Lucas won’t even let you see the original Star Wars without his CGI additions. Lucas has lied to deflect from being criticized for his decisions.
Harmy and the 4k77 project have illegally done what Lucas refuses to do.
Lucas won’t even let you see the original Star Wars without his CGI additions.
My VHS tapes say otherwise.
Sharing is caring!
A New Hope https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QWVH3JajvLZx6IKMf_XXKhAAumwEo3NH/view?usp=sharing
Empire strikes back https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H5b1LmH7FcYVm4qIj7FgMZuOt3Mo4LAy/view?usp=sharing
Return of the jedi https://drive.google.com/file/d/14soyrTUubC02_vImP1aRbtdI_lY1CDqa/view?usp=sharing
Why would I want to watch a moldy VHS copy when 4K77 is a thing?
Then, don’t?
I thought he manually edited the masters, so the original Star Wars without CGI additions no longer exists.
I do love the Harmy Despecialized editions. Also check out the Anti-Cheese edits of the prequels.
The cheese is why the prequels are fun to watch though! We’ve all worked through our collective trauma about how trashy the prequels are, now we’re ready for good ol fashioned hate watching.
I’m not sure “we’ve all worked though” it, but I’m glad I’m not the only one with this perspective. I tried to explain “rage watching” the prequels to a non Star Wars fan not long ago and they looked at me like I had 3 heads.
I dunno, seeing it without the racist stereotypical accents was a significant improvement.
You can destroy the negatives with extra processing but you can’t destroy the prints. Lucas has original prints and if he didn’t he had the millions to acquire them. If fans did it, Lucas could have.
The rumor I heard decades ago (so a mountain-sized grain of salt) was that he didn’t want to admit he fucked up the originals when making the specialized editions, and just acted like he didn’t want to release remastered theatrical versions. He was also fiercely defensive of the specialized versions, saying that they were closer to his “vision” than the originals.
Master negatives can create higher resolutions than what you get from the prints. The fan-made versions did a ton of upscaling from the best quality digital versions they could find.
The negative is 35mm like the print. There is technically a generational loss between negative and print but that’s far far below the resolution of a 480p DVD when Lucas claimed he couldn’t release the original. 35mm film print is higher resolution than 4k. The 4k77 version does not use upscaling.
Lucas had just re-released the Specialized editions in the theaters, and they did very well. There’s no way they go through the effort of remastering the originals without releasing them to theaters.
Is there literally only one master? Shouldn’t there be copies?
There is the negative that was in the cameras when it was originally filmed. Prints are made from those original negatives of which there are many.
Also check out the Anti-Cheese edits of the prequels.
Why would you want that? People nowadays have no appreciation for theatre…
Because there’s a better movie under that layer of veiled racism and slapstick.
… Is there?
Yeah, watch the Anti-Cheese edit of Phantom Menace. It’s a better movie.
What should I search for to find the anti cheese version?
I don’t remember where exactly I found it, but search for “Phantom Menace Anti-Cheese fanedit” or some variation thereof. I originally found the full thing on Youtube, but I would not be surprised if it has been taken down. That was many years ago.
Not his choice any more. Now Disney is the one not allowing it.
MaĆlunky!
I’ve always loved the Harmy version but recently I watched 4K77 without noise reduction. My god… so much grain!
The grain helps us grow!
Is grain that stuff that’s rough and gets everywhere? I hate it.
I loooved the grain. It made me feel like I was a kid again watching it for the first time in the theatre.
Nostalgia at its finest.
In hindsight, all of media used to have this “meh, close enough” attitude about it: Vinyl LPs, audiotape, broadcast TV, film, iffy projectors at the local theater, AM radio, it all had limitations well within the range of human perception. Plus, everything the consumer got was a lossy copy of something else. Everything had noise, and everything cost some amount of fidelity no matter what you did. In light of this, “authenticity” is really a No True Scotsman argument, where we argue forever about intent, the optimal fidelity for the time, and what one would have experienced.
