The Matrix looks dramatically different on Hulu versus on HBO Max

The “looks greener” is actually a central part of the filmography (not sure if this is the right word), as the colours are tinted green whenever the characters are in the matrix and shift back when they are in the real world.

Edit: Moved off the dead parent comment

> Some people genuinely like the green cast of the 2008 Blu-ray.

I never did the see the original Matrix movie in theaters (I watched on a "DivX;)" rip provided by my roommate at the time). Did the original theater version not have a green tint to it? The rip that I saw did and to me that feels like the "definitive" look of The Matrix. Am I misremembering and it was only added to the 2008 Blu-ray?

Many comments here are clamoring for immutable masters. We also see comments elsewhere complaining when historic buildings receive a an addition in a contemporary architectural style etc.

For most of human history art has always been mutable. If you tour the National Gallery of Art there are plenty of paintings that have been changed throughout out the years to match changing and politics or theologies.

In fact, most performance art has always been somewhat unique. Every show Shakespeare put on was slightly different.

A fun mind-twist is to think of the film itself every time one of the characters in the film mentions "The Matrix". E.g. "No one can be told what the Matrix is". Indeed. Nobody can be told what this movie is. Ha!

It makes it even more meta than it already is. The Matrix was shot in 1999 and takes place in 1999. It was purposefully shot with the technology of the time; cellphones, computers, etc. As such, it serves as a perfect time capsule of that period. So in a sense, The Matrix (the movie) is indeed a simulation of 1999!

A much more significant problem to me is when streaming services don't preserve the original aspect ratio. Like cropping to make a 4:3 show 16:9 or a 2.35:1 movie 16:9.

It's been so long since these were in the theaters I wouldn't remember which was most accurate.

I saw them all in the theater but I watched the original so many times on the original DVD that to my mind the DVD release would be "correct".

I haven't seen any of them in a long time but I sure loved that first movie for about 5 years.

My feeling that it should be more green when they are in the Matrix and less so outside of the Matrix matches up with other commenters though. There were very very obvious filmography/cinematography/color grading choices the directors made to show the contrast between the Matrix and the Real as you watched the movie.

One of the example scenes with Agent Smith pointing his gun is NOT in the Matrix though, that's in the construct.. can't remember but I think those did not have the green tint.

The scene color is quite important to the storytelling. Most often I think of Green as being in the Matrix and Blue as being in the "real" world/ Zion

For those interested, there is an interesting video [1] that explains how/why the different versions with different color gradings came to be.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEdgmNZnLs4

I was not able to watch the first movie when it was released in cinema because I was a year to young to watch it (Germany late nineties and no PG-13 madness as it is today). But I watched a double feature when Matrix reloaded was released a few years later. And I still remember that I saw the color grading of Matrix Reloaded and was really annoyed by it. For me Matrix before the sequels where released was blue (you can also see this in the movie poster, which you can find green graded versions now as well ;)). With the release of the sequels everything became green. I’m also the owner of the blu-ray release and was not amused by the color changes.

Reminds me why I maintain all those DVDs, Blu-Rays, CDs, records, and tapes. They're the same every time I play them. No streaming services to "remaster" my favorite records, change all the colors, delete scenes, add characters, letterbox the damned Simpsons, for crying out loud Disney+!!!

It's interesting to compare this to Ghost in the Shell (1995) a key influence on the Matrix. It also had a re-release in 2008 which brought the color palette in line with the GITS extended universe, but that re-release is consistently referred to as 2.0 and is understood as a separate release.

This kind of sloppy mastering across different platforms suggests that whoever is in charge of ensuring the original films are available in high-quality formats is not doing a great job.

It never occurred to me to wonder what streaming services use for their sources. Do they send an intern over to Best Buy to pick up a Blu-Ray?

I wonder if this person has the incorrect settings on their TV for HDR content or color space.

HDR content to not-full-brightness-capable display autoconversion was a terrible idea.

Take the color grading away from someone with an eye for aesthetics and give it to a dumb algorithm.

I saw the first matrix the night before it came out in 1998 in san jose ca. I remember the whole film had a bluish tint to it, it was filmed in Australia(alot of it) and remember not loving the tint. In subsequent films (reloaded and revolutions) they went to the green tint and then applied the green tint to future dvd releases of the original matrix to preserve a continity to the series.

In the original theatrical release the color correction within the Matrix was intentionally a sort of "bleach bypass" look - not as dramatic as what you see amateur photographers doing but definitely quite different than the heavy green hue. Personally preferred this look myself and I wish they had kept it for the subsequent films. If the Matrix is supposed to look like "our" world then why would it be heavily green ? It still contrasted very well with the cold, metallic muted colors of the "real". The greens were mostly only in the shadows and very subtle and in some scenes more subtle than others.

