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Originally Posted by Geoff D
Back[Show spoiler] to the Future Part II (1989) 4K Dolby Vision review, UK UHD disc. HDR metadata: DCI-P3 colour primaries. Mastering display levels: 4000/0.005 max/min nits. Maximum Content Light Level: 1000 nits. Maximum Frame Average Light Level: 606 nits.
After starting my BTTF UHD review https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...5#post18208145 with what was basically a disclaimer telling people that it just wasn't gonna be a "pretty" movie and they should check their expectations accordingly, BTTF Part II comes along and pretty much blows that notion out of the water. Not that it doesn't still apply to the first film because it does, but the sequels are bigger, bolder and more expansive and with that comes more VFX, more technical polish and a greater canvas to work with. I dare say that DP Dean Cundey wouldn't disagree with my previous assessment of Zemeckis' "workmanlike" approach to visuals, in the American Cinematographer piece on Part II he noted that his director prefers low angles and wide lenses which need to be lit in quite a broad way and sometimes make it "hard to be 'painterly' with the light". But as Part II would be visiting several distinct periods - future 2015, alt-1985, 1955 again - then they could explore different looks. They stuck with the regulation 1.85 spherical framing as per the first film and if I had to guess (as the AC article doesn't mention the stocks used) I'd say it was all shot on 5295, this was the late '80s successor to the extremely grainy 5294 and featured T-grain in the blue layer, this greatly reduced the size of the grain but still kept it nice and speedy. (You can see the same kind of difference re: grain between the first two Ghostbusters films, first one was 5294 and the second was 5295.)
The movie starts with the do-over of the final scene of BTTF, reshot with Elisabeth Shue as Jennifer after Claudia Wells had to step back from acting, and admittedly it won't knock your socks off as the intent was to replicate what was shot before. But there's grain and there's detail, the grain looking a touch 'managed' as Marty and Jen approach each other (so not that different to the version of the scene on the BTTF UHD then, lol) and once the titles are over and we get to Hill Valley 2015 then bang, in comes sharp detail and some lovely fine grain as Marty and Doc talk in the alleyway. When Marty walks out into Hill Valley 2015 disguised as Marty Jr then it gets all soft again because so much of that is VFX for the flying cars, the holographic shark etc and those shots have been de-noised extensively, perhaps even more harshly than on the previous transfer because they soften tiny details that are clearly visible on that old transfer. But they now have better range and colour than the old one so it's a trade-off, and it's worth mentioning that not all VFX shots seem to suffer like this, some are still soft but have a respectable layer of grain and some look so good that they might as well be camera original, the bit when old Biff talks to his younger 1955 self in the garage looks AMAZING with sharp detail and fine grain. It's also worth noting that the rig removal for the 'flying' participants in the hoverboard chase is literally seamless, it was done well on the old BD to be fair but it looks even better now as those shots are so fresh and detailed. And that's just the practical shots, as the optical comps like the hoverboards being thrown to the ground by Biff's gang have been revamped as well, not digitally augmented as such but just tidied up to remove matte lines and compositing errors, you'll see what I mean in the photo section.
But away from all the VFX and those multi-layered motion control shots the underlying transfer is very, very good. As I said, you get a taste when Marty and Doc first touch down in Hill Valley 2015 and when it quietens back down after the action you get that terrific grain and sharper detail - more so than on the first film - in abundance. Maybe still not some people's ideas of "reference quality" but eh, this is a 30 year old film so it's not going to look like someone just went out with an 8K RED and shot it yesterday - though there are definitely a few shots that are up there with the best I've seen on 4K HDR, there's so much clarity and refinement to them. The close-up of Marty seeing his father's grave in 1985A is stunning, beautifully lit and so detailed, and the exterior of Biff's house when old Biff drives into the garage in 1955 looks sooooo good. The grain is just fantastic, fine but lively and looking more organic than it does on much of BTTF's UHD. It's finer than on BTTF but that's not due to "grain managed" ****ery, it's literally a different film stock. And if folks still aren't convinced then compare most of the UHD's non-VFX scenes to the old BD, it's so video-y and noisy and overly sharp and blown out to fudge in the highlights on the old disc. Christ it's putrid.
