Originally published at: A despecialized 4k supercut of the 'Space Battle for Endor' | Boing Boing
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Isn’t it the “Battle of Endor,” not “Battle for Endor?” Saying it was “for” Endor suggests that the purpose was to save the planet, when the planet almost certainly would have been better off if the massive Death Star were allowed to fly away in one piece.
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More to the point, Battle for Endor was the name of the second Ewoks movie.
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I just jumped into hyper space, Right Now.
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100% chance that Wicket was going to eat Cindel if Grumpy Space Wilford Brimley hadn’t come along.
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You’re right, and we probably don’t need or want to see a 4K version of that.
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Clearly, “despecialized” in this context means that the new shots and special effects that were added by Lucas in the 90’s were stripped out. Though I would say that upscaling it to 4K is partially “respecializing” it. Movies are a reflection of the time in which they’re made. Upscaling it for newer resolutions may look shiny, but don’t pretend that you’re somehow returning it to the original. /soapbox
On a completely separate note, I have probably seen only three other movies more times than this one and I re-watch movies frequently. Yet somehow in all those watchings, it never struck me until now what a poor choice it was for Lucas to label the rebel squadrons, “Red”, “Grey”, and “Green”. Grey and green sound way to similar to be readily distinct over audio communication. Battle communication using these labels would be a disaster.
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Honestly, I clicked the link hoping it WOULD be The Battle For Endor, and now I’m extremely disappointed. Look, between the piranha steeds and the Dathomirian Night Sisters, it’s basically canon!
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There’s a lot wrong with your first paragraph:
Clearly, “despecialized” in this context means that the new shots and special effects that were added by Lucas in the 90’s were stripped out.
True.
Though I would say that upscaling it to 4K is partially “respecializing” it.
False. Almost all of the elements used in Despecialized are scanned from original 35mm film prints at 4K, rather than being upscaled.
Movies are a reflection of the time in which they’re made.
Okaayy… but not really relevant here.
Upscaling it for newer resolutions may look shiny, but don’t pretend that you’re somehow returning it to the original. /soapbox
Yikes. Respectfully, in this case you don’t know what you’re talking about. ROTJ was shot and released on film at a resolution that’s arguably better than 4K, so it’s actually the cruddy technology of home video from the '80s through just a few years ago that is not “original”. So yeah, this release very much IS returning it to the original!
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I respectfully defer to your expertise. Thanks for the correction and clarification.
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No worries… and sorry for being a huge pedantic annoying nerd about this. I just think it’s pretty incredible that interested amateurs in the “preserve the original Star Wars trilogy” community have been able to source 35mm prints, digitize them at 4K resolution, and clean/composite/regrain/colour-time the footage at least as well as some recent official (i.e. not original) releases.
I mostly watch from afar, but I know there is an amazing body of knowledge out there about esoterica like frame counts, reel change marks, audio track differences, film stocks, etc., etc., etc. There’s even a large database of perfectly-synched subtitles for literally dozens of languages for each of the original films!
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I just watched Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old, as well as the making-of featurette. The film restores, stabilizes, cleans up and upscales a ton of WWI footage with fairly impressive results. It also colorized it fairly well (which Jackson said was justifiable because the original cameramen likely would have used color if they’d had the option) and added convincing audio.
I was a little surprised how little time the featurette spent on discussing the process of upscaling and restoring the film. Apparently that part is fairly straightforward with modern software.
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