The Matrix 4K UHD (1999)

[eddievanhalen]

I love how The Matrix looks on UHD BD, I got the UK release and I've watched it twice since I got it. By the way, I don't know if it's the same on all territories but I really like the UK slipcover with its mate finish but metallic looking background, very very nice looking. I must confess what I like the most is the inner cover with the white rabitt but that's just me, I like everything with four legs and hairy (aka Mammals,but I also love dolphins) animals.

[VonMagnum]

Originally Posted by HeavyHitter

And the UHD BD looks FAR better than the DVD and BD in every area including color.

Given "better" is a subjective term, so what? In terms of color, it's FAR LESS ACCURATE to the original film. Hell, I wouldn't even use the word accurate. It's more like, "Hey guys, why don't we just splash blue filtering here and there where it doesn't belong and see if those morons on the Internet even notice? I bet they don't have a clue! They'll think it's fantastic!"

But hey, if you don't appreciate cinema accuracy and prefer neon green backdrops that used to be faint green, cyan-tinted headlights and walls that used to be grey and blue tints used all over the place in outdoor scenes in the Matrix that used to be normal or green tinted. Even with the Construct Lady in Red program; look at how the fountain and walls behind it and all the people have a BLUE TINT added to their outfits that used to to be color NEUTRAL (even in the old BD). It's inescapable. How much green used to be used is debatable. It's NOT even SLIGHTLY debatable that they EVER used that BLUE TINT inside the Matrix or formerly neutral colored construct programs! But hey, that's okay! Some people have only matured to the point of appreciating Sesame Street as an art form and still eat Frosted Flakes for breakfast because it's GRRRREEEAT!

Maybe some day, Warner Brothers will release an UHD remaster that is actually true to the original film instead of this freakish inconsistent cyan ultra green abomination that only resembles the original theatrical presentation if you were on LSD at the time.

[legends of beyond]

You forgot /s.

[VonMagnum]

There's actually a nice fan color correction project out there (a search will easily turn it up) for the old Blu-ray. It's the same one that includes the Cinema DTS soundtrack as well. It originally used the PAL DVD as the basis to remove the excess green the BD added. They later got hold of a 35mm print to compare. I have no major complaints with that version at all (some minor glitches is all). It's not over saturated, the outdoor skies look more blown out like the 35mm film and there's no blue or cyan tint in the Matrix. It has little or no green in the outdoor scenes, but no blue added either. It's probably not completely accurate either, but I'd take it any day over the horrible new Blu-ray with cyan and blue tints in the Matrix and elsewhere. It's a harder choice with the UHD because the resolution and contrast is so much better.

[jh901]

Originally Posted by Kris Deering

I still say this is a solid but flawed video presentation.

Flawed? Could it be better? Nearly anything could be better, but that makes it flawed?!

Originally Posted by Kris Deering

What bites me more is going into Best Buy and seeing the four movie Blu-ray set (all three films plus The Animatrix) for $9.99.

That’s $2.50 a movie!

So a bit of a markup for the 4K I’d say.

This 4K release was priced at $25 on release and, whether you like it or not, the

[Show spoiler]digital code alone was worth $10.

I bought at full retail and then PM'd using the receipt a day later.

[Show spoiler]Sold the code, so do the math.

We have to pay something! (Price has dropped to $22 now as I understand it)

You felt the need to celebrate tossing the slip, so congrats. Signal those virtues! You didn't need the inherent value. Or pride of ownership.

Now, all that said, we must demand full restorations when necessary or otherwise best possible transfer work on this new format. We also must demand better SRP. Whoever is doing the negotiating on licensing costs and other expenses must get tough so that lower break even goes our way.

[fighthefutureofhd]

Originally Posted by VonMagnum

Given "better" is a subjective term, so what? In terms of color, it's FAR LESS ACCURATE to the original film. Hell, I wouldn't even use the word accurate. It's more like, "Hey guys, why don't we just splash blue filtering here and there where it doesn't belong and see if those morons on the Internet even notice? I bet they don't have a clue! They'll think it's fantastic!"

But hey, if you don't appreciate cinema accuracy and prefer neon green backdrops that used to be faint green, cyan-tinted headlights and walls that used to be grey and blue tints used all over the place in outdoor scenes in the Matrix that used to be normal or green tinted. Even with the Construct Lady in Red program; look at how the fountain and walls behind it and all the people have a BLUE TINT added to their outfits that used to to be color NEUTRAL (even in the old BD). It's inescapable. How much green used to be used is debatable. It's NOT even SLIGHTLY debatable that they EVER used that BLUE TINT inside the Matrix or formerly neutral colored construct programs! But hey, that's okay! Some people have only matured to the point of appreciating Sesame Street as an art form and still eat Frosted Flakes for breakfast because it's GRRRREEEAT!

