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SDCC: Original unaltered Star Wars trilogy high quality release "quite likely"

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Cheerilee said:
Scientifically speaking, there was some destruction of the original negatives, because each "cut" of the film (the early ones, apparently including at least the first Special Edition) was made using "negative cutting".

In order to attach two different pieces of film to each other, they would lay the film in a rig that holds it steady, make it so the last frame from one scene overlaps with the first of another, and then make a diagonal slash across both frames at once with a really sharp knife, ensuring that both frames have a perfectly matching cut line. Then they blow the little bits out of the rig, and place a square of tape over the frame (carpet installers use basically the same technique of an overlapping cut-and-tape when they have to join carpet for a big room).

When Lucas made earliest re-cuts to the movie (he's been doing that since forever), he probably just cut the ugly tape away and taped onto a fresh new frame.

When they did the restoration, they carefully removed all of the tape so that they could clean the individual pieces, which could theoretically be put back together without more cutting (since the cuts would still line up), but when Lucas took this opportunity to make a "Special Edition" they were still cutting film the old fashioned way, so he apparently added a few more cuts.

It's a miniscule thing, since one frame of film is only 1/24th of a second, and they might have saved enough of the tiny bits and pieces to repair the cuts, and they have high quality copies of most of the damaged pieces anyways, but technically a "cut" of a movie is appropriately named, and (with older techniques) was a technically destructive process.
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Awesome post, with a film recut as many times as SW, you hope there's good prints to remaster from. I guess that's the case though.
 
Cheerilee said:
Scientifically speaking, there was some destruction of the original negatives, because each "cut" of the film (the early ones, apparently including at least the first Special Edition) was made using "negative cutting".

In order to attach two different pieces of film to each other, they would lay the film in a rig that holds it steady, make it so the last frame from one scene overlaps with the first of another, and then make a diagonal slash across both frames at once with a really sharp knife, ensuring that both frames have a perfectly matching cut line. Then they blow the little bits out of the rig, and place a square of tape over the frame (carpet installers use basically the same technique of an overlapping cut-and-tape when they have to join carpet for a big room).

When Lucas made earliest re-cuts to the movie (he's been doing that since forever), he probably just cut the ugly tape away and taped onto a fresh new frame.

When they did the restoration, they carefully removed all of the tape so that they could clean the individual pieces, which could theoretically be put back together without more cutting (since the cuts would still line up), but when Lucas took this opportunity to make a "Special Edition" they were still cutting film the old fashioned way, so he apparently added a few more cuts.

It's a miniscule thing, since one frame of film is only 1/24th of a second, and they might have saved enough of the tiny bits and pieces to repair the cuts, and they have high quality copies of most of the damaged pieces anyways, but technically a "cut" of a movie is appropriately named, and (with older techniques) was a technically destructive process.
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Awesome post, never knew any of this.
 
This is what I was waiting on. The films lost a lot of soul with the various cgi updates.

Hell they could release then the way they are minus the shitty music scene in jabbas palace and it would be cool.
 
Why the hell have they split up the ownership like that, that is going to be a fucking mess in years to come.

Re: unaltered versions, that would be nice, I could upgrade my rips of the shitty laserdisc transfer on the trilogy DVD's.
 
What I really want is the build your own version of all the movies. Have all the different scenes in and you just go through a check list of which scenes you want. I actually don't mind some of the things introduced in the SEs, but I want to get rid of some of it.
 
The problem with the DVD release was that it was actually worse than the LDs! Similar resolution, but new artifacts and video errors.
 
I don't mind the edits honestly. I mean it happens so fast that it looks like they shoot at the same time. Musical number? I don't hate it. And everything else is fantastic, especially the improved death star sequence.

But the video quality is an issue. For a company that is considered legendary at video processing, Lucas sure did a bad job on the blu ray transfers.

EDIT - Oh, I also like Episode 3 as much as the original trilogy (hate 1 and 2 but I think 3 gets a bad rep) outside of 5 (which is one of the greatest movies ever imo). So I don't mind the tie-ins.

EDIT 2 - Maybe that's why I like the edits. They only improved Empire Strikes Back? Seeing the snow monster more? Awesome! Better quality on hoth speeder scenes? Awesome. More lively Cloud city? Great!
 
