The Empire Strikes Back (HDTV, BLURAY)

Wampa arm extension.


Special Edition window adjusted.


Finally found some true color correction plus digital spark additions.



Return of the Jedi

No TIEs have been added, as I read earlier elsewhere.

Jabba's door.



Han thawing.




Seboca the Dug.


Ewok eyes.






R2 freakout. The "piss" has been crudely erased.




Slugs erased.


Lightsabers rotoscoped.



Nooooo.

Nice! So much for whomever swore based on what they saw a couple of days ago that "no color corrections have been made for the Blu-Ray, it's all exactly the same as the 04 DVDs!"

Overall there's no color correction applied. I'm truly surprised by the smelting room scene. Eh, what can you do.

Could you confirm if they have been fixed in TESB duel too?

Thanks in advance.

Sadly, I begin to fear that in future releases this will no longer be the case.

Video and Audio on these are quite nice. The DTS MA 6.1 ES is amazing compaired to what has been.

None of the duels have been 100% fixed. The most consistent one I saw was in the cave on Dagobah.

From the screenshots I saw, Dagobah looks just as terrible as it did in 2004. It looks like a video game.

ESB had the best saber effects in the trilogy (maybe the saga) until the DVDs screwed with them.

Does anyone know if they fixed the error where Luke's saber crosses the handrail in ROTJ, just after slicing off Vader's hand?

The only lightsaber adjustments I see are the single shot in Star Wars and the throne room in Jedi. Empire is largely untouched, including the pink saber moments.

Given I have no pre-orders in place,I am quite happy to cherry pick the saga on the BD format and only buy single movies instead of the whole BS set.

That's not a colour correction in any event. It's a change. It's not like accidentally there was a blue instead of orangey smelter as one of the errors on the DVDs. Kershner shot and lit it like. What they've done is slectively recolored that part of the frame and let it wash onto Chewie a bit.

What about coreless sabers? Are they still there?

I feel like the lightsabers may have looked better on older releases because the video overall was brighter. Maybe a bit too bright, beefing up the cores. I remember the Special Edition of Jedi being way too bright in the throne room scenes and the lightsabers were really exaggerated.

OK, two lightsaber shots were corrected in Star Wars. This was done with a simple mask and color shift without preserving the white core.

The one on the left makes the lightsaber feel more "real."

I've always appreciated the moments where the saber doesn't glow unrealistically when other light sources are present. Sometimes the core should appear "whiter."

I completely agree.

I prefered all the lightsabers as they were. Some fans wanted them changed to macth the other films, but they have been fucking them up in different ways ever since then. Honestly, how they originally were in ANH was fine - I'd rather they looked consistently "natural" across the duration of one movie, but look slightly different in the next movie, than have them inconsistent from one shot to the next in an attempt to make them match.

Deleted Scene Video - Hoth Han & Leia

[flash width=640 height=385]http://www.youtube.com/v/-2SIoHtBPpw?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&hd=1[/flash]

On a planet of ice, how did you get so much sand in your vagina, Han Solo?

therpf.com /prop-store-first-look-location-buttercup-valley-1982/



SKIFF & SPEEDERBIKES





BOBA FETT





R2-D2

Thankfully that one stays in the "deleted scene" area of the set and not added to the actual film.

"You could use a good kiss!!" said with cut to Leia and Rebel walking into HQ Room looking their way is SO much better.

I dunno. I like Leia's attitude in this scene better

So here is the final proof.

31 (the bad ones) out of 45 lightsaber shots have been fixed for the blu-ray version of ROTJ.


Comparison with the 2004 PAL DVD:

• Shots 1-10:
• Shots 11-20:
• Shots 21-30:

Credit goes to my good buddy DVD Schweizer who went throw the entire ROTJ duel frame by frame + already owns the official retail version of the OT Set.


Good work ILM.

Thanks for the analysis. Good to have some solid numbers and back up to show what's actually been revised for this versions. Does he have any interest in doing other sequences? (If not the OT.com peoples will eventually get to it) Is there a way to batch download from screenshotcomparison.com?

He will do a lightsaber comparison for TESB as well but it looks like that there arent as many fixes as for ROTJ if any.

There are no lightsaber changes in Empire Strikes Back.

This is still in then:



Lucas must just stop watching ESB by that point.

This is doubleofive from over on OriginalTrilogy.com, I just wanted to make sure you guys were cool with me using your screenshots to help with my Visual Comparisons I've been working on the last year. I started a new group just for Blu-ray changes:

picasaweb.google.com :: StarWars2011Changes

But you can find my previous up to 2004 changes here:

picasaweb.google.com :: StarWarsSpecialEditionChangesHD
picasaweb.google.com :: EmpireSpecialEditionChangesHD
picasaweb.google.com :: JediSpecialEditionChangesHD

Thanks!

