Disney Will Never Alter or Restore Original Star Wars Trilogy

Saturn_V said:
Don't waste your money if you ever find someone that offers that service, because they're full of shit.
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Care to elaborate? I'm fully aware the copy won't be as good or sharp as the old school laserdiscs. I'm not expecting miracles.
 
Never say never. Disney's stance probably won't change until either Kennedy steps down or Lucas passes away.

In either case I personally don't care, but nerds need something to rage about between new SW franchise releases. :rage:
 
MrSteel74 said:
I have a feeling once Episode 9 is ready for home release Disney will release the original trilogy in it's original format.
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Yep. Can't put out any competitors to their rip off of the original trilogy before all the suckers go see 7,8 and 9. They might realise that 7, 8 and 9 are Disneys versions of the original trilogy, and that uncomfortable feeling they have is the mouses middle finger up their arses.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
Are we sure that Fox doesn't own all 3 of them? My VHS copies all have the FOX logos on them.
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They distributed them all, but they only own A New Hope (because they financed it...or at least partially financed it). That said, I guess Disney could pay them a fuck ton of money for the rights, but I can promise you if they do, they're not going to be thinking, "You know what we need to do with our multi-billion dollar movie? Make it look like it did in 1977."

What they might do is change it back to Han shoots first and maybe they'd update or remove the CGI mobs, but honestly, I don't think the ships in the SE DVDs are up to snuff. I still see matte boxes on IV and maybe V too. As I recall, VI looks fine.
One thing's for sure, if there was a ton of money to be made from releasing the original movie, I'm sure Fox would do it.
 
Scizyr said:
Why are you guys asking for anything? We already have the despecialized versions in HD and they look fucking great on our OLED screen. What I want Disney to do with Star Wars is dick all. I don't care about it anymore. I got what I wanted.
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If my memory serves me correct, A New Hope was the only one restored.
That said ROTJ and ESB both have less new material, or maybe just less noticeable touch ups.

This thread is making me consider buying a Laserdisc.
 
SeymourGore said:
The most cringe worthy revision of Star Wars, was the addition of the 'Noooooo!' by Vader. I first saw that clip on Youtube and thought for sure it was just some troll trying to get fans enraged.

Unfortunately that troll was Lucas himself.
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Meh...couldn't care less. When there's 45 minutes left, i lose interest and that's beyond that point.
 
Saturn_V said:
I still have my 9-disc Laserdisc set. But I watch it less and less every year.
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My laser disc player broke. I ended up giving my LD's to a friend as I didn't want to buy another player from Ebay. (Not too mention, the despecialized editions are pretty nice.)
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
Care to elaborate? I'm fully aware the copy won't be as good or sharp as the old school laserdiscs. I'm not expecting miracles.
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Even Laserdisc is awful, it's quite inferior to DVD.

The best option (though it runs foul of the copyright police) is a crowd-sourced HD restoration you can find out on the net. That rebuilds the originals from the unmessed parts of the Blu Ray and even old original theater film.

It was nearly a frame by frame rebuild, with color matching, etc...

It runs scene for scene as the originals, and looks fantastic in HD.
 
Snowdog said:
Even Laserdisc is awful, it's quite inferior to DVD.

The best option (though it runs foul of the copyright police) is a crowd-sourced HD restoration you can find out on the net. That rebuilds the originals from the unmessed parts of the Blu Ray and even old original theater film.

It was nearly a frame by frame rebuild, with color matching, etc...

It runs scene for scene as the originals, and looks fantastic in HD.
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Oh, I'm well aware of the "De-Specialized Editions". Last time I checked to get invites of the torrent to the latest build you had to prove you had copies of the blu-rays. I'm not sure that would appease the MPA copyright assholes or if that was just proof you were enough of a hardcore fan.

