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Comment by aranchelk | Hacker News Reader

It’s wild how much the green color grading used in the film made the daytime location shots look un-Californian.

There's actually a bit of a controversy over what the original film actually looked like. There are 35mm scans out there with no colour grading at all (e.g. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ow1KDYc9XsE). Some people claim it never had the green and it was added later for the DVDs. The sequels definitely had it but turned up to 11. Trouble is nobody can really remember what they saw in the cinema in 1999 and there's a bit of Mandela effect going on thanks to retroactive grading and sequels.

From a quick look there's at least one CAM[corder] recording from when it released - is that any use for settling the debate?

short clip from it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k71faZm6P1A

I saw an original 35mm print at Cinespia somewhat recently and it's definitely not the green tint. That was added later.

The original look was a bleach bypass film process which was very colourful with blown highlights. There should be quite a bit of info on this online I would think.

Coolest part of this whole experience is that the Cinespia venue is at the Hollywood Forever in LA - it's a giant old cemetery with a huge lawn and massive screen. During the final scenes when Neo is about to fight Agent Smith in the rain it actually starts raining in real life (obviously rare for Los Angeles). People started leaving but I thought it was pretty damn amazing.

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