Star Wars: The Force Awakens (JJ Abrams, December 17, 2015) Movie • Page 11

Boo...

Thanks, for the reply.

 

I'm sure a fan edit will come out - but there's a few scenes where you can tell they weren't finished. The snowspeeder chase doesn't really look too great.

 

Yea, I just finished watching them. There wasn't much too them and some felt like they were shot before they had a solid idea of what they wanted to do; like Ren in the Falcon.

And I was definitely about to comment on the Snowspeeder chase. I am glad they left that scene out. That scene had an Episode I-III feel to it. Yuck.

 

Kid continues to be adorable and I hope they throw him a role of some sort in the future.

 

That's a great call. I've needed to upgrade my 2004 DVD copy for some time now. The only possibility that gives me pause is Disney releasing the OT in its original form. Anyone heard anything substantial about that?

 

It's been rumored forever, but I doubt we'd hear anything about it until Star Wars Celebration. That's where the most of the news like that comes out. I'm quite happy with my "complete saga" blu-ray set. I rarely watch the prequels, but the packaging is nice and they're great transfers.

Besides, I'm sure they're readying the OT print for a 4K remaster anyhow.

 

Over the last 15 years Mike Verta, a composer and visual effects artist, has completely restored the first Star Wars using five 35 mm prints, including the rare Technicolor print. This restoration, called Star Wars Legacy, surpasses the bluray in detail. He has documented his progress on his website and his vimeo channel. He not only shows the restoration process, he also makes comparisons with the official bluray. It is a genuine restoration from 4K scans of original 1977 35 mm prints. Legacy is a combination of several IB Techs and several Eastman prints. It combines the best data from multiple sources to produce a much more detailed, cohesive frame than any one source could ever hope to. It is in a sense what any professional restorator would use if the original negative were no longer available or damaged beyond repair. He stated a while back that he was told by people at Lucasfilm to expect a visit from the FBI should his project ever be released online, which is why he's in the process of putting together a pitch for them in the hopes that they'll see fit to officially release it. Disney has apparently been pretty receptive to it.

There's also been some evidence that they're working on a restoration now. A few people on the OriginalTrilogy forums who are evidently reliable, longtime posters have heard from various people they know at Disney that a scan was made of the OOT sometime recently. The Library of Congress also answered a query recently that Lucasfilm requested a copy of their scan of the original film, likely for reference material.

So, let's say for the sake of argument that they have it and are working on a restoration, but they've agreed to hear this pitch primarily because Verta might have a better quality restoration than they do. Let's say he does, and they like it, and want it. They release it. One of three options: They get Verta to do the other two, and they stagger the release of all three films, releasing them as they're ready (unlikely), they hold off and give Verta time to do/oversee new restorations of TESB and RotJ and release them all at once, or they release his Legacy restoration for SW and release theirs for the other two. To be fair, the original film is in by far the worst shape, Empire and Jedi might not need nearly as much work, so I could see that last option being feasible.

When asked if Legacy has essentially restored the original negative or if there is still more detail that can only be recovered by actually using the original negative, Mike had this to say:

You can check out this site to see the progress he's made over time (the site is in archive mode currently with the homepage now saying "Coming Soon" which might be a good thing):

Welcome to STAR WARS - Legacy Edition

And you can also check out his Vimeo channel with loads of videos detailing this arduous process:

Mike Verta’s Videos on Vimeo

Thanks to the heavy amount of time he has spent on this as well as his years of experience, he has actually developed custom software that allows him to stack references on top of each other and then combine image detail together from each print, thus resolving the image back to the original negative. This is possible because every print has it's own unique grain structure, so by stacking different prints he can take the best available data and replace grain with image detail. Here's one of his videos which shows his software in action:

Really exciting stuff.

 

I'm sticking with my Harmy edits until Disney produces HD copies of the original.

 

This is far more detail than I expected to hear about this process; thanks for sharing! Harmy's Despecialized is the only alternative of which I had previously known. Hopefully the eventual release comes sooner than later.

 

Episode 7 of my Star Wars podcast with @oldbestfriend is up, wherein we discuss who Rey isn't. Full show notes at the Bantha Fodder website. Awesome Libsyn integration by @Jason Tate below.

 

I love my Harmy blu-rays.

 

Did you print these?

 

Beautiful. I might just have to do this.

 

Yeah. I downloaded the artwork from here:

http://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/766210#TopicPost766210

and then printed everything out on glossy paper. The disc artwork I printed out on Avery 8960 disc labels.

 

You can download the artwork from here!

http://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/766210#TopicPost766210

 

I would love to have those. I don't have a bluray burner (or a computer, I guess) but it would be awesome to have

 

Still need to go download the Target videos. Thought they were gonna be on the actual release.

 

I've been meaning to download the Harmy versions for a while, but I can't seem to find out where to do so?

 

It's kind of a long and complicated process unless you just choose to torrent them. If you go through the site you would go here:

Harmy's STAR WARS Trilogy Despecialized Edition - NO DISCUSSIONS/REQUESTS (SEE POST#2, Feb 2016) - tehPARADOX

You have to create an account to see the links. Once you do that you can download the individual files from uloz. That takes forever though so the best option is to download a program called Jdownloader 2 which will download and extract all the files for you. It still takes a while, but faster than downloading each file individually. Once that's finished you will finally have mkv files of the films.

OR

You can torrent each one. The current versions are:

A New Hope - version 2.5
The Empire Strikes Back - 2.0
Return of the Jedi - 2.5

Harmy is going to do Empire 2.5 next and then start on 3.0 versions for all of them to bring them to 1920x1080 resolution rather than 1280x720 which is where they are currently.

 

I refuse to buy the OT on Bluray until it's a version without Hayden force ghost and Vader doesn't say "no" at the end of Jedi.

 

Interesting...
Obi-Wan Kenobi wasn't originally going to die in Star Wars: A New Hope

 

That's incredibly old information. I've known that for years. Pretty sure Lucas has talked about it.

 

I'm sure this is news to more than a few people here.

 

JJ Abrams says Rey's parents were not in Episode VII.

J.J. Abrams Just Revealed a HUGE Clue About Rey’s Parents | Nerdist

 

There's been an update.