Well, I
still don't stream but let's just say I watched this via other means, the method of which I shan't utter here.
Wow, this looks amazing in 4K HDR (regular HDR10, not Doblee). Right off the bat it's obvious that it's had some "grain management" and I'm not surprised as the movie is FULL of opticals. Not just for the VFX but practically every scene is bookended by a transitional effect like a fade, wipe or dissolve and these were also done as optical functions, not an A/B roll neg cut. There were two schools of thought as to editing these opticals in: first was to just cut in the transition the moment that it actually begins, causing a very noticeable 'jump' between the 1st gen footage and the grainier, dupier fade/dissolve/wipe, which then 'jumps' back to 1st gen material when the transition is over. Movies like Dirty Dozen and Bridge on the River Kwai are quite notorious for this sort of flip-flopping quality.
The other method is that you keep the entire length of the pre/post adjoining shots as one long dupe so that when the optical fade/wipe/dissolve occurs there's no visible cut, but the image only reverts back to 1st gen material on the next cut after the optical, which could take several seconds or even minutes given how non-ADHD the editing style was at the time. What this then means that entire swathes of the 'original negative' is going to be dupe neg, with all the quality loss therein, and this is the method used on WOTW. These dupes in WOTW are better than most to be sure, but still lack for resolution and sport a subtle amount of colour fringing that no amount of digital tinkering can fix, whereas the 1st gen stuff is perfectly registered for colour.
Why am I droning on and on about this? Didn't I just say it looked amazing? Yes I did, but the numerous opticals have been degrained to keep them from standing out too much against the 1st gen material which has a very fine layer of grain. Some shots can look a little smooth but the two sets of material cut together rather well and it makes all those dupe sections much more bearable than on previous transfers, with minimal signs of DNR artefacts like smearing or frozen grain (though a roomier disc-based encode would be the best judge of such things).
That 1st gen material itself is simply stunning. I mean I know that comparing the 4K stream to a DVD is usually going to reap dividends and it'd be more worthwhile to compare to the 4K to a 1080p Blu-ray (chance would be a fine thing, Paramount) but it really is gorgeous, with the aforementioned fine grain and crisp detail that's incredibly well refined, with oodles of texture on faces and clothing. There's a close up of the Secretary of State when he says "all right, I've heard enough" in the briefing scene prior to the A-bomb drop and it's so clean it looks like it could've been shot yesterday.
I love the grading on this too, skin tones have that slightly buttery feel and the green glow from the war machines' appendages is as vivid as ever. The red death rays look so much more vibrant, not clipping to white like before but having this redder core to them. It's definitely a fair bit darker than previous grades, hiding more in the shadows which helps the VFX scenes immensely. I say that because on the DVD the 'blue spill' around the death ray shooter thingies is almost absurdly obvious but on the 4K HDR it's been greatly toned down. But as much as higher gamma (as befits actual film projection) is a friend to optical VFX I can't help but think that maybe they've even been recomposited digitally?
As for what HDR itself brings to the table, don't ever let anyone think that HDR won't benefit "old films". The death rays as mentioned now have this fizzing red colour throughout instead of clipping to white at their core, and the various flames and explosions now have plenty more highlight information therein, not looking horribly bright but plenty punchier than the DVD. That said there are certain moments when the death rays are aimed directly at camera where you can really sense the extra specular brightness in action! I dug the bit when they lit the flare over the first 'nest' of the martians, on the DVD the brightness just burns out the detail in the pit but in the HDR you can see so much more.
The biggest point of contention for this 4K remaster will of course be the digital wire removal on the war machines and, gosh, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't incredibly effective. Even on low rez 480i60 DVD they are
super obvious so the mind boggles as to how 4K HDR would've treated them! I still looked for the wires of course but they're simply not there for the most part. If you peer closely enough you might spot the occasional wire left over or a column of frozen grain above the war machines but given all the smoke and death rays and explosions that the wire removal is having to contend with they did a sterling job.
Oh, and although I don't listen to movies *in* surround sound any more it's blatant that the 5.1 mix accompanying the 4K remaster is a brand new remix that adds lots of new foley and effects. Mercifully, the upload that I found also had the OG mono mix, I don't know whether the web version actually comes with it or not but I'm very grateful nonetheless!
In keeping with my UHD Blu-ray 'reviews' in the 4K section of the forums I took a few photos of each version in action to show some of the differences I'm seeing,
these are NOT 100% accurate 1:1 representations of either edition owing to the camera exposure doing funky things but for showing what I want to show re: dynamic range then they get the point across.
Very quick one showing the wire removal in action, not just the vertical ones but the lateral ones too. (The remaster sports a slightly wider 1.37 aspect than the 1.33 of the DVD.)
R1 DVD
[Show spoiler]
4K HDR stream
[Show spoiler]
One of the soldiers getting all hot and bothered, NEITHER VERSION IS ANYWHERE NEAR THAT DARK but I wanted to expose the highlights in the photo and so here we are. Old film can't do dynamic range, they said. Harrumph, sirs.
R1 DVD
[Show spoiler]
4K HDR stream
[Show spoiler]
One of the appendages about to shoot its load, get a look at how much cleaner that composite is. As best as I can tell it's the exact same frame because the sparks are in the same place (with one extra spark on the right in the 4K, maybe because of wayward dirt removal on the old DVD?) and yet the position of the 'snake head' is slightly
different between the new and old, the 'neck' is shifted over to the right by a fraction and they've copied part of the background and pasted it on the bottom left side of the 'neck' to cover the missing area. You can tell because the copy and paste is slightly misaligned.
Look at the very top of the 'neck' as well, the blue spill is eroding some of it on the old-school version because they couldn't pull a clean enough matte but sure enough it's all there on the 4K. And don't worry, the beam of light in the centre is nowhere near as clipped as that on the actual DVD and 4K (though the 4K is betterer), it's just the exposure having to trade off range for brightness, it's the whole image I wanted to convey here and not the highlights.
R1 DVD
[Show spoiler]
4K HDR stream
[Show spoiler]
Last one is another example of the range with one of the death rays pointing directly at camera, the 4K IS WAY WAY DARKER IN THE PHOTO THAN IT IS IN ACTUALITY but just look at how much more of the highlight detail is resolved, again the beam stays red rather than clipping to white, some of the other littler sparks are lost in the photo but are there in the actual stream.
R1 DVD
[Show spoiler]
4K HDR stream
[Show spoiler]
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The movie itself is simply fantastic. It's a product of its time for sure, with clunkingly earnest dialogue and a main female character who, when she's not serving the men coffee or making them eggs, goes from nought to hysterical on the drop of a dime, but there's a genuine sense of creeping doom and eerieness to this flick that still keeps me spellbound from first frame to last. Come on Paramount, do the right thing and get this out on 4K Blu-ray!
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