Come to think of it, an easy approximation for a time machine is to buy some aviator frames, smear some Vasaline on the lenses, and stuff your ears with some cotton.
In light of this, “authenticity” is really a No True Scotsman argument,
4k77 isn’t a no true Scotsman because it is a scan of a print that was played in theaters. If you digitally scanned a photo of the Mona Lisa, it would be a more authentic copy than a Photoshopped version that removed the brush strokes and replaced the blurred background with new high detailed images.
smear some Vasaline on the lenses, and stuff your ears with some cotton.
Had you watched movies in theaters before 2013? Film projectors were fine. The sound quality was fine. A movie filmed and projected in 35mm film was higher quality than the 1080p digital version of Phantom that was in theaters in 1999.
I thought it was to screw over his ex-wife.
It likely was. That and the ego of someone who wanted to be Steve Wozniak but was really a Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs which coincidentally owned Pixar for a while after it spun off/kicked out of ILM which was owned by Lucas.
It’s a weird Small World.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmy's_Despecialized_Edition
He’s doing God’s Work.
If the original trilogy is anything to go by, George Lucas desperately needs a good editor. I can’t imagine a longer cut will be anything but worse than what we got…
That’s exactly why we want it
The “special director’s anniversary editions” or whatever the hell they were called were the worst bullshit insult to those of us that grew up with the original trilogy. Fuck you, George Lucas.
Despecialized Edition to the rescue!
And you can torrent it now! Back in my day we had to download it as 20 separate files from Mega.nz!
George Lucas desperately needs a good editor
Literally his first wife. One reason why New Hope and Empire Strikes Back were so good. Once Lucas got divorced, his screenwriting fell off a cliff.
Also, incidentally, Carrie Fisher became an acclaimed script doctor towards the end of her career. She was rewriting a bunch of her own dialog in Return of the Jedi. She fixed up the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s “Hook”. Sister Act, Lethal Weapon 3, Scream 3, Coyote Ugly, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith are also on her resume. She patched up the first Austin Powers movie and saved Mike Myers from himself.
https://www.slashfilm.com/548436/carrie-fisher-script-doctor/
And that’s where you’d be wrong. Quite a bit of the stuff that was cut from RotS is really good.
Like Anakin talking in R2 speak lol
Disney: No.
It’s just 2 hours of Jar Jar Binks slapstick.
When is the screening?
It’s hard to trust George Lucas with Star Wars after he keeps making so many little changes. Can I see the Topher Grace prequel cut instead?
… No.
“George, the house is on fire!”
No, Vader, it’s just the Death Star exploding.
Well, George, you are an odd fellow, but I must say - you sell a good franchise.
No mother, it’s just the Disney rights.
George Lucas? Release an old cut of a movie he made that his fans want to see? Where have I heard that one before?
We need a wrath of vader movie.
For it to work, he needs to keep his mystery. Like, I don’t want to see him collect his laundry. But basically just him going round the galaxy mercilessly hunting down and murdering the crap out of Jedis.
I’ve been saying for years that the market exists for an R-rated movie about Vader hunting Jedi, but Disney doesn’t have the balls for it.
We got a taste at the end of rogue one, and I’m hungry for more.
Seymour! Seymour! The Chosen One is on fire!
At no point watching any of the prequels did I think “man, I wish this was longer”
Idk, the pod racing seems excited.
I’d take 30 minutes of Greg Proops sportscasting
Y’know I never even questioned who voiced that two headed fucker but now that you mention his name I can hear it clearly.
Holy crap! Wowsers me too now even from memory
George Lucas should screen this cut of the film at Sodankylä Film Festival in Finland.
That way, he could be feted by the most dedicated of the film buffs. AND experience the Aurora Borealis. Localised entirely on the geographic region he is in.
At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your kitchen?
Well I’m from Tatooine and I’ve never heard that before.
I mean, I’d watch it. It couldn’t be worse than the ST.
Yeah…
Just think of all the memes you could mine from four hours of patented Lucas dialogue.
