Comment by phantasmish
3 months ago
Yeah I clicked this link going “oh god it’s because they printed to film, I bet, and man do I hope it looks worse so I don’t have to hunt down a bunch of giant 35mm scans of even more movies that can’t be seen properly any other way”
But no, of course it looks between slightly and way better in every case. Goddamnit. Pour one out for my overworked disk array.
And here I was thinking it was just my imagination that several of these look kinda shitty on Blu-ray and stream rips. Nope, they really are worse.
Piracy: saving our childhoods one frame at a time.
When it comes to Star Wars, people are literally spotting them in Photoshop frame by frame. :)
I recently watched the despecialized edition. During the lightsaber duel between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader, there are moments where Obi-Wan's lightsaber has no glow and looks more like a very thick metal antenna, or like he's play-dueling with a short curtain rod.
I can't figure out how to determine if that's intentional.
The ignited sabers used spinning sticks with reflective tape covering them, and some rotoscoping applied in post to get the final effect. There are spots in the un-retouched Star Wars where the effect is missed, or something, and you can indeed see the raw stick. Something similar's also behind that one weird shot where Obi Wan's saber seems to almost fizzle out (the tip is pointed too much toward the camera, and messes up the effect)
The careful eye may also notice they almost never strike the sabers against one another in that scene... because it'd break the spinning sticks. Apparent contact is usually gently done, or a trick of perspective.
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