Watchmen (The Ultimate Cut) 4K UHD (2009)

[Hedrox]

Originally Posted by opiFunstuff

is e French one any different or just cheaper than the UK one?

Same disc across EU.

[opiFunstuff]

Originally Posted by Hedrox

Same disc across EU.

Okay I'm not trolling I think I like the look of the BD more than the 4k after going back and forth on select scenes so I'm just gonna stick with the director's cut of the BD. The upscaling is a bit more distracting on the 4k than my Bravia's upscaling on the BD and the HDR honestly isn't really impressing me.

[thebarnman]

I have the WB version of it on 4K. Is the color space correct on that one?

[DR Herbert West]

Originally Posted by thebarnman

I have the WB version of it on 4K. Is the color space correct on that one?

Yes.

[emailking]

I've got this and parts I & II of the newer animated version, and I'll be watching them on my vacation and will let you know what I think on 8/21.

[Naiera]

Originally Posted by Hedrox

On the Paramount disc yes, except for chapter 28, where if you skip it you miss a 5 second scene of Rorschach walking to his cell in slow motion, while the next chapter starts with a 3 second leftover bit from the animated section. Other than that you can seamlessly bypass all the Black Freighter stuff with chapter skip.

This is definitely not the case for the German release.

[Hedrox]

Originally Posted by Naiera

This is definitely not the case for the German release.

The Paramount disc is identical across all territories. Can you be a bit more specific as to what is different from my findings?

[Naiera]

I checked the first five or so pirate animation chapters and all but one had live action before and/or after.

[George.P]

I have the UK Paramount, and most/many of the animated sections do not line up perfectly with the chapter stops (this is using a Panasonic ub9000).

[emailking]

Originally Posted by emailking

I've got this and parts I & II of the newer animated version, and I'll be watching them on my vacation and will let you know what I think on 8/21.

As promised, I am ready to tell you what I think. I am going to lump the 3 Watchmen movies together since they're so similar. I watched all 3 on my vacation. I watched Snyder's live action movie when it was released and I liked it but I think I had problems following it or something because the Mars sequence should have made a much bigger impression on me than it did. It was watching the Mars sequence in Chapter 2 earlier this year when I realized I needed to own these. But rewatching the movies I do think it had an effect on me, and I'm now tempted to watch the series, which I understand is a sequel to the comics. I feel like the entire story is about Dr. Manhattan. Or at least, he's the driving force. If you think about it, none of the superhero stuff overtly violates physics (ignoring things like, does Owl's ship have enough fuel, etc). So Watchmen feels like 2 stories, Dr. Manhattan, and everything else. There's a sense in which it all ties together in the end, but also a sense in which none of the other Watchmen are really necessary. Still I enjoyed the balance, and thought Rorschach is a pretty cool character, love the voice and the mask.

Overall it's a pretty interesting alternate history take, if you can accept some masked heroes, and then the one "plot miracle" of a God-like character coming into existence. But the interesting thing is that the plot of Watchmen takes place after all of that has happened. So the superheroing is sort of in the past, and now we have aging superheroes dealing with a world on the brink of nuclear war. And it raises many metaphysical questions about fate and destiny. That's one of my favorite parts, exploring how Dr. Manhattan experiences the world. Acting wise the highlights are whoever plays Dr. Manhattan and Rorschach (both versions) and Nixon in the live action, where his role is expanded, Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Negan), and Malin Akerman. Patrick Wilson is ok, I don't really like the Owl character.

I definitely recommend all 3 movies. The only parts I really don't like are the integrated comic-within-a-comic scenes. I know this is only in the Ultimate Cut of the Snyder movie, which also pushes it to kind of a 3 hour slog. In the animated movies you have no choice. But it's not too hard to skip past these if you don't like them. I did watch everything though.

Unfortunately none of the movies are Dolby Vision so that is a missed opportunity, particularly for the recent animated movies. Picture is pretty good for all of them. For the animated movies it looked a little better than what I remembered from my HD streams. The Snyder movie is pretty decent picture-wise but not reference. The site review of 3.5 stars is maybe a bit harsh, I would have thought 4. Sound is very good in all of them, I used headphones for the sound. Some pretty cool sound effects (owl ship, Mars atmosphere, Dr. shenanigans). Lots of specials across 3 discs. The animated movies are just UHDs, no blu-ray, so everything is on the discs (in 1080p). They each have a couple of 10 minute featurettes that are pretty good. For the Snyder movie, everything is on the blu-ray or the special features blu-ray, which are fortunately region free. A couple of hours of stuff. I watched all of them a few weeks ago but they're a pretty good exploration of the movie and how it was made. I recommend all 3 movies and releases. If you've seen one or the other, I recommend watching everything to see the different takes. They're pretty similar though differ somewhat at the end.

[dallywhitty]

What did you eat?

[emailking]

Originally Posted by dallywhitty

What did you eat?

This was 2 weeks ago. But go ahead and give me your request for the Karate Kid thing UHD on Tuesday.

[Hedrox]

Originally Posted by Naiera

I checked the first five or so pirate animation chapters and all but one had live action before and/or after.

As I've mentioned earlier, those animated sections aren't the only new scenes added for the Ultimate cut, there are also short live action segments that bookend them to better integrate Tales of the Black Freighter into the story. Those are also skipped, because keeping them in while omitting the Black Freighter segments would make no sense.

Edit: Just checked again, and my initial statement is correct, all the Black Freighter sections (along with any other footage exclusive to the Ultimate cut, which you can see here) are fully contained within chapters 6, 16, 20, 28, 32, 41 and 45, with two minor exceptions. Chapter 28 because the audio from a following scene overlaps with the previous one, and the last one, 45, with the newsstand segment bleeding into the actual movie story.