Man of Steel is endlessly fascinating to me. While I appreciated the central thesis: “How would Earth react to finding out there’s life on other planets?”, some of the choices made have been the source of discussion for years now. The one that I found always stuck out most was the desaturated color palette that director Zack Snyder used to reflect the more dour themes of the movie.
While it makes sense in concept, a more realistic Superman should probably be reflected tonally in the visuals, it ended up lessening some of the splendor of the film for me personally. Man of Steel had some of the best visual effects and action cinematography (the two areas in which Snyder really excels) of any superhero film, but the overwhelming sense of grey made everything look rather sludgey.
Now, thanks to the folks at VideoLab, we get a chance to see a somewhat brighter take on the material. Their team turns the color up a bit and show us what Man of Steel would look like if it were just a bit more red and blue. Check it out and gaze at what might have been:
For what it’s worth, we’re all still debating the film to this day, so clearly somebody did something right. That’s more than we can say for some of the lesser Marvel offerings or the latest Spider-Man picture.
Now if they could only find a way to put some red shorts on him.
I personally liked the color choices in the original much better. There’s not much thought put in the re-colored version. Check out the savanah scene where superman is flying for an example. I like the original subtle palette in Man of Steel, It kinda has this naturalism and Norman Rockwell look that not a lot of superhero movies have. In a way, It actually harkens back to the nice color palette in the Chris Reeve Superman movies.
I increasingly find myself twiddling with the colour settings of the Mac we play DVDs on… Either to brighten overly dark films or to punch up colours. I’m getting particularly fed up with teal & orange tinted films, and try to drag the colours away to a more natural palette. In case that fails, I’ve opted to watch movies in black & white (which adds a touch of class to the tripest tripe).
We’ll get out the Superman DVD to see whether we can replicate the restored colour effect.
If only NeoConservative ideology could be removed from Snyder’s movies with similar ease.
I guess people really hate Man of Steel that much. VideoLab just makes up stuff to make it look bad; but the worst part? Everybody jumps on the hate bandwagon.
http://furiousfanboys.com/2015/04/viral-video-lies-about-how-man-of-steel-really-looks/