Today in Predictable Things: George Lucas Converting Star Wars Saga to 3-D

star-wars.jpgGeorge Lucas has announced plans to spend the next six years personally supervising the stereoscopic 3-D conversion of the entire Star Wars series. The first entry will hit theaters in 2012, with a new entry coming out each consecutive year. But even if you're pumped to give Lucas more money, this sounds like a bad news/good news scenario. Check out the details after the jump.

Okay, bad news first: When Lucas says entire Star Wars Saga, he means all six. That means in 2012, we'll get to see Jar Jar Binks in 3-D. In fact, if the Mayans and Roland Emmerich are right, The Phantom Menace is the only entry that will be released in our lifetime! But even if they aren't, it still means no Empire Strikes Back until 2016. They way things are going, they may have to convert to something completely different by then.

Now for the good. Remember Clash of the Titans and The Last Airbender? Oh cool, I didn't see them either. But I heard the 3-D conversion looked muddy and actually worse than if they had just left the movies alone. That shouldn't be the case here. With Lucas supervising each transfer, that Death Star trench scene will probably look every bit as cool in 3-D as it should.

Also, with Lucas throwing so much money at it, this could push the 3-D conversion technology forward quite a bit. Since it seems like studios are going to keep pulling these conversions for a while, it'd be great if Lucas pushed the technology to a place where it actually looks good.

Lucasfilm is expected to make the official announcement today. Stay tuned for updates.

[via Deadline]



Comments

  • casting couch says:

    So that comment from Lucas about the theatrical versions being "too expensive" to restore was total bullshit (even though Fox already threw down 20 million to digitally restore them in 1995). But a 3-D conversion is within his budget? Riiight.

  • Rachel says:

    Whatever, we'll all see them again and again. Even AOTC.
    I know I'm going to go at least 5 times to each of them.

  • Eric says:

    I can see that George Lucas is a perfectionist, like myself. He's the only director who has gone back over his movies as the technology became available to make them better. I like most of the enhancements that were done on IV,V, and VI, especially those done during the Bespin scenes. I don't think they needed to change that scene however, after Luke chose not to join Darth and let himself fall down the shaft. Right after that, they show Vader and his entourage rounding a corner, and in the previous film Vader grudgingly (and with the right amount of disappointment about Luke); said, "Bring my shuttle." In the new version, they mistakenly changed it to; "Inform my star destroyer to prepare for my arrival," entirely losing the feeling about Vader's disappointment. I didn't understand that...I mean, the plot was that Vader DID have good in him, so naturally after Luke jumped off into the shaft, he SHOULD have shown disappointment in that moment. Why they wiped it out with the new line, is beyond me.
    The only other addition I didn't thing was very great, was in Episode IV with Han Solo and the bounty hunter in the bar. Right before Solo blew a hole in his chest, they added a laser shot, simulating that the bounty hunter also fired, or, had tried to blow Solo away first. That was not in the original version. The laser blast they added from the bounty hunter was....shall we say, less than spectacular, and just looked like it had been added in there and was fake. I think unless they could have gotten that to look much better, they should have just left that scene alone. Of course Solo wasn't going to let Jaba take his ship. Of course he wasn't about to be blown away by that green slug, so he shot first before he got shot. Well, I just think that scene was just fine as it was.