the different layers of film into one image) were meant to be viewed through a projector on a screen, which reacts to brightness and darkness in the image differently than a TV screen, which displays the image directly. The big issues were "matte boxes," rough outlines of objects like spaceships that cut out the stage lights and backgrounds from the film and just left the model and the bluescreen behind it, but the bluescreen wasn't entirely eliminated by their process, so there'd be a sort of rectangular outline around different objects. There were some other invisible clean-up shots like that in the special editions (one I remember is that the hallway to Leia's cell on the Death Star had a painted background that showed it extending forever, but there were shots where you could see it didn't line up with the real hallway, so they replaced it with CGI for all of them).
What they do in cases like those is going to be a matter of judgement and taste for the people doing the restoration. I would guess things like replacing the painted backdrop with a nearly identical CG one is probably going to be reverted back to how it was in 1977, but the matte boxes might be removed or obscured as part of the clean-up and color-correction process any re-release would go through.
In TOS, the issue wasn't that the special effects weren't in HD, the show was edited on film, so the base quality was just as good as the live-action footage, it's that the techniques they were using meant that the quality of the filmed special effects elements went down substantially when they removed the blue screen behind the model and put in the stars, and the shots were reused over and over and became damaged and degraded, so the same stock shot in late season 3 looked much worse than it had in early season1. That wasn't a big deal broadcasting on TV over the air, where the resolution was low and there was going to be some amount of static, but even though the footage was technically in HD, it looked noticably worse than the live-action stuff in a way it hadn't when it was all being seen as a standard-definition TV broadcast.
Thank you, but I'm well aware of what's involved. My point was to differentiate what this is, from what certain fanboys will insist on making it out to be. A restoration of the "only true and authentic version", which is nonsense.
Also, yes it's getting a little semantic but the processes involved aren't restoring the images to their original state. This isn't like cleaning tarnished brass work; it'd not just about removing some grime from the negative and fiddling with the contrast levels. The image is being digitally altered, stabilized, and manipulated in a myriad of ways to produce something that looks better than any print of this movie ever has, even the very first generation fresh out of the lab and delivered to Lucas's screening room. Indeed in principle it's closer to a replica than a restoration. It's a version of the movie people thought they saw at the time, rather than the actual genuine article. They had a screening of the actual genuine article not so long ago, and people complained that it looked like arse.
Of course it has to be done this was in order to preserve the flaws of the original VFX for one. When he went back and made the Special Editions, Lucas didn't just Photoshop in some CG dewbacks and called it a day; he got the original negatives (which were on the verge of decaying, so good thing that he did!), chemically treated them to bring them back from the brink, scanned it all digitally, and re-composited all of the VFX elements individually to eliminate matte lines and other artifacts that were inherent limitations of the photo-chemical processes at the time.
So going back to the negatives won't work for a restoration; they have to scan a print (or several) at a high a resolution as possible, with all of those janky matte lines and chroma key bleed as-is. The latter gets a little dicey because colour correction is also part or the process, and as we've seen in the past with blue lightsabers turning teal, fiddling with the hues to bring up the set footage can have a knock-on effect with any already extant vintage post-processes.
So yes, I know what they're doing, and I already said I fully support it. But let's just stay intellectually honest about it's purpose and function.
Last edited:
That's what Premium BBS membership is for.
In their post above, @David cgc raised an outstanding point:
Some of the techniques they used for Star Wars with compositing the visual effects (putting together the different layers of film into one image) were meant to be viewed through a projector on a screen, which reacts to brightness and darkness in the image differently than a TV screen, which displays the image directly. The big issues were "matte boxes," rough outlines of objects like spaceships that cut out the stage lights and backgrounds from the film and just left the model and the bluescreen behind it, but the bluescreen wasn't entirely eliminated by their process, so there'd be a sort of rectangular outline around different objects.
I have no doubt that part of the experience of what people "thought they saw at the time" had to do with viewing the film under conditions of the era. Given that the film was engineered for theaters of types that existed circa the mid-1970s, it follows that to have the same experience, one has to view the film under substantially similar conditions, from the projector, to the screen, to the sound system.
When the matte boxes stand out on other media more clearly than they seemed to the first time around, like when you watch it years later on television, there's a problem, because the experience is not the same. It's not because we had rose-colored glasses on in the 1970s. It's simply that we're watching under conditions that the filmmakers didn't even consider in the first place.
The overwhelming majority of viewings of any restored version of the 1977 film will not be in movie theaters, especially theaters of the type circa the mid-1970s. What people who saw the film at that time will be looking for, however, is something that evokes the same experience, even if it and therefore especially if it is presented in a different medium. Taking the medium into account is therefore an absolute necessity. A restored film version that is faithful for presentation in circa-mid-1970s theaters would be appropriate in such a venue. But to create a similar experience on a digital medium like 4K home-theater systems, clearly appropriately different approaches are called for. (Not to mention, the number of frames per second is completely different.)
As for whether the original looks like ass now, when watched as a film on the big screen, opinions are like assholes: everyone has one. This is Jennifer Vanasco's, who writes for NPR [link]:
And what was it like to see this rare print?
It felt — fresh. Real. Without the shininess of CGI, the droids and ships and sets seemed well-worn and grubby. It felt more like a real battle and less like a fairy tale. The pacing was more measured. It was funnier. The explosions seemed fake, but the scenes, stripped of their CGI characters, had more of an edge. And it was very clear — without a doubt — that Han shot first, before the bounty hunter Greedo could shoot him, which is an ongoing controversy online.
I wasn't there. So how would I know what it looked like? But I would love to have been.
Greedo controversy is becoming a stupid joke at this point.
Honestly, it always has been.
I will agree that you're getting way into the weeds regarding the difference between a restoration and a clean-up, but going back to the OCNs to clean up and correct damage to the film followed by a recomposite has been called a restoration by folks like Robert Harris and Grover Crisp, who have overseen the restoration of multiple films in the last forty years.
Based on your logic above about making the new version look better than the original release prints, Warner Bros' MPI division's restoration of 3-strip Technicolor movies wouldn't classify as restorations. The technology they have makes it possible for the original YCM separations register infinitesimally closer than the originals were ever capable in the 30s through the 60s.
I should see if my VHS still works.