MERGED: Lion King DVD discussion thread (1 Viewer)

[James Reader]

Will Disney f--k up again like they did with Beauty and the Beast?

Being as the transfer for the Lion King will not be including multiple angles (as the Beauty and the Beast Work In Progress version did) they should be able to implement the two versions of the films with seamless branching (something we know Disney can do, as they implemented seamless branching on their Kate and Leopold release).

My big worry is that the "original" version of the film will infact be the IMAX version of the film (which also did not include the "new" song - but did include a number of effects shots alterations, as well as general animation tidy-ups throughout).

 

[Brian Kidd]

If BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is any indication, the "Original" version will have all of the revised animation, not including the new song. I guess we'll find out when the disc comes out.

 

[Dan Rudolph]

In beauty and the Beast, the original didn't have the revised animation. It continues with the original trashed interiors past the place where Human Again went. The animation was altered for different reasons with the Lion King, so they very likely will have the revised version.

 

[Chris Farmer]

Unless I'm mistaken though, most (although not all) of the alterations (excluding the famous SEX in the dust garbage) were done due to the special needs of the IMAX theater. IE the IMAX screen is so huge that for example, characters who before were too small to be reall ynoticed are now 5 feet tall. So where the animators didn't give them a face before, now that's blatantly obvious, so they added a face. Shrink it back down to HT dimensions and those animals now become an inch or two high, and the change will be so small as to be unnoticeable. If my understanding of the changes made is correct of course, if not then all bets are off. [shrug]

 

[Anthony Urzi]

Forego a comentary for DTS?
You must be kidding.....Comentaries add added value and insight into the film and film makers, while a step up from a good dolby digital 448 kbs mix to a DTS track adds very little to the value of th emovie....it's a gimmick for extreme audiophiles and people with $2000+ sound systems. While DTS is cool, it should never replace special features unless a seperate superbitesque disk is produced with overkill video and audio is created in addition to the movie and/or suplimental content is included on seperate disks.


Comentaries are miniscule though and can easily eb included on a movie., especially on a movie this short.

What ticks me of fis waste of bitrate, Atlantis 2 for example has an average bitrate fo liek 8 or 9 mbps, and dts audio, whiel neither the aniamtion nor the audio mix is worth the attention, they just did it to take up space.

Look at Pearl Harbor Directors Cute (3 audio comentaries DTS 5.1, DD 5.1, French 5.1, and Dolby Headphone and they still fit 2:09 worth of film on 1 disc not bad bitrat 4-5 mbps range)
And LOTR EE (4! audio comentaries, Dolby Digital EX 5.1, DTS ES 6.1, and Stereo Surround 1:45 footage tiem on a disk, and a high video bitrate, in the 6-7 mbps tange)

A Film liek TLK won't require a very high bitrate for most of it, soem will, so they could easily put 2 comentaries a dts a dd and mayeb a 2nd or 3rd laungage and have headroom to spare, doens't mean they will of course

 

[James Reader]

In beauty and the Beast, the original didn't have the revised animation. It continues with the original trashed interiors past the place where Human Again went. The animation was altered for different reasons with the Lion King, so they very likely will have the revised version.

I beg to differ - the Beauty and the Beast release has the revised animation throughout the special edition and in the first half of the so-called 'original' edition. Most of the revised animation is virtually unnoticeable as, like Lion King it was "touching up detail" for the large screen IMAX presentation. One example that can be seen though is blood coming from the Beast's wound after he is attacked by the wolves, which was not on the original release. The revisions to the IMAX release were much more than the new musical number and the subsequent revised backgrounds.

In addition, the original release of the Beauty and the Beast disc did not have the original soundtrack. This can be heard when Belle leaves the castle with the Beast's consent. In the "Special Edition" smashing noises can be heard (to explain how the castle is shown in disrepair again after the tidy-up). This sound was not in the original release, but is still on the DVD soundtrack.

As for The Lion King, virtually all of the digital effects were redone for the IMAX presentation, not just the "SFX in the dust" scene. Plus, as has been mentioned, general animation clean-ups for the large screen presentation.

I have no actual complaints about the BatB DVD like others do (regarding PQ) but I have a big issue with Disney claiming it is the original theatrical presentation when it is in fact not. More so with The Lion King if my fears are proved to be correct - why not just truefully advertise the 'Cleaned-up IMAX version of the Original Cut' and the 'Special Edition cut' and not deliberately mislead anybody?

 

[Anthony Urzi]

Does anyone really WANT the original untouched original theatrical master as best viewed at that time, presented on dvd? For what, a fake hoem verison of the movie theature presentation? Maybe people are into that, i dunno.