I think in a weird way, Lucas resents ESB because of how good it was and it was the film he had the least to do with. It's also the film he's tampered with the least (or at least hasn't made any devastating changes - the useless Vader shuttle scene aside).

Riiiiight - Nevermind that he poured $30 million of his own cash into finishing it and personally paid Kershner's Director's Guild fine.

I think the operative part of that is "in a weird way". And, true, it's the one film he felt he lost control of. Despite all attempts by Lucas to reign in Kerschner, his on-site producer and director stalled, and steadfastly ignored his instructions and shot the film the way Kersch felt it needed to be shot.

Even after that, Lucas cut the film, it blew, and he had to conceed that his vision didn't work. The end result is the one film in the six that is furthest from Lucas's idea of what the series should be. Now, I think you have to balance that with it's also the least fucked around with of the three OT films, Corgo, so he can't be TOO broken up about it.

Thanks to some innovative thinking by "none" over at OT.com, we've discovered that the R2 jump cut as he rolls away from 3PO shortly after receiving the message from Leia has been fixed.

^Interesting...

So if they can do that, why can't they fix the more obvious lightsaber jump cuts in ANH?

Most likely CBF syndrom.

And in TESB too.

I don't remember jump cuts in ESB, just Luke's saber making the turny-offy sound while still lit as he escapes the Wampa cave. But the jump cut in Ben's house and on the Falcon have looked bad for 34 years.

There is one when he comes out of a small tunnel during the duel in Cloud City.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that one. It's been awhile since I've seen it.

They also didn't fix the error when Luke escapes the Wampa's cave. We hear his saber deactivating as he's fleeing the cave but his saber on screen is still ignited. They could have easily fixed that mistake.

Honestly, I'm not even sure I noticed that before, same as I'm not sure what DNR is or why I should be annoyed about it anymore. I see a lot of people talking about these things and it put me off buying but honestly it feels like I'm missing out for reasons I'm not even sure about anymore.

The Noooooo's and shit annoy me but if I can put up with young Anakin in the Jedi finale I guess I can deal with most things these days. Like back in the Phantom Menace days it seems most sheep are annoyed at what the set isn't rather than being happy with what was delivered-More Star Wars; surely that's what we're all here for when all's said and done?

Another possible change on the Tantive, after R2 has gotten the plans, there used to be a slight jump cut, R2 rolled backwards before going forward, this shot seems different. Look at the relationship of the dome to the body as the roll right begins.

lazy bastards just did a clone stamp from the rocks!








and the same with Jabba's door!

Ahah.

That's really cheap, though.

Those R2 rocks are seriously bad. Nothing about it works - it looks like it is trying to be some kind of formation comprising three or four rocks, but there is no depth to it, so it just ends up looking like one big, flat, inch-thick panel of rock-textured shit.

And it is just like those moments in the Han and Jabba scene - those rocks are both in front of, and occupying the same space as, Artoo at the same time. You can't just drop some rocks onto a piece of footage, Photoshop in a crappy shadow, and expect that to be enough to convince the eye that they are "in front of" certain three-dimensional objects in the existing shot.

I can't understand how they could be happy with how crude and unconvincing that looks.

I keep thinking are the rocks our first look at a 3d effect in A New Hope?

DNR, the changes, weird selection of features or even the awful packaging should not be a deal-breaker for you. I can criticize this set for all these things and more, but inevitably it's this: THE MOVIES in 1080p.

The best they've ever looked at home (probably better than theatrically in many ways), presenting the snow battle to where you'll be in front of your TV suited up in winter gear and leaning along with the speeder's flight paths, so much depth in the bar and Jabba's court that you'll probably spot delightfully, charmingly terrible alien puppets you'd never even seen before in the background ... not to mention stray hairs off Tarkin's beautiful bony wrinkled head during the Death Star's final countdown that are sure to make you piss yourself. Or maybe just me.

Obviously get these, even if it's just the old ones. Sebulba and some NO's I can just play the DVD soundtrack over after syncing it up are not enough to deter me. I've said it before, this is just like cosmetic bullshit. The movies are untouched at their core ... and they look pretty awesome here.

So is it confirmed Lucas hid R2 behind the extra rocks to have an excuse why Obi-wan doesn't recognize him at first?

I thought long and hard about it and I don't have any more ideas for the rasoning behind this change.

Lucas probably just wanted Artoo hiding behind rocks to look cuter.

About the first look at ANH 3D, this actually reminded me of something I was thinking about today. McCallum is going around the last few months threatening that if TPM doesn't do well, then no more conversions will be done.

However if it's taking them a couple of years to "properly" (and we'll see what the hell that meant really in February) do TPM, then in order to have a release schedule of one per year, they've already got to be deep in production on at least AotC, and probably also RotS, if not the OT fims as well. Meaning he's, as usual, full of shit; they're anticipating excellent sales and already going ahead, no?