Can The Lord of the Rings Ever be Remastered?

Stuff like this is exactly why I fear physical media becoming obsolete.

As one of the matte painters on the film, ( painted the afternoon Leaving Rivendell 14:59 and morning Entering Rivendell 15:31 ), it's painful to see such degradation - pun intended - in the colour and tones of LOTR. I had my own 'war' with PJ in regards to the colour of the sky in the 'entering Rivendell' scene. It was meant to be warm, morning light and he wanted me to paint in a bright blue sky with two puffy white clouds, just like a Simpsons sky. I refused at first but then cartoonised, like the Simpsons, the entire shot and sent it for film out to be viewed in the screening room. They were NOT happy! He ended up getting the compositors to grade the sky blue. Everyone, including Elijah Wood told him to leave it alone and he relented... halfway. I love PJ for making the films but by God he made some stupid decisions at the time!

These movies are classics and made billions, but it's too expensive to rescan the original negatives? Hollywood is so cheap!

"So instead of a magical elf gliding through her enchanted realm, she looks like a beautiful woman in a beautiful gown on a beautiful set."

Going from that brooding ending to those shitty upscaled credits made me burst out laughing. 10/10 editing mate.

My version has a Cerveza Cristal commercial about every half hour or so.

Thanks for the shoutout! Glad you’ve enjoyed the HD color restoration. I agree with your analysis here 100%. All I want is the same version of LOTR that I saw in the 2000s, but in a higher resolution than a DVD. Pretty simple idea, but apparently Peter Jackson just doesn’t care to offer that, unfortunately. I was initially pretty happy when the 4K Blu-rays first released, because even though it wasn’t a 1:1 color restoration, at least the Blu-ray’s ugly green tint problem had been fixed. But after the rose-colored glasses came off, it became really obvious to me that the 4K remaster wasn’t handled nearly as well as it should have been. The digital noise reduction is especially egregious, and the fact that it has less highlight detail than the DVD is straightup absurd. Hoping that one day we’ll finally get a proper 4K restoration that preserves the original color grade.

Aw, what are you doing to me?! I had zero idea any of this was even a thing. I have a blue ray copy of the extended edition that I watch every Christmas. I was happy! I was perfectly content with what I have! I didn't know all these other editions had all these other qualities and that my copy has problems. But now that you've pointed it out to me, *shaky screen yelling* I'LL NEVER UN-SEE IT! So, thanks for that. Now, I'll be obsessed with finding a perfect version before I'm happy again. Ugh. This is exactly the kind of thing my pedantic brain will obsess over for a year.

He remembered the password

I always felt the film grain added to the effect of viewing an old forgotten world.

"What if I like to annoy people by pointing out creepy masks in the background" -- wise words, wise words my friend.

The color grading for flashbacks is truly unforgiveable. Genuinely on par with George Lucas or James Cameron revisionism.

The silly thing about the upscaling of the Fan Club credits is that they could have easily have had a computer read it and re-write it these days.

