Star Wars saga 3D release confirmed, starting in 2012

[Jim Raynor]

A full reboot of Star Wars is pretty much out of the question, since both trilogies are still so fresh in people's minds. A remake would also pretty much derail the TV series, as well as every other spinoff story out there. And all the people bitching about the Special Editions would bitch even harder. It's just a completely unfeasible idea.

Wow, can you say historical revisionism? Since when were all the prequel films "almost universally panned"? That's such nerd-rage-bitter-old-SW-fan bullshit.

That's exactly what it is. Few people criticizing the prequels ever point out actual facts, such as how every prequel qualified as "fresh" at Rotten Tomatoes, even if TPM and AOTC received mixed responses. According to the internet commentary everyone hates these movies, which doesn't fit with the continued financial success of this franchise. I think this is because the internet skews geek, and the people who are most likely to write about something are the ones with the strongest feelings against it.

[Ghost Rider]

As for the prequels? People in general view the prequels with less favor then the original trilogy. Sure, the people who despise it make a mountain out of a molehill from it all. If nothing else, the prequels are a very easy target to make fun of because the general thoughts on it.

As for the 3D, it's a tad silly but the main effort is that we'll get to see the movies in the theatre. That alone makes it worth my money to see Star Wars and Empire again. I do follow in the thought that putting numerical order is a foolish one.

[Srelex]

I kinda agree, even if it does sorta make sense from a purely logical standpoint. It'd be better if they were at least released in the same year, perhaps there'd be slightly less derision.

[Jim Raynor]

Doing the movies once a year gives them way more time for the 3-D conversions. Also, re-releasing multiple movies in the same year might overload the audience, especially with the jacked up price for 3-D movie tickets.

[Ghost Rider]

Doing the movies once a year gives them way more time for the 3-D conversions. Also, re-releasing multiple movies in the same year might overload the audience, especially with the jacked up price for 3-D movie tickets.

Then the preference should be just to simply do all of it, then release. The viewers are not going to lose interest in the time it would take. I mean given the clamor of the Special Edition, it's a tad odd.

[Srelex]

Well, it is Star Wars, so it's bound to make a profit anyway. That said, if interest loses too sharply, then perhaps Lucasfilm will switch to one film every six months, or something.

[Channel72]

That's exactly what it is. Few people criticizing the prequels ever point out actual facts, such as how every prequel qualified as "fresh" at Rotten Tomatoes, even if TPM and AOTC received mixed responses. According to the internet commentary everyone hates these movies, which doesn't fit with the continued financial success of this franchise. I think this is because the internet skews geek, and the people who are most likely to write about something are the ones with the strongest feelings against it.

Only a few crazies actually hate these movies. But many people were disappointed. I mean it's hard not to find something to like about each of the Star Wars films. Even Phantom Menace has its moments, especially on a first-time viewing. But the Prequels simply failed to live up to the originals - and this dissapointment is reflected in their respective Rotten Tomatoes scores, with TPM and AOTC scoring over 10 points lower than even ROTJ, the worst of the originals. Also, it's been over 10 years now since TPM was released, so I doubt public opinion will improve much over time.

As for the upcoming 3D release, well, it's hard to get too excited about it. I remember being pretty excited in 1997, but at this point I've seen these films so many times that it's just not that interesting. Still, if you have kids it's a good opportunity to let them see Star Wars on the big screen.

[Havok]

People were disappointed because they wanted 20 years of love wrapped up in a new two hours, and that was impossible.
Little kids that saw TPM when they were 4 are now 15 so no one really knows yet what that generation thinks of TPM or the following movies yet.

[Darth Fanboy]

I would do one every six months. Get TPM and AoTC out of the way for the time being, and i'd even do a Clone Wars episode or two from that time period in between with OBi Wan and Young Anakin, or maybe even a Qui-Gonn/Obi-Wan one.

Then in the second year of this project you get that contrast from RoTS to ANH and the transition begins, it would have a nice touch to it. Then in the final year have Empire and Return of the Jedi to complete the Saga.

[Havok]

I like it starting with TPM myself as well. It will be a nice build up, and honestly, If there is going to be two or three movies that suffer in the transition and the newness of the process, I would prefer it to be the Prequels and not the OT.

[Kurgan]

I'm completely underwhelmed by this. Of course I'm not a real Star Wars fan, just a rabid hater of George Lucas and all around spoilsport.

