Has the "Lord Of The Rings" Movie Trilogy Held Up For You?

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by mpayan, Sep 13, 2019.

  1. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    No, 4K can do 60fps, as the 4Ks for "Gemini Man" and "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" demonstrate.

    4K can't do 48fps, apparently, so that's why the Hobbit movies are 24fps.

    I guess they could've tried to up-something the 48fps to 60fps! :shrug:
     
  2. PH416156

    PH416156 Alea Iacta Est

    Location:
    Europe
    Calling it "soap opera" was a bit over the top, but I can't stand DNR, EE, image sharpening applied to a whole film when there's no need for it.

    Grain should be kept. I get that most people want their high def TVs to show perfectly sharp images, and they see grain as imperfection. The industry happily obliges and gives the buyers what they want.

    This is why I still keep old DVDs:

    Left: DVD. Right: DNR cropped version on blu ray.

    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2020
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  3. AlmanacZinger

    AlmanacZinger Zingin'

    Location:
    The Land of Zaat
    Reminds me of The Beatles Touring Years doc...
     
  4. AlmanacZinger

    AlmanacZinger Zingin'

    Location:
    The Land of Zaat
    I get it. But there is actually a "soap opera effect" (which is also an abysmal thing to do to a movie). It can either be having that awful refresh rate or whatever turned on televisions or something shot in HFR. Both of these create the "soap opera effect". Although you may not have been referring to that, it does exists. I just wanted to clarify that the UHD sets for all their faults do not have that one.
     
  5. AlmanacZinger

    AlmanacZinger Zingin'

    Location:
    The Land of Zaat
    Yeah. You're correct. I should've clarified that the specific framerate for The Hobbit films can't be done on home video physical formats yet.

    If they were gonna go the HFR route they should've shot in 60 fps so it could be replicated on home video. But I guess the thought was to make it something that you could ONLY get in theaters.
     
  6. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    I doubt the standards for 4K UHD discs were in place when Pete started the Hobbit trilogy. The disc format debuted in February 2016, and movie production started March 2011, so that's a long time in advance.

    Wiki claims the standards were set in May 2015, so the Hobbit trilogy was over before 4K UHD specs emerged.

    Maybe Pete already was aware 48fps wouldn't work in video before he made the movies, though - I don't know those details! :shrug:
     
  7. CraigBic

    CraigBic Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Zealand
    I think going with 48 frames just meant that they could have a standard rate movie as well as a high frame rate movie. I don't know if they were thinking about the home video release when they made it but I know Blu-ray doesn't support 1080p60 or 1080p50 so that would have ruled both of them out. You don't get a high-frame-rate home video release but at least it doesn't compromise the blu-ray by looking as though it was shot in 24fps all along.
    I don't even think that editing packages support 48frames per second, I don't remember the details but I think they edited in 24 and then designed an algorithm of something to conform the EDL to the 48fps footage.
     
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  8. lahtbp

    lahtbp Forum Resident

    Location:
    Earth
    I’ve only got the dvd extended box set and the movies still look good on my 4K tv. Not sure how I feel about the movies being modernised. Would this not make the cgi and sfx look worse?
     
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  9. PH416156

    PH416156 Alea Iacta Est

    Location:
    Europe
  10. Surprisingly not.
     
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  11. Color grading is better here. Grain management a bit more uniform (but in a bad way for the first film). 4K upscale for those shots that involve visual effects for the first film while the second and third are still 2K up scaled. That about summarize it?

    I’m not going to spend too much time analyzing it all but it does look better than the earlier Blu-rays overall to me. Would it have been ideal to get 4K OCN harvests plus new 4K visual effects? Of course but it would cost quite a bit to do a film as visual effects heavy as the trilogy.
    Popeye was clearly an older scan but it still looked pretty good IMHO.
     
  12. EddieMann

    EddieMann I used to be a king...

    Location:
    Geneva, IL. USA.
  13. AlmanacZinger

    AlmanacZinger Zingin'

    Location:
    The Land of Zaat
    From what I understand it's a case-by-case basis regarding FX shots looking better or worse on the UHDs. The...ahem..."grain management" being the main culprit.

    As it stands the DVDs sets may still be the overall best presentation of the trilogy as it doesn't have any of the color or grain issues present on the blu-ray and UHD sets.
     
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  14. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    My wife and I saw all three Lord of the Rings films a few weeks back on an AMC IMAX screen, and we had no problems with it.

    We might have had something to pick apart if we were doing an A/B split screen specifically looking for flaws, but we're not that type of people.
     
