Anubis2005X

Personally I'm hoping for purple! Mace Windu's long lost lightsaber to further tie the two trilogies together.

Ranger

SDCC is coming up, will they have more stuff to show us?

Living Dead

Good point.

Travis McClain

Wait, wait, wait...Lando gets a disc? My guess is that each Trilogy box gets one of the two droids, which would mean Lando is the Saga-exclusive bonus 9th disc. That means Lando beat Luke, Leia, Han, Jabba, Boba, Qui-Gon, Maul, a stormtrooper or clone trooper, Mace, or even a cantina band member to represent the disc of treasures. I appear to have underestimated the power of Colt .45.

Josh Z

Sadly, the George Lucas who railed against conformity in THX 1138 is dead, and has been replaced by a doppelganger who CGI'ed the hell out of THX 1138 and threw in a Hot Wheels-looking action scene to make it conform with modern sci-fi movies.

Quack

I wonder who will have the rights after George is gone....when we're on the next format of home video too if there is one besides streaming....and if we'll have a chance at the OT being released then.

Timber

I think we'll get anamorphic DVD releases for the OT soon. The Blu's won't come until whatever the next format is is in full swing.

Anubis2005X

Probably his daughter. And if her Twitter reaction to the coverart which apparently she helped choose is any indication...she is her father's daughter. Shudder...

Mabuse

It's far from that simple
http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/savingstarwars.html

At this point a quality version of the original 1977 version of the film is very much possible, but would require much work. A digital restoration would be relatively easy, a real photochemical restoration (like Vertigo and The Godfather underwent) would be very hard.

Guru Askew

All 3 bonus discs are exclusive to the box. The individual trilogies are 3-disc sets.

Travis McClain

I stand corrected. At least they went with Lando and not Jar Jar or worse--Ghost Hayden!

tylergfoster

Even though this is true, which is what I was going to say, the changes to the movies, as extensive as they are, probably isn't more than 10 or 15 minutes worth of footage per film. Wouldn't you theoretically only need to restore the elements that were altered?

Mabuse

Speaking strictly photochemically reconstructing the original 1977 version would most likely involve recutting the negative or a duplicate negative and may result in lost frames at the heads and tails. All optical wipes (of which there are many and SW is famous for them) would have to be recreated and timed exactly. The article goes into it at great length.

PGHFlyer

Thanks for posting Breather. I have been googling everywhere and really no one has posted much on if we can safely get rid of our current DVDs (I suppose because as you have found out, the details have really not been released at all, as much as they protest).

Ugh, getting a little money back and recovering some shelf space is a big benefit of upgrading for me, so this is real disappointing. So it looks like we have to hold onto all three prequels and the original trilogy set?

Doctorossi

Two points to be aware of here in this digital age are that

1) There's really no need to re-cut the negative in order to photochemically restore it; the existing negative and the trims from replacement FX can be restored separately and the original cut then edited together digitally after scanning the product.

2) There's really no need to perform a photochemical restoration, in the first place, if your goal is only to release the original cuts on Blu-ray.

The post-production procedural challenge is not the difficulty in this situation and any necessary work would easily pay for itself. Lucas' preference is the only impediment here.

Jay G.

To be fair, Mabuse was only referring to specifically attempting a purely photochemical restoration. He already mentioned digital processing:
If going digital, I'd prefer at least 4K scanning of the source materials, for potential theatrical and future home video presentations.

But I agree that, while it's not as simple as slapping an all-ready transfer of the unaltered OT onto a disc, the real impediment at this point is Lucas.

E Unit

FYI for those interested, Overstock is selling the Complete Saga for $20.99. Glassdragon posted it in the Bargains forum.

http://www.overstock.com/Books-Movie...=173z9j0jouvcu

milo bloom

Already sold out. Will they hold your order till they get more in stock?

Jay G.

It's listed as sold out now.

Overstock has been having pricing issues all morning. They earlier listed Wii and Xbox systems for $10-$20. The word is that they've been cancelling the orders that got through and slowly fixing the prices.

Schloob1

How exactly do they even have "in stock" of this? Theoretcially one could say they have a specific amount pre-ordered from the studio coming to them and that is "stock" but at the moment they of course do not even have the product. And it does not matter since it will be cancelled as the previous post mentions they had a rather big pricing issue obviously from a system upddate they did overnight.

milo bloom

Yeah, dumb question. I guess I was thinking of their "allotment".

Not surprising this was an error. I'd still bite if I could get the Barnes & Noble $40 deal though.

Spottedfeather

The original version of the movie is already restored and in anamorphic HD. Lucas had to restore the entire movie in order to screw with it. All that would have to be done is fix the scenes and put them back the way that they should always have been.

Jay G.

No, it isn't. From the link Mabuse and I have provided earlier in the thread:
http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/savingstarwars.html
So the original Star Wars was scanned into digital in piecemeal, with all optical effects getting new digital composites, instead of getting restored. Also, if a shot was going to be completely replaced by new SE material, it's possible it never got scanned at all. And add to this that many shots are missing a few frames in the SE compared to the original, due to the splicing of the negative.

So if you want a true original copy of Star Wars (i.e. with the optical effects instead of the digital recomposites) then there's still some restoration to be done. Even if you simply want a Star Wars without any of the new SE footage, it's possible that there's still a few shots that were never digitally scanned.

tylergfoster

Yeah...luckily, I was already keeping my Star Wars set because I have all the two discs. I gotta re-buy the stupid prequels, though.

Breather

From the link that Jay G posted:

"This is normally the point of a restoration, and though I just a moment ago spoke of this not being the case for Star Wars, the other great irony is that it, at one point, was--before Lucas and ILM could enact the enhancement and alteration of the original content, the film was restored to its original state, the original negative meticulously and painstakingly repaired. This restoration was then used as the basis for digital additions, in effect making the restoration lost."



In my opinion, I think the point that I've bolded above is where the difference of opinion between Jay G. and Spotted Feather originates. The site that Jay G. quoted mentions that the original negative was restored before the alterations began. Whether Lucas ever wanted to release the originals again or not, the sensible thing to have done after restoration/prior to alteration would have been to preserve the restored negative by either scanning it or making an all new negative to use for the alterations.

In other words, can we believe Lucas when it comes to the subject of the negative and when he claims that the originals don't "exist" anymore? I always took that statement by him as philosophical and not technical. He's done some controversial and unpopular things as it relates to the originals in the last 15 years. On the other hand, considering his educational background, love of film, and experience as a cameraman, editor, and filmmaker, should we believe that he permanently altered the only negatives to the theatrical versions of arguably the most popular film series of all time? Without at least some form of preservation of those versions? It would seem insane to have not preserved them, whether he wants a future release or not.

I don't know nearly as much about the subject of film restoration/preservation as some of you, but considering what was posted in the paragraph I quoted from the Secret History of Star Wars site, could it indeed be possible that Lucas has a restored copy, either in negative or scan form, of the originals?

I'm not stating fact or even a strong opinion here. My post is actually geared toward asking those of you that know more about the subject of restoration/preservation than I do.