- Empire Strikes Back
- Harmy Despecialized Return Of The Jedi Download Torrent Download
- Star Wars Movies In Order
Hot on the heels of my weekend post about Harmy's Despecialized Editions of the original Star Wars Trilogy movies, Six Colors maven and all-around good guy (and my ex-boss) Jason Snell pointed me to something I'd previously only seen briefly referenced in a few spots: Project 4K77.
Project 4K77 is, as you might guess from the name, a 4K version of the 1977 Star Wars movie. The group has also completed Project 4K83 (Return of the Jedi), and is now working on Project 4K80 (The Empire Strikes Back).
What's really amazing about the 4K77 project is that it is not an upscale of lower-resolution footage. Instead, as explained on the 4K77 page…
- Born out of frustrated fans failed attempts to convince George Lucas to release the unaltered theatrical versions of the Star Wars Original Trilogy films (Episodes IV, V, & VI), the online forum community built around a popular petition hosted at Original Trilogy turned to discussion of fan edits as a means to obta.
- Mar 15, 2020 As a child of the 1970s, the original Star Wars trilogy 1 Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi was—and remains—one of my favorite movie series of all time. Unfortunately, George Lucas has made it virtually impossible to watch the original unedited versions of the films. 2 Unedited versions exist on LaserDisc and DVD.
Empire Strikes Back
Born out of frustrated fans failed attempts to convince George Lucas to release the unaltered theatrical versions of the Star Wars Original Trilogy films (Episodes IV, V, & VI), the online forum community built around a popular petition hosted at Original Trilogy turned to discussion of fan edits as a means to obta.
…97% of project 4K77 is from a single, original 1977 35mm Technicolor release print, scanned at full 4K, cleaned at 4K, and rendered at 4K.
Because this is a scan of the original film, it's grainier than the Harmy releases—and there may be some actual film effects like scratches visible at times (I haven't yet watched the full movie, so I'm not sure).
But it is a full 4K, and it's a very different experience than is Harmy's version. As an example, here's the same still as I used in my prior post, but this one was taken from 4K77 (again, click to see the larger version):
Without looking back at the other blog post, it may not be obvious just how different these two versions are…but this composite photo makes it obvious:
There's a lot more detail in Chewie's fur, and the scene is much lighter than in Harmy's version. (It's a bit too white in the windows near the top of the photo; the details are getting blown out.) Due to the cut direction I used, you can't see it, but the red color on the background equipment is much richer on the 4K77 version. Keep in mind this is a 4K resolution image, though I scaled it down here—so it should look much better than would Harmy's version if you're watching on a big screen.
Unfortunately, there's not a nice 'How to get 4K77' guide for you to follow, as their is with Harmy's Despecialized Editions. The 4K77 project page suggests that usenet is the best source for their versions, and they're probably available in torrent form if you're willing to go that route. (I can't share where I found my versions, but I will say that it wasn't on usenet.)
Again, as with Harmy's Despecialized Editions, these are fan-made creations that you should never buy or sell, and it is technically illegal to have them, even if you do (as you should) own the original movies on another medium.
I'm not sure which version I prefer—Harmy's seems closer to what my memory thinks the movies were like, but there's no denying the appeal of a 4K version to watch on our big screen TV.
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Most movies will see two, maybe three different releases in their lifetime. You’ll have the original theatrical, then perhaps an “extended edition” and maybe even a “director’s cut.” Then you have the three original Star Wars movies, each of which has seen at least 38 slightly different releases.
Okay, so that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s safe to say that there have been more alterations to these three movies than any other in the history of cinema. But which is the definitive version of the films? If you’re a purist, then you probably want to watch the original theatrical version. The hard part about doing that is finding a version of it that you can play, and that looks good. Thankfully, there’s one guy that has been working hard on getting all three movies to look their absolute best.
If you’ve never heard of Harmy or his Despecialized Editions, then you’re missing out. This guy has been working hard for years to get all three of the original movies looking perfect, in their original theatrical glory. When I watched the movies in the Machete Order before The Force Awakens came out, I used his versions of the films to do so. (I own 4 different releases of the films, so I don’t really feel bad about downloading and watching his versions.)
Well, Harmy has been working hard to update Return of the Jedi to its purest form. There’s already a version of it in the wild that he released some time ago. However, he’s just finished what he is calling V2.5. So what’s different about the new release? I’d say that they are “less special,” but here’s the official description:
This is a reconstruction of the 1983 theatrical version of Return of the Jedi. The original shots were painstakingly restored using various sources and the film received an extensive shot by shot colour correction based on a fade free 1983 LPP Print. ROTJ v2.5 is pretty much completely despecialized, apart from a couple of wipes, which were recomposited optically in 1997 and look nearly identical to the originals, so for all intents and purposes this is the original version.
Harmy Despecialized Return Of The Jedi Download Torrent Download
The remastered version (v2.5) represents a significant improvement in picture quality over the earlier 1.0 version due to the use of better encoding and higher quality sources and replacing many of the despecialized shots with higher quality ones.
So where do you find this particular version of the film? Well, unfortunately for legal reasons (or so I’m told) I can’t actually tell you that. But I’m sure that you’re clever enough to work that out on your own.
Source: Harmy’s Facebook