I want it just for my own purposes. I want to say to my grandchildren someday "I own the originals. Here's the proof! Han SHOT FIRST DAMMIT! I'm not crazy." I won't be able to do that if the tape is literally crumbling and the only VCR and TV with analog inputs in existence are found in the Smithsonian museum.
 
nilepez said:
Meh...couldn't care less. When there's 45 minutes left, i lose interest and that's beyond that point.
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I dunno, for me, the best and most powerful part of the original trilogy is when Anakin returns to the light to save his son.

The scene revision felt forced, and didn't add anything to the scene but a corny nod to the prequel.
 
Wouldn't have guessed that Disney hates money.


CaptNumbNutz said:
I still have the original's on VHS. I wish I could find a local service that would rip them and upscale them to HD resolution and clear up any artifacts. Eventually that tape will disintegrate.
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A much, much better option is to look up the Harmy's Despecialized Editions of the original trilogy movies. They're essentially restorations of the original films, using all the highest fidelity sources available, and with meticulous attention to all details, including rotoscoping, colour-correction, scene edits, soundtrack fixes. Harmy worked on them for many years, and might even still be making fixes for them. I think it's unlikely that an official release of the unedited original trilogy by Disney would look better than what Harmy has accomplished.

The original threads for Harmy's projects are here:

http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Ha...alized-Edition-HD-V25-MKV-IS-OUT-NOW/id/12713
http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Ha...n-HD-MKV-and-AVCHD-v20-NOW-AVAILABLE/id/12511
http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Ha...d-NTSC-DVD5-available-SEE-FIRST-POST/id/12905



SeymourGore said:
The most cringe worthy revision of Star Wars, was the addition of the 'Noooooo!' by Vader. I first saw that clip on Youtube and thought for sure it was just some troll trying to get fans enraged.

Unfortunately that troll was Lucas himself.
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Reminds me of an anecdote from the designing of The Phantom Menace.

"A similar situation arose with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed’s protagonist, Starkiller. “[That name] was only supposed to be a nickname or call sign, not a proper name from the beginning,” a former LucasArts employee says. The development team hoped that Lucas would give Vader’s apprentice a Darth moniker, which at the time, was something that didn’t happen often.

“The team threw a Hail Mary to George, saying the game would have more credibility if the apprentice had a ‘Darth’ title,” a Force Unleashed team member says. Lucas agreed that this situation made sense for Sith royalty, and offered up two Darth titles for the team to choose from. “He threw out ‘Darth Icky’ and ‘Darth Insanius.’ There was a pregnant pause in the room after that. People waiting for George to say ‘just kidding,’ but it never comes, and he just moved on to another point.”"
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
Oh, I'm well aware of the "De-Specialized Editions". Last time I checked to get invites of the torrent to the latest build you had to prove you had copies of the blu-rays. I'm not sure that would appease the MPA copyright assholes or if that was just proof you were enough of a hardcore fan.

I want it just for my own purposes. I want to say to my grandchildren someday "I own the originals. Here's the proof! Han SHOT FIRST DAMMIT! I'm not crazy." I won't be able to do that if the tape is literally crumbling and the only VCR and TV with analog inputs in existence are found in the Smithsonian museum.
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I was writing my above post before you made this one.

The Despecialized editions are probably on other torrent sites than invite-only ones. I might have a Myspleen invite to give you, I'll check. The 'you have to own the original' thing is what makes downloading the fan edit legal, but I've not heard of proof of owning the original being a requirement to sign up for anything... unless that was something a particular host had set up. But, AFAIK, Harmy uploaded all the Despecializeds to Myspleen.
 
Yes, let the butthurt and salt flow through you. OT fanboys.

How dare they want want to respect George's vision for cuts of films that are updated to keep continuity or create the better visual effects they couldn't originally,due to technology or time constraints. If those movies were made that way originally, no one would've cared.


Though, ironic that they want to respect that part of George's vision, but then shit all over it basically with their soft rebootquels VII-IX.