Nearly ever older film which debutes on modern dvd even the exact same cut of the film goes through digital grading to get to dvd, whther it be picture clean up, remixing the sound, whateve rit is, you'll almost never get the whatyousawiswhat you get of the original theatrical release.

First you have differnt formats and a differnt viewing enviornment. What was ok in a theature might not work for home theature and vice versa.

I'm fiwn with cleaning up aniamtion and film artifacts from a dvd and still calling it "original theatrical cut"

The minute they recut the film, add or remove actual footage, digitally add in new skys, or windows where there weren't, new cg elements (star wars se) or in the case of aniamtion, re-animate scenes with new processes like cgi, or whatever, then it can no longer be called the original cut, in my mind. Re-doing the sound and picture though i'm fine with, upgradign dolby stereo or dolby prologic to a new dolby 5.1 mix from the original stems, please, do upgrade the movie sonicly to the best of what today's technology has to offer.


Why waste the disck space on a direct copy no modern fixes of an older movie to dvd? might haas well keep the VHS then, and fi they do that, a large portion of the HT comunity will complain about the poor transfer, or lack of taking advanatge of modern technology. I do feel however that any changes or upgrades need to be aproved by the original director, to ensure it stays within his vision.

 

[LukeB]

The minute they recut the film, add or remove actual footage, digitally add in new skys, or windows where there weren't, new cg elements (star wars se) or in the case of aniamtion, re-animate scenes with new processes like cgi, or whatever, then it can no longer be called the original cut, in my mind.

That's what we're talking about. I think we ALL want the original theatrical cut, presented in the best possible quality. Whereas Disney will most likely be giving us the IMAX cut, with altered animation.

It'll be a shame if the "Asian imports" on eBay offer something that Disney's official DVD release doesn't - namely, the true theatrical cut.

Clean-up/digital remastering is one thing, but re-animating things and altering stuff is quite another.

 

[James Reader]

Why waste the disck space on a direct copy no modern fixes of an older movie to dvd? might haas well keep the VHS then, and fi they do that, a large portion of the HT comunity will complain about the poor transfer, or lack of taking advanatge of modern technology. I do feel however that any changes or upgrades need to be aproved by the original director, to ensure it stays within his vision.

Becuase you can't change history! - only the vain and egocentric think that they can. (Which probably explains why Hollywood is so fixated on doing "special editions" at the moment)

How hard is it for people to grasp this concept whenever rivisionist filmmaking is brought up? Films are history. Why does the AFI and the BFI spend so much time and money preserving them?

They document more than just a story - they document the talents of the filmmakers at the time, the technology of the time, internal studio policies and politics, world politics and so much more.

How can you watch a talent (or even the artform as a whole) grow if people insist on revising it's history every 10 years or so?

 

[Anthony Urzi]

The history part is a good point, and maybe there is a market for untouched originals. Largly though, if given the opertunity to upgrade yoru picture to teh stanards you always wanted in the first place, why wouldn;t you want to take it?

Look at Star Trek The Motion Picture Directors cut.....Finally 20? years later the Director got the final cut he always wanted and completed everything he had originally intended for the film, and thats a great example of technology not interfereing with story telling as they spent a great deal of time tuning the effects so they would match seemlessly withthe original work done.

 

[James Reader]

Regarding ST:TMP - so you think the Director's Cut finally presents the film as Robert Wise intended? Perhaps it does but I doubt it. In fact, of all the films made since filmmaking began how many are as the director originally envisioned or intended? None I would imagine. There's always some compromise.

Okay - for ST:TMP there is a reason the original cut is considerably removed from Robert's vision. But what happened, happened. It's become history. Paramount set the deadline, the film had to open that weekend. If original cut as well as telling the story of the film, also (to a lesser extent) tells the story behind the film. Isn't this why we like the proper 'Making of' documentaries when they appear on a DVD rather than a brief self congratulatory HBO special - because we like to know the ins and outs of the film's production. What's the point of knowing the troubled production of a film if the studio is just going to effectively erase it in favour of a 'better' version whenever they feel like it?

[sarcasm]Let's 'improve' Whale's Invisible Man, because, as stunning as the effects are for 1933 - I'm sure if he had the chance he would have opted for "Hollow Man" type digital excesses. No point in keeping the original effects is there? Not when you can have better.[/sarcasm]

Do you think J K Rowling is 100% happy with the first Harry Potter book? Don't you think she may come up with something (no matter how slight) for book 6 or 7 which could possibly be improved by adding a passage or two to the first book? If so I doubt she will do it. In fact, how many author's have issued new editions of their novels? I'm sure that they all grow as writers over time, but none of them seem to have the Hollywood obsession of going back and rewriting ('improving') their works.