The reason the original looked so good and is hard to replicate now in post is that they were very likely applying actual chemical color corrections to the original negative film. Probably using some kind of transfer film and a variation of the bleach bypass or similar method.

I am sorry for asking such a basic question but did anyone here figured out a working hw/sw solution for playing blue ray uhd/hdr videos on macbooks? I spent considerable amount of time researching and found nothing that would not crash on my mbp w/ m1 max.

IIRC each streaming service has a different set of acceptance criteria. I haven't read about color grading in this regard, but Netflix, Disney etc. do control things like audio levels to ensure that the experience is even across their different media titles -- having to crank up the volume on one title, only to be blown away when starting another one is a poor user experience. Requirements around mean audio level can have non-trivial impacts on the experience of a film -- ones with a lot of quiet/loud contrast may be affected differently from ones with less peaky audio tracks.

I hadn't thought about it before, but it makes sense that this would apply to the visual aspect as well.

I thought the parts that take place within the matrix are intentionally green while the outside ones are blueish. eg the scenes where their nebuchadnezzar flies through the old tunnels is completely blue even in the greenish shade edition

The industry term is "color grading" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_grading

I did not see the film in theaters as I was 12 at the time, but I racked dozens of plays of the DVD version, which has the green tint and looks "correct" to me.

(Edit: Apparently the 1999 DVD did not have the tint, but I that's not what I remember...)

It would be interesting to do a comparison between the green tint version and the "untinted" / neutral without the issues with highlights/whites.

> When you steam The Matrix, you don't know which version you're going to get, and that stinks.

You know which version you get, ironically, if you pirate the film from the private torrent tracker networks out there.

Fuck Big IP! Pirate your favorite film today!

One thing I could never figure out about the Matrix is why they would write all the code on top-to-bottom lines. You'd think it would be left-to-right or right-to-left even if it's all written by machines!

Well, online platforms do not care a lot about the content.

For example, on disney+, the simpsons are cropped to 16/9, which removes a lot of the image. Hopefully, I found an original version on torrent, but that's really a bad move from disney.

Great use of the word 'hews' in an article about hues.

Just a theory, but it looks like it could be caused by differences in the tone mapping algorithm used to convert the HDR masters down into an SDR palette.

it kind of looks like they took the blu-ray version that was streaming on hulu and desaturated it to make it less green, rather than going back to the original version.

Too bad they never made any sequels...

Let's just sort out the color grading versions:

The one with the blown out highlights and leaning often way too much into the blue is the most recent remastered version done for the UHD BD release. Beside a few scenes outside the matrix it is the version furthest away from the theatrical presentation. It's the only one currently available in UHD though.

The green tint version is the color grading that was done to bring the first movie in line with the planned look of the sequels. This is the HD version most people know and was widely available on DVD and of course on BD. It was not well done, as digital color correction was in its infancy back then and there are many issues with the color grading overall - but never received an official correction. This is version was also used for digital screening later on.

Now onwards to how the movie actually looked theatrical:

The theatrical release looked very close to the first R1 NTSC DVD (well as far as telecining goes of course) - and only this one (VHS and LaserDisc are naturally more off). Cannot speak for other than US releases though. Also the same version as on the initial R1 DVDs was broadcasted on cable at least back 2000/2001 in HD. Minor differences, but more off than the DVDs (looks like color space conversion round trip from Rec.709 to 601, back to 709), though unless you have a trained eye for color grading and a reference like display you probably won't notice the sublte differences here at all.

Anyway, the theatrical release does not have the the strong green tint as released later. It has a slight green and an amber vibe instead (to reflect amber and green monochrome monitors), but not as pronounced as the later release most people know from BD and streaming services or later DVD releases. In fact the green is very sublte, but giving you a monochromic vibe back in the days and the amber is more pronounced, sometimes almost yellowish, but not reddish. Some scenes are almost neutral. It gives you the best impression how the movie looked in cinemas when it came out, though due to telecine it is naturally a bit off. Some of the green is getting lost and the amber is tad more pronounced than it should be. How do I know that exactly? I have an EK print in my collection.

Don't get fooled by some scans of 35mm you see on youtube. Even though you can still the absence of the strong green tint, the print from which these scenes came are way off in color as these prints already deteriorated. And most companies offering scan services do some color correction as the prints are often really bad that people buy.

What is the best version? Take your poison. None is probably how it was envisioned. For theatrical they couldn't achieve the look with classic color timing and digital color correcion was not really feasible in 99. Then with the sequels they overdid it, with the new toy "digital color correction" and the recent UHD remaster when totally overboard emulating a bad 35mm scans often for whatever reason. The vision probablty lies between theatrical and BD somewhere. I personally always prefer theatrical, but well what do you expect from people collecting actual prints...

lol "dramatically different." To most, it just looks greener, that's it. It won't affect an average viewer's enjoyment of the film. This reminds me of a typography article that says a g with excess kerning in some font is a devastating flaw.