Maybe some day, Warner Brothers will release an UHD remaster that is actually true to the original film instead of this freakish inconsistent cyan ultra green abomination that only resembles the original theatrical presentation if you were on LSD at the time.

"IT'S FAR LESS ACCURATE..." is also subjective. You think the color is not at all accurate to the original film, but not everyone agrees with you. I, for one, think this 4k presentation is very accurate to the film source. I've only ever been able to remember the home presentations and the blu-ray ones at that. Even though I saw it in theaters and watched it on DVD and VHS (I think. Still a little fuzzy on that one.). Now, however, I am remembering how it was in theaters and on DVD. This presentation represents that original theater/DVD presentation fluidly. Odd as that may sound, but it's true.

Having seen this movie for the first time in years on 4k UHD I am starting to remember so many things about the movie itself and those things related to the movie. personal memories locked away for so long. This presentation represents the best, the most theater-like presentation we are to get of The Matrix. To me, of course. Others mileage may vary. All I can go on are my eyes and my memories. And every bit of that tells me it's accurate. I know others that would be equally happy. and (again to me) that is what matters most.

[jh901]

"Cinema accuracy"

Who's seen an original, mint condition print screened in a reference theater in the past couple months?

No one here can recall image details of what they saw on a random screen in 1999. No one.

I'm not a fan of white balance revisionism and there's plenty of examples where teal/orange and the like ruined a given release. But this one? Save the outrage.

[fighthefutureofhd]

I can't accurately recall my cinema viewing from 19 years ago, but I can recall my DVD viewing. This is very accurate to that viewing and while I'm not certain I still stay this is accurate to the cinema viewing as well. Everything that I can remember aligns with what I saw the other night.

[jh901]

Originally Posted by fighthefutureofhd

I can't accurately recall my cinema viewing from 19 years ago, but I can recall my DVD viewing. This is very accurate to that viewing and while I'm not certain I still stay this is accurate to the cinema viewing as well. Everything that I can remember aligns with what I saw the other night.

It's fair, in my view, to have the desire to experience something in a similar way to a "reference". For you, that's the DVD, which you also seem to link back to the original viewing. No one can tell you what you should like, but we can have civil discourse with respect to artistic intent and the merits of a given release.

You have, presumably, sold this 4K. Fine, but it's a whole different matter to expect the masses to agree with you. I don't necessarily like the green and the blue, whether it was originally intended or not, but I'm going to watch this 4K many, many times over the next few years. So. Much. Fun!

[fighthefutureofhd]

Sold? No, I have not sold my 4k and have no plans to. As for the DVD being a "reference" point, I mean it as being one reference point among other reference points. Which include the cinema and my limited memory of it that's starting to come back. I very well could be wrong and I would certainly eat my crow if that were to be the case. I hope, by no means, that I am sounding like what I feel and see is the definitive answer. It isn't and it can't be. There's just far too specific things that have happened to me alone for it to be definitive or THE answer. It's just an opinion and a gushy one at that. This is not something I have felt or seen before with 4k UHDs and the reason I started buying them. Hence the gushiness.

[VonMagnum]

Again, I'm not arguing about which scenes were green versus which were more normal looking. Given it was optically tinted originally, it's a reasonable guess the outdoor scenes probably had little or no green in them originally. Both the fan preservation project and the DVD versions reflect this. They later tinted the sequels digitally more consistently green and the old Bluray was adjusted to match the sequels. This is already known and whether one prefers the original film or the original "vision" of what they had in mind but could not achieve with the mere optical tint is not being contested by me. I can watch either version.

No, my issue is with blue tinting the Matrix and Construct scenes in several places. The agent training program with the red dress clearly has the background around the fountain and the clothes on the crowd tinted BLUE. It was not tinted at all on either the old BD or DVD. I'd wager NOTHING was tinted blue in the Matrix before either. Yet now we see the office building tint changed from green to blue on the new BD. It was grey originally (no tint). The same is true in several later outdoor scenes. It looks like instead of removing the green tint, they switched it to blue instead. The reports on the 35mm print suggest the outdoor shots were not tinted, but purposely overexposed to give it a blown out fake look instead since the optical tint wasn't effective outdoors. Washed out and blue tinted are two entirely different things, especially given blue was the tint/color to indicate the real world.

