How is the Toho Godzilla collection?

[TheDolphinKaijuGod]

I was planning on getting all of the Toho Godzilla collection blu rays, but was curious about the quality of them. Are they solid releases?

[Terasawa]

There are reviews for most of the discs on the main site as well as Blu-ray.com. They offer decent (at best) HD transfers with English and Japanese (English subtitled) audio options and a few trailers for each film. Ultimately this is not the best these movies should look or sound but for the price and considering there aren't any better alternatives on video they're more than worth getting.

[Malchik]

Best we'll see the Heisei and Millennium series on Blu-ray in the Americas. I'd like to see them box them up as a bundle and sell them for a little less.

[Terasawa]

Best we'll see the Heisei and Millennium series on Blu-ray in the Americas.

Maybe, although all it would take to top these is for Sony to go back to the original film elements and do their own HD scans instead of primarily using Toho's garbage.

[Servanov]

The only way I'd disagree is with Godzilla 2000. Toho's master of the Japanese version is ahead of Sony's master of the English version, in resolution, grain, and color.

Look at the difference in detail between the Japanese master and the American master, as well as the gobbish grain the American version has.

Japanese:

American:

[Joseph Goodman]

The US version is probably a few extra generations away from whatever the Japanese master is from.

[Tamura]

The Toho master probably also has some sharpening added.

[Tyrant_Lizard_King]

I actually find the American master of G2K more vibrant that the Japanese. Godzilla's green coloration for example is much more noticeable.

[Malchik]

The colour timing on all of Toho's masters is atrocious.

Best we'll see the Heisei and Millennium series on Blu-ray in the Americas.

Maybe, although all it would take to top these is for Sony to go back to the original film elements and do their own HD scans instead of primarily using Toho's garbage.

Sony's International prints are in pristine condition. They had some solid Showa DVD transfers.

[G1985]

The colour timing on all of Toho's masters is atrocious.

That's because Japanese NTSC hardware utilizes a wider color palette (NTSC-J) than American NTSC hardware. Blame your television, not Toho's Blu-ray.

[Terasawa]

The colour timing on all of Toho's masters is atrocious.

That's because Japanese NTSC hardware utilizes a wider color palette (NTSC-J) than American NTSC hardware. Blame your television, not Toho's Blu-ray.

Well, yes but also no. They’re poorly graded. Recent (2016-) Toho HD masters are very good in spite of regional standards.

The Secret of the Telegian


Matango


Space Amoeba

[Malchik]

The colour timing on all of Toho's masters is atrocious.

That's because Japanese NTSC hardware utilizes a wider color palette (NTSC-J) than American NTSC hardware. Blame your television, not Toho's Blu-ray.

Bullshit.

[MikeSTZillak]

I was planning on getting all of the Toho Godzilla collection blu rays, but was curious about the quality of them. Are they solid releases?

I only own two of them at the time of this posting (the Destroyah/Megaguirus double feature and Godzilla 2000), but they're good. The American version of G2000 looks the best. The Japanese version has the brightness turned down way low.

[Servanov]

The American version of Godzilla 2000 on the Blu-ray, is at the least, very inaccurate to how it originally looked, and at worst, is simply, at least in my opinion, way too flat and saturated to be pleasing. In fact, if you look at various VHS tapes of non-digital masters, such as the Spanish dubbed Screener VHS, had colors much closer to the Japanese Toho master than what is on the Blu-ray.

American BD (digitally color graded):

Screener VHS (not digitally color graded, credit to SpaceHunterM):


SpaceHunterM has a video online of a clip from the opening, which show that it has much different colors than what is on the Blu-Ray of the American version.

[omgitsgodzilla]

I think what might account for some of the degradation in the first comparison is the added expository super in the US version. I don't know what elements were scanned for either transfer, but the best available element for the US cut is probably at least a generation removed from the best available element for the Japanese version.

That super, though, necessarily makes that shot even farther removed. I can't say with absolute certainty, but the added titles in the TriStar version look digital to me. That would mean whatever element they had was at the bare minimum digitally scanned, had the super added, and was then reprinted to film. If the US cut was finished digitally, the whole movie would've undergone that process, but in 2000, I think it's more likely they would've finished the cut physically on the Japanese element they were given, like most movies would do with the camera negative. In that case, that shot would be even farther from the negative than the rest of the movie.

Regardless, yes, the Japanese cut, all other things being equal, will always look better than the US cut, unless the US cut is completely recreated from a scan of the best available Japanese element. I just don't think that shot necessarily makes an ideal comparison, since it's probably another generation or so from the rest of the movie.

[Tamura]

G2K was shot in Super 35, so the Japanese version itself is a product of multigenerational printing. I very highly doubt TriStar, a major film company, would have tolerated a cutting and printing workflow that would have resulted in US prints dupier than domestic Japanese prints. Duping just a few shots for the purpose of superimposing text would have been costly and wasteful. A&B roll printing was a really common industry method for creating dissolves and effects in the fewest possible printing passes. The industry also used offline video editing workflows to ensure the least amount of physical handling of the precious film elements. The traditional photochemical workflow for editing and printing domestic and imported films was all about minimizing the number of printing passes in order to both save on costs and reduce generational loss, and this tradition carried on until the very end. This is a hypothetical workflow for the TriStar cut, based on these industry techniques:

Super 35 original camera negative, either three or four perf (I've never been able to confirm which one it was) ->

Optically converted 2.35 anamorphic interpositive of the Japanese version, physically conformed via EDL to the TriStar version, A roll (main picture, one side of any added dissolves or optical effects) and a B roll (superimposed text, the other side of added dissolves or other opticals) ->

A few dozen internegatives with all dissolves and superimposed text added in printing ->

Theatrical prints no more multigenerational than prints of any domestically produced film, nor the Japanese release.

Additionally, the IP would have been transferred to video prior to physical cutting. This video would have been edited using Avid or some other non-linear digital editing system. An edit decision list would have been created, containing the source reel timecodes for all the cuts. The timecode would have been related back to Kodak or Fuji Keykode edge markings present on the IP, allowing the IP to be precisely conformed to the video workprint. Internegatives would have then been struck from the IP, and answer prints struck from those to check on the color timing and contrast.

[Joseph Goodman]

G2K was shot in Super 35,

Relevant minutia from way too long ago:

https://tinyurl.com/y6ppkxhs

Toho supplied us with a textless (no credits
or printed matter) interpositive as well as an English-dubbed release
print.

https://tinyurl.com/y34yghnp

[Tamura]

^ All of that is pretty much in line with what I was thinking - textless, anamorphic IP origination.

[Joseph Goodman]

IIRC, back in the pre-digital intermediate days, the blow-up for Super35 was usually done at the internegative stage, i.e. from the interpositive.

Has any open-matte material directly tied to the US version of G2000 ever shown up in promos or whatnot?

[Tamura]

I haven't seen any, and I don't think there is any since they only received an anamorphic IP and an anamorphic print of the original dubbed version.

'Scope was actually decided on pretty late into the production, possibly after shooting wrapped, so either very little or none of the movie was shot with a ground glass marked for 2.35 (this would have made it easier to convert the film to 2.35 since the printer only has to be set for one framing throughout), and there was almost certainly some tilting and scanning going on in the optical blowup. It's not a typical Super 35 film... the blowup was an afterthought and necessarily carried out in a non-standard way, so I can see Toho striking a pair of domestic and foreign IPs in a very laborious, tilt-and-scan style. I bet the domestic Japanese prints were the same generation as US prints - struck from one or a handful of internegs themselves struck from an anamorphicized IP.