I never understood the insistence upon 1080p or whatever. I'd rather just watch the movie than go, "Oh, no, it's not the right resolution..." or something. I don't know. It's confusing to me.
I find 'A New Hope' hard to watch nowadays
- Thread starter ED-209
- Start date
The streaming version is not the original version.
It doesn't make nor break the film for me. It's a laserdisc transfer of a 1977 movie that was never digitally cleaned up before being released as a bonus disc in a limited edition DVD run.
Some of us would just like the original versions available in a decent release. We’d just like the option to see them. For me, the 1977, 1980 and 1983 releases are special and historical. (And yes, I understand fully there are different versions in those time periods. The tech is there to release them all affordably.)
By his own criteria when he testified before the U.S. Congress over Ted Turner colorizing films, Empire and Jedi are not his.
Didn't say that it was.
BTW, I'm sure when they were cleaning up Lawrence of Arabia and The African Queen frame by frame they were shaking their heads thinking, "All of this work when there are perfectly serviceable VHS tapes of these movies. Some people just need to have their films in a preferred format, I guess."
Probably.
But only available to a small audience of film preservationists and academics? That's not really in line with Lucas's previously stated position on historic films' place in our larger cultural heritage.
Such is the real world. People have strong emotions on all kinds of subjects. That doesn't make them well-reasoned, or rational, or ethical, or factually correct. Individuals' feelings are not the final word on publicly debated ideas. Art continues to be appreciated and discussed and argued over long after the creators and their feelings are gone from the world.
If Lucas wanted absolute perpetual control over his movie he shouldn't have released it publicly. And one day it will be in the public domain. Until then, I guess the goal is to make it as difficult as possible for audiences to see it. For whatever benefit George Lucas personally derives from that, I guess.
It's available. It has also been purposefully made more difficult to see than the revised versions. Original copies have been threatened with confiscation. Public screenings of the original have been forbidden. That qualifies as some degree of suppression in my book.
I get the argument that Lucas can suppress the originals. Which I obviously agree with. What I haven't seen is a convincing argument as to why he should. What I have seen basically amounts to the kid stamping his foot and saying, if you aren't going to play by my rules I'm going to take my ball and go home.
The focus of most complaints is that modern high-def equipment highlights and exacerbates the shortcomings of transfers meant for obsolete home video formats. People don't enjoy looking at a picture with black bars on all four sides, with hazy softened details, with washed-out color, with substantial graininess, and with odd artifacts from decades-old signal processing technology. To such an extent that it's distracting, taking them out of the movie instead of drawing them in.
And if someone decided they wanted to see even that problematic version today, their best option would be to go to some online marketplace and find an out-of-print DVD with the bonus material. Not really great accessibility for one of the most historic films of the last century.
That's from a DVD release of a revised version. Not the bonus disc.
Perhaps there is no convincing argument. Doesn't change the emotions behind it.
I know, you mentioned it as a maybe and I was advising that it was not.
I was simply wondering if the bonus material might be available with it. 'Tis all.
I can't tell if you're annoyed or not but I wasn't giving you shit, just addressing the wondering with information confirmation.
No. Just stating my intent. I didn't feel like spending 10 bucks to find out.
Wow, you'd think they could at least give the National Film Registry copies of the original unaltered versions.
But films are a collaborative product, let alone TESB and RotJ were. Lucas was one of the contributors and worked on them, he was far from the only one (even with the first film there were other significant contributors).
Kershner didn't critcize the special edition-izing of TESB (I think he felt indifferent to most changes aside from liking the opening-up of Cloud City, did regard it as still the same film) while with RotJ a lot of people seem openly dismissive of the director.
Then perhaps one of those contributors can persuade Lucas.
