Thursday, October 02, 2008

Star Wars - Remastered DVD's - part 2

I'd already made a post here a while back about the picture quality of the 2006 remastered DVD's, you know the set where they put the original cut of the film as a bonus feature on the 2nd disc 'sigh'. Anyway I was talking to a mate online the other night and I'd mentioned the stuff I'd put on my blog regarding these problems and he alerted me to the end sequence in Return of the Jedi, now I bought the DVD's purely to watch the original cut so I've only ever flicked through the new versions when people have mentioned problems to me, or sometimes just to punish myself. Anyway I've took some grabs to show what he was talking about, for some reason the scenes in the Death Star reactor chamber have been tinted a pretty naff blue all over, and the explosions have a really awful burnt out look to them. So the so called remastering has actually made the picture look worse, I love the way with every version Lucas puts out of these films he gradually destroys what was already great.
Check out my old post here for Star Wars: Revisited, a DVD put together by a fan who colour timed the film and made adjustments to Star Wars that puts the stuff Lucasfilm did with their two attempts at Special Editions to shame. At the moment the same guy is doing his own version of The Empire Strikes Back again taking away awful blue washes in the Hoth scenes and re-timing the colour so Hoth looks like it used to in the original version, from what I gather he'll also be tweaking FX shots as he did with Star Wars: Revisited.

6 comments:

dylan said...

bought the dvd special editions when they came out as the box set. The thing that really bugs me about them, apart from the added crap, is the shitty lightsaber fx on Empire Strikes back. They seem to have become transparent and the colours have gone rubbish, Vader's seems almost pink!
I was going to get the original versions on dvd but just couldn't get round having to buy the special eds for the third time, yeas I have them on vhs too lol. Another reason was that they're not anamorphic so I was worried they'd look really bad on a widescreen tv.

Michael Grant Clark said...

That's some pretty pro work on the colour timing. Pity the spanky mega studio didn't bother with all that 'boring' stuff and instead concentrated on making a feaky mutant cg Jabba.

allen etter said...

This is more proof that real George Lucas died after "Empire"...at least that is my prayer.

Rol said...

Guess I'll stick with my old videos.

Jim said...

"I've only ever flicked through the new versions.... sometimes just to punish myself."

HAHAHA, awesome.

Moonwatcher said...

Those colours look dreadful.