The cyan changes largely look like some shade of blue placed over green resulting in cyan or teal. The UHD version also had some pretty intense shades of green that were nowhere near that level in any prior version I've seen. It goes against the idea that there's something subtly wrong with the world, IMO but hey at least it's green instead of blue....

I have no idea how they ended up with blue in several places and even less how anyone thinks it should be that way. Even the computer monitor that's showing Morpheus news articles near the start looks odd now. Green monochrome was common back in the day. I've never seen blue/cyan. Given green monochrome was the basis of the green idea in the first place, I've always assumed that web appearance was reflecting that. There used to be a nice Matrix Black Box theme in Linux that looked like it. It was green themed windows not cyan. Yet despite all the evidence, people here really believe green was all made up later and THIS is what it looked like. Amazing. Hollywood has been tinting all kinds of incandescent lit films blue lately so why not.... Blue is in.

[fighthefutureofhd]

My point is this presentation, from what I remember, is the same as the DVD and cinema viewings I saw all those years back. And that includes the blue tint. None of it seemed different or out of place to me. I don't know anything about the fan preservation tit thingy, but I know that this 4k presentation is the truest representation of the movie theater quality wise. Blue/green tint and all. At least to me anyway. As for the cyan, I'm not sure what you're on about so i'll cede on that.

[Kris Deering]

Originally Posted by jh901

Flawed? Could it be better? Nearly anything could be better, but that makes it flawed?!




This 4K release was priced at $25 on release and, whether you like it or not, the

[Show spoiler]digital code alone was worth $10.

I bought at full retail and then PM'd using the receipt a day later.

[Show spoiler]Sold the code, so do the math.

We have to pay something! (Price has dropped to $22 now as I understand it)

You felt the need to celebrate tossing the slip, so congrats. Signal those virtues! You didn't need the inherent value. Or pride of ownership.

Now, all that said, we must demand full restorations when necessary or otherwise best possible transfer work on this new format. We also must demand better SRP. Whoever is doing the negotiating on licensing costs and other expenses must get tough so that lower break even goes our way.

Dude relax a little. Most of my post was in jest. The flawed issues I have are clear as day and have nothing to do with whether I agree with the color palette. Clipping and other minor hiccups.

As for slip covers, I still don’t understand the obsession. To all their own though I guess. I’ve always had issues with Warner’s catalog price points, especially when you compare the price to their Blu counterparts. In this case the movie costs 200x’s the Blu on “sale”. And I NEVER use digital code sales to offset so why would I equate that to the math for the general public??

I’m stoked that Warner released this and overall I’m happy with the result despite the issues.

[VonMagnum]

Originally Posted by fighthefutureofhd

My point is this presentation, from what I remember, is the same as the DVD and cinema viewings I saw all those years back. And that includes the blue tint. None of it seemed different or out of place to me. I don't know anything about the fan preservation tit thingy, but I know that this 4k presentation is the truest representation of the movie theater quality wise. Blue/green tint and all. At least to me anyway. As for the cyan, I'm not sure what you're on about so i'll cede on that.

I'm not referring to the blue tint in the real world but the blue tint that was changed from green or "normal" inside the Matrix. I like the DVD color grading for the most part. I think it was supposed to be washed out in some places and blue tinted in the real world and it wasn't green "everywhere" like in the BD, but mostly indoors and more of an "olive green" instead of a celery green or whatever. I'll try and post some screen shots to illustrate what I'm talking about. I WISH they had used similar color to the DVD. I can't take UHD screenshots here so it'll have to be the new BD.

Ok, here's the first image to compare. The top slice is from the new BD included with the UHD release. The middle image is the previous Blu-Ray and the bottom image is the old BD corrected via the aforementioned Fan Project a couple of years ago to the DVD/35mm color grade.

Now even a near color blind person can tell the top photo is BLUE tinted. The Middle one is GREEN tinted and the bottom one is almost NORMAL.

New BD = BLUE
Old BD = GREEN
DVD/35mm = almost NORMAL

I've got several more examples to show what I'm talking about. Personally, I think the NEW BD is far worse than the simple green tint on the old. In fact, it looks like all they did was add blue or change to blue in some scenes instead of removing the extra green!

