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Lucasfilm Creates A 4K Ultra-HD Restoration of the Original 'Star Wars' (4k.com)
An anonymous reader quotes 4K.com:
When the first ever of the Star Wars films, "A New Hope" turns 40 in 2017, millions of dedicated fans of the immensely popular franchise might get a very unique treat in the form of a limited theater screening in beautifully restored form with theatrical 4K resolution of the first movie released in the series. According to recent comments made by Rogue One director Gareth Edwards, a 4K restoration of Star Wars Episode IV "A New Hope" does indeed exist and now the only real question is whether or not the cleaned up and sharpened version of the movie will be hitting the big screen once again.
White it's release status is unknown, the ultra-high definition footage is said to be spectacular. In the interview, Edwards says "You can't watch it without getting carried away... It just turns you into a child."
White it's release status is unknown, the ultra-high definition footage is said to be spectacular. In the interview, Edwards says "You can't watch it without getting carried away... It just turns you into a child."
I hope they don't do something stupid like add additional content like they did with THX1138.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"... now the only real question is whether or not the cleaned up and sharpened version of the movie will be hitting the big screen once again."
No! Now the only real question is whether or not they will show that Han shot first!
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
Imagine seeing "it is" in glorious 4K resolution?
if you were a child in 1977.
The bad acting, horrible script, terrible direction, all of it will still exist. Just be higher resolution.
I thought they claimed the original theatrical release version was destroyed and would never be released in high quality, and that was one of the main reasons people collaborated to produce the Star Wars HD despecialized edition.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Theatrical 4K is not the same as Ultra-HD, often marketed as "4K UHD". Seriously, don't muddle these up! The linked article did not, it even had "Theatrical 4K" explicitly, being a link to an explanation of the differences.
The cinema standard 4K is 4096*2160, not quite 16:9 aspect ratio. However, movies can be of any aspect ratio that would fill either the width or the height. With Star Wars being in 2.35:1 aspect ratio, that becomes 4096*1743. Pixels are square and there is no overscan.
Ultra-HD, the TV and BluRay standard is 3840*2160 pixels. Some HDTV's do have overscan, not showing the entire picture, by the way.
Cinema 4K also uses the DCI-P3 colour space and theatrical projectors are capable of the entire range of this colour space.
Regular Ultra-HD is not that good. Ultra-HD with HDR uses a larger colour space than DCI-P3 but mainstream LCD panels at the moment are not capable of displaying that properly even if they can handle the input signal.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
The first movie rightfully deserves to be preserved in the Library of Congress. It is part of the American culture, and history. But, having said that, I have a confession to make:
The movie simply has not aged well. The last time I watched it on DVD, a few years ago, I decided never to watch it again. Now, that I'm much older, the movie looks rather simplistic and rough; and I would rather remember the movie the way I saw it, with much younger eyes and a less crtitical brain. These days, Darth Vader's initial entrance makes him look like a cartoonish villain. Luke playing with a starfighter, in one of his first scenes, is cringe-worthy. Ditto for the scene where he drools over the hologram Leia. C3PO's stumbling around ...just doesn't work for me the way it used to.
To state the obvious: the 4K version is nothing more than a pathetic, utterly pathetic money grab. And nothing more. That should be fairly obvious to anyone. I can't think of any possible value that four thousand pixels will bring to that movie. I just have a bad feeling about this...
"unique" is a binary term. Something is either unique or not unique. There are no "degrees" of uniqueness.
Not sure if it's possible with blu-ray. I would like to see an all versions disc where one only has to select options in an options menu for what they want to see. Han shot first should be default but we can keep around the revisionist history for laughs.
Better yet... come up with yet another proprietary DRM format and release it on an 128gb sd card or compact flash. Honestly it should be as lossless as possible and DRM free.. you know how much any ISP is going to complain to any customer that tries to download that? Do the equivalent of a DOS attack by providing too much data. Collectors are going to want origional media. It's not like people haven't seen Star Wars.
