James Cameron's THE ABYSS: New 4k Version Complete and Coming Soon

[StewDogg11]

Why is this left to the director? He apparently doesn't want to do it or in the least it is not high on his priority list. Him as well as anybody would know it was fucked up.

Who knows, look what William Friedkin did to the first Blu Ray release of The French Connection. It was almost universally hated. They finally got the cinematographer on board for the subsequent release and it was almost universally loved.

 

[moreorless87]

I won't celebrate until i see it, the 4K of T2 looks awful with way too much smoothing applied to remove all the grain.

 

[Wilmer Digreux]

I like seeing the grain in its native format. Just like i like hearing little pops on vinyl records.

 

[Your Salad]

One of the many cool parts of that movie. It's SO out of the realm of human experience that, in the sci-fi movie world, I'd probably pick breathing the gel over using the three seashells in Demolition Man...probably.

Fun fact, you can breathe the gel. In fact the rat in the move really did breathe the gel.

 

[Bullitt68]

I like seeing the grain in its native format. Just like i like hearing little pops on vinyl records.

Do you also prefer scratched up and dark film prints to Blu-ray? I alienate all of my film colleagues who just LOVE nitrate when I tell them that 9 times out of 10 I'd prefer just watching a Blu-ray, especially in the case of horribly preserved or severely degraded prints.

This conversation always makes me think of the Everybody Loves Raymond episode where Ray buys his dad all of the old jazz records that got destroyed in their childhood on CD and his dad hates them, but when Robert gets the records, he loves the awful sound of the scratchy vinyl and it boggles Ray's mind



For me, I just want to see the film as clean and pristine as possible. I don't want it to be altered, I want it to be improved, brought up to as good as possible given the way that it was filmed, the original colors and shadows, etc.

Fun fact, you can breathe the gel. In fact the rat in the move really did breathe the gel.

The rat breathed the gel, but Ed Harris didn't. I suspect that would've been another fight for him and Cameron

 

[moreorless87]

Do you also prefer scratched up and dark film prints to Blu-ray? I alienate all of my film colleagues who just LOVE nitrate when I tell them that 9 times out of 10 I'd prefer just watching a Blu-ray, especially in the case of horribly preserved or severely degraded prints.

This conversation always makes me think of the Everybody Loves Raymond episode where Ray buys his dad all of the old jazz records that got destroyed in their childhood on CD and his dad hates them, but when Robert gets the records, he loves the awful sound of the scratchy vinyl and it boggles Ray's mind



For me, I just want to see the film as clean and pristine as possible. I don't want it to be altered, I want it to be improved, brought up to as good as possible given the way that it was filmed, the original colors and shadows, etc.





The rat breathed the gel, but Ed Harris didn't. I suspect that would've been another fight for him and Cameron

Big difference between some badly done transfer from scratched up high generation print and de graining though.

For one thing the grain is how it was originally intended to be viewed but I think more importantly the grain is not like some noise over the detail, it IS the detail, an image on film is made up of grain, some larger than others but when you degrain a film to the degree something like T2 was your actually removing detail.

Watch the old bluray of Predator with the grain removed and then watch the UHD with it mostly left in and tell me the latter doesn't look vastly better.

 

[djacobox372]

Too bad he fucked up a much superior movie in T2 when he approved the 4K release.

Every think that this is WHY he's been so reluctant to releaes the Abyss while he was so busy doing other things?

He doesn't want the same thing to happen this time around. He probably delegated the T2 work and they fucked it up and he was too busy to stop it.

 

[HARRISON_3]

Crazy that it’s based on a true story.

 

[Bullitt68]

Big difference between some badly done transfer from scratched up high generation print and de graining though.

For one thing the grain is how it was originally intended to be viewed but I think more importantly the grain is not like some noise over the detail, it IS the detail, an image on film is made up of grain, some larger than others but when you degrain a film to the degree something like T2 was your actually removing detail.

Watch the old bluray of Predator with the grain removed and then watch the UHD with it mostly left in and tell me the latter doesn't look vastly better.

I don't go too far into the tech weeds with all of this shit, so I can only do the eye doctor "Better 1, Better 2?" thing, but based on this video...



...the 4k looks WAY better to me, mainly because the images look clearer, the skin colors look more vivid, the jungle looks more alive. What does that mean?

 

[moreorless87]

I don't go too far into the tech weeds with all of this shit, so I can only do the eye doctor "Better 1, Better 2?" thing, but based on this video...



...the 4k looks WAY better to me, mainly because the images look clearer, the skin colors look more vivid, the jungle looks more alive. What does that mean?

