Jurassic Park - 30th Anniversary Edition UHD

[VickPS]

Humble apologies for the premature Thread, but i've figured the earlier we start properly discussing the upcoming edition, the more chances we might have of getting the very first proper Home-Video edition of this movie. Since, with the exclusion of Jurassic Park 3D Blu-Ray (the most criticized version of the movie we got, yet only one supervised by Spielberg and actually stunning in 3D) every single Home-Video release since 1994 has been a complete disaster in capturing Dean Cundey original cinematography.

For those unfamiliar with the film's original presentation, here a video compilation of every VFX shot in their original 35mm form:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-4fWASG_xE

Here a long and insightful interview with the DOP after a 35mm screening:

Jurassic Park Q+A with Dean Cundey CSC ASC - YouTube

And here an American Cinematographer article:

https://ascmag.com/articles/jurassic...the-box-office

After hearing/reading about what he had to say, how important "visual storytelling", "mood", "painting with light" and "subtract light from a scene" are to him, you might get the sense he's describing a completely different movie than what we watched in our homes for 30 years.
We know he wanted an extremely realistic look, because we had to "believe the unbelievable", a contrasty, dark and shadowy presentation because we "had to understand what's going on, but not enough to figure how they made it". We know he wanted every scene to look different from the other, from comfortable and warm to cold and pitch black in the next scene. A never flat nor samey looking movie.
The exact opposite of what Universal gave us, in short, as Jurassic Park in Home-Video always looked colorful and joyous thanks to the extreme pink push in white balance, bright and plain flat thanks to its brightened shadows and compressed highlights, and especially samey due to the adjustments carried to every single scene.

Saying this groundbreaking motion picture went from a horror, classy looking film with immortal visual effects, to a children TV serial shot on video with dated CGI, isn't actually hyperbole. But who's to blame?
While this isn't a "Star Wars Special Edition" situation in the slightest, one would still picture hardcore fans fighting for years to get the chance to see their favorite movie in its intended presentation, even just for wanting to see dinosaurs looking real again instead of dated CGI creations. But no: most fans of this movie actually love what we currently have, and are actually responsible for the UHD first release's familiar grading due to the insane level of criticism aimed towards the 3D version at the time. All you have to do is look at comments under "Sicky T" Youtube and Twitter comparisons: lots of people love pink, flat and colorful video presentation. They think that's the original movie.

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*The above 35mm video and frames are sourced from an untouched 4K scan of a positive, made on top of the line equipment by a competent and professional projectionist who also compared the finished 1080p encoding to the actual film projected.
The UHD frames are from highdefdiscnews, the absolute best when it comes to UHD uncompressed screenshots and SDR conversion, except for the last one from Caps_a_holic.

Will we finally get a faithful official release of Jurassic Park next year? And in the remote case, will it be harshly criticized for being "revisionist"? Do we actually want a faithful release, or are many among us too accustomed to colorful and "appealing" video presentations?

P.S. Apologies again for opening this Thread before an official announcement (and for such an heavy pictures loaded OP), but Universal already started announcing merchandise for the 30th Anniversary, which is where the logo on top of the Thread is from, and we know for a fact an announcement of this UHD edition is imminent.
I think between the movie presentation across formats, the severe cropping happened since LaserDisc, and the superior, Award Winning revolutionary Cinema DTS track, there's plenty to discuss regardless.

[ImBlu_DaBaDee]

Opening this thread nearly crashed my phone

[JohnCarpenterFan]

Those 35mm clips and scans look pretty desaturated and don't really give a decent representation of any of the prints I've seen or handled. Jurassic Park is a strange case as I recall the original prints looking quite different from print-to-print (I noticed this on a few early '90s films. Obviously no print is going to be identical but I wasn't used to that sort of discrepancy). Most of them looked warm and vibrant, the day scenes had a warm golden look to them and there were a lot of cool blues in the night scenes. Either way, none of those prints resembled the Blu-ray or UHD at all.

[-JKR-]

There current UHD is definitely too magenta and reminiscent of the old home video masters. And yes, that 35mm print is faded.

This looks like a different print:

Jurassic park 35mm Comparison - YouTube

[Hardback247]

Let's be real here. Has there ever been a time when Universal re-released a 4K UHD Blu-Ray with a new master?

[starmike]

Yeah those 35mm shots don’t look right

[sfmarine]

Originally Posted by Hardback247

Let's be real here. Has there ever been a time when Universal re-released a 4K UHD Blu-Ray with a new master?

