Star Wars Blu-ray Set 2011

[DavidBanner]

Hope I'm not repeating a thread here, but I just caught the notice that George Lucas officially confirmed today that there will be a complete 6 movie Blu-ray set of the Star Wars films released next year. The notice at bluray.com mentions some new documentary, interview and behind the scenes material. They are apparently including deleted scenes as well. There's a clip now running on YouTube that shows a constructed scene for the beginning of Return of the Jedi, incorporating some existing footage of Vader from Jedi and Empire, and some deleted material with Luke on Tattooine building his green lightsaber.

Lucas has confirmed that he will not be including the original theatrical versions of the original trilogy. The ones on the Blu-ray sound like they will be essentially the same versions we saw on DVD in 2004 - although you never know with Lucas. He could very well have made more changes without saying anything. One story running around was about the sound mixers at Skywalker having made new mixes.

I'm not sure what more material there is to release, unless they have some interesting on-set hijinks and the deleted scenes from Star Wars, Empire and Jedi. I would have also liked to hear an uninterrupted commentary for each film by Lucas, and separate technical commentaries from the VFX guys and Ben Burtt, but I have a feeling that's not likely to happen.

[John Johnson]

Hope I'm not repeating a thread here, but I just caught the notice that George Lucas officially confirmed today that there will be a complete 6 movie Blu-ray set of the Star Wars films released next year. The notice at bluray.com mentions some new documentary, interview and behind the scenes material. They are apparently including deleted scenes as well. There's a clip now running on YouTube that shows a constructed scene for the beginning of Return of the Jedi, incorporating some existing footage of Vader from Jedi and Empire, and some deleted material with Luke on Tattooine building his green lightsaber.

Lucas has confirmed that he will not be including the original theatrical versions of the original trilogy. The ones on the Blu-ray sound like they will be essentially the same versions we saw on DVD in 2004 - although you never know with Lucas. He could very well have made more changes without saying anything. One story running around was about the sound mixers at Skywalker having made new mixes.

I'm not sure what more material there is to release, unless they have some interesting on-set hijinks and the deleted scenes from Star Wars, Empire and Jedi. I would have also liked to hear an uninterrupted commentary for each film by Lucas, and separate technical commentaries from the VFX guys and Ben Burtt, but I have a feeling that's not likely to happen.

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[Eric Paddon]

Lucas has confirmed that he will not be including the original theatrical versions of the original trilogy.

Then that's a 100% guaranteed NO SALE for me even if I have a Blu-Ray player by then.

[mkaroly]

Lucas has confirmed that he will not be including the original theatrical versions of the original trilogy.

Then that's a 100% guaranteed NO SALE for me even if I have a Blu-Ray player by then.

Me too...they're his films, and he can do what he wants with them. But I don't need or want yet another special edition of the original films. Too bad he stubbornly refuses to release what I consider to be the REAL versions of episodes 4-6 cleaned up and remastered with the same care he did with the special editions. Oh well.

I am hoping that he will at least release complete scores to the prequels, which for me are the best things those films have to offer.

[Eric W.]

About time!

[AndyDursin]

Blu needs a big shot in the arm like this. Hopefully it will create a residual effect and more of the big stuff we've waited for will follow.

[Eric W.]

Blu needs a big shot in the arm like this. Hopefully it will create a residual effect and more of the big stuff we've waited for will follow.

Arguably more than anything else, "Star Wars" is the name you hear the most often from people when asked: "When will you jump into BD?"


I realize a TON of work from the ground up has had to go into these to clean them up for merciless high definition but it really is kind of a shame that it's taken this long to get some of this stuff out.


I look at Disney. By the time they get all those titles of theirs out (Lion King, Aladdin, etc etc.) heck we'll probably be on holography or something like that.

[DavidBanner]

The studios don't want to jump into any format with their big guns, so to speak, until they're sure they will make a large return. Means that they have to let the market grow enough that they can see a big splash when they release a Star Wars or a Jaws or a Titanic.

Of course, Sony owns Close Encounters, so they made sure to put that one out right away, but the other Spielberg films have only recently started to get out there.

[AndyDursin]

The studios don't want to jump into any format with their big guns, so to speak, until they're sure they will make a large return. Means that they have to let the market grow enough that they can see a big splash when they release a Star Wars or a Jaws or a Titanic.

I've repeatedly said that as well -- that they've waited for the market to grow large enough and they've held off so far on titles like Star Wars because the BD player penetration level hasn't been there. There's no reason to bring out an "A ticket" title if there aren't enough consumers there -- you want to max out your sales and waiting until the market has developed is the way to do it.

I realize a TON of work from the ground up has had to go into these to clean them up for merciless high definition but it really is kind of a shame that it's taken this long to get some of this stuff out.

I just don't believe that has anything to do with it in the case of these movies, because HD masters exist of all of these films -- just like JAWS, just like LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, etc. I've had my HDNet airing of JAWS on my harddrive for almost a couple of years now and if they just went ahead and put that master on BD it'd be perfectly fine.

There's no reason these couldn't have been released in 2007. You can see the HD masters of all the Star Wars movies on cable...I mean, Lucas has fixed them up a dozen times or more already! lol. They all look great, so nobody ought to be surprised how good these will look in high-def. The DVDs were already based on high-def masters and looked phenomenal for standard-def.

What this signals is that BD player penetration must be at a level now that Lucasfilm feels the time is now to go ahead and do it...which hopefully means some other titles we've waited for will follow. Hopefully.

[DavidBanner]

Lucas was looking at the sales numbers for Avatar. I have a feeling they were tempted by the numbers for The Dark Knight, but they held off a bit longer.