Also sucks if that's what you prefer as well. I think they should do it, just so people can be happy and watch their preferred version, even if it's non-canon. But that's also a tricky thing too, because there were small minor changes prior to that. And there's no way they would make everyone happy. It's pretty inane how many people are out there trying to "Re-grade" the films by over exposing them, blowing out the contrast and changing the intended color palette by making it too warm. (This is a conversation all in itself. Home mediums can't reproduce the dynamic range and color of film entirely. Not even BD. And then there's the fact that different film prints,negatives,different generation prints,et all can make a giant impact)

There's no doubt they would make someone mad with something they did. What if someone wants the cut restored to before it was called ANH and all the other changes after prior to the SE? It's a slippery slope.
 
MrBonk said:
Yes, let the butthurt and salt flow through you. OT fanboys.

How dare they want want to respect George's vision for cuts of films that are updated to keep continuity or create the better visual effects they couldn't originally,due to technology or time constraints. If those movies were made that way originally, no one would've cared.


Though, ironic that they want to respect that part of George's vision, but then shit all over it basically with their soft rebootquels VII-IX.


Also sucks if that's what you prefer as well. I think they should do it, just so people can be happy and watch their preferred version, even if it's non-canon. But that's also a tricky thing too, because there were small minor changes prior to that. And there's no way they would make everyone happy. It's pretty inane how many people are out there trying to "Re-grade" the films by over exposing them, blowing out the contrast and changing the intended color palette by making it too warm. (This is a conversation all in itself. Home mediums can't reproduce the dynamic range and color of film entirely. Not even BD. And then there's the fact that different film prints,negatives,different generation prints,et all can make a giant impact)

There's no doubt they would make someone mad with something they did. What if someone wants the cut restored to before it was called ANH and all the other changes after prior to the SE? It's a slippery slope.
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Have you ever watched the original, non-SE films? The SE version edits are cringe-worthy.

The original Star Wars is not just George's vision: Tons of people worked on them and made design decisions for them. The cast often overruled George's script with their personal ideas, ESB and RotJ weren't directed by George Lucas, and the screenplay for ESB wasn't even written by George Lucas. The original films never were just George's vision. Further, when George made the original trilogy, he said that he was making films that he personally wanted to see - but then 2 - 3 decades later, George changed his opinion on what Star Wars is, and called them kids movies. George's own vision of the films has degraded just like the films did when they were edited for the "Special" editions.

The "original vision" argument regarding the OT is fallacious on every level: If it was George's original vision to have different scenic background throughout the films, he would have had them. If it was George's original vision to have Vader as a youth at the end of RotJ, he would have done it. If he wanted James Earl Jones to make a "No!" line for Darth Vader in RotJ, he would have done so. 90% of what's edited in the SE's was entirely possible at the time the original films were made. So, if those things had been George's original vision, they would have been there in the beginning.

The SE's were already descended the slippery slope.
 
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CaptNumbNutz said:
I still have the original's on VHS. I wish I could find a local service that would rip them and upscale them to HD resolution and clear up any artifacts. Eventually that tape will disintegrate.
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My RotJ Vhs already disintegrated in the part where the princess is in her sexy outfit choking out JtH
 
oldmanbal said:
My RotJ Vhs already disintegrated in the part where the princess is in her sexy outfit choking out JtH
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LMAO. I know which part you rewound and re-watched over and over again. :p


To be fair...you aren't the only one that paused that scene of Carrie Fisher in all her glory.
 
I just get tired of seeing people so salty with George over what he did with HIS movies. The SE was made because technology was available for him to show what he wanted us to see from the beginning. He always mentioned that the he was never happy with the originals. The film industry just wasn't advanced enough. He changed that. He mentioned though that when he saw Jurassic Park that he knew that the time has come.
 
likely a clause in the contract that if they mess with any of the 6 established movies the brand reverts back to his holding companies control
 
I don't buy for a single second that the alterations made to the films were done on the actual original film prints. That's just lunacy...and I guess I wouldn't put it past George Lucas but that just makes no sense to me.