To keep this thread somewhat more on topic let's consider Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Originally, as well as including the Human Again song (which, incidentally was dropped not due to studio interference, but because they couldn't make it work in the context of the movie), the opening telling the story of the Beast's original transformation was to be animated rather than told in voice-over static stained glass window images. But a combination of time and money constraints meant that the version we are all familiar with was chosen instead. Does this mean that in a few years time, you'll be open to a "Beauty and the Beast: Extra Special Edition" release with an animated opening? You have to draw the line somewhere, and more importantly - the creators have to move on and create fresh, new movies instead of living of past glories instead of looking to the future.

 

[Cees Alons]

I'm sure that they all grow as writers over time, but none of them seem to have the Hollywood obsession of going back and rewriting ('improving') their works.

Very true, James, but to be fair to them, it doesn't have to be an "obsession" actually. Just a (perhaps ill-advised) desire to make those films more attractive for a new sales period (cinema period).

In fact, it already happened with a lot of books. When they become a bit older and no longer meet the current standards of reading for some reason (and still are reasonably popular), they are very often "abridged", "modernized", "reworked", "told again" or whatever.
Personally, I happen to have read the original (rather verbose) versions of Alexander Dumas's books (The Three Musketeers and sequels, The Count of Monte Cristo and sequel, etc.), but I wonder how many other readers of those books have. Other authors come to mind, like Jules Verne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Tolkien (yes, yes!) and what about most of the stories from the Bible?

Not to mention filmed versions!


Cees

 

[Chris Farmer]

Interesting that you ring up Rowling James. The original printing of Goblet of Fire had a rather glaring error near the end.When Voldemort's wand is regurgitating spells in reverse order, Harry's father comes out before his mother, even though the wand is working backwards and his father was killled before his mother.
In subsequent printings, this error was fixed, with the proper order being established.

Also, not Rowling, but similar case, how about Tolkien revising an entire chapter of the Hobbit to enhance continuity with The Lord of the Rings? Is that not exactly what you were talking about there? Oh, and notice that most copies of Lord of the Rings are the second edition, was numerous revisions made by Tolkien to fix continuity errors in the original version.

 

[Dan Rudolph]

James wasn't Human again dropped because the way they wanted to do it would have been too technically complex (read expensive and time-consuming)?

 

[James Reader]

I'll have to watch the supplements again, but I got the impression it was dropped because they felt if slowed the story down too much.

This from animated movies seems to confirm my impressions:

And the new version includes a delightful New Year's gift: the song "Human Again," in which the various animated objects — Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts, Lumiere — muse on their hopes of being released from the spell that imprisons them. The song was originally written for the movie by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, but never animated, because the filmmakers felt at the time that it posed story problems.

However, being as the opening sequence was changed due to financial and time coniderations (the film was made in 2 years rather than the usual four) it's possible both contraints also played a part in the dropping of the sequence.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

While DTS is cool, it should never replace special features

different strokes to different folks. For me, maxiumum image and sound quality is first priority. *all* "extra" special features come next.

I don't have a $$$ sound system and yet DTS consistently sounds more natural, detailed, and abient than even the best Dolby Digital. I do agree that 448 DD is not bad, and I think that all DD tracks should be mastered at this rate (grrrr to WB who doesn't think so), but DTS still sounds better (less digital/more analog) consistently in my system.

Hopefully HD-DVD will have the bandwidth to do high-quality picture, and sound with plenty of room to spare for extras like commentary so we won't have to worry about what compromises need to be made in the future.

-dave

 

[PaulP]

I haven't seen any specs that confirm that the DVD will indeed contain a commentary, but UltimateDisney got this menu screenshot:



I assume this is the original LD commentary.

 

[Dan Hitchman]

Take out the redundant Dolby Digital mix (the IMAX mix is more powerful anyway) and the French mix and BOOM! There could have been an enhanced DTS mix as well!

To me it looks like Disney's Platinum titles are DOWNGRADING the experience from their non-Platinum 2 disc sets. They also cram too many video supplementals on disc 1 too.

Dan

 

[TonyD]

The Lion King features no less than four different ways to view the film: the original theatrical version and a new "special edition" version (which includes a new musical number), both in anamorphic widescreen video (1.85:1). In addition, each of these versions can be played with the original 5.1 audio mix or a brand new Disney Enhanced Home Theater 5.1 mix.

what the heck is a home theater mix?

 

[PaulP]

I guess a mix done specifically to sound best via home theater speakers and not the original theatrical mix. I'm guessing more aggressive, etc.