I just caught this last week (we all knew they just had a wide expansion, right? 2000+ theaters) and I was stunned at how great it looked.
I presumed this was the new 4k master because it did not have the minty color timing of the blue rays, but looking up screen caps of the UHDs, they don’t at all look like what I saw in the theater. Much too murky and still had some of that “minty” look.
Thing is it really can’t be anything else, and I’ve noticed other movies that had rather obnoxious color timing on video or screencaps looked much more natural in the theater, I wonder why that is.
Yes, but were you watching at home on a calibrated display or just the out-of-the-box settings, etc, etc??
As far as I know, the version of Empire playing in theaters right now is still the 2004/2011 version off of that master (which, it’s worth mentioning, was only mastered by Lowry at 1920x1080 back in 2004, which isn’t even full 2k scope res).
I can’t speak for Empire, but I actually saw the 2011 bd of ANH projected in an actual movie theater several years ago and it looked surprisingly good shot out of a ridiculously expensive digital cinema projector. That might explain why Empire looked different from what you were used to.