Monster Zero x SciFi Japan - Archive Only

1988 George Lucas sounds like he'd kick 2011 George Lucas' ass.

per http://filmdrunk.uproxx.com/2011/09/198 ... l-gangster

[quote="George Lucas"]American works of art belong to the American public; they are part of our cultural history.
People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians, and if the laws of the United States continue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society.
These current defacements are just the beginning. Today, engineers with their computers can add color to black-and-white movies, change the soundtrack, speed up the pace, and add or subtract material to the philosophical tastes of the copyright holder. [b]Tomorrow, more advanced technology will be able to replace actors with “fresher faces,â€

Perhaps with that George Lucas quote being circulated around the Internet in light of the forthcoming Blu-Ray release, maybe it will prod Lucas into changing his mind about release the initial versions of ANH, ESB, and ROTJ.

It'd be nice if Lucas has people working on such a release even now, with the idea that the initial versions of ANH, ESB, and ROTJ would get their own release. If wishes were horses and all...

I just watched Harmy's Despecialized Return of the Jedi.

It's a fantastic experience, just like his SW and ESB. However, you can see it is a garbage-in-garbage-out process. The Max Rebo Band scene is obviously from an upscaled and filtered laserdisc master, but since that's the only digital scene that exists, it's either this or Jedi Rocks, and I prefer this 10000000000x's to the jar-jarring cgi abomination that is Jedi Rocks.

Also, I was able to notice where Harmy really got into detail. Vader's eyebrows have been re-inserted, but again, because the only digital scene where they existed is the upscaled filtered laserdisc masters it's not perfect. The whole scene is hi-def, *except* for the eyebrows, which if you're looking for it look a little blurry. It must have been painstaking to cut and paste just the eyebrows in this scene. The Anakin ghost in the final scene is the same situation. Yoda and Kenobi look hi-def, but Anakin is a little blurry. I'm sure if they tried to do this in 1080p instead of 720p, it'd be even more noticeable. Again, I'm purposefully looking for this, so to the casual viewer, they're probably not going to notice.

These are my Star Wars disks now. I will never watch anything else. Lucas can go to hell.

I got the Complete Saga set this afternoon at our local Target. They seemed to be the cheapest in-store place around here to have it. I got the lithograph set for free with BD purchase (if you're curious what it is, it's basically a set of the art that appears inside the BD packaging).

I'm not a "hardcore" Star Wars fan by any means, but I still wanted this set. The extras I've skimmed through are nice, I watched most of the deleted scenes for the original trilogy, some rather bland, some really interesting.

A note to anone who buys this and may have an older BD player. On my older one, which I don't believe is updatable, it had an issue playing some of the old standard-definition documentaries, the original trilogy ones. It showed them in a box in the upper left hand corner that was about 1/6 of the screen. They played correctly (fullscreen, black bars on the side) on my newer player.

Here's a question for some really big fans. I might have noticed a change, but I'm not sure if it is a change... It just didn't sound right based on memory. In the scene where Vader comes to the Emperor telling him the rebels arrived on Endor and Luke is among them, Palpatine tells him Luke will come to Vader. Vader says "He will come to me?" Except here there is a definite inflection on "to ME?", whereas I swear in the original he says it more as a statement. Am I incorrect? I don't watch these films anywhere near as much as say, Godzilla films, so I can't remember specifically.

Also the whole added "no" thing isn't as horrible as I thought it would be, but I still think it was a needless change.

RyanClark: No, there's been no change in that regard. Vader always said that line like this: "He will come to me?"