Yes, I said "most" scenes as we can't always escape the DNR demons on non-VFX shots, this is Universal after all. But, as with the softer 'dream like' notion that may have been the reasoning behind DNR'ing Marty's arrival into Hill Valley 1955 in BTTF, I see a similar pattern in Part II as the most blatant DNR occurs when young Jennifer is taken back to her 'home' by the cops. Some of that stuff is incredibly smudgy on the UHD and not just for the subsequent VFX shots of the three McFlys all played by Michael J. Fox, as the first shot of Jennifer being led into the living room ("lights on?") has been softened to hell and back. The old disc is substantially more detailed in that shot and several that follow, so I genuinely think they've tried to play up the disorientation of the character by smudging it like this. Again, probably giving someone too much credit but when the rest of the movie looks as finely filmic as it does then there's got to be some sort of reason for this. The only other non-VFX shot that gets close to this level of fudgery is when Marty goes into the nostalgia store to buy the Sports Almanac, his face and that of the salesperson are fudged over for some weird reason while the scene around them looks pin-sharp, this being the shot with the infamous speaker grille that some turnip tried to argue was fake detail or some such shit when caps of the streaming versions first popped up. Nah bruv, that's real detail. And thankfully there's no mastering cock-up like the entire reel with dodgy chroma in BTTF's UHD, though they've traded it in for a Dolby Vision encoding error in one shot instead, I'll cover that at the end.
The HDR basically has the same brief as the first film, expanding the highlights almost exponentially compared to the burnt-out ridiculousness of the previous transfer. Skies that were just torched expanses of white now have colour and shading, light sources are no longer set to nuke 'em levels and exterior street views from interiors have loads more depth. It's such a well-rounded usage of HDR with a good solid APL again so it doesn't look dimmer than the extant SDR version (not unless you've got SDR on Torch Mode, though that wouldn't surprise me with some people), it just looks so natural the way it so effortlessly expands the imagery without calling undue attention to itself. And the VFX show some excellent levels of range as well, headlights and things on the flying cars have visibly more information than the old transfer and even the animated lightning bolts look aces, much more realistic here whereas they were a bit funky on the HDR grade of BTTF. (That said, I got a look at a laserdisc rip of BTTF and to my surprise the VFX lightning looks more like it does on the UHD than on the silly old 2010 Blu-ray, I'll add some photos to my BTTF UHD review when I get a chance.) As with BTTF, the newly remastered 1080p Blu-ray of Part II shows lots more range than the old Blu so some of the major differences are down to 'old transfer is old' more than HDR alone but even so: the UHD is still resolving more in the highlights with better colour saturation and volume than the new Blu-ray, which again has a 'harder' look in the brighter scenes and feels flat and dull next to the UHD.
Colour also follows much the same pattern as with BTTF, the greeny bias of the old transfer is replaced by a warmer but vastly more natural look to primaries and skin tones. Cundey once again intended for the 1955-revisited stuff to skew warmer so as to match the original, and he opted for a similar tone for the future sequences too so that it wouldn't seem too 'out there' to audiences. The 1985A stuff went for a much darker look, literally, shrouding Hill Valley in darkness to make it more ominous, more foreboding, and so it'd make the neon-lit gaudiness of Biff's Pleasure Palace stand out so much more than if the scene were set in daylight. The interiors also carried on with this theme with similarly tacky sets, the "Las Vegas" vibe as Cundey called it, and all that gold and maroon looks excellent on the UHD, again freed up by the lack of that green tint. Cundey likes to mix light sources to provide some contrast (not so much on/off contrast but between different hues of colour) and that really comes through on the shots of Marty at the cemetary as mentioned up there ^ somewhere, they go with a conventional 'blue' night look but have the refinery blazing away in the background which justifies them throwing a warmer tone on one side of his face while the other is hit by the bluer 'night' light. Gorgeous. Black levels also do the same things as BTTF's UHD does, looking much less crushed than before and uncovering lots more shadow detail whilst still looking deep and dense when needed. The new BD tries its best to keep up but yet again has this kind of duller bronzed look to the colour that sucks the life out of it when combined with that 'harder' looking light. Better than the old BD at any rate, but the new BD still falls some way short of the UHD.
Compression-wise it's another virtually transparent encoding, another UHD100 having been employed here to house the movie, FEL Dolby Vision layer and the existing extras, so that sweet sweet grain never succumbs to overt blocking or that nasty chroma noise. Ah yes, the Dolby. Remember that bit in the UHD of JAWS where you get some ghosting on-screen for a split second as the helicopter flies over the beach? Same thing happens during BTTF Part II's Dolby Vision output though NOT in the main body of the film (though I could swear some of the background details are visible through Marty's face for a split-second after he pushes Griff in the cafe), it happens on the trailer for Part III in the shot where Doc swings his rifle into action, the barrel of the gun visibly 'ghosts' as he swings it around. It's not subtle and this artefact is categorically not there on the HDR10 layer, here are some photos:
Dobly
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HDR10
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As for the movie, it's fun but I can't shake the feeling that it's more of a technical exercise, not just for all the ground-breaking VFX but the story too. They talk in the extras for the first film about how they didn't want it to be about technology, that there's very little technobabble because the time travel *itself* is just a means to have some cool shit happen, like dropping an '80s kid into the '50s, and the tech isn't the main focus of the story (see also: The Terminator) but they pretty much invert that with Part II. So much of it focuses on who time traveled to where and throws so many alternate scenarios at us that it loses sight of the human core of the story, each segment even feels like a third act on its own which makes it such a fragmented experience. There's Doc and Marty trying to stop Marty Jr from ruining his life, there's Doc and Marty triumphing over alt-Biff, then there's Doc and Marty trying to beat young Biff without altering what they've already done. When the highlight of a sequel is when it literally restages the climax of the first one it feels like it can't stand on its own, it's cute AF on the surface but is emotionally hollow underneath and it just serves to remind me how much I love the first film.
