Fathom did not advertise TMP in 4K. You can see the announcement page
here.
I stand corrected. Although I cannot open that link with either browser.
TWOK and TVH I'm fairly confident were both advertised as 4k when Fathom had them. Cinemark and Flashback didn't advertise TWOK as such, but appeared to have the same digital scan that Fathom used.
TMP for my money looked better in theater than both other films, even allowing for TWOK/TVH being just cheaper-looking films with a softer texture.
The old HD streaming master of TMP had the original burned in subtitles in the original font, so there was absolutely a master prepared with those. That's what was shown at the Fathom event.
If they had shown a new transfer of the movie, don't you think the internet would have been discussing it these last two years? Look how everyone reacted when the new transfer showed up on iTunes weeks prior to the 4K disc coming out. The reason why there wasn't any discussion was because what Fathom showed was the existing HD master.
A new transfer, no I don't think there would be an excess of discussion about it. An actual remaster, sure there would. Especially one that was also an HD or 4k upgrade.
I haven't watched the remasters except TWOK; they're in my Blu-Ray backlog. David speculated (above) that TMP's remaster might date back to the Fathom screening based on his perception of different audio materials used; I neither assumed nor rejected it out of hand but hypothesized accordingly.
But a new transfer just means a different scan was made. And the original burned subtitles on the Fathom screening and/or streaming master suggests already more than one scan: one from a clean source such as an interpositive, and one from a dirty source such as a release print or internegative. Two such scans could be described as close cousins to each other but not direct clones or siblings (an exception would be if the subs were actually superimposed back in).
I don't dismiss the
possibility that Fathom's scan or transfer could have been a parent or sibling to the one that was streamed (if indeed that one in turn is close or identical to what was on Blu-Ray), ie, something that might have existed either upstream or as a by-product.
What I don't accept is that a badly overscrubbed, 16x9 letterboxed 1080p presentation, equivalent to what's on the Blu-Ray, is what was actually shown in theaters. Because that's the point where I'm being told to disbelieve my own experiences with the TMP screening. The projection they showed looked authentic, it was panoramic, it filled the screen with no telltale clumsiness, it was not soft but
crisp, it had appropriate film grain, the subtitles appeared natural, and it looked like film... even if it was just a cinema-friendly 2k.
You can't go to that from 1080p (the poor man's 2k) if it's letterboxed and only 2/3 of the horizontal pixels are used. George Lucas in 2002 believed he could shoot Attack of the Clones in letterboxed 1080p and the critics disbelieved him when they saw the results.