By the way, on the whole 'original vision' argument... I have to side with those that hate the alterations. (To be clear, I've never seen them unaltered...)

Lucas seems to have handled these movies the way I seem to handle almost everything I ever write. That is, I'm happy with my writing immediately after I finish but if I even go back a day later I start to rewrite. And I don't even mean real writing. I'm talking stupid shit like forum posts (I tend to edit a lot if I happen to re-read my posts) or e-mails I send at work were I think "I could have written that better..." and that's even considering I take pride in my professionalism, grammar, and coherency in my e-mails.

Sure any all edits will service my vision, ultimately, but in every case it's simply attempting to catch something I felt I missed. Lack of confidence in yourself and your work will always cause you to go back and change something you felt was amiss (if you even have the opportunity to change it). George Lucas should have been confident in his movies but he clearly wasn't for a very long time and used the technology excuse to forgive himself. Sad.
 
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Why am I the first to ask who shot first? Will this be accounted for if they do re-release?
 
SeymourGore said:
I dunno, for me, the best and most powerful part of the original trilogy is when Anakin returns to the light to save his son.

The scene revision felt forced, and didn't add anything to the scene but a corny nod to the prequel.
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Maybe if it didn't have corny lines like, "It's too late for me, son." I'm sure I liked it in 83, but for me the last 45 just doesn't hold up.
 
I'd vote for an official 4K "despecialized" version, but with the inclusion of some of the omitted footage that found it's way into the special editions.

Of course, the problem is knowing what to include and knowing what revisions were even out there. There were actually even at least two versions playing when the film was released in 1977 -- because I saw it several times at different theaters that year and the version playing at some the better theaters that were in a wider screen presentation were ever so slightly different than what was being shown in the lower end movie houses with narrower screens (specifically, the narrower version included an extra bit of footage on Tatooine, some of which later showed up in the SE, and some of which I have only seen still clips released of to this day). Then it was additionally ever so slightly tweaked with the revised "New Hope" opening scroll and other minor details for the 1980 re-release. And, if memory serves, there were even a few more modifications for the first TV broadcasts of it.
 
I wish my VHS player had not died, I still have an original Ep4 I got second hand from a video store when I was in college, along with all three on VHS from the first rerelease then all six on DVD. The original with all the blur and fog of a 70s film print is what I like the most. The sharp, crisp look of the remastered stuff just doesn't look like what I saw in the theater when I was 10 back in 1977. I even remember on the sign at the theater it said "Star Wars, now in its 44th week". What movie today could draw people to a theater for a year and still have sold out showings(even in the 44th week we had to sit in the front row because we got there late)

Oh, and I wonder who else has a copy of the "Holiday Special" from CBS. I finally found one, terrible as it is lol.
 
'Never' and 'no plans' are not the same thing. I'm expecting both a despecialized OT and a prequel trilogy reboot eventually.
 
nilepez said:
Maybe if it didn't have corny lines like, "It's too late for me, son." I'm sure I liked it in 83, but for me the last 45 just doesn't hold up.
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I'm comfortable enough with myself to admit that scene always makes me tear up a little. :oops:

I am probably being really nitpicky with the 'no', but it seemed more poignant to me with the idea that Vader is so overcome with emotion, that he doesn't say a thing as he sacrifices himself to save his son.

Anyhow, enough of this softy liberal shit from me, I'm going to GenMay to look at big titties.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
Care to elaborate? I'm fully aware the copy won't be as good or sharp as the old school laserdiscs. I'm not expecting miracles.
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It won't be sharp at all when you scale it to 1080p. DVDs upscale well to HD because it's progressive scan content. VHS is interlaced and has fewer lines than DVD. It might be acceptable from 15-20' away.

But I'm mostly saying it's not worth paying for the quality source that you have. LaserDisc would be only marginally better.
 
