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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.
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!
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…
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!
That’s exactly why we want it
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/
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.
I think I just threw up a little in my mouth….
Why would you want this!!!
I know the prequels have been meme’d to hell and are objectively ridiculous, but I’m not too proud to admit that I really like them.
RotS was always genuenly good.
I think the resentment from fans came out of a feeling of missed potential. What people wanted was what they eventually put into the Clone Wars series: space adventures, complex characters, and the subtle corruption of a great hero.
What we got wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great. There was cheesy dialogue, convoluted storylines, and one-dimensional characters. Star Wars, like a lot of franchise films, benefits from the association with the wider universe. We, the fans, fill in gaps and references to backstory with the things we know without it appearing on the screen. But it also suffers from the comparison and expectations we have.
Take the reveal of Vader/birth of the twins at the end. Seeing Vader rise from the table, and hearing James Earl Jones’ voice for the “first” time was genuinely cool because we have all seen the original trilogy. The interspersed delivery scene draws parallels between Luke and Leia being born with Vader being born.
Taken in a vacuum, if you had no idea who Vader was, it would all seem a bit silly, because “Darth Vader” was actually “born” several scenes ago when he killed Mace Windu and then mass-murdered a school full of children.
At the same time, we know what Vader looks and sounds like. Drawing out the reveal feels slightly overdramatic. Then you get the whole “she’s lost the will to live” and that “Noooooo!” and people are rolling from laughter instead of wiping away tears.
That’s like the whole movie. Anything good or bad is made simultaneously better and worse by association. How you view the movie depends on how that association makes you feel. If you love Star Wars and want to love the Prequels, you will.
Aside from the logical inconsistencies, the plot holes, the (still) bad writing, the over-utilization of green screen that makes the whole production soulless and artificial, and the infamous “NOOOOOOO!” scene, it’s a great movie!
Unironically up voting this
Don’t forget the taking the whole mysticism behind the Force and reducing it to: “wow, you got quite the bacterial load there, bud.”
The original trilogy. A decade of history and nostalgia. “lol, it’s space flu”.
Fuck you and everything you know and love, George. You’re dead to me.
Was it? Or was it just a breath of fresh air after the other two? And yes I did grow up with it, even saw it in theatre.
I also saw it in theatres, and while I wouldn’t call it a breath of fresh air per se, but it was definitely the least bad of the prequels. This is gonna get me down voted to hell, but that 45 minute lightsaber battle at the end was 44 minutes too long in my opinion.
I also grew up with the prequels and yes, RotS was leagues ahead of them but it’s not just that. It has its issues, but I firmly believe it is a really good movie. I also grew up with prequels and saw both Episode 2 and 3 in theatres. But while the first two were quite cringey with some good parts, RotS was just good and stood up the test of time. More than I can say bout New Hope tbh.
Oh you poor kids. You never knew the world where there weren’t the prequels. Or even the trilogy.
There were many years - many! - when “prequel” wasn’t even a word! Let alone a real word.
You’ll just have to trust us when we tell you there was a magical time when there was only one Star Wars and it was glorious.
RotS was just good and stood up the test of time. More than I can say bout New Hope tbh.
I respect your opinion but I can’t say it’s not baffling to me lol. Do you find New Hope is too slow by today’s standards?
I don’t have any concrete reasons why I think this. I don’t mind if a movie is slow - if anything it may be too fast when I think about it? Going from place to place, not really fleshing out much. As a kid I also found it the least interesting due to the lack of lightsaber fights.
Ironically, I’ve found the writing fairly poor and cringey as well tbh.
Pervert
Everything cool about them is despite George Lucas not because of him. Sure the battles are cool, the CGI scenes are cool, but the prequels were wayyyyyy too much a direct implementation of what Lucas thought was going to be good to ever have been good lol.
The original Star Wars movies were better because Lucas wasn’t famous yet and had to actually listen to the people around him.
Don’t get me wrong, the original trilogy is the best by far. I was just the right age to enjoy the prequels when they came out, so maybe it’s the nostalgia talking. I rewatch them every few years and enjoy them every time.
Yeah I mean I was the perfect age to enjoy the shit out of the battles and action scenes, so I understand the nostalgia thing.
The Darth Maul fight scene was very cool in 1999, and I watched Bigger Longer & Uncut the same year! What a time to be a teen.
I could watch 4 hours of RotS but no way could I make it through 4 hours of Phantom Menace.
Honestly, I’d rather just ditch the terrible plots of both movies and just go have fun in Star Wars Battlefront playing with all the cool hovertanks and robots.
It’s been like 15 years since I’ve seen it, but isn’t it the one with all the good memes?
It’s got several of them, and that’s the only redeeming quality.
I re-watched it recently, and was reminded just how bad it was. I only saw The Phantom Menace in the theatre, and the disappointment kept me away from the releases of the next two installments - money well saved.
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”
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…
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.