THESE IMAGES ARE NOT INTENDED TO CONVEY THE ENTIRETY OF EITHER SDR OR HDR WITH 100% ACCURACY BUT ONLY SPECIFIC ASPECTS. THEY CAN ALSO BE MUCH DARKER THAN THE CONTENT ACTUALLY APPEARS OWING TO THE EXPOSURE NECESSARY TO CAPTURE THE DYNAMIC RANGE.
Marty with Holo-JAWS. UHD is palpably softer (look at the objects in the sky) but still doesn't look as raggedy as the old BD, and look at the JAWS holo: notice anything about the flecks of 'holo-noise' between the two versions? Hint: wayward dirt removal strikes again on the old transfer.
2010 BD
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UHD
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Wide shot of Hill Valley 2015. I really like the colour (less green) and range on the UHD (look at the white car) but look at the sky, those little pylons for the skyway are almost entirely smooshed away on the UHD.
2010 BD
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UHD
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Marty in the Cafe 80s, "all I want is a Pepsi!". UHD just looks nicerer, it loses that weirdly out of focus look that the old transfer has.
2010 BD
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UHD
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Marty squaring up to Griff, the background is rendered with more clarity on UHD and again it just loses that video-like look in general, it's more naturally filmic
2010 BD
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UHD
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Gonna show a sequence of frames from the hoverboard bit I mentioned that'd been cleaned up. First one, mightn't seem like too much difference, though you can see the background bleeding through the heel of the boot and on the board, under the toe of the boot. UHD colour also looks far better without that shitty green tint.
2010 BD
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UHD
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Next one, now things are hotting up. The thick black matte lines around the boot are gone and the bottom of the hoverboard has been cleaned up quite a bit, again a sliver of transparency around the heel has been filled in.
2010 BD
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UHD
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Third one, holy shit.
2010 BD
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UHD
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Fourth one, nothing more need be said.
2010 BD
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UHD
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"Batter up!" It's not some amazing difference but the sky isn't a nuked white, nor is the specular on Griff's shiny helmet. Better colour again.
2010 BD
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UHD
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Jennifer being escorted home. No, the caps have not been mixed up. UHD is soft as balls.
2010 BD
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UHD
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Trump, er, I mean alt-Biff in the hot tub. Again the old BD looks like it's out of focus in comparison, so much more texture on the new one.
2010 BD
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UHD
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The DeLorean when they knock out alt-Biff on the roof, the old BD totally nukes the headlights, the new BD brings it back a ways and the UHD smacks the shit out of both of them. This is zoomed in a lot, hence the visible pixels.
2010 BD
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2020 BD
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UHD
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Lorraine running from Biff after she gets her dress from the shop. Old BD looks green, new BD has that 'pale' look I keep talking about where it seems to lose midrange detail, UHD has more contrast and keeps everything in a nice balance. Speculars look great too, like the sun reflecting off of Lorraine's dress box.
2010 BD
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2020 BD
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UHD
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I don't often like to take photos just to show resolution because the noise reduction of the camera can play silly buggers, but I just had to get this. The UHD murderises the old BD, look at the tiles on the roof!
2010 BD
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UHD
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This is to show it's not all bad with the VFX, this shot of the paper changing looks wonderful with all that lovey fine grain on the UHD while the old BD is as clean as the proverbial whistle and lacks so much texture. (Ignore the slightly off-kilter text in the BD shot, this one was a bastard to get a photo of and the multi-HDR exposure is smearing the lettering)
2010 BD
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UHD
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Last one, I couldn't get a lightning shot like on the BTTF UHD review because the background is so dark it knackers the exposure, but here's one of it striking the DeLorean just before it disappears. Old BD is of course totally nuked, new BD brings back a load of range but the UHD properly energises it, you get the brightness and range at the same time rather than having to sacrifice one for the other.
2010 BD
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2020 BD
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UHD
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I don't know why someone hasn't offered you a sack of moneyz yet to review. Elect Geoff, progress is his middle name.
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