The thing with some of the HD transfers, particularly the ones at Universal, is that they were actually done much earlier than 2007. The problem Universal has been having lately with releases like Spartacus is that they used the old transfer and tried to clean it up rather than just pressing a new one. Which would have been more expensive, and there's the big elephant in the room.

Universal and Spielberg are clearly waiting on Jaws. He's been releasing several of his more recent movies on Blu, and is only starting to talk about working his way through the bigger catalogue titles. It's likely that we'll see Jurassic Park before we see ET or Jaws. And I have a feeling we will probably never see Sugarland Express or Empire of the Sun or Always on Blu. But I could be wrong there.

I think Star Wars fans would be happy if Lucas were to include the original theatrical editions of his original trilogy in standard definition, using the source for the 1993 release, only providing anamorphic encoding and an SD Dolby Digital 5.1 mix. I can't imagine this would cost very much at all, and the set will sell plenty of units. But it's clear that Lucas doesn't want the fans to watch the old versions - his choice to not do the anamorphic encoding or the 5.1 mix for the 2006 DVDs makes that evident.

[Eric W.]

Chicken and egg argument: You want to sell hardware and get people to adopt a format? It's all about the content. Content is king.

[AndyDursin]

The thing with some of the HD transfers, particularly the ones at Universal, is that they were actually done much earlier than 2007. The problem Universal has been having lately with releases like Spartacus is that they used the old transfer and tried to clean it up rather than just pressing a new one. Which would have been more expensive, and there's the big elephant in the room.

I've seen almost every Universal HD catalog title that's been released and SPARTACUS was clearly the worst of all of them by a wide margin...at times they've had issues with older masters and fudging it, or throwing too much DNR over them, but SPARTACUS was in a league of its own for lack of high-def detail. Most Universal discs, in reality, are pretty solid, there are a handful of titles that are problematic but most of them -- it's not the master that's the issue, it's what they're doing to the transfer that's the problem.

Case in point is John Carpenter's THE THING -- that master looks fantastic, but the Blu Ray problem was how they threw DNR on top of a transfer that didn't need it (it's why the HD-DVD looks better in that instance by a slight margin). So most of the time I'm not really sure it's their masters that are the problem -- more that whoever handles their transfers is ruining them by adding DNR or edge enhancement (hello, OUT OF AFRICA, the year's worst looking Blu Ray; or at least tied with Fox's PREDATOR) to something that doesn't need it.

On JAWS, the master that plays on HDNet and elsewhere looks great, so there aren't any issues there. They've clearly just waited until they felt it "was time" so to speak.

And that ties in with the whole question as to the lack of catalog content on BD. My point, again, on the Blu-Ray releasing pattern is -- I don't buy, whatsoever, the lack of catalog content is primarily tied to "they have to remaster every film before it comes out in HD." Sure in the case of certain films that's true, and goodness knows not every film is ever going to get that high-def treatment -- yet it doesn't explain the dearth of content when so much is available on broadcast cable. Watch MGM-HD or HDNet Movies and you'll see hundreds of films you'd never have guessed would be in HD, but are -- and not only that, but they look great. LIFEFORCE was newly remastered by Tobe Hooper and ran Saturday night and blew away the old non anamorphic DVD -- so why aren't we seeing more catalog titles on Blu?

Again, it comes down to lack of player penetration plus the stigma (and probable reality) that it's Playstation 3-owning 25 year-olds and under who are the format's main demographic, hence the studios aren't that into releasing "old movies" for a format that's perceived to be big amongst younger viewers.

But back to the main topic (whew!) -- JAWS or STAR WARS could have been released in 07. And not only that, but HD versions of them out there right now and have been for years. It's the same with INDIANA JONES. They run on HBO, on HDNet, all over the place -- you can find them on torrent sites, wherever. Restoration -- with these movies -- had nothing to do, zip, with them not being released. The fact that they've waited for player sales to max out most definitely is.

[AndyDursin]

And I have a feeling we will probably never see Sugarland Express or Empire of the Sun or Always on Blu. But I could be wrong there.

I'd wager you're going to be wrong about EMPIRE OF THE SUN -- eventually.

Warners has found a home for, among other less-than-popular catalog titles, FRANTIC, PRESUMED INNOCENT, THE POSTMAN, OVER THE TOP and CATWOMAN on Blu-Ray.

At some point EMPIRE OF THE SUN will make it. I can feel it, lol.

Now as for ALWAYS and SUGARLAND EXPRESS -- I won't take that bet.

[DavidBanner]

The chicken or the egg concept is quite apropos of this discussion. You would think that the studios would want to get movies like the Star Wars series out on Blu-ray sooner in order to boost sales. But at the same time you have producers like Lucas or Spielberg who don't want their prize movies going out in any release that won't make a giant splash. To quote Joe Pesci in CASINO, "Always the dollars, always the dollars..."

And I agree with Andy that Lucas could easily have already released the Star Wars films on Blu-ray but has chosen to wait. His statement at the convention that he wanted to get the box out this year but just couldn't do it doesn't make sense. It's much more likely that he noted the big releases already in the pipeline for Blu-ray this year (Back to the Future trilogy, the Alien Anthology, etc) and chose to give his movies a more isolated launch window for their Blu-ray editions.

Something tells me that the special features in the Blu-ray box do not include the Ewoks TV movies or the infamous (and grueling) Star Wars Holiday Special...

[Eric Paddon]

Just think of the dollars he'd make if he for once realized that there are a large number of people who want to see the cuts that made the films important to begin with in the best quality. His determination to force people to see only the tampered versions and accept them only in the context of the prequel trilogy that I prefer to say never existed is not something I intend to reward.