[VonMagnum]

Here's some more comparisons.

Again:

Top = New BD
Mid = Old BD
Bot = 35mm Restoration Project using DVD and 35mm comparison

Generally, the outdoor tints line up to be:

Blue
Green
Slight Olive Green or Normal

[fighthefutureofhd]

Originally Posted by VonMagnum

I'm not referring to the blue tint in the real world but the blue tint that was changed from green or "normal" inside the Matrix. I like the DVD color grading for the most part.

I know that and I'm saying that it's still a true representation of the theater presentation to me. INCLUDING the supposed blue in the matrix. I'm seeing green though more where you're seeing blue.

[LordoftheRings]

I see dead green people, and 4K Blu alive ones.

[i007spectre]

Wanted to get this since BB had it on sale, but they were sold out.

[VonMagnum]

Here are two more images, one subtle, one less so.

The headlight comparison top photo simulates what I'm seeing on the UHD version in terms of increasingly cyan headlights compared to the original DVD/Restore Project (bottom untouched). The second from the top is the new BD (untouched) and the third is the old BD (untouched).

The other comparison is with the Panasonic clock radio just before he goes to work when he's late. It's more subtle, but illustrates the clear and obvious blue tint applied on the new BD as the black body of the clock has clearly visible blue tint over it (just like the falling cell phone did in the previous example). One way or another, it's not the correct color exposure so again, the question becomes, is the Matrix normal looking (DVD/Restore), slightly green (old BD) or tinted blue (new BD)??? Again, you can question one person's ability to remember levels of color, but if the Matrix was tinted BLUE instead of normal or green originally, there would have been interviews articles talking about BLUE instead of GREEN. Thus, the ONLY possibility is that either the Matrix is normally exposed and accurate to the color of the clock (black with white specular highlights as the DVD/Restore version shows) or it's slightly green because it's in the Matrix (old BD). Either way, it should not be blue tinted.

These are errors, pure and simple and no amount of "liking" them makes them accurate. Bill Pope can sign off on anything he wants, but this is historical rewrite, not a more accurate version of the movie. I maintain the DVD, despite its telecine flaws is still the closest overall official "color" version to the original movie.

As for 35mm scans, I've now seen multiple sets. One set showed an ORANGE tinted Matrix (https://imgur.com/a/5mTFn) (See also https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Th...d/16098/page/5). The 35mm scan owners vehemently argued were accurate until they finally accepted the Matrix was never a TANG ORANGE. (https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Th...d/13657/page/8). Some quotes below are from that discussion.

"The reason for this is because it seems that film prints didn’t actually look that, and the green tint slathered all over the image most likely actually was only added for home video. During the production itself, the main methods by which the unreality of the Matrix was emphasized visually was through bleaching out the sky to eliminate as much blue from it as they possibly could, creating unusual contrast through lighting on set, and sometimes using green filters in-camera and in the color timing. On film, this is evident because some of the Matrix scenes do look somewhat greenish, but not all of them, and not nearly to the extent that they do on video." -Hairy_Hen

And yet the new BD has VERY "blue" skies in the Matrix as the previous comparisons show, not bleached white skies. The DVD version is as close as we get to the original movie. No one complained about the DVD looking "weird" when it came out, unlike the BD versions.

"Catbus is right. THe exact shade of green might be hard to remember, but we would remember colors like that.
Considering the black levels are crushed and the light areas are blown out, there are a lot of reasons to believe the film transfer and/or source are sketchy.

Seriously, this isn’t complicated. No one remember the DVD looking wrong when they saw it and that wasn’t that long after the movie came out.
Also, trailers are rarely restored or retimed unless they are cutting a re-release trailer… and the DVD is pretty damn similar.

The Matrix (1999) Official Trailer #1 - Sci-Fi Action Movie - YouTube

It make for a pretty solid reference." --Doctor M

Then there's the original trailer, where someone here claimed if the Matrix was ever originally green at all, why doesn't the official web site (and trailer) show ANY green? It shows no tint at all on any scene anywhere. The answer is that the color timing was unfinished in the trailers. These are the same sources for the web site.

"Maybe it’s just me, but to me it looks like every scene in the trailer has the same color timing going on. I don’t notice any difference between inside or outside of the Matrix." --Asaki

"Indeed. The color timing is unfinished in the trailers." --ilovewaterslides

Of course, you can always take the BLUE PILL (new BD) and believe what you want to....

[Juan127]

I love the Matrix 4K.