I recently completed my home 7.1.4 speaker setup and have been really enjoying digging into high-end Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision material. Playing around with nip23 long-form content to share this kind of niche nerd stuff that doesn't quite make sense as a regular nostr note.
tldr: Still a joy, though much of its intentional over-the-top ridiculousness is just too much for me now. The absolute trash 4k transfer is a tragedy.
The movie
I'm fairly sad to report that I just couldn't enjoy the first hour or so anymore. More and more of the movie's creative absurdity that I previously loved is souring to cringe.
The bulky, waddling alien designs in the intro sequence are just pointlessly dumb.
The savage lampooning of an American-style government — from the casting of a President who looks and sounds like an NFL lineman to all the stupid and/or war-hungry military leaders — I'm sure is hilarious to the French creative team (and, sure, somewhat deserved), but it's just so blunt and caveman-y and insulting. I'm not interested in defending America's honor, but this is just so dumb and cruel in its way that it's unpleasant to watch.
Gary Oldman is, as always, a powerhouse. But when you direct him to go big with the campiness, it's... it's a lot.
Things improve once Leeloo starts to take over the story. And, maybe this is a surpise given the above, but Chris Tucker's how-do-you-even-describe-it Ruby Rhod is still a shockingly successful, brain-breaking spectacle. Happy to report that the Fhloston Paradise set piece is still a gem and is where all the unique absurd energy truly finds its groove.
Overall, I think the movie still works. Luc Besson is unapologetically asking us to YOLO into this crazy world. It's experimental in a idgaf way but he does real work to layer in an appealing emotional core between Corben and Leeloo. It does all somehow come together and ultimately works surprisingly, uniquely well — if you can get past the first hour.
Video
Just straight trash.
Sidebar: On image processing / contrast
Our eyes want strong contrast in images. You might complain that this pic is just a little too muted:
But once you start tinkering, it can be very easy to way overshoot the mark:
Some of you may think, "Uh, I prefer the boosted version." Yes, it's more lively to our eyes, certain things are so much more emphasized now that you can appreciate those details more. But then look at the highlights. They're so boosted that details have disappeared into full white. Same for the shadows. Crushed to pure black.
The art is to dial in just the right amount of contrast boost without blowing out the highs or crushing the lows. And there's just an overall harshness where there had previously been subtle gradations of color and texture. The more you work with image processing, the more you appreciate a lighter touch.
Here's another set:
This was a lower quality image to start with (cellphone cam vs DSLR) and then overjuiced so hard that it's lost any semblance of the natural world.
Back to the trash "The Fifth Element" video transfer
The 4k transfer is similarly overjuiced everywhere. It's hideous. My cellphone photos of the HDR screen are in no way accurate, but even still some of the flaws are entirely evident.
Harsh over-contrasty processing. Color saturation similarly overjuiced.
There are lots of dark areas in this image, but if we boost those levels, we see that there's NO information in the shadows. Once you crush shadows to black, no amount of brightening can bring back those details.
Ruby Rhod's hair and black dress are just (0,0,0) pixels.
A good transfer would still provide strong contrast where it's called for, but would preserve the subtleties, some details even in the shadows and highlights. A good transfer paints with up to the full 1 billion available colors. This transfer clumsily, bluntly limits itself to a box of 32 crayons.
View this one full-screen:
Just harshness everywhere.
There's also way too much sharpening applied which adds to the harshness and over-accentuates the natural film grain.
I'm not the only one who hates this transfer.
It's noisy and harsh [...] I think a lot of people would be surprised at how artificial Sony's remaster would look compared to an untampered presentation. (link)
There’s no positives that I can mention in regards to Sony’s efforts on The Fifth Element. It may be the single most artificially sharpened UHD. You can literally use the screen as a cheese grater. And the color grade is completely off from 35mm. (link)
There's a better option
Weirdly, there's an alternate 4k disc that was published in the UK by Studiocanal that is said to be a vastly superior transfer.
The 4k disc is region-free, so even though it's a UK disc, it'll play fine in any 4k blu-ray player.
It's currently $28 on amazon but, given my lessening admiration for the movie (at least the first hour), I'm not interested in double-dipping and spending more money to get this version.
Audio
Nice that it has a Dolby Atmos mix but I think I was too distracted by the horrible visuals to do any kind of critical listening. But for any movie this old (1997), the quality of the original sound elements will always be an obvious limiting factor.