Thor - The Dark World: Hard Forged Edition

[hbenthow]

I'd imagine that's your player not displaying it at the correct ratio because I didn't letterbox the scope image inside a 16:9 frame. When you made the MKV did you letterbox it?

Yes. That's what I meant when I said that I set it to the correct aspect ratio. I used MKVMerge.

 

[TM2YC]

Thanks for taking the time to review this [MENTION=20849]thecuddlyninja[/MENTION]...

Great edit. This was a solid movie and with some trimming it is even better. I agree with most of the dumb stuff cut. I liked the humor peppered throughout so I'm glad you retained that. I think the ending is a bit more satisfying. This replaces the film for me.

...it's always nice to hear the word "replaces" .

 

[TM2YC]

Thanks for the review [MENTION=17556]skyled[/MENTION]...

This was a very fun edit. The fat was trimmed off of what was already a pretty good movie. The new subtitles add the nice Shakespearean flare that TM2YC was aiming for but don't distract either. The editing was very seamless and nothing really stands out as a flaw. Leaving the humor intact was certainly the way to go and I highly recommend the edit.

Yes it was already one of favourite Marvel movies. Which was in a large part down to the warm humour amongst all the drama and action. The humour was one thing I'm glad was kept in tact from Thor1.

 

[hbenthow]

I just found out something that might be of interest, especially to @"TM2YC". It turns out that there was an actual functional language developed for the Dark Elves by a linguist named David J. Peterson, who also invented a language for "Game of Thrones".

http://marvelcinematicuniverse.wikia.com/wiki/Shiväisith

 

[Neosmith]

I haven't seen the new cut of Thor 2, but I would like to very much. Having read a bunch of early posts of this thread, I was amazed at the amount of clips that were available and how so many fans gave input.

Just wanted to say that Thor 2 likely has at least 30 more mins. of whole and extended scenes on the cutting room floor, which Marvel has not released. I think it's likely they might put back in some of the cut footage unto the inevitable Phase 2 box set.

Alan Taylor was quite unhappy with what happened, as his film was effectively made into a completely different picture during post-production. Marvel apparently really pushed for more Loki stuff, more humor, some of which was out-of-tone with the rest of the film, the opening expository prologue and a post-credit scene for Guardians of the Galaxy.

Many scenes concerning the Elves were lost, such as Malekith's past with Bor and the loss of his family at the hands of Asgard. Taylor does hope to do a director's cut one day. You can read about some of that stuff here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/25/alan-taylor-thor-dark-world_n_4164821.html

http://www.blastr.com/2013-11-7/eccleston-reveals-some-thor-dark-world-scenes-didn’t-make-cut

 

[TM2YC]

^ I went into a lot of those changes at various points in the thread, if you are interested to read through and skip to those points.

You can see where the changes were made and what parts are missing when you get in there and start editing. I listed what I believed to be the original running order of scenes at one point in Post#3 and detailed many other changes in Post#104. As I commented at points in the thread, remaking this original cut is impossible (As are adding back some of the released deleted scenes) due to various other scenes being missing, or existing ones altered in post. All of the changes were for the worst IMO and I can't see why they were made really, as the film is great generally.

It would be cool if Taylor did a Director's cut but it seems unlikely. However, Taylor was very positive on his commentary track and in those interviews he doesn't sound all that annoyed.

 

[Neosmith]

^ I went into a lot of those changes at various points in the thread, if you are interested to read through and skip to those points.

You can see where the changes were made and what parts are missing when you get in there and start editing. I listed what I believed to be the original running order of scenes at one point in Post#3 and detailed many other changes in Post#104. As I commented at points in the thread, remaking this original cut is impossible (As are adding back some of the released deleted scenes) due to various other scenes being missing, or existing ones altered in post. All of the changes were for the worst IMO and I can't see why they were made really, as the film is great generally.

It would be cool if Taylor did a Director's cut but it seems unlikely. However, Taylor was very positive on his commentary track and in those interviews he doesn't sound all that annoyed.

Thanks!

I've read those posts and I was amazed at how you pointed to evidence of various changes and last minute alterations. Taylor is trying to put on a good face in those interviews, though I recall he did at one point in another interview let it slip that he really didn't like the Guardians post-credit scene, which wasn't shot by him. More recently, he said the following to an interviewer at
Uproxx (http://uproxx.com/movies/2015/06/terminator-genisys-alan-taylor/):

When I spoke to you for Thor: The Dark World, I got the underlying tone that it wasn’t the greatest experience for you making that movie.

They were very different. I’ve done two and I’ve learned that you don’t make a $170 million movie with someone else’s money and not have to collaborate a lot. The Marvel experience was particularly wrenching because I was sort of given absolute freedom while we were shooting, and then in post it turned into a different movie. So, that is something I hope never to repeat and don’t wish upon anybody else. This was not like that. The story we started telling is essentially the story we finished and are bringing out into the world. But there was a lot of collaboration, as there is going to be on something this big.

With Thor: The Dark World, I did get the impression you were promoting a movie that you didn’t think was the movie you made.
[Laughs] I’m hoping I wasn’t that candid?
I was reading in-between the lines.
Okay, well, you’re probably good at reading body language over the phone. I’m not good at hiding stuff like that.

