Pitch Black (2000) 4K Dolby Vision review, UK UHD disc. HDR metadata: BT.2020 colour primaries. Mastering display levels: 1000 max/0.0001 max/min nits. Maximum Content Light Level: N/A. Maximum Frame Average Light Level: N/A.
Arrow's first foray into 4K UHD disc might've had some people wondering if they could pull it off but, as I've said to people before, Arrow are no mugs and nor are the restoration and grading facilities that they employ. The physical transfer and restoration thereof was always going to be excellent so I guess the only question mark was over the usage of HDR, and for a VERY stylised movie at that - although it helps that the director David Twohy approved the new transfer, inclusive of the HDR hopefully. And, well....Arrow have knocked it out of the park.
The transfer itself is supremely good, losing the telecine jitter of the old Universal BD (which I'll be using as my point of SDR 1080p comparison throughout this review) and although it hasn't been cleaned up to an absolutely spotless standard owing to the frequent flecks of white (negative dirt) that are sprinkled around, I'm plenty happy with 'good enough' rather than 'overly processed'. Arrow rarely go overboard with the processing these days anyway, but if they had to stop short of their usual standard to free up a bit of cash for other mastering aspects like the HDR then that's fine.
Not that it needs more filmic flavour as the interiors carry a MUCH heavier grain field than the exteriors, not surprising as DP David Eggby used a very fast, very grainy 500-speed stock for the interiors and night exteriors, while the daylight exteriors were shot on much slower fine-grained 50-speed stock and overexposed anyway to burn out the highlights. The exteriors were then bleach bypassed to make them look harsher still - where the bleaching process used to wash the silver from the developed film is skipped, desaturating the colour and pumping up the contrast - with one core difference: they wanted to retain distinct colour schemes for the red & yellow suns and the blue sun. Instead of using a lot of filters in-camera Eggby gelled the lights to add the required hue and dialled in the rest during printing, this allowed them the freedom of not burning 100% of the colour directly onto the negative (which was being bleach bypassed anyway so they didn't want to do too much other funkiness in-camera, just in case) and so that gave them enough leeway in post to push the colour where they wanted it.
As they've gone back to the OG negative for this new transfer then those 'looks' would not have been timed in at source, they would need to be graded from scratch and this Arrow edition does a masterful job at maintaining those different 'looks'. They don't fully emulate what the previous Universal BD did with the colour (transferred from an IP most likely) but they take it to the logical extremes within the HDR space. The 'red & yellow suns' scenes had much more of a yellowy hue on the old transfer, very distinctive in itself to be sure but for the Arrow they've gone with more of a burnt orange kind of tone, not a drastic departure but one that makes sense (as red + yellow = orange). The 'blue sun' stuff actually looks quite similar to before, only with a bit more of the blue tone bled into it for the Arrow.
The interior and night exterior stuff was not however subject to these processes and was shot and developed in a much more conventional manner. Colour has a consistently warmer hue to skin tones in the interiors, fairly similar to the old disc but with more nuance and separation of tone, and the red of the emergency lights during the cryosleep scene is more deeply saturated than on the old transfer. The grain is significantly coarser in the dark than the day exteriors, even with the bleach bypass of the latter, and there's a huge difference in perceptual sharpness as well, the darker stuff almost looks like dupes with its blue/yellow-flecked grain when put next to the astonishingly pin-sharp and almost grain-free exteriors. It's not from dupe negative though, it's just the contrast between the two stocks and how they were shot and treated.
Some people's DNR-sense might be tingling with that aforementioned lack of heavy grain on the brightest exteriors, but when something is shot on as fast a stock as this was, and drenched with light to boot, then the grain is essentially being 'burnt off' along with the highlights and not even HDR will bring it back - IF the average brightness is kept to a sensible level and doesn't have thousands of nits pumped through it it
a la the Sony Light Cannon™. People may not believe me and hey, I'm just a regular schnook, but I can only reiterate my belief that there's not so much as a frame of this movie that looks like it's been DNR'ed or otherwise filtered during the remastering process. There's a shot of the Imam looking for one of his followers in the coring room which has a 'frozen' feel to the grain, but as it's a VFX shot (for the body that then falls directly in front of camera) then that's prolly baked in.
I tell you what though, other than that one shot the VFX looks FANTASTIC. We hear so much bullshit aboot filmouts being unmitigated crap from certain people on here, and while I'll admit that some are better than others (the state of filmout art got to be very good around the turn of the century, when PB was made) there still seems to be something of a stigma there. But stigma no more as this stuff is damned near transparent to the live action footage, it intercuts seamlessly in terms of grain, detail, colour and even dynamic range, the very first shot of the movie with the spaceship gliding past has way more range inside the rear engines of the ship and on the suns in the top right corner than on the old SDR disc. Even the actual CG creatures themselves hold up brilliantly, Twohy being canny enough (and of low enough budget) to use them sparingly.
