superman the movie

[jbat31]

I bought this tonight but have not opened it yet due to a quick question. How much better is this compared to the one i got from the boxset last year. I thought i heard it was not a big improvement

[esc]

Originally Posted by jbat31

I bought this tonight but have not opened it yet due to a quick question. How much better is this compared to the one i got from the boxset last year. I thought i heard it was not a big improvement

its not a mind blowing disc, but it is nice to see the film looking as good as it does.

I remember that there is some nice detail in the blue parts of Supe's suit.

I say open it if you are a fan of the films.

[MooglePorn]

Yeah, it's a good transfer, but it's nothing amazing...

[skywalking_sith]

Pretty awesome sound mix though...

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by jbat31

I bought this tonight but have not opened it yet due to a quick question. How much better is this compared to the one i got from the boxset last year. I thought i heard it was not a big improvement

Its a pretty decent improvement. How much probably depends on how big your HDTV is/resolution and how sensitive you are to things like digital artifacting.

[Derb]

Audio is noticeably improved. If you have a good upscaler dvd player than I'd pass as this HD/BDs video transfer is kinda sub-par & the DVD looks almost as good.

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Derb

Audio is noticeably improved. If you have a good upscaler dvd player than I'd pass as this HD/BDs video transfer is kinda sub-par & the DVD looks almost as good.

Let's not confuse a "sub-par" transfer with a transfer that does not look as good as a modern movie. No movie from the 70s is going to look as good as a movie from the past 5 years. They may look soft, have film grain, or both.

But that does not make them "sub par," as you will find the DVD editions on top of the softness destroys the structure of the grain and has MPEG2 artifacting on top of that.

In reality, this is a very good transfer. The HD DVD is free from digital artifacting and presents the remastered film elements very well. It is signficantly better than the DVD. Does it show the full potential of HD? Of course not, the movie is like 30yrs old. But it still looks a lot more like film than the DVD does - and your perception of difference depends on your equipment and sensitivity to digital artifacting.

Your confusion of terms is dangerous because then studios will be clamoring to DNR, EE, and boost contrast artificially of every old movie to give them artificial "HD pop".

[jbat31]

hmmm well, not sure yet, but i do love the film.

[David St. Dubly]

Originally Posted by Ruined

Let's not confuse a "sub-par" transfer with a transfer that does not look as good as a modern movie. No movie from the 70s is going to look as good as a movie from the past 5 years. They may look soft, have film grain, or both.

I can't agree with this at all, especially with a film as recently remastered as Superman. No reason that if they went straight from a cleaned up 35MM print (it had a 70MM blow-up that looked very soft) it wouldn't look as reasonably good as the recent King Kong.

For years, the best looking disc in my collection was the original Criterion version of The Third Man. That certainly wasn't produced in the last 5 years.

[MooglePorn]

Yeah, 2001 is probably the most impressive HD disc I own.

[Ruined]

I would agree that to me and film fanatics older films can look impressive. Like I think the Blazing Saddles HD DVD looks awesome. However to the average person, these films are not going to hold a candle in the eye candy department to stuff like King Kong.

You also cannot say "Film X from that time period looks awesome, so Film Y from the same time period can look awesome too." Some films were shot with a soft look on purpose (i.e. Superman) and therefore cannot look razor sharp without artificial EE added. Other films simply were not shot on good film stock - take Evil Dead for instance, that film will never look "awesome." Anchor Bay tried to modernize it and the results are horribly artificial looking. But even when a film is shot on good stock, if the elements were not preserved then it may need a costly restoration. In Superman's case due to popularity it got this, but other films which are less popular may simply not have enough mainstream appeal to warrant the cost of a restoration.

So, in the end you can't just look at film X and say it should look like film Y. There is often a lot of reasons why it does not look that way. In Superman's case, the filmmaker deliberately gave it a soft look. IMO the HD DVD is still very impressive though as it eliminates the MPEG2 artifacting of the standard DVD and preserves film grain structure better and colors are more accurate too. Some may not like this disc because it doesn't "pop" as much as a recent eyecandy movie, but myself I'm not looking for "pop" but rather the best presentation on disc relative to what is reasonable for said film.

[MooglePorn]

No shit.

But Superman can still look a lot better.

[pizza]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes, studios try too hard to make a film look better when it's already about as good as it can get. The latest trend is messing with the color scheme, such as some of the recent Disneys and Bonds, which I noticed right off. (My day job employs adjusting pictures in PhotoShop.)

I really like the HD of Superman because it looks the way I remember it the first time I saw it in the theater. Also, I like film grain so I'm glad to still see it in the print. I do wish they had included the Superman cartoons in the HD versions.

(I'm sure that's it's the same cut on the special edition DVD, but I was delighted with this version. Among other changes, it includes two key scenes -- young Lois appearance on the train with Noel Neill & Kirk Alyn and Superman facing off bullets, fire and ice in the tunnel to Luthor's hideout -- that I thought should have been in it right from the beginning.)

[Derb]

For a film which looks like its SD counterpart, I'm kinda surprised that this HD transfer gets praise.