Assuming it actually happens this time, I wouldn't even care until they got to the Original Trilogy anyway. Even then I'd read reviews and stuff to see how the OT fair, because I have no desire to see something akin to the awful 2004 revisions again, even if they are "in 3D!"

Already I've had people tell me that I'm in denial and I can't resist buying tickets to all of them. Since these people are clearly Jedi, I can't doubt their ability to read my mind and predict the future, but seriously...

When did it become assumed that Star Wars fans had no sense of taste or self control when it came to the franchise? I could understand if you're one of those folks who has never seen any of the movies before. But honestly, via a show of hands, how many people would pay $12 or so to see Episode I "in 3D" with a CGI Yoda? I wonder how many adults would stick with the whole franchise if their first experience was that one...?

[LMSx]

Some more business about the 3D conversion

After the recent announcement that the Star Wars saga was going to be converted to 3-D, beginning in chronological order with The Phantom Menace (set for a 2012 theatrical release), I caught up with John Knoll, Industrial Light & Magic's famed visual effects supervisor, who is spearheading the project. He provides a sneak peek of what we might expect in 3-D from the Death Star trench run to the Tatooine Podrace.

Bill Desowitz: So what are your plans for 3-D stereoscopic conversion?

John Knoll: We're mostly going to be working with outside vendors. But the big difference is I'm driving the look of this and going to hold the vendors to very high standards. I've been pretty vocal and my feelings for stereo and stereo conversion. I feel like some of the previous efforts that we've seen were victims of a too rushed production schedule and a too low budget, and maybe not the best aesthetics applied. I feel like the tools can be used to generate good results; otherwise, we wouldn't be doing this. You can't rush it and it's an iterative process, and if you've got a gun to your head and you've got eight weeks to convert a 2,000-shot show, it's not possible to maintain the level of quality control that you need.

BD: And you can only work with what you've got for live action.

JK: Right. I've been very vocal with my opinion that if you're originating new material, if you're in production right now, making something for stereo exhibition, then you should be shooting it in stereo if it's live action, or if it's a computer-animated film you should be rendering it in stereo. But it's a different story if you've got good reasons why you want to convert a library title. So, if you want to explore what stereo can do for you, conversion is the only option. But when stereo's done right, it's not just throwing objects at the camera every few seconds; it's immersive. I think Avatar did a really good of transporting you to an exotic alien place where the stereo is mostly used to give you this powerful sense of presence. And so if you look at the Star Wars world, there are so many interesting, exotic places to go and I think that the immersive nature of stereo exhibition has a lot of appeal. The stuff I've seen to date is pretty cool.

BD: So what is the status of converting Phantom Menace?

JK: We've been thoroughly evaluating the resources out there and giving them the feedback that they need to hear to get the quality where we expect it to be.

BD: Are you able to name the vendors?

JK: I don't think we're allowed to.

BD: Or how many companies?

JK: I'm not allowed to do that either.

BD: Tell me about your role.

JK: It's mostly being the arbiter of good taste. There's a lot of different ways to play stereo. How deep do you go with it? Where do you play convergence? Do you rack convergence? Do you do floating windows? How stylistic do you go on wide shots? Do you leave them realistic? Or do we need to see stereo even on a wide shot with nothing close to camera where you wouldn't really see much. A lot of those kinds of questions need to be answered and I'm trying to provide the answers that result in good-looking stereo that looks to the largest extent possible that it looks like it was shot in stereo; and not with the weird miniaturization or the cardy look or the warped spaces or the edge artifacts that we've seen in other stereo conversions.

BD: What's your personal stereoscopic philosophy and what have your conversations with George Lucas been like?

JK: George and I talked a little bit about the character of stereo and there's a little bit of a different stylization of what you saw on Avatar and How to Train Your Dragon, for example. One of the things that Jim did throughout Avatar is a relatively fixed rule: for the most part, camera converges on subject. So that makes whoever you're focused on, whoever's speaking, whatever the subject of the shot is converged at the screen plane. And so if that person walks forward in the shot, we actually rack convergence with them so that they stay at the screen. And that worked pretty well for Jim; it's a convention that served him well. That's not the convention that, for example, DreamWorks and Pixar are doing on their stereo projects. What they tend to do is define a good use of volume for a given shot -- a lot of the DreamWorks seems to be about one-third forward, two-thirds back -- and that's fixed for the shot. So even for the character that's walking forward, we don't rack convergence with them. And we're going a little bit more toward that style than Jim's style.

BD: So, what's your plan?

