Catching a movie projected digitally can be a rewarding experience – the picture clarity and brightness is astonishing, and the pre-movie ads and trivia bullshit are often animated! And as Star Wars fans know very well, you may even see a different movie than the folks catching it on celluloid.
That will be the case with Revenge of the Sith which, just like Attack of the Clones, will have a slightly different digital version. "The digital version of the movie will be different from the version that goes out on film. That has to be locked down so much earlier, whereas the digital can go right up to a week-and-a-half before the film comes out," Darth McCallum tells Empire Magazine.
Let’s divorce this from Star Wars for the sake of argument. While it’s nice that digital gives filmmakers more prep time, maybe the answer is to not set release dates before work on a movie begins? What’s interesting is that I had thought (and I think that Lucas did as well) that digital projection would be a lot more widespread by now. This really makes you wonder how much of a point there is in directors pursuing 3D tech before the last "next-gen" film technology even becomes remotely commonplace.