As a fan - read not fucking fanatic - of the original trilogy having seen them in actual theaters on their respective days of release in my younger years I have no use for the edits, I really don't. I haven't bothered to go looking for the fan edits that everyone raves about either, guess I just will have to rely on my memories of the three original movies in the theaters and be happy about it. I've never purchased any of the movies on any media, probably never will, but I have seen all of them at this point (the original trilogy in theaters as noted, the rest on either DVD or streamed from someplace including The Force Awakens (really disappointed in that one) and Rogue One (better than TFA in my opinion but still no match for the original trilogy material/story).

Nothing compares to that original trilogy in actual theaters in my experience, they will stand the test of time for old bastiges like myself. :)
 
Sedriss said:
I just get tired of seeing people so salty with George over what he did with HIS movies. The SE was made because technology was available for him to show what he wanted us to see from the beginning. He always mentioned that the he was never happy with the originals. The film industry just wasn't advanced enough. He changed that. He mentioned though that when he saw Jurassic Park that he knew that the time has come.
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That's just not the case, as I wrote in this post.

Further, when George divorced his first wife (who was a film editor for SW and made many important decisions), she received entitlement to a portion of all profits from the original edits. By making numerous changes to the original movies, George made the films not count as the original movies anymore, and didn't have to split the profits from them with his first wife. The SE isn't George's "original vision", it's his 'greedy prick' and 'IDGAF about SW' vision. And his claims of it being his "original vision" are only covers for him to try to avoid being seen as greedy and spiteful, and also probably to avoid a potential contempt of court ruling if he expressed that he did it just to avoid having any SW profits go to her.


Here's some info on the importance Lucas's first wife in making SW the SW people know and love: http://www.news.com.au/finance/busi...s/news-story/75eb078a8b14d93fce23b06e98805ffb

“Marcia’s faith never wavered — she was at once George’s most severe critic and most ardent supporter. She wasn’t afraid to say she didn’t understand something in Star Wars or to point out the sections that bored her.”

It was her, for example, who decided Obi-Wan Kenobi should die on the Death Star. “I was struggling with the problem that I had this sort of climactic scene that had no climax about two-thirds of the way through the film,” Lucas told Rolling Stone in 1977.

...

“Her first idea was to have Threepio get shot, and I said impossible because I wanted to start and end the film with the robots, I wanted the film to really be about the robots and have the theme be framework for the rest of the movie.

...

She also “reeled in Lucas’ own sense of ego”, as Kaminski puts it, and was behind not just the broader story strokes, but many of the smaller character moments that make Star Wars special.

“She was really the warmth and the heart of those films, a good person [George] could talk to, bounce ideas off of, who would tell him when he was wrong,” Mark Hamill said in a 2005 interview with Film Freak Central.

“I know for a fact that Marcia Lucas was responsible for convincing him to keep that little ‘kiss for luck’ before Carrie [Fisher] and I swing across the chasm in the first film: ‘Oh, I don’t like it, people laugh in the previews,’ and she said, ‘George, they’re laughing because it’s so sweet and unexpected’ — and her influence was such that if she wanted to keep it, it was in.

...

“When the little mouse robot comes up when Harrison and I are delivering Chewbacca to the prison and he roars at it and it screams, sort of, and runs away, George wanted to cut that and Marcia insisted that he keep it.”

Marcia was also responsible for arguably the most iconic sequence of the film: the trench run. According to Kaminski, the original run was scripted entirely differently, with Luke having two runs at the exhaust port.

“Marcia had reordered the shots almost from the ground up, trying to build tension lacking in the original scripted sequence, which was why this one was the most complicated (Deleted Magic has a faithful reproduction of the original assembly, which is surprisingly unsatisfying),” Kaminski writes.

“She warned George, ‘If the audience doesn’t cheer when Han Solo comes in at the last second in the Millennium Falcon to help Luke when he’s being chased by Darth Vader, the picture doesn’t work.’”

...

