Thanks for that comparison, my HDTV recording appears to have been sourced from the same "colour corrected" master as the Blu-Ray. I'll stick to watching my DVD instead.
I'm sure that if a DCP is struck, Cameron will strike it with that. It's probably the source for it now. He's pretty much erased the original color timing the same way Lucas has his original works, and I can't see demand for it being very big either, so it's not like another release is likely, especially given that the release is apparently exemplary in every other way :(. Cameron did actually apply some of that on the SE DVD version, apparently, but not to as extreme a degree. I'd really love to get rid of my Legacy and Quadrilogy (That's not a word) boxed sets and save some space, but Cameron has made me hang on to them. Shame the DVD will naturally be so inferior. Apparently Scott did it to the first film to a lesser degree too. If you've seen it in 35mm, I envy you. Add to that the fact the physical media market is on its knees, and a new release doesn't look likely much of anywhere in the future.
Filmmakers, directors etc are entitled to make whatever revisions they like to their work (and in the case people such as Lucas, their franchises), regardless of whether those revisions are ill advised and come across as vandalism. As a consumer, I'm also entitled to object to what I see as bad choices that ruin my enjoyment of the product and vote accordingly with my cash.
All arguments about film history aside, they certainly have no moral or legal obligation to release it. But I wish they would. But while you and I may vote with our money, the average person doesn't care. And on the off-chance that the OOT comes out remastered, I can't see Aliens and Terminator, which have already been remastered, getting their color-timing fixed back to the way it was before. The average person doesn't care, and with Cameron currently holding the top two box office hits in history, he probably doesn't much care what the fanbase thinks anyway.
Frankly, there should be a law making it illegal to release a special edition/director's cut/etc. of a film without releasing the original cut alongside it.
The Lucas example is the most extreme one, but the stuff with Michael Mann, James Cameron, Raimi, etc. is much subtler and much less likely to be noticed by the less discerning, and therefore less likely to be fixed. And that's not even counting all of the releases which omit the mono-The Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, An American Werewolf in London, Sergio Leone films, and God knows how many Hong Kong movies to name just a few. Being and HK fan is almost as frustrating as being an OOT fan. Even most of the damn Tai Seng VHS tapes are hard to find.
Mike O
God, I wish I could fix my name :p.
Regarding FotR, you're probably right. The problem with that new transfer isn't so much the coloration as the lack of contrast in the image. A big piece of evidence is the dissolve to white when Arwen saves Frodo: on all other transfers it's bright white whereas it's just a pale shade of green on the extended blu-ray. It's the same problem with any other scenes that should exhibit "peak white," such as the letters in the title shot and end credits. When you consider that a recall would've involved exchanging not just one, but two whole discs, you can see why everyone involved would've agreed to just keep saying "it looks exactly as we intended." Pretty frustrating when - aside from that one significant problem that affects the entire transfer - it's actually a pretty big step up from the theatrical blu-ray in terms of detail. All previous transfers of FotR were telecines of filmouts. The extended blu-ray was the first time they made a transfer directly from the DI files.
It's especially odd when you consider how digitally obsessed Jackson usually is. I think you're right though-it was a mastering fuckup that they'd simply rather not spend the time and money fixing. I'm hoping there'll be a new transfer in the inevitable six-film Mega-Middle-Earth boxed set which I'm holding out on buying the movie for (And man alive, is it a long wait!), but I'm not holding my breath.
The new transfer of Raiders is really more of a head-scratcher than a frustration. When you consider that they'd already done newer transfers of the three movies in 2008 (it's those transfers that were used for the Temple and Crusade blu-rays, in fact) and even struck new 35mm prints from them, you wonder what decisions led to them giving Raiders a radically different color-timing in 2012 from how they made it look in 2008.
That one mystifies me. It thought it might be a mastering mistake too, but given how obsessive Spielberg is about the visual look of his films (And the I recently attended a film club at a local multiplex and they projected the Blu of Jaws on a big-ass screen, and it was stunning.), I'm not sure. Why he'd swear off revisionism and then do a big change like that, I don't know. And the other discs in the boxed set don't have UPCs to sell individually either :p.
I actually love that blue/green tone. That was the only good thing about 2004 release of OT.
Like it or dislike it, it's not how the film looked for 25 years prior to its Blu-ray release, and that, IMO, is not OK.
That appears to tie in with reports by The Digital Bits soon after the 2004 DVD's were released that industry insiders had informed them that Lucas was preparing even further changes for subsequent versions.
So basically, the 2004 release was a just a placeholder to make OOT fans shut up?
And just when I though Lucas couldn't sink any lower...
I think it rules out the possibility of Disney releasing the OOT even further too.
Damn him in the ass!
How do you damn someone in the ass?
Sorry about the haphazard setup, these forums are weird and are even giving me trouble copying and pasting. And I think that we'll see all of the above fixed before we see new forums here ;).