JK: What we're doing that one-third forward, two-thirds back use of depth. We'll be using floating windows to maximize good, usable, depth dynamic range. And then, stylistically, I go fairly realistic with the stereo. I don't like hyper stereo and there are a lot of shots in the Star Wars pictures that are meant to be big vista spectacle. It's a big wide view of a city or a space battle, and there's nothing particularly close to camera. Shooting in stereo, you wouldn't get a lot of depth. So I'm not going to go hyper stereo on that because it has a really ugly artifact, in my view, of that miniaturization. You don't want to see that these ships are really closer than the star field and undermine all the effort that we tried to put in to make those scenes have vast scale. So I'm going to play all the wide shots more realistically and rely on the overall context of the sequence where you're right there with the characters, experiencing this with them. And there are loads and loads of action where we're in tighter and closer, and that's where the stereo shines.

BD: The prequels will certainly offer a different experience with all the CG.

JK: Yeah, I would say that, in general, the prequel trilogy are denser than the original trilogy and the most obvious contrast is comparing the space battle at the end of A New Hope with the space battle at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith. There's a lot more going on and definitely a lot more stereo possibilities there. But there's nothing about the original trilogy being older that makes them harder to convert. If anything, they might be a little easier because they're less dense than the prequel trilogy. A lot of the labor-intensive work is if you have an army of 4,000 droids getting them separated from the background, generating the second view and then cleaning up the background where they were. And it's harder to do when you've got hundreds or thousands of characters as opposed to 10 or 15.

BD: Is there a favorite film or moment you're looking forward to converting?

JK: I always liked Empire Strikes Back. It's just packed with great stuff: I love the snowspeeders and the walkers. I love the asteroid scene. I think that people misunderstand what stereo's good at and what it isn't. It's not necessarily about vista; it's most effective when you're in close with your characters and all those scenes with Yoda are closer, intimate scenes. And I actually think those are going to look nice in stereo, and the bigger challenge is what are you going to do with the Return of the Jedi space battle where those shots are relatively wide?

BD: Any plans to do tweaking?

JK: No, there are no plans to revisit shots or do any new work. This is just doing a stereo conversion of what we've got. This is a long process if done right and I have no intention of doing something that damages the brand. I think we're going to set a new precedent for what conversion can look like?

Bill Desowitz is senior editor of AWN & VFXWorld.

I couldn't tell you I understand what Lucasfilm was saying in comparison to James Cameron, but it sounds methodical, at least.

[Spoonist]

I couldn't tell you I understand what Lucasfilm was saying in comparison to James Cameron, but it sounds methodical, at least.

Its really not a choice that they had. Cameron's approach worked because the film was thought out with 3D in mind. For a conversion like SW3D it would make no sense to use the Avatar approach.

[Kurgan]

Accidentally posted this in the other thread, but here goes:

You know, I hate to say it, but one way I could see some fans (or "fanboys" or "haters" whatever you want to call them) who hated Episode I going to see it anyway, using the logic that by giving it money, they'd be "encouraging" Lucas to make the other ones, so that down the road they'd be sure to get the Original Trilogy.

I don't buy it, personally, but I bet somebody will use that as their excuse to promote it, even if they think it sucks.

Lucas isn't some pauper, so if he wants to put out all six movies in 3D, he will (and in theaters too, not just with the $150 glasses). He won't just make Episode I and stop there, unless the stock market crashes and the Ranch burns down or something drastic like that.

Besides, if Episode I 3D makes a huge profit, he'll just say "See? People loved Jar Jar, space politics, and lil' Annie pod racing" and rub it in your faces.

[adam_grif]

People were disappointed because they wanted 20 years of love wrapped up in a new two hours, and that was impossible.
Little kids that saw TPM when they were 4 are now 15 so no one really knows yet what that generation thinks of TPM or the following movies yet.

Will it matter? If they like it because of nostalgia people will go "see, hah, they were good movies!" and if they hate it, people will dismiss it as "oh they're just hating it because its cool to hate it". I was 8 years old circa 1999 and saw it in theaters on release. I liked it when I first watched it but after we'd taped the whole series of SW movies on TV (~2000-2001) and I would watch them in the school holidays and stuff, I started getting bored of Ep 1 and 6, which used to be my favorite two. The one I ended up getting the least-bored of was Empire, but I didn't really know why at the time.

I didn't form any strong opinions about the series until I was 15-16 and I started actually hating some movies and liking others. Prior to that age I just kind of liked everything I ever saw. I don't think I've watched TPM from start to finish since Ep 2 came out.