“You can see the huge difference in the films that he does now and the films that he did when he was married,” Hamill pointed out in the 2005 interview, in a not-so-subtle dig at the prequels.

...

“But George would never acknowledge that to me. I think he resented my criticisms, felt that all I ever did was put him down. In his mind, I always stayed the stupid Valley girl. He never felt I had any talent, he never felt I was very smart and he never gave me much credit.

“When we were finishing Jedi, George told me he thought I was a pretty good editor. In the sixteen years of our being together I think that was the only time he complimented me.”

In The Secret History of Star Wars, Kaminski makes the case that she has been “practically erased from the history books at Lucasfilm” as a result of the divorce.

“[She] is mentioned only occasionally in passing, a background element, and not a single word of hers is quoted; she is a silent extra, absent from any photographs and only indirectly acknowledged, her contributions downplayed,” he writes.
“Marcia Lucas, the ‘other’ Lucas, has basically become the forgotten Lucas.”
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SW simply isn't just George's vision, or George's films. They weren't in the beginning, and the SE edits and prequels show that George isn't capable of making the kind of movie that SW OT is loved for being, by himself.
 
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Never is a harsh word. If Disney sees money in it, they will eventually get around to it.
 
Tweak42 said:
Never say never. Disney's stance probably won't change until either Kennedy steps down or Lucas passes away.

In either case I personally don't care, but nerds need something to rage about between new SW franchise releases. :rage:
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It'll change when the Marvel gravy train slows down and they need a profit boost for the year.
 
I would like to see Disney remaster Episodes 1-3 into something compressed like fans did with "The Phantom Edit". You know, something that is actually WATCHABLE.
 
Tiberian said:
I haven't bothered to go looking for the fan edits that everyone raves about either, guess I just will have to rely on my memories of the three original movies in the theaters and be happy about it.
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Do yourself a favour and watch this 10 minute video of Harmy explaining some of the changes he did to A New Hope.
 
ChoGGi said:
Do yourself a favour and watch this 10 minute video of Harmy explaining some of the changes he did to A New Hope.
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Despecialized versions are a work of art. Emphasis on work. The work that went into this is astounding.

For the absolute purists, there is the Silver Screen Edition, which uses only original print footage. It's the "Team Negative 1" version mentioned in the video. It is left with a lot of the original film grain and small defects, but it is the closest thing to the original projected movie from the 1970's, since it actually is that original projector version scanned.
 
ChoGGi said:
Do yourself a favour and watch this 10 minute video of Harmy explaining some of the changes he did to A New Hope.
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Impressive, though some of the changes, for me are pointless. I couldn't care less if R2D2 is walking through the canyon or not nor do I care about the color of the door(?) when R2/C3PO are walking in the desert. I can honestly say that most people never noticed it. Nevertheless, their work is excellent. May break my rule of not torrenting movies and check it out. That said, i looked and noticed the sound is 5.1, which goes against the original's stereo vision. They should destroy all copies and only do stereo (or better still mono) ;)
 
ChoGGi said:
seems like it came out in stereo and surround:
http://savestarwars.com/theatricalaudioresources.html
"On May 25th, 1977, Star Wars was released in two audio formats: stereo for regular 35mm and a six-track surround for 70mm."
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Dolby Stereo is Dolby Surround. Dolby-equipped theaters would matrix decode the two-track stereo into four tracks, Left, Center, Right and Surround.

And six-track magnetic on 70mm wasn't technically 5.1. You had five front channels Left, LeftCenter, Center, RightCenter, Right and a single Surround track. (no sub) They didn't come up with Stereo surrounds until Apocalypse Now in 1979- the first movie mixed in 5.1 channels.

nilepez said:
That said, i looked and noticed the sound is 5.1, which goes against the original's stereo vision. They should destroy all copies and only do stereo (or better still mono)
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The first time I saw Star Wars was in a crappy drive-in theater in Tucson, AZ. The ones with the crappy three-inch speaker hanging on the window. Let's standardize on that.
 
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