"Uncle George never told you what happened to the original theatrical release version"
"He told me enough. He told me it was destroyed"
"No. I am the original version."
"Noooooooooo! that's not true.....that impossible!"
"Search your archives for you know it is true!"
Edit: Captcha> Monetary
Much like Star Wars Episode One was basically a really lengthy commercial for that Podracer game.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You failed to explain why the hell we'd WANT to.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... is how much are they going to milk it for?
(As much as they can is the correct answer.)
4k is supposed to be better than the original 70mm we saw?
Certainly not. 4k "HD" is about the same quality compared to analog video as a 96 Mbps MP3 is compared to analog audio.
But the young generation has no concept of analog as they have never experienced it. Nor big silver screens, as they have grown up with movieplexes with numerous smaller screens with angular digital projections. And an audience that blinks on and off cell phones, ruining any chance of total immersion.
The old 70mm big screen analog movie experience only lives on in our memories. It isn't coming back.
I don't know how many years and hours of effort have gone into trying to recreate this by fans simply because Lucas's ego woulden't allow it. But hearing this is amazing news.
I suspect the word "original" is throwing you off, as LucasFilm surely intended.
#DeleteChrome
Chewy is in on the plot, as is an android science officer (glad they got rid of the latter).
That does sound pretty good, only I would love to see the science officer left in - though not as Android, but as hologram....
Can you imagine the howls?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No, 3 had its moments and a more appropriate, darker tone. 1 was stupid and cheezy, 2 was just horrible.
Come on, the lightsaber battle in 1 was really good, and pretty dark all by itself. Also the initial scene on the droid ship was pretty good if you think of it standalone and ignore the absurd droid army stuff that comes later.
2 Had, um, well,... Clone trooper carrier ship! OK, yeah, that was a cool Clone Trooper ship. Ok, also the asteroid field with the sonic weapon was fun. Sadly though it contained the worst scene in the history of cinema by far - Anakin and Padme in a meadow.
3 like you say had its moments. I personally think thought you cannot possibly understand or enjoy the opening without having seen the Clone Wars so as to properly appreciate General Grievous (who if you watched the original Clone Wars cartoon, was a fantastic character).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The 70mm was just a 35mm blowup.
No. The only real question isn't if it'll be shown in theatres.
The only real question is: does Han fucking shoot first?
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
because in the first non-blurred print, the models looked too fake. So slight blurring restored the sense of reality.
All the luddites CLAIM that 35mm film is a WHOLE LOT BETTER than digital... why did they have to clean it up and do digital restoration?
It's because in reality, SW EP4 film is lower resolution than real 4K is so they are getting rid of film grain and using their high end software that will make it less obvious how low of resolution the 35mm film really was.
Hell you could see the lack of sharpness and film grain on the 1080p release.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
When the word 'Original' is capitalized, it can be used as a proper noun. Lucas is tricky that way.
It probably was, either way Star Wars was not shot on 70mm.
The 35mm film was the resolution of the silver halide crystals. Which is pretty high resolution. But entirely analog, though an abstract mosaic of crystals. It doesn't fit into a world of shitty bitmaps.
It doesn't fit in well with the digital bullshit that people today insist on imposing on all visual reality. The film as shown in the theaters wasn't 'video' nor was it in any sense digital.
The first copy of the White Album that I had was on mono reel to reel tape. I recorded it on tape from a vinyl album copy that my sister had, which was loaned to her by her guitar teacher. I remember that it had jelly or something on one side of one of the lp disks that I cleaned off before recording my tape.
It is still the best 'version' of the White Album that I have ever owned, though I don't have it any longer. I do presently have one of the same model of tape recorder. It's a Revere Tape Recorder with vacuum tubes.
Aesthetic Distance means never having to not enjoy a dramatic presentation.
You can screw up and lose all the entertainment value by looking too closely. That's always been the deal.
