I haven't had the chance yet to sit down and watch any of the movies in full, but I did put in a few discs last night and skipped around to a few scenes to check a few things out.
ANH:
-The Greedo/Han shooting scene in ANH is MUCH better IMO. Not only do they shoot at almost the same time, but the new, shorter edit on that scene just looks a lot better. Basically when they cut to that shot where they both shoot, Han is already in the process of bobbing his head out of the way of Greedo's shot, and it doesn't look as bad as it did on the previous versions. As much as I would prefer it to just be Han shooting, the worst part about that scene IMO was just how bad that head-bob edit always looked. It is a big improvement here.
-I was disapointed to see that it's still pretty much the exact same CGI Jabba from 2004. While I agree with those who say that this scene just doesn't work for a number of reasons, I didn't expect it to be removed from the movie, so the most I was hoping for what for Jabba to look better. While the '04 version was a big improvement over the 1997 CGI version, the coloring of the '04 version is still all wrong and the CGI just looks very "flat" to me. For whatever reason there just doesn't seem to be as much "depth" to the way he looks as their should be. Supposedly this is supposed to me the same model used in TPM, but I checked out his appearance in that last night as well, and that still looks A LOT better to me. His coloring is correct, the animation and depth look much better. This scene could still use a lot of improvement. One unfortunate side effect of watching this scene in HD is seeing just how bad the edit of Han walking around Jabba and stepping on his tale looks. It was already awkward to begin with because originally he just walked straight around the human actor, but they digitially edited it to make it look like Hand goes up and down and he steps on and off of the tail, and it's a very choppy looking edit. But now on top of those issues, seeing it in HD, if you focus on Han as he walks over the tail, there's a few times where he goes from being in focus with decent detail to becoming really, really blurry and looking like he's been SUPER-DNRed, which is probably just a side effect of the digitla edit that they did on him in the first place years ago to make this special effect.
-Overall the lightsaber coloring during the scene where Luke is training on the Falcon is better and and somewhat more consistent. I would have still preferred if the FX had just been completely redone, but compared to the 2004 debacle, this is an improvement. The biggest inconsistency is that when we see Luke from one angle (with his right side facing the audience a bit more, and this being the angle during which at times we see Han and Obi Wan to the right side of the screen), the saber is a more blue-ish color. It's still not quite the right shade, but it's not a starck green anymore.... then when we see him from another angle (more so his left side facing us a big more, with us seeing more of the background behind him and the other side of the falcon away from Obi Wan and Han), his lightsaber has more of that white coloring to it, with a slight aqua colored glow around it. So, that is the biggest shift that I noticed, but otherwise the saber seems to be relatively consistent within each separate angle... it's just when comparing the two that the issue occurs, but it's not like the effect has ever quite looked right. I'm not defending the other color timing issues that still exist, and some residual effects of the 2004 coloring may still be present in the sabers, but this looked better to me.
-Then there's the scene with R2 hiding behind the new rocks. This looked better than I had thought it would. I'll admit that the question of "how did he get in there" is still a reasonable one, but it doesn't look bad to me. Even the inconsistency of him being behind those rocks and then when we see him later outside of there with the little cave or whatever still in the background but without the new CGI rocks, it wasn't that jarring. I can see where it wouldn't be totally obvious to the audience that what we are seeing was specifically his hiding place, and could possibly just be him from another angle with different rocks in the background. I'm not so much defending this inconsistency (because I do agree that they should have thought about this and made it consistent from the get-go), but it's not really one that I think is going to stand out that much unless you specifically know what you are looking for.
-It's interesting seeing what I assume to be unintended details on Vader's mask in this. Especially during the first scenes where he shows up at the start of the movie, when the camera is zoomed in on his face, you can really see some scratches and roughness on the mask which was likely a result of it's construction, and other minor flaws in the mask and helmet. Having also watched some parts of ROTJ (more on that below, and note I haven't checked out TESB at all yet, so I'm just comparing these 2 movies), I noticed how it looked smoother and shinier in ROTJ. So, some improvement occurred over the course of the OT.
ROTJ:
-Wicket's eyes for the most part are nice, though will take a little getting used to. A couple of times the blinking looked odd to me, but overall I can see the improvement.
-The lightsaber battle at the end looks a lot better. There are still a few minor coloring inconsistencies, but to me overall it looked pretty good. Maybe those with a more keen eye for this sort of thing will see more of a problem than I did, but overall it still looks good. One thing that I did notice (both in watching this disc and from previous stills that were posted) is that while they very much fixed the problem with that shot where Vader and Luke cross their sabers in front of the Emperor, if you take a close look at Luke's saber-blade, towards the bottom of it in that shot, some of the white core still has some green coloring to it. It's as if they went to fix it but didn't quite go down far enough. Really not a big deal, but just something I happened to notice.
- I'm still not
thrilled about the "noooo" at the end of the movie, but now that I've gotten used to it, it's not too bad. I do still find Obi Wan's new dragon call in ANH to be laughable, though.
TPM:
-The new Digital version of Yoda looks nice. I checked out a few scenes with him in it.
-I also, as stated earlier, checked out Jabba's brief appearance during the pod race scene, and he's still one of my favorite former-puppet-translated-to-CGI characters that I've seen out of the movies. I really, really wish they would do more to make ANH Jabba look more like that if we absolutely have to have that scene in ANH.
-I did notice the DNR in some scenes. For instance, when Qui Gon is talking to the council about training Anakin. But it's wasn't
too terrible.
-I also checked out a bit of the lightsaber battle at the end, which overall looks nice, but there are a few spots where it's EASY to tell that they are on a green/blue screen and not in that actual location.
ROTS:
Not too much to say aside from it looking very good. I didn't really notice any changes in any of the scenes that I checked out. I mainly watched it for the PQ, mostly the lightsaber battle at the end.
I haven't checked out TESB or AOTC yet. I would have, but it was getting late and I was tired. I checked out ANH and ROTJ since they had the most changes of the OT movies, and TPM for largely the same reason for the PT. And of course ROTS for the PQ. Now I need to sit down and actually watch the movies from start to finish.
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. If this directing style really is true, that to me pretty much explains the wooden acting in the prequels.
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so i got stuck on buying the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy (with their ugly covers)
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