As for the HDR itself, it does a damned near heroic job with those incredibly harsh, blown-out exteriors which are repeatedly clipped to balls on the old SDR BD. The HDR brings back a good chunk of range on faces, clothing etc during the exteriors but it retains that bleached feel and still hits a point where it just can't extract anything else from the negative, it looks a touch posterised around people's hair and ears in some shots where it just kinda greys out. It never goes stupidly bright though which I think was a very wise move, I mean it would've been easy enough to crank the shit out of it considering the central idea of the movie but it would've been too distracting IMO. Instead you get those feelings of heat and harshness conveyed by the colour rather than the luminance, but still managing to add depth and a more rounded look to faces than the clipped BD. One bit that I really loved wasn't the brightest or the darkest, but the scene when the suns are just aboot to set. There's a richness to the shadows and the colour that truly conveys a 'sundown' kind of look whereas it's flatter and duller on the old BD.
Black levels are lusciously deep in the UHD, it's surprising how lightweight the blacks are on the old BD as even the letterbox bars seem to be raised and almost grey looking, but now there's a far greater feeling of density. I never got the feeling that important information was being crushed though as it doesn't always go down to 'letterbox' black but sometimes holds just above it. The scene when matey does his 'fire spit' surrounded by beasties looks so good, him just floating there in the darkness on the UHD while the old BD is much lighter and greyer. Blech. There's a fair bit of blue noise in the blacks in some shots, I wonder if sets that struggle with 'dirty' near-black rendition might have a problem with this but time will tell.
Despite this disc containing a slew of extras both old and new - Dark Fury is in proper anamorphic widescreen AT LAST, it may still be upscaled from SD but it's sooooo much better than the grotty aliased-to-shit non-anamorphic transfer on the old BD - the compression is first rate, but then I'd expect nothing less from Fidelity in Motion™. So no blocking, banding or other anomalies.
One more thing before I throw a few photos at you: For some reason there's a different take in one of the added 'Director's Cut' scenes. It's when they're trying the first power cell in the skiff and Riddick starts talking about using it to get into the shipping lanes and sticking out a thumb. When he says "ain't that right, Captain?" Fry looks at Johns and Johns' reaction is different between the old BD DC and the new Arrow transfer. The shot lasts for the exact same length but it's clearly a different take as he now purses his lips before making that 'shrug' expression with his face. It's not particularly interesting but I thought it worth mentioning, perhaps they pulled what they thought was the same shot (as it wouldn't have been conformed into the theatrical cut negative and would've been transferred separately) or perhaps Twohy just saw a chance to have a tiny little tinker.
Anyhoo, this is a cracking UHD debut from Arrow (I don't count Flash, as StudioCanal restored that) and they've proved themselves every bit as adept at hanging with the majors in HDR as they do in SDR. And long may it continue. We might even get a slipcover next time!
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.
Shazza, note how the highlights on her forehead and nose have that 'greyed out' posterised look in HDR, there's just nothing left there. It's not a distraction in motion however, those bits still look stunning.
Universal BD
[Show spoiler]
UHD
[Show spoiler]
Shazza and Zeke, here there's more range on her face in HDR without greying it out, and the colour has a much more prominent orangey tint. Her hair isn't clipped out either where it meets the sky.
BD
[Show spoiler]
UHD
[Show spoiler]
I just saw that capsaholic also used this shot but **** it, I took these last night and can't be bothered to do any more. Look at how the old SDR just bleaches the colour into one cyan tone on her face, lips, eyes, hair, everything, and also check those ghastly blobs of clipped light on her jaw and the background. The UHD has more depth, variance and nuance WITHOUT losing the intended blue hue. Superb. (and yes the BD may look sharper but that's because it's been distinctly sharpened on the old BD and my camera's multi-exposure HDR processing tends to soften the actual HDR captures, I don't know why)
BD
[Show spoiler]
UHD
[Show spoiler]
This is the alternate take of Johns that I was talking about, this is the first frame of each shot when it cuts away to him and you can see he's much more 'pouty' in the new transfer. Aside from that, you can see how clipped the highlights are in the old BD.
BD
[Show spoiler]
UHD
[Show spoiler]
All countries
Argentina
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Chile
China
Colombia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Estonia
Denmark
Finland
Greece
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
India
Latvia
Lithuania
Malaysia
New Zealand
Norway
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
Linear Mode
