The Terminator (1984) - 4 DVDs vs Blu-ray comparison PIX - Page 7

O-ho! Caught me on a juice-related technicality.


If Aliens is "distasteful", how would you describe stuff like The French Connection and Dracula?

While I won't argue that it's there, I honestly don't think THIS is nearly as damaging as many people are making it out to be. Aliens has always been a dim, poorly saturated film, and that monotone shifting from slightly blue to slightly green has far less impact on me than the DVD fleshtones shifting regularly towards pink, or the fact that highlights are no longer being blown out. The color timing is only part of the puzzle anyway - surely you'd not want studios to go back to scanning IP materials at lower resolutions, just to ensure that the Blu-ray has that "classic" look of a duplicate theatrical print?

Mind you, I can see making a case for only using original "finished" optical elements. Personally, I can forgive erasing Lance Henricksen's lower body sticking out of a hole being erased digitally - it's certainly no CGI Jabba, and if that's something that's always bugged Cameron, I can't say I'm overly fussed with him erasing it for his modern director-approved-version. It's not as if he's erasing all of our DVRs and stomping on our DVDs if we prefer the older versions either, so it's far less a damning situation than titles that have never had a proper release of their "Original" versions. (Honestly, I'm kind of amazed THAT hasn't gotten half as much scrutiny as the color temperature...)

But this may be where we agree to disagree, and that's fine. I think Aliens is - broadly speaking - a good use of modern tools to present a film that's 25 years old as the director may well have always wanted it to. If the sets looking a little green around the gills is the worst thing we have to complain about, we should probably count ourselves lucky... heck, weren't we all petrified when Cameron was talking about "Uprezzing" and "Degraining" the whole film?

Absolutely horrific.


Let me ask you this: What if, instead of teal, the next big fad in color grading is to make all movies bright glowing neon fuscha? Just because, one day, someone decides that fuschia looks cool, and everyone in Hollywood jumps on board the bandwagon. Would you be OK with Cameron re-doing Aliens with a new all-fuschia transfer? Or would you look at it and say, "That's hideously inappropriate. Why would anyone think this is a good idea?"

Teal is just as arbitrary a color to re-grade the movie to as fuschia. And frankly, it's barely any less gaudy or obnoxious.

Fuscha, Teal, Puce, Robin's Egg, Putty, Salmon, whatever. If the final results are as minute and and inoffensive as Aliens, I could care less what push colorists arbitrarily decide is the "in" pallet.

Now if Aliens looked like THIS, or THIS... yeah, we'd have a big problem and I'd be behind you 100%. But Aliens (thankfully) looks nothing like that.

So, uh... how's about that there Terminator movie?

I thought the teal push worked for Aliens because it's an alien planet, mostly indoors, and needs to feel creepier than the color temperature of your average Best Buy showroom. Bluish white in the egg nest just didn't look right.

I don't find the teal push to be either minute or inoffensive. It takes me instantly out of the movie. Your mileage may vary. But whether you agree or not, the fact remains that this is not how the movie was originally photographed. It's revisionism.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome James Cameron's publicist to the forum.

****, I forgot about all that recent hullabaloo surrounding Ahnuld. That'll definitely put a spanner in the works as far as True Lies and T1 are concerned.

That just leaves The Abyss. Come on Jimbo, there are no excuses left. I don't care if you colour the damned thing in neon fuchsia, just give us an anamorphic version already!

Hmm... I'm not sure that I do. This movie is now 25 years old. There has been a lot of "making of" material about it available for a long time now. Yes, I'd like Cameron to be able to guide the transfer process, but I don't think Schwarzenegger will have any input on that part of the process. As much as getting some first-class new supplements made would be nice, the movie's the priority and I'd like to see a nice transfer on Blu-ray before the format is washed up.

I never thought Arnold's sexual peccadilloes would affect a Blu ray release!

That's the logical way of looking at it, but the studio will no doubt want some new features to shout about (which is of course what Van started working on several years ago) and getting Arnie on board will be a big part of that.

Aaanuld not being able to keep it zipped has put the kibosh on a new Terminator film as well. He was supposed to star in it, though it still doesn't mean it will be any good.

They need an A-grade direct and writer, not B, C, D, or F as the last two were (trending more towards F).

Rumor was buzzing that William Wisher, co-writer of T2, wanted a crack at the new script. Don't know how much input he actually had on T2 since he was commenting to Cameron that most of his screenwriting contributions and ideas were cut out by Cameron on the audio commentary. Though he didn't seem too upset.

Wisher would probably be the closest person besides Cameron to know how the continuing storyline was supposed to go if they did a T3 until it got derailed by being sold off to a bunch of hacks.

Hell, I'd love it if Cameron at least directed a really good script. Say what you will about his latest efforts in script writing (Titanic and Avatar), but he is a gifted director and visualist and has an eye for detail (he did do most of the conceptual design work for his movies himself).

I highly doubt it would really affect it. Most people could not care less who or what Arnold bangs.

Not just concept art.

For example, he wrote a 10+ page worksheet detailing every little nut and bolt about the spaceship you see at the beginning of Avatar

I dont think theres another director in hollywood as detail obsessed as him.

David Fincher?

Guillermo del Toro. I enjoy his illustrations in the arty "Making Of" books that come out whenever he releases a new film as much as the movie itself.

Absolutely keep Schwarzenegger out of the transfer process: we don't want any of his facial DNR to rub off.

JC signs off on masters, not encodes, hence the T2 Skynet DNR debacle.

Wow, for a moment thought we are going to see the Holy Grail edition of T2 featuring a properly remastered picture.

The Japanese T2 is probably the best we will have for the next eight years.

Heh. There's a bit of baked-in EE, but apart from that T2 still looks pretty darned good for what is now a 9 year old transfer. (If Universal came up with "crap" like that on a regular basis I'd be over the moon.) The extra dirt removal/DNR pass is what did for the Skynet edition.

T2 is okay for the moment. And The Terminator mightn't look great, but at least it's 16:9. The Abyss STILL hasn't been afforded that basic technical requirement, which is a disgrace.

Perhaps just trying to better match with the T2 Skynet Edition cover art? I'm not getting my hopes up.