The 4K in this case is the one which has been de grained far less compared to the 2010 bluray which was very heavily degrained.

The shot with Arnie smoking the cigar espeically I think you can see the de graining on the bluray making him look like he's made of wax removing skin texture along with removing grain.

 

[Bullitt68]

The 4K in this case is the one which has been de grained far less compared to the 2010 bluray which was very heavily degrained.

The shot with Arnie smoking the cigar espeically I think you can see the de graining on the bluray making him look like he's made of wax removing skin texture along with removing grain.

Hmm. I think that I'm just not seeing what a lot of "grain" people see. The Blu-ray just looks dark and fuzzy. The 4k is brighter and the colors pop more. Wouldn't more degraining mean less fuzzy? Either way, if The Abyss is restored like Predator, improving what is already there, I'll be a VERY happy viewer.

 

[Henry Swanson]

You see this? They used to call this ‘The Hammer.’

 

[Bullitt68]

You see this? They used to call this ‘The Hammer.’

 

[StewDogg11]

The 4K in this case is the one which has been de grained far less compared to the 2010 bluray which was very heavily degrained.

The shot with Arnie smoking the cigar espeically I think you can see the de graining on the bluray making him look like he's made of wax removing skin texture along with removing grain.

Did you ever watch the subsequent Blu Ray release of Predator? I wonder how it stacks up.

 

[moreorless87]

Hmm. I think that I'm just not seeing what a lot of "grain" people see. The Blu-ray just looks dark and fuzzy. The 4k is brighter and the colors pop more. Wouldn't more degraining mean less fuzzy? Either way, if The Abyss is restored like Predator, improving what is already there, I'll be a VERY happy viewer.

The "fuzzy" element on the bluray is a lack of detail due to excessive smoothing out, again when you remove the grain your also removing fine detail because the latter is actually made of the former.

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=18063&d2=18061&c=6619

One of the advantages of UHD as well is that the grain will look more natural, the higher resolution means it will look less blocky than it can in HD.

I would recommend the UHD disk of Don't Look Now as a good example of how nice a grainy film can look on UHD.

 

[crabmeat]

Big difference between some badly done transfer from scratched up high generation print and de graining though.

For one thing the grain is how it was originally intended to be viewed but I think more importantly the grain is not like some noise over the detail, it IS the detail, an image on film is made up of grain, some larger than others but when you degrain a film to the degree something like T2 was your actually removing detail.

Watch the old bluray of Predator with the grain removed and then watch the UHD with it mostly left in and tell me the latter doesn't look vastly better.

It had that greenish tint, too. It took away from the warmth of the daytime shots, and the coolness of the nighttime shots.

 

[moreorless87]

It had that greenish tint, too. It took away from the warmth of the daytime shots, and the coolness of the nighttime shots.

Colour grading has definitely improved these days to the degree the entire shot does not need to be tinted the same colour, you can have the greens of the undergrowth played up AND the skin tones of the characters.

The 00's generally was I'd argue an era of bad colour grading, loads of DVD's of that time had a purple/blue tint to them which Hollywood thought was "classy" but just tended to make everything look bland then a lot of more modern stuff the disks just kept having stronger and stronger grading, each version of The Matrix got greener and greener.

 

[Slobodan]

Apologies if @Dragonlordxxxxx or someone else broke this story somewhere else, but I'm so excited that I had to make this thread to make sure that people are aware of this:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/ne...42f6cd67531eaef48fe5&ocid=winp2fptaskbar&ei=5

For YEARS, whenever someone would bring up The Abyss and why it wasn't on Blu-ray, Cameron would say that he was too busy but that if it was going to be restored, he'd have to oversee the process. Well, apparently, that process is now complete. According to the interview linked above, the new 4k restoration of The Abyss will be released and will be streaming in a couple of months.

Fans like me will no doubt lose their minds at the prospect of seeing this amazing film literally as never before, while those of you who have yet to see The Abyss will have the opportunity to see it for the first time at its most stunning.

This has long been one of my favorite films and no matter how many times I rewatch it, it never loses any of its power. I can't wait to experience the new 4k version.

Nice, hope he does this for True Lies as well

 

[weed]

growing up, I used to get The Abyss & Leviathan mixed up. both movies are similar underwater flicks correct? too lazy to google-fu

 

[Slobodan]

Did you ever watch the subsequent Blu Ray release of Predator? I wonder how it stacks up.

I think this was actually the first release, the Ultimate Hunter edition with the horrible DNR came later. This one went out of print long ago I believe.