  15. AlmanacZinger

    AlmanacZinger Zingin'

    Location:
    The Land of Zaat
    I'm not sure what version they're showing in theaters. I'm strictly speaking of the new UHD releases which have had their grain scrubbed in an effort to make film look like HD video (Peter Jackson' current aesthetic-which you will also see on his new Beatles Let It Be/Get Back film). The results are noticeable and not pretty, on the other hand I do like the color-timing of the new discs. So, for me, it's an unfortunate toss-up.
     
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  16. mr. steak

    mr. steak Forum Resident

    Location:
    chandler az
    Short answer...nope.
     
  17. Nimby

    Nimby Rotten hound of the burnie crew

    Location:
    Lewis, Scotland.
    The trilogy are in my "to watch" pile of charity shop DVDs that I got a couple of months ago, perhaps this weekend I shall give them a watch
     
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  18. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    There were credits at the end of each film specifically for Park Road Post's work.
     
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  19. Doctor Worm

    Doctor Worm Romans 6:23

    Location:
    Missouri
    I finally picked up the 4K collection. My wife and I are excited to check these out when we get a chance.
     
  20. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    Honestly, the Lord of the Rings films presented in IMAX looked like film... projected onto an IMAX screen. We were in the second row of the best IMAX theater we've found in Kansas City, the AMC BarryWoods 24 which uses two projectors stacked. We've looked at every IMAX screen in the city except one, the AMC Legends 14, and that's only because they haven't shown anything we wanted to see on it.

    We don't share any romantic attachment to film grain as having any sort of "greater truth" or any sort of nonsense like that. We're there to see the movie.

    I do wish they'd have gone back and re-rendered Gollum for The Fellowship of the Ring as they had improved the technology rather dramatically in the year after that film.
     
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  21. AlmanacZinger

    AlmanacZinger Zingin'

    Location:
    The Land of Zaat
    If it was shot on film, the grain contains information that gives the image depth or texture. If you scrub it, the detail goes away. It's exactly like DNR for audio: you scrub the grain, you're scrubbing the air, info, texture, depth etc out of the medium. It's not an aesthetic choice, it is quite literally getting rid of information.

    To be fair, there can be some level of grain management done so the movie isn't just a haze of grain, but scrubbing it all to make a faux-current day digital look will take out detail and give a flat, waxy appearance. In fact, the blu-rays have more detail in the image than the UHDs do. There are countless comparisons to prove this, including an egregious one where the mountain chains in the background of a shot on the UHDs have no detail whatsoever. They're just bleeding smears.

    I dig my fellow forumites here but sometimes the irony of how savage people can be regarding DNR in music versus the free pass these same folk give in it visual mediums is baffling to me. Same with color changes in film-that's synonymous with EQ changes in music.

    EDIT: In general I share your opinion about not being romantic about grain-I'm fine with people using digital going forward. But I'm am totally against going back to "analogue" mediums and trying superficially "digitize" them. People have enjoyed the LOTR trilogy for decades as they were, no need to change them now. Not with that silly green tint of the FOTR blu-ray nor with the grain scrub of the UHDs. (IMO, of course).
     
    Last edited: Mar 27, 2021
  22. Chris DeVoe

    Chris DeVoe RIP Vickie Mapes Williams (aka Equipoise)

    Did you miss the part where I said we were in the second row of an IMAX theater? I assure you, we did not see detail being scrubbed out. I've seen these films dozens of times, and I would challenge you to produce actual screenshot comparisons.
     
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  23. robertawillisjr

    robertawillisjr Music Lover

    Location:
    Hampton, VA
    I just rewatched the trilogy and aside from the overdone (IMO) "humor" during the fight scenes, it holds up quite well. Sort of surprised me how involved I was in the movie.
     
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  24. GregM

    GregM The expanding man

    Location:
    Bay Area, CA
    It's a significant improvement. The Hobbit 4K is a much more impressive improvement. None of the films hold a candle to the books.

    The humor is also attempted in non-fight scenes, mostly revolving around the dwarf. Really juvenile and obnoxious. There's also the entire approach to Frodo, which is little more than repeatedly falling down. I hope Villeneuve or someone is able to greenlight a more respectable remake that does justice to the books.
     
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  25. Kristofa

    Kristofa Enthusiast of small convenient sound carrier units

    Location:
    usa
    My family and I stood in line for hours on opening day for all of them, LOtR and Hobbit. They were a big deal. My wife still wants to watch them via marathons each year, but I have seen them soooooo many times, I think they are a once-every-five-years sort of thing.
     
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