 

[hbenthow]

TM2YC, I thought that this might interest you:

 

[TM2YC]

TM2YC, I thought that this might interest you:

Interesting thanks.

Although it's disappointing that we don't seem to be getting some of the "real" deleted scenes. This looks to have been a quickly dropped reshoot idea to expand Loki's role even further. I still want to see more of the production scenes before the Loki-based reshoots.

It's also interesting to see how stylisticly jarring it is when Thor1 and 2 are cut together. The Thor2 previz FX shots arguably look better than the finished Thor1 ones :-D.

 

[Neosmith]

I have the new Marvel box set now, and I have to say - while they are definitely holding back on the deleted scenes for Thor 2 (there's only about 11 min. here and none of the expansive Dark Elf material discussed in interviews) - there is an excellent alternate version of the Malekith/Frigga confrontation. The effects there aren't finalized, but it is much better than what ended up in the actual movie. It really deepens Malekith's character and deserves to have been in the movie.

 

[TM2YC]

I have the new Marvel box set now... there's only about 11 min. here

11 new minutes, or 11 minutes all together (Including what is already on the Thor2 disc)?

 

[Neosmith]

11 new minutes of deleted scenes for Thor 2. In fact, every Phase 2 movie has additional deleted material, as well as some more bts material. All the new stuff is on the bonus disc.

Most of them, however, look rougher and more unfinished than the stuff we got on the individual Blu-Rays, with time code and everything.

 

[beezo]

11 new minutes of deleted scenes for Thor 2. In fact, every Phase 2 movie has additional deleted material, as well as some more bts material. All the new stuff is on the bonus disc.

Most of them, however, look rougher and more unfinished than the stuff we got on the individual Blu-Rays, with time code and everything.

I wonder if overtime this is going to be more and more common due to fanediting. When a studio releases blu-ray quality extra features and deleted scenes, it can be used by us so much easier than the unfinished extras. It wouldn't surprise me if, behind the scenes, there was a conversation about whether or not they were going to fork over the extra money to polish the deleted material, and decide against it as it might embolden our, admittedly small, hobby.

 

[Neosmith]

I think it depends more on the stage, at which the scenes were cut. Some are removed early into production, others possibly days before release. I don't think a lot of people ant to spend more money on finalizing the cut stuff, unless they restore it into an extended cut, Lynch being the exception.

 

[TM2YC]

Not finishing the deleted-scenes has always been standard Marvel practice. Which is a shame as they are fairly generous with deleted material (Compared to most films) and fans would gladly pay a little more for it IMO.

 

[TM2YC]

Thanks for the recent couple of reviews from @"richtofenseventytwo" and @"ironman23". No doubt down to @"beezo" 's recent podcast. Glad you both enjoyed this version and more than the original it sounds, although I really enjoyed that cut myself.

 

[Gaith]

(Forgive me if this has been addressed upthread... a quick look didn't show much.)

So, I'm giving the MP4 of this a spin, and it looks weirdly desaturated compared to the caps on bluray.com:

Reveal message

I'm pretty sure this isn't an issue with my VLC media player, as the Ghostbusters III mp4 looks great, and I don't see anything about movie-wide color re-grading in the IFDB entry. What means all this?

(PS. Any chance for an mp4 of your Warriors restoration?)

 

[hbenthow]

I'm pretty sure this isn't an issue with my VLC media player, as the Ghostbusters III mp4 looks great, and I don't see anything about movie-wide color re-grading in the IFDB entry. What means all this?

I've always thought that the "Hard Forged Edition" looked "off" somehow. I didn't realize that it was desaturated compared to the Blu-ray (which already looks very desaturated, which is probably why I didn't notice), but I did comment a while back that it looked a bit fuzzy (ie, not sharp) to me.

 

[TM2YC]

I think this was my first edit using Vegas, so I possibly got a setting wrong somewhere? (Or just didn't use a high enough bitrate when enocoding the compressed output). It does look a bit washed out next to the blu-ray sadly. Oh well, we live we learn.

If a slew of new deleted scenes came out I'd definitely consider remaking this edit. I've learned so much since this edit and could redo the FX tweaks a billion times better. Also, I think I tried too hard to remove a few plot holes in places. When it would have been better to just leave the nonsense in there because it was fun, regardless of logic. It would be nice to have a 1080p version too as my editing hardware has been beefed up since I made this edit.

Damn! Now you guys have got me thinking that this would be good to edit before Thor3 in November .

 

[beezo]

I think this was my first edit using Vegas, so I possibly got a setting wrong somewhere? (Or just didn't use a high enough bitrate when enocoding the compressed output). It does look a bit washed out next to the blu-ray sadly. Oh well, we live we learn.

If a slew of new deleted scenes came out I'd definitely consider remaking this edit. I've learned so much since this edit and could redo the FX tweaks a billion times better. Also, I think I tried too hard to remove a few plot holes in places. When it would have been better to just leave the nonsense in there because it was fun, regardless of logic. It would be nice to have a 1080p version too as my editing hardware has been beefed up since I made this edit.

Damn! Now you guys have got me thinking that this would be good to edit before Thor3 in November .

FWIW, I've noticed that any encoding at 720p, regardless of bitrate, desaturates the image noticeably.  I'm wondering if that's what happened here.