Here's a bit of history about aspect ratios (and the filming of them) that I'm recalling from my years of persistence and anality on the subject :-
I'm a full believer of watching a movie in its Original Aspect Ratio (to get the entire viewable image possible), at least in terms of the intended viewing presentation by the director. But each film is different, which roughly fall into these sorts of camps ...
- oar 1.33:1 (or all Stanley Kubrick movies) with little or no intention of being widescreen (while SK was alive), but are now sometimes being cropped to 1.78:1 on video etc (even things like the old Laserdisc game Dragon's Lair has been unfairly cropped like this etc)
- hard-framed ratio - eg Aliens (1985) at 1.85:1 oar (or any other 70mm/equivalent film-making etc) - no option but to crop this for 1.33:1 when on old-time TV (but James Cameron didn't know he didn't have do hard-framing at that point, hence the following transition to ...)
- Super35 (oar 1.33:1) - eg The Abyss (1989) and True Lies (1995) - cinema cropped to 2.35:1, but the TV presentation can take advantage of some/all of the 1.33:1 frame (however, the CGI-FX are nearly always only rendered in the 2.35:1 frame)
Robocop 1 - oar 1.66:1
first DVD (Criterion 1998) was oar 1.66:1 non-anamorphic, but has a full-bodied 2.0 soundtrack (great for when ED-209 shoots its guns off etc)
later DVDs/BluRays are now cropped at 1.78:1 and the 5.1 mix is pitiful (even with .1 subwoofer channel), like Terminator 1's remix etc
Total Recall, Blues Brothers, Evil Dead I - oar 1.33:1
all video releases (until the latest SEs) have always been presented in thei oar 1.33:1 (but not hotly considered for widescreen at the time)
for Evil Dead, Sam Raimi demanded to crop it at 1.78:1 and do a couple of "star wars adjustments" (such as removing the rogue hillbillies at the start of the bridge scene, which unfortunately negates any possible talking-point about this and other "bloopers" in the film)
for Total Recall, it only seems to suffer for a particular scene where the "futuristic Pepsi sign" entirely disappears on the cropped 1.78:1 frame
for Blues Brothers, it really bugs me because when cropped to 1.78:1, the "neon hat on top of the head of the musician" is entirely missing in the image, thereby the joke is destroyed forever
Monty Python & The Holy Grail - oar 1.66:1
first DVD release (1999) was oar 1.66:1 non-anamorphic
later DVDs were cropped 1.85:1 anamorphic
latest SE DVD 2006 is oar 1.66:1 anamorphic, and so will the Blu-Ray be too
Starship Troopers - oar 1.85:1
Now, why do I mention this movie? Well, I'm glad you asked. (hehe, any Aussies old enough to remember "The Curiousity Show"?)
when you watch the original DVD, the TV's 1.78:1 frame is filled in, but there are cropped words on left/right sides of frame, which indicates a cropping of the oar 1.85:1 (but a recent review of the Blu-Ray claims a 1.85:1 viewing ratio, but what that really means here I have no idea).
(btw, I don't know how or why I'm showing up as "double-space", but I can't stop this ... anyone know what I'm doing wrong here in ot.com?)