Just watched A New Hope.
I watched it twice actually; one all the way through with the audio ramped up, and another where I picked out scenes and looked at them in more detail.
Firstly, there are some changes that haven't been picked up on yet.
DEATH STAR
- When Han runs after the Stormtroopers and then intercepts the large 'platoon' of them in a room around the corner (the '97 edit), the sequence of him seeing the platoon, reacting and running backwards has been shortened by about 2 seconds, making his reaction more blunt.
- When Luke and Leia cross the 'gorge'/open via the grappling hook, their speech has new echo sound effects that arrive from the distance shots, making make the space seem more vast. A great change, in my honest opinion, and takes the scene further away from the 'studio' feel.
- A couple of minor edits between 'troopers and all the characters as they run back to the Falcon.
YAVIN
- A couple of sound cue edits, most notably before Luke makes his attack run (the fanfare as one of the pilots crashes is now more imminent, and not a delayed reaction to the crash).
- The colours within the cockpits are far brighter, and the control surfaces/buttons/graphics are much more vivid in colours. I can't vouch for the exact changes in colour shift, but they look far more engaging and alive.
There were a few more, but I forgot to write them down!
Overall however i'm
mightily impressed. Sure, the film is very inconsistent in terms of its image quality... Grain is one minute fine, the next scene its smudgy... Some scenes look like they've had 4K scans on par with
Alien, and others look like the 2K DVD scans.
Yet although a new full wack restoration job could have made this film look even better (and i'm absolutely convinced about this), for home presentation its absolutely fine.
The main difference is the colours... Wow! Don't trust the screen-caps and videos that we've been looking at for months - the film is a massive leap over the DVD's. They are no longer dark and crushed. The actors skin tones are naturally glowing and brown, and environments have detail that was lost on the DVD's. The computers/graphics in the cockpits just pop out like some Technicolor film. Its only marginally darker than the 'UOT'.
And then there's the sound... Unbelievable to say the least. Anyone who has a sub will be punching the air with joy once the Death Star blows up, thats how powerful it is. The music is lovely and high in the mix which i'm absolutely delighted with. Even the speech is crisp and could have been recorded yesterday.
The definition just leaps over any other release i've owned/heard. Restoring the soundtrack from those original elements has to be the best thing Lucasfilm has done in a long while!
You might be thinking that i'm getting carried away, but i'm really not. In terms of looks, the colours feel more like the 1997 edition which i'm totally satisfied with, and the new edits that i've found in no way alter the experience for the bad.
I'll be watching ESB tomorrow, so another report then