Dead Man said:
Why the hell have they split up the ownership like that, that is going to be a fucking mess in years to come.
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When Lucas signed his contract with Fox to get the first Star Wars movie made, he turned down money in favor of a bunch of rights that Fox thought were useless, like toys and sequels. Yeah right George, Star Wars toys and Star Wars sequels. LOL, keep dreaming. Fox would've given him an extra $500 for those crappy rights.

Fox owns the first movie, but Lucas owned the others, until Lucas sold his position to Disney.
 
I haven't seen the original movies since back before the Remakes were in theaters. I actually remember seeing those in theaters when I was a kid and we bought the remake VHS box set and always watched those.

I've avoiding buying either the remake dvds or blurays hoping that we might get the originals back.
 
Cheerilee said:
Fox owns the first movie, but Lucas owned the others, until Lucas sold his position to Disney.
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Again, Fox only owns the distribution rights to Star Wars. Not the movie itself. Disney/Lucasfilm own the movie itself. They just have to work a deal with 20th Century Fox to distribute it theatrically or on home video.

Which they're going to do because easy money.

20th Century Fox owns nothing of Star Wars but the distribution rights to the first of the movies. That's it.
 
Cheerilee said:
When Lucas signed his contract with Fox to get the first Star Wars movie made, he turned down money in favor of a bunch of rights that Fox thought were useless, like toys and sequels. Yeah right George, Star Wars toys and Star Wars sequels. LOL, keep dreaming. Fox would've given him an extra $500 for those crappy rights.

Fox owns the first movie, but Lucas owned the others, until Lucas sold his position to Disney.
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Ah. Sort of smart, but sort of irritating.
BobbyRoberts said:
Again, Fox only owns the distribution rights to Star Wars. Not the movie itself. Disney/Lucasfilm own the movie itself. They just have to work a deal with 20th Century Fox to distribute it theatrically or on home video.

Which they're going to do because easy money.

20th Century Fox owns nothing of Star Wars but the distribution rights to the first of the movies. That's it.
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So if they can't distribute it, what does Disney own exactly?
 
Dead Man said:
What a great arrangement they have reached.
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It's all due to the original deal Fox made with Lucas back in the 70's. Fox bankrolled the movie, but Lucas talked them into giving him the IP rights and the merchandising rights. It seems insane today, but movie merchandising was small potatoes before Star Wars. No studio would ever make a deal like that again.
 
Hope they make them, I would totally buy them on day 1.

Meanwhile Harmy's Despecialized Edition's will do, they're quite great actually.
nqerNhY.jpg
 
Nokterian said:
The real originals what i saw when i was a kid? Yes do those on blu ray and we have a deal.
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This.

After buying the original trilogy three times on VHS (widescreen, THX remastered widescreen, SE) and the original DVD release, I boycotted the blu-ray. Enough is enough.

If I can finally get the original versions on blu-ray, I'll buy day one.
 
Will buy, I only watch the unaltered versions so it'd be nice to have them in higher quality.
 
The film I'd LOVE to see, out of morbid curiosity, is a cut of the original they way Lucas originally intended it. Doesn't rumour have it that the film was a mess and the editors saved it by editing it differently to what George intended? I don't think I have ever read WHAT changes they actually made.
 
Nicktendo86 said:
The film I'd LOVE to see, out of morbid curiosity, is a cut of the original they way Lucas originally intended it. Doesn't rumour have it that the film was a mess and the editors saved it by editing it differently to what George intended? I don't think I have ever read WHAT changes they actually made.
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I read his wife helped had massive amounts of input into making them watchable.
 
Nicktendo86 said:
The film I'd LOVE to see, out of morbid curiosity, is a cut of the original they way Lucas originally intended it. Doesn't rumour have it that the film was a mess and the editors saved it by editing it differently to what George intended? I don't think I have ever read WHAT changes they actually made.
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I don't know anything about this rumor but if what you say is true and the film was changed *after* it was shot, then by reading the script you can reconstruct the original version in your mind, so to speak.
 
inm8num2 said:
That saddens me. :(

Do you know anybody who has old VHS copies before 1997? Or the laserdiscs?

