A "true color" YouTube video featuring footage from Zack Snyder's Man of Steel has surfaced which asks that very question. Just how important is hue and saturation to a film? Would a true blue and red Superman suit and unsaturated footage improve the first film in the DC Cinematic Universe?

Can a different color pallette change your views on Man of Steel? The fine folks over at Video Lab are trying to find out.



From 300, to Watchmen to Man of Steel (and by the looks of it, Batman v Superman too) Snyder's film's have had a distinctive hue that tries to capture the mood and tension of the given scene. While some applaud Snyder's visual sensibilities, others can't seem to look past how unnatural certain scenes look.



Take a look at the video below and decide which version you like best.

VideoLab attempts to turn back time and restore the natural color & brightness in shots from DC's Man of Steel. Turns out there was a beautiful Zack Snyder movie hiding underneath the bleak coloring. Would Man of Steel have been more successful at the box office if it wasn't colored like Schindler's List? What do you think?



PRODUCTION NOTE: We're big fans of both Superman and the film Man of Steel. That's why this was a fun project. But Superman isn't just a brand. He's a worldwide icon that has lasted 77 years. When you make a Superman movie, and not every kid running out of the theater wishes they were Superman... you've done something wrong. We're simply asking questions.



WORKFLOW: (For the curious) The results we achieved are obviously a bit oversaturated and contain contrast artifacts. Since our source footage already contained severe color-grading decisions, it was far from optimal and, at best, this is an approximation. If the raw footage had been colored in a more natural and pleasing manner, it would actually look SIGNIFICANTLY better than what you see here. Synthetic Aperture's Color Finesse and some color exclusion adjustments did most of the heavy lifting in our color correction and re-grade, but each clip required a cocktail of secondary corrections. We did, in fact, put too much green in the savanna, brought to our attention by eagle-eyed commenters. The orange-tinted sky in the Metropolis aftermath shots and the purple girders behind Zod were actually there naturally. We believe Man of Steel had a more traditional-looking color grade until later in post-production when they decided to go darker. They should have followed their first instinct.