Star Trek TWOK Blue Ray oddity

If it's blue, throw your empty soft drink cup at the screen and depart.

 

I wouldn't knock those who've had the chance to see Wrath of Khan on film. As someone who has the opportunity to see it, I too can attest that the coloring on the Blu-ray matches what I saw on screen. I could tell just by the first shot of the film on the Enterprise bridge. Sorry I can't produce concrete evidence, since they don't allow you to photograph or take video of the screen. Some video transfers can't always be trusted and you can't judge a film squarely off of your experience with previous versions. I've seen a video version of Star Trek: The Motion Picture that was unbearably dark that I could barely see anything, but that's not the case with the Blu-ray edition. Another example is how I recently seen a film print of The Terminator and the color from it matched the newly remastered edition than the first Blu-ray edition.

 

And every still photo and every bit of publicity material from 1982 till now was wrong? No.

In the Blu-ray the white bridge seats have a blue tinge. They designed the seats to be white with a blue tinge? No.

 

Do you know that The Terminator was actually being shown from a film print? Because like has been said, modern cinemas are kitted out with digital projection, and that involves downloading an file (no doubt sourced from Blu Ray or other high definition equivalent) and it's all done on computers. Chances are if it was a recent screening of The Terminator, then it basically was the Blu Ray.

If you're viewing of TWOK was likewise a recent-ish one, then chances are there's a very good reason why it matches the Blu-Ray in terms of coloring...

Almost no theaters show film prints anymore. I should know, I was a projectionist for nine years until the new technology got good enough for everything to be changed over. If you're watching any movie in a theater now, trust me, you're not seeing a film print.

 

Absolutely correct. It will become increasingly common for theaters to show vintage movies from a digital file----the one created for the new Blu-rays, no doubt.

The top tier of this link has two near identical images from TWOK---the one to the left if from the Blu-ray and the one a few spaces over is from the DVD. Anybody who thinks the coloring on the left is what was meant to be seen and hat WAS seen in 1982 is.........

There are many other Regula images on the page and they all show the correct brown version.
Also the top right image is the shot that Starlog used back in MAY 1982 even before the movie came out. Really, they had released "wrong" color for shots even before the movie premiered?---And every other shot for the next 27 years? Does that make any sense?

https://images.search.yahoo.com/sea...s&fr=yfp-t-672&fr2=sb-top&ei=UTF-8&n=60&x=wrt

 

The thing which surprises me the most about this issue is the number of people who seem willing to come out and say about the blue hue things like "Well, maybe that's how it should look..." or other observations to that effect. In complete contradiction of over thirty years of evidence proving that the red/brown palette is the correct one!

I don't know where the mistake was made. Maybe the blue was there in how it was originally shot and it was subsequently color corrected on the earlier versions, and in the process of rescanning the original negative they got the blue hues but failed to readjust the tint to what we're all familiar with. But whatever the case, the Blu Ray is significantly different compared to how TWOK has been presented for thirty years, both in home video presentations as well as countless publicity stills.

The blue hue: Just Say No.

 

I guess Hollywood borrowed the Howard Johnson color scheme and ran with it.

 

So it was an "after the fact" decision? Not an unintentional mistake during authoring?

For some reason that actually makes me feel even worse about it.

An error made during remastering along the lines of the scenario I said above I could at least forgive, but somebody making an actual creative decision to recolor the entire movie in blue tones... it beggars belief.

TWOK's original color pallette was beautiful, and worked so well for the feeling the movie was trying to encapsulate... the rich tones enhancing the general 'Hornblower In Space' feel... why anybody would want to change that is beyond me.

 

I don't believe Meyer signed off on anything other than the notion that they were going to do right by the film.
Maybe he saw them at some step of the restorartion and saw how they were removing the blemishes.

If you listen to the new 2009 commentary he recorded--he doesn't even know which version of the film he is watching (he assumes it is the DE)--then part way thru---mid-sentence--he pauses and says, "They're using this version--I wonder why they are doing that?"---then he resumes his commentary.

Does this sound like someone who was intimately involved with the restoration? Someone who didn't even know which version he was watching or they were bringing to Blu-ray? Also it is very common for cast/crew to record the commentary BEFORE the restoration is completed. So he may have been watching an older print of the movie assuming the final product would be to his liking/specs.

I'll bet they simply invited him to see the restoration in progress--the terrible original negative and how they were lovingly fixing all the defects and he assumed they'd get the color right as well.

They didn't. If you click on that link I put in earlier it's clear from the riginal version that the nebula was casting a red/brown shadow on the station, the planetoid and the Ent. You can see the left (nebula side) of the upper right photo has Ent and the planetoid browner/redder on the side facing the nebula, than the side not.

So in that upper left photo from the Blu-ray they have the shot of Ent leaving the planetoid and heading toward the nebula---that is the Ent is between the nebula and the planetoid----but there is NO brown in the shot at all. It is bright blue! It's as if they are just near the earth's moon for what that shot looks like.

They clearly intended for the nebula to be casting some color inot those shots and the Blu-ray has none of it.

It's wrong.

