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Original Star Wars on DVD... Sorta
An anonymous reader writes "The Original Star Wars is available on DVD. Sure it's more moola in Lucas's pocketsess (Gollum accent). But he did finally release the original version for a limited time.
But which Original Star Wars, I bet Episode IV is in the opening titles. " Also apparently the original versions are basically non-anamorphic transfers from the laser discs. So basically, they look terrible.
Honestly? Will the original Trilogy ever be released in a non-craptastic form? Perhaps we will have to wait for the Blue-Ray HD-DVD battle to be resolved. This particular release leaves me feeling underwhelmed, and my pocketbook will stay closed.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
My wife just bought these yesterday. She put in the original version of Jedi for my daughter. A bit later my daughter came to my wife saying that something did not look right. Then my wife put in the new version, no complaints. I am hoping that it was something simple like the aspect ratio was not right on the TV, but if not it does not bode well if a 4 year old complains about the picture.
When I came home from work, I noticed that the new version was very dark. I turned-up the brightness for the kids. I wish I knew why that was.
How is the quality of the bootleg DVD rips of the original trilogy from LD? How does it compare to these? Wouldn't it be a shame if the bootlegs looked better. Anyway for me quality better than my old VHS versions will be acceptable, but why could it not have been at least an anamorphic rip of the original trilogy on these new discs?
With all the Star Wars fans out there and a growing number of Computer geeks, wouldn't it be possible to create an open source project that rebuilds the Star Wars movies part by part using CGI? Think about it - everyone could try to improve a part of the project; someone could model a Star Destroyer another one could work on the lighting of a particular scene etc. - and when enough people contribute the final result could even surpass the original. Until that point is reached though all are working towards one and the same goal (which is uncommon in huge open source projects) i.e. precisely recreating the movies.
Stage 2 would be the creation of an HD version, stage 3 might even be a 3D-Version. Just imagine: the space battles of Ep. IV and VI in full 3D!
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
For those unaware, Robert Harrish is an EXTREMELY respected member of the home theatre community. This isn't just some hack with a blog. (Figured a bunch of lazy shites wouldn't read the wiki entry and then just dismiss the rest of what you said.)
He's not the only person to mention prints and interpositives. Lucas is obviously full of shit, but doesn't have the balls to even come up with a convincing excuse. Instead they make up this bogus story about it all being destroyed. (Yeah, just like all those Doctor Who's the BBC destroyed... Oh wait, 50 of them have been found since) when really, the truth is "You'll be getting this crap non-anamorphic transfer from laserdisc because I'm can't be bothered to do any better, and I know you'll suck it up like a vacuum and still give me your money."
There is a strong parallel between DOOM 1 and Star Wars: technical innovation combined with pretty good storyline/gameplay = classic. And I think there is another parallel between DOOM III and Episode I. Impressive technology, but not revolutionary. And both are nearly pure technology demonstrations. That makes them not nearly good enough to be compared to the originals.
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
I have one of these, as a matter of fact, purchased from the BFI's Museum of the Moving Image. It is not a "master", as it is quite evidently a positive, and it's 70mm wide, and Star Wars IV was shot Panavision and VistaVision, which are 35mm formats. 70mm prints are blow-ups made for special venues, particularly because they had very good sound for the time.
The claim that he destroyed the originals in the process of creating the Special Editions is highly suspect, even if it is him saying it. The modern method for recutting/restoration is to ingest the print into a 4K telecine (that is, 4000 lines res) and work with the data files, and then burn it out to a print (4K exceeds film resolution handily.) However, this workflow was not very common at the time of the SE's, and it's possible he did the horrible thing of recutting the negative. When you cut negative, you have to scrape a frame of film on either side of the cut in order to get a hard splice (there are ways around this, but the 1-frame rule is a common method). So, if you cut the neg, you are destroying a frame of film every time you make a splice, thus your original cut is unrecoverable.
However, as other threads point out, there are interpositives, and these are generally what DVDs and stuff are mastered from, and these are never cut into for any reason. However, Lucas can always elect to destroy these if he retains physical possession of them -- I'm not sure if the distributor (Fox) vaults them indefinitely or not; even if they did, Emperor George and his estate for a very long time to come are the only ones that can authorize a re-release based on them.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.