[IndyMLVC]

So...wish list?

[Filmmaker]

Your apology for this thread’s title is insufficient.

[unberechenbar]

Is Universal re-releasing this?

[jess1581]

This thread is not cool. Not. Cool. At all.

[IndyMLVC]

Originally Posted by unberechenbar

Is Universal re-releasing this?

Not that any of us are aware of. It's all theoretical.

No one is a fan of OP atm.

[gigan72]

Universal has yet to ever issue an updated 4K disc for anything themselves as far as I'm aware, I highly doubt they're gonna remaster this for the 30th. A 30th anniversary release is FAR from inevitable

[johnnyringo7]

This movie deserves to be remastered immediately. Universal did a magnificent job with a lot of classics and hopefully soon with Jurassic Park.

[Geoff D]

Delet this

[starmike]

It belongs in the Wish List forum!

[concolt]

This thread has made me visibly ill.

[Kyle15]

Jurassic Park

[Synchg]

clickbait if i ever saw it

[VickPS]

Well, that's a proper Thread backfire.
I edited OP to hide most of the photos under Spoiler, and not just the 4K ones.

Originally Posted by JohnCarpenterFan

Those 35mm clips and scans look pretty desaturated and don't really give a decent representation of any of the prints I've seen or handled. Jurassic Park is a strange case as I recall the original prints looking quite different from print-to-print (I noticed this on a few early '90s films. Obviously no print is going to be identical but I wasn't used to that sort of discrepancy). Most of them looked warm and vibrant, the day scenes had a warm golden look to them and there were a lot of cool blues in the night scenes. Either way, none of those prints resembled the Blu-ray or UHD at all.

Yeah, this is the inevitable first impression. However I personally own close to 50 35mm frames and the movie looks like that on them as well.
I even saw frames from a print of another continent entirely and, before they were color boosted by the owners, on the raw level the movie looked like that. Read this:

https://valeyard.net/2017/03/jurassi...-like-crap.php

I haven’t seen the raw scan that the fans did, only the released version. I do know that it was handled by people with extensive experience in the industry, and that it was professionally colour corrected and graded to the projected print. I also know from viewing 35mm films recently, that a lot of films look similar to Jurassic Park when projected from their theatrical prints. This does serve as a good example of why home video release often don’t match the look of theatrical prints. A good release however can still strike a balance between preserving the original flair and creativity of the film-maker, whilst enhancing and optimising the viewing experience for home use. For example, the darkness of the T-Rex chase scene could never be made out if not brightened for older analogue formats. It’d be great to see a more faithful release of this film in the future, but given the revisionism of the 3D release that may be a long while off.

If you know "Valeyard", you know the chances of him being so forgiving and actually praising the person behind a 35mm scan are usually zero.

Sure, there are some more pleasing looking frames here and there on net, but as far as we know no one was matched to the projected film, and they could all be color boosted or be post 1993.

Originally Posted by -JKR-

There current UHD is definitely too magenta and reminiscent of the old home video masters. And yes, that 35mm print is faded.

This looks like a different print:

Jurassic park 35mm Comparison - YouTube

A faded Eastman print from the 90's?

That one in the video you linked is certainly not a 1993 print. I also personally never seen analogue film looking like that, but all the other JP 35mm videos on Youtube are taken from the same print that's in OP, but from the cleaned and color corrected version, which wasn't matched to the actual film projected like V1 was.

Originally Posted by IndyMLVC

So...wish list?

Originally Posted by starmike

It belongs in the Wish List forum!

Originally Posted by IndyMLVC

Not that any of us are aware of. It's all theoretical.

No one is a fan of OP atm.

How is this theoretical?

20th Anniversary Edition: ✔️

25th Anniversary Edition: ✔️

30th Anniversary Edition: ❌

?

Originally Posted by gigan72

Universal has yet to ever issue an updated 4K disc for anything themselves as far as I'm aware, I highly doubt they're gonna remaster this for the 30th. A 30th anniversary release is FAR from inevitable

A 30th Anniversary release coming next year IS inevitable. There's no question about it.

Will it be a Remastered version though? Unlikely, especially not if this is the shown interest in it.

Originally Posted by Filmmaker

Your apology for this thread’s title is insufficient.

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Delet this

Originally Posted by concolt

This thread has made me visibly ill.

Was certainly not my intention to make people feel ill or all worked up. Feel free to lock and delete this Thread of an edition already mentioned in several different Threads on this Forum, which is months away from release. Peace.