by Topeka » September 6th 2011 11:13 pm
Sam has always been in the parade. It's the Palpatine landing shots that use a double along with midget Yoda. There have always been two digital Yoda shots that have gone unchanged, the walking shot in the tower and the establishing shot of the funeral pyre.
The Phantom Menace is very soft. At best it has a moderate level of DNR. At its very worst is the Qui-Gon closeup above, flat-out DVD edge enhancement and images so sharp they're pixelated. Clarity and color are very inconsistent from shot to shot within the same scene. The podrace is the longer 2001 cut, and it really sounds fantastic. There's a noticeable audio addition of some alien gibberish during Jabba's introduction.
For a new film transfer, it is a bit of a disappointment. Again, I wonder if the film was intentially 'cleaned' to look like video when it was released in '99. I really have nothing to compare it against to prove that. I can see that the 2001 master has the same soft and sharpened scenes.
The extended framing really opens up the settings, however some shots are actually tighter. Compared to what we've been shown before it looks brilliant.