Hi! I was directed here by a friend, namely Dwalin who is one of the guys behind the two most common preservation projects for FOTR. (Fellowship of the Ring) First of all: HUGE thanks for making more people aware of this. It's a nightmare. While I only saw FOTR on DVD back then, I saw TTT and ROTK in the cinema on 35mm film. And unlike many, I pay notice to things like colors in quite high detail. I have a clear memory of the color of the battle at Helm's Deep, as well as the battle at Minas Tirith. They looked very close to the way they're presented on the extended blu-rays. And while you don't like the Hobbit trilogy, and yes, I agree they shouldn't be "bridged" to LOTR, the whole parts with Frodo and old Bilbo shouldn't have been there either since they assume whoever is watching has already seen the LOTR trilogy which they consider this one bridging into... (?) Anyway, I saw the first Hobbit movie in the theater and tried hard to remember the colors, and indeed, it had a green blanket tint both there and on blu-ray. But we're here for LOTR now! I was among the first to present a way to battle the green tint when the FOTR extended blu-ray was released. Sadly, it had more problems than just a green tint. Colors that were actually green in the original had been darkened, and that's just one example. There was simply no way to make it look like the original colors without doing what 44rh1n and Dwalin did. Anyway, some facts that are not presented here are: The HDTV broadcasts of all three movies in their theatrical versions, before their release on blu-ray, had all the dirt and grain intact. The theatrical blu-rays had DNR on all three, completely unnecessary in TTT and ROTK if you ask me. I understand if they wanted to clean up FOTR since it had lots of dirt spots and flares and things appearing all the time, but they also scrubbed away the grain along with it, and it could've been cleaned from dirt while still preserving the grain instead. Now, like most, I prefer the extended editions. I was horrified when I saw FOTR on blu-ray for the first time and ended up watching the good old DVD instead. The other two are true to the DVD releases. The reason people think the colors changed in TTT and ROTK in the first extended blu-ray releases was the color space conversion. Convert the DVDs' color spaces to Rec709 and they look the same as the blu-rays, except FOTR of course. There are a few more facts that are missing in this video and I'll list them: The 1080p blu-rays of the 2020 "remaster" of ALL THREE actually have more detail and grain in it than the 4K versions! The 4K versions are upscaled, DNR'd versions of the new 1080p versions which is insane. Here are some good comparisons from each on caps-a-holic: FOTR: https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0&d1=15006&d2=17668&s1=156523&s2=198551&i=13&l=0 TTT: https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0&d1=15008&d2=17673&s1=156546&s2=198561&i=6&l=0 ROTK: https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0&d1=15009&d2=17674&s1=156561&s2=198576&i=5&l=0 Mouseover is the 1080p blu-ray of the 2020 "remaster". The master has grain preserved and is the same master they used for the first extended blu-ray, just color tweaked to oblivion once again instead of going back to the negatives to faithfully restore the original, and more "fixes" than anyone can count, like closeup shots where they've removed a pimple on Frodo's face or "fixing" the visible hobbit feet in one shot where Frodo falls on the mountain and drops the ring, where Boromir picks it up. (The "fixes" are some findings of Dwalin) There's another thing with the first FOTR extended remaster: Aliasing. It's there all the time but only truly visible when there are thin dark objects against a bright background, like in this shot, mouseover is the 2020 "remaster": https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0&d1=5240&d2=17668&s1=48914&s2=198533&i=2&l=0 Look at the thinnest branches of the trees against the bright background. Another thing in the first FOTR extended remaster is some shots are oversharpened on top of the aliasing, like the closeups of Aragorn telling Frodo he would've followed him to the fires of Mordor. Another huge fact is about The Two Towers. It was DNR'd already in the CINEMATIC TEASERS! Which means that it's the one of the trilogy that would benefit the most from going back to the camera negatives. Watch the original teaser shots of Frodo and Sam walking in the bog and then watch all blu-ray versions. Another time when it's very visible is when "Gimli falls behind", the running scenes of Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, especially when they run into the sunset you can see trails of them left behind from the previous frame. This is applied to the entire film, it was on the 35mm prints and like I said, even in the teasers so it was done very, very early in production. Either way, my preferred versions remain the fan version(s) of FOTR as well as the first release of the other two extended versions on blu-ray. I won't get started on George Lucas but Peter Jackson has pretty much turned into him. James Cameron is bad too, not as bad but close. What hit me the hardest about the disrespect for the original colors of FOTR the first time I saw the first extended remaster was that I used to watch ALL the documentaries included with the extended DVD boxes and I knew that they paid huge respect to Tolkien's descriptions of colors of everything. Now they just threw all that work in the garbage bin as if it meant nothing. I had so much respect for everyone working on the movies back then when realizing how close to an infinite amount of work was put into it all. Now I hope "Peter Lucas" never touches them again but that a proper restoration will happen one day, but sadly, the vast majority won't care, they're blinded by all the "HDR 4K ULTRA HD blah blah"... I can't count how many movies have been oversaturated in 4K just to make people think everything looked like that originally when in reality the DCI-P3 colorspace should be used only to be able to capture all colors/hues a 35mm film can hold, which Rec709 can't. It's supposed to look more realistic since every film could, in theory, be presented the way they originally looked but oversaturation wins the audiences. And I have nothing against high saturation on new works by filmmakers where it's the intent. PS. The Hobbit trilogy's new "remasters" also have more detail in their 1080p versions and the 4K versions are upscales of those. For the record, they should only have removed the blanket tints then stayed away from the colors but they messed them up badly. The originals look like they did in the theaters, like I said earlier, the first one had a green blanket tint even there and I've ever heard a rumor that it's the reason FOTR extended also got it, to "make it look closer to the Hobbit" which doesn't make any sense either since the Hobbit didn't suffer from dark greens or aliasing as far as I know. Thanks again for the video and I hope these facts are useful. And thanks for not accepting the fact that they ruin our favorite movies by doing this. I remember when The Terminator remaster was released and one guy on a certain forum where I was very active argued that the cyan blanket tint was "the original look and it's there because they could now scan it properly"... Just now, James Cameron did it again with The Abyss and Titanic before it. No cyan in Titanic but green and altered all the way beneath it. I think the Indiana Jones trilogy is an example of a few done right? I doubt we'll ever see LOTR treated like that. They can make money anyway and that's all some of them care about.

I always fucking KNEW the green tint in the Blu-ray set was bullshit. It did NOT look like that in theaters. And yes, it CAN be remastered. It just WON'T for the reasons you mentioned. Nobody wants to pay $10M (I guess) to do it all from scratch.

Aragorn’s bow tapping the screen is so thing I’m strangely attached to. Seeing the “corrected” shot literally filled me with rage.

Annoyed me too when the 4K came out with none of the bonus discs and if you wanted those then you needed to get the regular blu-ray edition, which i already own from the previous remaster.

Nice Touch at the end! You upscaled your "DVD" credits!

From the bottom of my heart....thank you for making this video. I always thought there was something off about the 4k release. I am not trained in editing or colour grading so I would have never been able to figure it out. Sincerely, out of all the many LOTR YouTube vids, yours has been most helpful for my soul. Lol thanks

Thank you, I knew I wasn't crazy about my DVD looking radically different from my HD and 4K editions. Thank you.