But this is a nerd site, so we're the people who ran the movie projector in Jr. High School; we always had to be immersed a layer too deep in the presentation.
Both the original Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back were officially added to the National Film Registry when it was created in the late 1980s. However, Lucasfilm never delivered an original, unmodified copy of either movie. George Lucas tried to give the NFR a copy of the "improved" edition, but they refused it; their mandate is to preserve original versions of historic movies.
http://www.popoptiq.com/a-new-new-hope-film-preservation-and-the-problem-with-star-wars/
The article notes that ironically enough, George Lucas argued against colorizing old black-and-white movies, yet he has refused to follow his own arguments with respect to his own movies.
I hope that Disney will deliver a suitable cleaned-up archival copy of the original, completely unmodified movie to the NFR.
P.S. I personally would be happy to have a version that has some hidden wire removal and other very minor cleanups. Probably the perfect way to do it is to release a new slightly-polished cleaned-up original, with bonus disc content of the original, cleaned up but utterly unchanged. Watching the movie over and over on a 4K screen, you will spot wires and other glitches to some extent... but there should be a version where they are perfectly preserved. It's a movie that was made in the 1970's. It was an advance in the state of the art of special effects, but it wasn't perfect and couldn't have been perfect. Sometimes it's instructive or fun to watch things and study how they were made.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
There are still a few places that do that.
The "Everest" documentary shot on 70mm wasn't all that long ago.
If it didn't have that annoying Mary Sue character (that kid) in it...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
With the despecialized editions out there spreading around, lucasfilm/disney had to finally push out the originals after 40 years to grab the money before the market was impacted.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I saw the original first run, and was disappointed with some of the later "improvements".
For example, when they changed the combination from 1-2-3-4.
That's kind of change only an idiot would make....
They still do it in Rogue One (and pretty much every action movie). All the battles and shoot-outs are filmed handy-cam style with maybe 1 or 2 second shots, because if you keep that fixed it will probably look a bit corny with stormtroopers and other characters in heavy costumes logging about.
Loved the movie, btw!
It's only "Original" if Hans shoots first and does not step over Jabba's tail.
Is it the Original "Original," or is it the fucked up bullshit Lucas shat out of his asshole in the 1990s?
By the way, HAN SHOOTS FIRST.
I see what they did there.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Or will that get disneyfied out?
... now will have high resolution!
Some parts even have brand new matte backgrounds
Doesn't sound like this really meets the requirement of being a copy of the original release then. And how the hell is Disney letting them get away with this?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I think they mean 40 years later - after degradation has occurred.
They are the original matte background images, taken from still photos, coloured to match the original release based on the few remaining copies and original home releases, and then recomposited with parts of the home releases. That removes all the changes from the original and gets as close as we are ever likely to see to what was seen in theatres in 1977.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Bugs? Those weren't glitches in the Matrix?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I agree. If a piece of art is publicly disseminated, then the copyright holder should lose the ability to alter it, that is, unless the original is equally available or relinquished to the public domain. I think this is fair, especially in our DRMed future where things can be "taken back" instantaneously via remote computer commands.
If you think this sounds harsh, imagine the Mona Lisa getting a new hairstyle or clothes every 20 years because fashion had changed. Let's cover "David's" penis because we're politically correct this generation. And then we can change it back when the next generation lightens up... These innocent tweaks are distorting, and in some cases, ruining art (with the new ideas no longer reflective of the era in which the art was created, mind you).
"E.T.'s" right to bear arms should not be infringed.
And any 70mm print still in existence will probably be 40 years old (same for any 35mm print). The size of the flaws might be smaller relative to the overall frame size and thus look much cleaner today. It doesn't matter that both came from a 35mm original. A 1mm scratch in either will be a lot less noticeable on a 70mm print.
Really? Seems like this movie is becoming the joke. How many different formats will they do? VHS, Betamax, Laser disk, dvd, 25 year edition, HD, probably some others that I don't remember and now 4K!
I bet there are some people that have all formats.