by canofhumdingers » Tue Jan 05, 2016 9:49 am
It's funny this thread came back up as I just watched the bluray again myself two days ago. And I was again flustered by the transfer. It is so unbelievably dark. And having a calibrated tv doesn't make it better. If anything it makes it harder to see what's happening. I actually watched the movie with the brightness and contrast boosted from my normal settings and it was much more palatable. But that shot with Godzilla roaring while holding the severed MUTO head was still so dark it was nearly indiscernible.
And once again, after watching the movie I switched back to my normal calibrated settings and skimmed through a bonus feature that had clips from the movie, including that same shot after he blasted the final MUTO. It was vibrant and clear as day (well, night... but you could actually see all the detail and work the FX artists had put into the shot, unlike the main feature).
So then I put my tv on one of the pre-programmed "torch" modes (in this case the "GAME" setting) and watched that scene again from the main feature... And viola! I looked almost exactly the same as I the bonus features.
It almost makes me believe the video transfer was done to intentionally compensate for the fact that way too many people out their leave their tvs on the out-of-the-box torch mode. 'Cause the bluray looks great on my tv in torch mode -much more like what I remember in the theater (where the brightness of the image was never an issue). It's not the first time I've suspected a home video source was tweaked for the uneducated who leave their tv in torch mode. We watched the entire series of 30 Rock on Netflix a couple of years ago and several of the middle and later season looked AWFUL all faded and washed out and bland. That is, until out of curiosity I flicked my tv to torch mode and suddenly it looks perfectly normal with natural color saturation and good contrast.
Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll release a better transfer when the sequel comes out? I'd hate my theory to be right and find out those if us who actually properly calibrate our equipment are getting screwed for the "benefit" of the ignorant masses.