Crappy cgi removed, color corrected and as close as you can get to experiencing it like those who saw it in theatre.
I have 720p copies and they look great. with about 20 different audio options depending what version you ant
What are the audio options? Any commentaries by the people who did this?
shareid have to go look. I ammeter clicking on it and seeing a ridiculous amount of options
shareso mine has a
-5.1 1977 (70mm 6 track mix)
-2.0 1977 (35mm stereo)
-1.0 1977 (35mm mono)
-1985 2.0 laserdisc
-1993 2.0 laserdisc
- about 4 commentaries in English
-abunch of foreign languages.
- and then the score isolated
mine is the 2.5 version of harm's despecialized edition
Wow, amazing stuff. I will have to check it out. Thanks, mate.
shareThey are great to have just from a film history perspective.
shareI'm not even a Star Wars fan and I choose to watch those instead.
shareI feel ANY of the original cuts are better than the new edits.
For me, I compared 4K77, the DeSpecialized, and Silver Screen edition, and the Silver Screen looked and sounded the most right. Side by side on my calibrated 4K monitor, there were color issues with the others. 4K was sharper - but not really gaining detail, but too dark in the darks. The Silver Screen edition at 1080p seems the best, in my opinion. But despecialized is awesome too.
We're so lucky people did this. I own many versions of Star Wars and the only original cut was on the DVD and it looks like 80's television. So, it's cool people have found original prints and brought it back to life where DisnLucas don't give a crap.
forget everything I just wrote. I realized I was comparing the 720 DESP version the theSilver Screen one. The Silver Screen is authentic in an old projected theater kind of way, but the DESP is better colored. ima hunting down the 1080 version of the DESP now.
dont bother with the 4K77 one. It's barely sharper, colored worse AND crops in the image a little too much! whats up with that
"ima hunting down the 1080 version of the DESP now."
There's no such thing. Version 3.0 is supposed to be 1080p, but it hasn't been released yet. Note that Harmy, the creator of the Despecialized Editions, prefers the Silver Screen Edition to his own creation, and prefers 4K77 to the Silver Screen Edition. He's using elements of 4K77 to create his Despecialized Edition version 3.0.
"dont bother with the 4K77 one. It's barely sharper, colored worse AND crops in the image a little too much! whats up with that"
4K77 is the best one out there. Also, it's not just "barely sharper," than the SSE, it is significantly sharper. SSE causes eye fatigue for me because of how "soft" the image is (which makes it seem slightly out of focus), while 4K77 doesn't bother my eyes at all. And yes, 4K77 has more detail than the SSE, and even more detail than the official Blu-ray (upon which the Despecialized Edition is based) in some cases. For example:
https://i.imgur.com/YVNLPIt.jpg
Note the little lines in the doorway that you can see in the 4K77 that aren't there at all in the official Blu-ray.
Thanks! Very interesting. I have the 50GB or whatever version of the 4k77, and view it on an externally calibrated 4k monitor, but it doesn't look that much better when I compare. It's there, just not amazing or anything. Teh SS version is cool for what it is, but side by side, the DESP seems properly colored. Like the ending shot, Han's pant are blue, and SS edition they are so faded from having any color. but the 4k is cropped in slightly, cutting off some edge stuff. not a fan of that. And the colors in the one I got seem closer to the bluray
Either way, thanks for reminding me about all these versions. It's so nice to see the original cut without all the bullcrap :)
I like the SSE's colors better than the standard 4K77's colors (though versions of the 4K77 with different color grading are out there; so some of them might have better color, or anyone is free to come up with their own LUT to make the colors look however they want in any version), and it's true that the SSE has more cropping than the 4K77. The 4K77 is sharper and has more detail than the SSE. It comes down to personal preference of course.
I had Harmy's Despecialized Edition at one point but I don't like it as well as a scan of a 35mm theatrical film print, because it's not the real thing (it's a not 100% accurate re-creation of the theatrical cut), plus, because it's primarily sourced from the official Blu-ray, it's too scrubbed/DNR'd for my taste. On top of that it's only 720p.
Speaking of DNR, if you like that sort of thing, there's a DNR version of the 4K77 which has drastically different color grading than the standard no-DNR release. Have you seen that one? There's also a version called "D+77," which is primarily sourced from the new 4K releases from Disney on their "Disney+" streaming service. I haven't seen it, but I suspect it's the most detailed (and most scrubbed) version yet. However, it isn't as "despecialized" as Harmy's version is, but I believe that the worst of the Special Edition changes have been removed from it.
If I'm feeling nostalgic I'll just pull out the laserdisc and hook up the old Runco projector, that's about as close to the original experience you can get. I'm afraid you 720p copy would likely allow the viewer to see the cheesy styrofoam set pieces when they are are in the opening scenes. I know they stick out like a sore thumb if you play any 1080 versions, I made the mistake of playing it for my kids once and they instantly focused on the piss poor sets and wondered why kids thought it was so cool back in the day.
shareI have the 4K77 1080p DNR version and I didn't think the higher resolution made it any worse for me. Of course, I may be looking through the lens of nostalgia and just didn't notice it. I'm so happy there is a version of the theatrical release available to those of us that saw the movie back in '77 but don't have the laserdisc and certainly don't care for the Lucas-ized crap fest. The guys at Team Negative 1 along with Harmy and a few others have literally saved this classic from the willful destruction through neglect Lucas has imposed on it. I read somewhere that even though the film has been inducted into the Library of Congress there is no actual print of the film there because Lucas wants his hacked up version to be the one. Poetic justice would be if a fan restored version of the original film resided there instead of the film makers.
There have been movies from that era than when viewed in Hi-Def take you completely out of the experience because the clarity shoves the movie sets/props in your face. I remember watching a '70s era movie with Streep in it and thinking it was like watching a live play on a stage because the clarity was so off-putting.
I agree that there are a lot of old movies that really look bad when viewed in HD. It is the one reason I still keep my old laserdisc and a projector with a SVHS connection... Lots of older movies just look better at a lower resolution, if you want to see how bad Star Wars effects really were go watch a blu-ray version. It is a bit like watching the HD version of the original Star Trek episodes.. which I would also avoid.
shareYeah, but you can't get those discs legally at all unless you have a legit copy of the Special Editions. So what's the point?
Because they are the original cinematic releases upscaled to 4k
share