zombie84 said:
I have three theories to explain this:
2) The duplicate stock was very bad. In 1985, there was a batch of Kodak stocks that was excessively grainy, and it was replaced the next year with an improved version. Aliens was shot on this, which is why that films looks really grainy, and Cameron is currently de-graining it for the Blu Ray release because he says he was never happy with how grainy it was (I disapprove, but that's another case). Now, negative raw stock is totally different from duplicate stock. I don't know if Kodak's duplicate stocks that year were affected by the issue. The stock Aliens was shot on was a low-light special stock, and low light = graininess, so its no surprise that grain would be a problem. I have a feeling that the duplicate stocks would not be afflicted by this issue, but just throwing it out there that 1985 was a bad year for unusual grain for what it is worth. The duplicate stock of Star Wars might not be so bad as to have the problem of the Aliens stock, but it would definitely be grainier than an interpositive printed today because the granularity of all stocks in the 70s and 80s was poorer.
Which would point to problem #2 as the main culprit. You can see negative dirt on the GOUT, but you can see some on the Technicolor print, so that can't be the problem either. There's print dirt and dust on the IP itself, but thats not what is making the image look like shit, it's just making the problem already there worse. The problem also seems to inexplicably get better as the film progresses, as the first two or three reels are really bad and then it gets better; I don't know how to explain that, maybe the negative of those reels was just much dirtier so the image just looks grainier.
I'm kind of rambling now, but the situation is a bit confusing.
I completely agree. I've always thought this was the main problem behind the video image looking this way. The 97 doesn't look like this, although with the smearing from the broadcast versions it starts to. And even the SE isn't as sharp as the original.