 

I can assure you 100% that it was a film print with both Terminator and Wrath of Khan. We have a theater downtown called the Orpheum that has a film projector and screens a couple of films per month. Not only can you tell by the texture of the presentation, but the marks on the right corner of the screen that indicate the reel changes. Another sign is that if it was the Blu-ray for Terminator, it wouldn’t have had the original audio track on it, since the remastered Blu-ray only includes the new sound mix and not the original mono track. We have another theater called the Palace that recently went all digital and the classic films they screen there are digitally sourced. You may be accustomed to that, but there are still theaters that screen film prints.

Hate to burst your bubble, man, but you have to remember that back then, production photos and video transfers didn’t always quite match up to what you saw on screen. Technology has advanced over the years to create transfers that match the original screen presentation. As I said before, you shouldn’t try to knock something down that you’ve never seen yourself. You're only acting this way because you've seen it only one way. It's like if you only saw the Director's Edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture and then you saw the Blu-ray and started to question all the differences. There's plenty of other examples of differing transfers. It's a big debate amongst video enthusiasts, like myself, about whether or not home video presentations for older films should match how they looked on the big screen or not. Look at both of these Blu-ray editions of Flash Gordon.

http://www.caps-a-holic.com/hd_verg...?disc1=2161&disc2=2118&hd_multiID=217#auswahl

 

You are not bursting my bubble because I don't care what you say or what you claim to know.

I know they had it right for 27 years and got it wrong for the Blu-ray.

I believe my eyes and knowledge and not your belief in some ridiculous theory why it was wrong in every format and medium for all those years and now it is right.

Believe what you want but fans of TWOK from 1982 till now know what was right then and what will always be right.

Your minority view won't burst a single bubble of fact.

I've never seen anyone go from 0-jerk so fast.

Your first post on the subject says you admit you have no evidence besides your word.

Then when folks point out plenty of facts on the matter going back to even before the premiere in 1982 you break out with the smart alecky, condescending "Don't mean to burst your bubble man." BS

So after admitting you have no real evidence and folks don't along with you---you out of a sudden start taking pot shots in a rude manner to folks who don't believe what you already admitted was no evidence beyond your word in what you saw in a recent revival showing.

Every tie in material back in 1982 matched the red/brown appearance in every video format and every TV showing since.

Does it seem likely that every single photo of the FX and live shots being far redder/browner wouldn't have been mentioned back in the day?

I looked at all the photos in 1982 and I saw the movie 5 or 6 times in the theater. My mind didn't go, "Hey, why are all the photos and promotional material different than what I've seen on the screen again and again."

That didn't happen to me or anybody else because the promo material and all the tie-ins and magazine articles MATCHED what we saw on the screen.

Lastly I have had several people on this web-site and others say that in recent revival showings of TWOK where they showed a vintage FILM PRINT Regula WAS BROWN.

I trust them. And I trust common sense.

 

And the projected print I saw several years back was faded extreme red, almost unwatchably so. There was always a lot of red in the movie, but I don't remember it being the way most of you do. For once I'd say reality (as in, release print) was somewhere in the middle, between these two extremes (and they're still not extreme enough to annoy me, which is weird considering how picky I am about image fidelity & quality. Maybe because the film stock itself was a bad call and helped contribute to the 'cheap' look.)

 

Way to be totally ignorant with your postings and not being able to listen to a perspective other than your own. I'm guessing you were young back when you first saw the film, so your eye for detail wasn't as strong when comparing how the pictures looked compared to the final film. Plus, you're paying attention to what's happening onscreen and not so much how it looks. I said I can't use more than my word to tell exactly why that is so. I'm not going to be taking pictures and video of a screening, not only because it's illegal, but because it's not a fair representation of what's on screen. Plus, I didn't have a high quality camera like an iPhone back then. Obviously your heart is set on Regula One being brown. I'm sorry they didn't make it that color for you for the Blu-ray. At least you've got the DVD to look at.

 

All I can say for the red vs. blue, is that it really doesn't mean a whole lot to me. But, the change does make sense when the Enterprise leaves Regula to head for the Mutara Nebula (if they are facing the nebula). The nebula is giving off a predominately bluish glow.

 

Hmm, interesting. I wonder where they source their prints from? Because AFAIK the studios no longer offer film prints for exhibition purposes at all. I believe in fact that Paramount were the first to officially announce they will no longer do it.

The theatre I used to work at has got a 'film club' type affair thrice weekly, which often screens vintage movies etc, and they're all sourced in the same way as the latest releases now: entirely digitally.

 

Paramount has converted to digital for new releases going forward (Anchorman II: The Legend Continues was their last 35mm release), but I don't believe they've stopped loaning film prints of older movies out to repertory houses. I could be incorrect about that, however.

That said, when I saw Star Trek II at the Egyptian Theatre in LA for Walter Koenig's Walk of Fame ceremony a couple of years ago, the film was shown via DCP, and it was the same transfer that's on the Blu-Ray (which, other than the aforementioned color timing issue, I think is far and away the best looking HD transfer of the first six films).

 

But the color timing issue is huge, much bigger than the clarity of the image. I mean, Regula has a blue tint, and the ships around it have the same blue tint. I'd rather watch my DVD than that any day. Screw HD if they can't get the colors right

 

I'll have to ask around and see where they're getting their prints from. They get a wide variety that's not just from one studio. It's nice of them to keep that format alive.

 

In that case, you might like the HD transfer of the director's cut available on iTunes, original red color timing and all. It's an older transfer, but it's better looking than either of the DVDs.