I've seen the old VHS tapes at used movie/music stores for really cheap.
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I own a set, literally the only ones I'll watch despite being old, antique VHS quality. Worth every second.
(not my pic)
images


They go for <$25 these days, but the condition is usually pretty poor. Find a good one and they're worth it.



[edit]

Checking out that despecialized edition now... Gotta love obsessive fans!
561528-comparison109.jpg
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Would have loved to see what the X0 Project would have come up with had the team leader not gotten hospitalized long-term.
 
Why cant people just accept that Han Solo is a lawful good character, who only shot Greedo because he had no choice but to defend himself, when Greedo shot at him first?
 
Nicktendo86 said:
The film I'd LOVE to see, out of morbid curiosity, is a cut of the original they way Lucas originally intended it. Doesn't rumour have it that the film was a mess and the editors saved it by editing it differently to what George intended? I don't think I have ever read WHAT changes they actually made.
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There's no doubt that the film is brilliantly edited. I've seen enough raw footage to kind of tell that it probably looked like a disaster from the perspective of people on the set, but with the amazing editing and score it finally made sense. I always saw it as a movie that didn't make sense until it was on the screen.
 
Real Hero said:
I read his wife helped had massive amounts of input into making them watchable.
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Here comes "the Secret History of Star Wars" shit.

His wife helped a great deal. She was one of the editors. And film is a highly collaborative art-form, which is why I think Auteur Theory is mostly bullshit. But Marcia Lucas didn't save Star Wars from George Lucas, no matter how attractive that theory looks.

The movie came together in the editing booth like a lot of movies do, and George Lucas was there with Marcia, and Richard Chew, and Paul Hirsch as they were pulling all-nighters to get the thing working.

It's not like Lucas dumped a ton of reels in the editing bays, shrugged, and said "WELP" before leaving the room. He was there, working with the editors (like a Director is supposed to do, especially one with editing experience like Lucas had) to get the movie in shape.

THERE IS a "Lost Cut" of Star Wars, in black and white, that looks VERY different than the original. Google "Star Wars Lost Cut" to read about it. It's pretty fascinating.
 
Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of this revisionist theory that the original SW was "saved" by people other than Lucas. Feels like it's a way of rationalizing people's disappointment with the prequels so that they don't have to attribute the things they like about SW to the same man behind the things they hate about SW.

Film is a collaborative process. Period. It's just that we have a better understanding of how SW was made than a lot of other movies, so it makes Lucas' contributions seem small, when in reality, that's part of nearly every moviemaking process.

In the original trilogy, he surrounded himself with capable individuals who helped him craft his vision. As a good director should. To deny him even that and attribute the "good parts" solely to other people has bothered me for some time with the SW fandom.

(Not really saying anyone in particular is doing that here, but it's a rant that's been building for a while now.)
 
Tookay said:
Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of this revisionist theory that the original SW was "saved" by people other than Lucas.
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You're right that it can't be that cut and dried. The speculation only became more pronounced after he made the prequels, and the main evidence always was the fact that Empire makes ANH look like amateur hour in so many ways. It's pretty well documented that others helped steer George's original clunky vision towards what we see as SW today, but I don't think anyone doubts that George was an absolute visionary storyteller.
 
mattiewheels said:
You're right that it can't be that cut and dried. The speculation only became more pronounced after he made the prequels, and the main evidence always was the fact that Empire makes ANH look like amateur hour in so many ways. It's pretty well documented that others helped steer George's original clunky vision towards what we see as SW today, but I don't think anyone doubts that George was an absolute visionary storyteller.
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No one can deny that but he is just not a good director.
 
I want a version with all of the visual upgrades from the SE (color/error correction), but none of the content changes. An impossible dream!!!
 
I love Yub Nub. Unironically.

If you're going to have a bunch of teddy bears defeat the Empire, don't replace the score with something that DOESN'T sound like Teddy Bears partying. That's artificial as hell.

Fuck the pan-flutes. Yub-Fuckin-Nub.
 
BobbyRoberts said:
I love Yub Nub. Unironically.

If you're going to have a bunch of teddy bears defeat the Empire, don't replace the score with something that DOESN'T sound like Teddy Bears partying. That's artificial as hell.

Fuck the pan-flutes. Yub-Fuckin-Nub.
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Yub Nub fucking rules. People really don't like it?
 
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