Yeah,I definitely invested alot of money in a cinematic 4k setup to get closer to the films I watch and for me that means for better or for worse the original pure look and feel of the film,now on the surface that seems simple, however as alot of collectors like myself know it's anything but.and gets more so as films get older,because it then becomes about film preservation not just looking good. That sells projectors and 4k gear but it's not actually the point of watching film on 4k,it's now about seeing a film the way we would have seen it on a pristine 35 mm print the day it got released.and that preservation conveys intent and feel.which is cinematically everything. So Cameron's lack of concern for this preservation and his responses to his audience, is actually nothing short of Ludacris, and I can only assume thar the man is a complete lunatic.i don't expect the average buyer of a disc to see the problems here,but one certainly would expect him to.
Aliens has always had a grain issues going all the way back to the Beta/VHS and Laserdisc releases. I had the first non widescreen laserdisc and it was so grainy it was nearly unwatchable . Then years later the special edition DVD was released . But there was a THX remaster of Aliens on Laserdisc that was i thought better than the DVD . It was cleaned up but there was still film grain visible and the color timing wasn't changed. It's been tweaked so much now like Terminator and T2 they almost seem like different movies now . We're unfortunately in a time were studios and some directors are cutting corners and not properly restoring their films correctly and just using AI . It's why it's still good to keep your older copies of Laserdisc, DVD and Blu's . Some of these new remasters are atrocious.
I'd love to watch my original VHS some day, see how it holds up visually. It was a simpler time when picture quality really meant very little to me haha. Only when I had a bad signal from antenna television did bad quality bother me.
"Home Alone" was a Fox release, now owned by Disney of course. I have watched this and your previous video with considerable interest. Wasn't aware of the tweet. I genuinely hope that you do get to share these thoughts with someone at an authoritative level in the process, you've been very well-spoken on the subject and I think that you could be persuasive, given the opportunity. I don't know why Cameron claims that the process is the same for "Avatar" as it is for his earlier movies, since "Avatar" was shot digitally and the previous were shot on film.
Yeah, I think it's the fact that Home Alone and Gremlins both have near identical "modernised" artwork for their 4K releases that I lumped in Home Alone as a WB title, I think I knew as I said it that I was wrong but couldn't remember what studio made it. I go over the tweet in some detail in the first part of this little 4K Cameron mini-series, if you didn't catch that one. As well as my considerable rant about Peter Jackson's Get Back, ha... I appreciate your faith in me haha, but I think this issue is being almost irreversably baked into the home video production world right now. When guys like Peter Jackson and James Cameron are championing it, and in the case of Jackson actively offering it as a service through one of his companies, I think many will sadly follow the trend. Yeah I'm still not entirely sure what he meant by that, my only guess was colour grading/timing really. Otherwise the Avatar comparison makes little to no sense.
You would like to hope James Cameron would have seen the criticism that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg got when they tweaked the re-releases to their old movies and would have taken that onboard.
Well there's still two very different camps there. Lucas tripled down - Spielberg realised it was a shit idea and had his "special edition" of E.T. practically wiped from existence 😆
I really enjoyed Genisys, it would've been great if the characters weren't John Connor, Sarah Connor... etc. But even then still his praise was weirdly way too much for that film.
Reading the recent article on the BBC regarding Cameron joining StabilityAI, an artificial Intelligence firm, it’s clear the direction he’ll be heading in. I have zero faith in any of his future releases.
I dont buy the whole "it's his film" thing. When it has been out, it has found a place in people's hearts and has become part of the collective cultural experience then it needs at the very least to be treated with great respect to show appreciation to the public who love it. But it's out there, it doesnt just belong to the guy who directed it any more.
I dunno, it's murky. I agree with your sentiment but the author has way more ownership than the audience. Ideally a work should be preserved as it was released, and any revisions should be presented separately, I think.
You not entitled to ownership until the art or work goes into Public Domain. The agreement between you and the artist is simple. They provide a product and you provide the money. That is the end of their obligation to you once you have the product. That's it. You are not entitled to a transfer you prefer, an autograph or a handshake. It's real simple.
Of course Cameron doesn't really know what the fuck is happening. He's busy wasting his time with more Avatar films. These AI upscales are at best inoffensive. At worst its like you let a child with crayons run rampant in the Louvre.
I'm always fascinated by the argument that a director has the sole right to alter, or be in charge of the restoration of their work. Because well... I dont think it makes a whole lot of sense to be honest. One day James will pass away, so will George Lucas, and all these other aging creators just like the Director's who created the last generation of films before them... Who is, or will be responsible for the future preservation, alteration or restoration of their work then? I prefer the idea that once a film is released into the world it becomes part of our collective artistic/cultural history just like paintings, artefacts, and historical records. Efforts should be make to preserve what the films were for the future because you cannot rely on directors to understand the impact their work has beyond their narrow or subjective view of it, or even their finite lifespan. Their minds, and eyes will change over time and not always for the better... Especially if they are particularly egotistic, wealthy, and or powerful enough that they could be a huge risk to the future posterity of the work in a sad irony. The Matrix's original blu ray release was saturated in a pervasive green tint by the Wachowski's, resulting in an absurdly colourless image that smothered the films incredible FX, and action scenes. Only in the 4K rerelease did the films finally get their original theatre colours restored because their involvement was reduced, I think that is a prime example of why it is important to establish boundaries between the film as a artefact of pop culture, and as a playground for a director's changing taste, and mindset which in the case of creatives who dont have it in them to be humble can be the biggest risk to restoration efforts. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KEdgmNZnLs4.html This is a pretty good video on the subject.
I think it’s funny that he felt a need to say something at all. It showcases how fragile his ego is that he had to come out and talk down to anyone criticizing him on the choices he made for this. Not owning these was a pretty easy choice for me because I think he’s an overrated director to begin with. For more than half of his career he has seemed far more interested in technology than he does about storytelling
I'm nowhere near as big of a Cameron fan as you, I love a couple of his films, really don't love several others. But ultimately, the guy just seems like a total arseburger now so everything he does to his films irritates me even more 😅
In the case of The Abyss - I haven't seen it, didn't get released in the UK, but I believe that actually did come from a proper 4K scan, and by all accounts it's the best looking of the bunch. Aliens... fair enough, I'm glad *you* like it, haha.
We can certainly get a life. Let's live our lives and not watch Cameron's sh*tty AI "restorations." There are plenty of much better films out there anyway. He'll never rate with the truly great directors of cinema. He's become a hack. Hacks return to their old stuff because they have nothing new to say.
As I noted to someone else, you not entitled to ownership until the art or work goes into Public Domain. The agreement between you and the artist is simple. The provide a product and you provide the money. That is the end of their obligations to you once you have the product. That's it. You are entitled to a transfer you prefer, an autograph or even a handshake. It's real simple. If you don't like it. Move on. This weird entitlement mentality is odd. Personally, I think a lot of this stuff the studios have made 50-100X their money back on charge $30-40 for a release is a bit absurd. Why? Because I believe more people would be interested in collecting it it was a bit cheaper. Are the studios obligated to oblige me? No. Am I entitled to cheaper films. No. But I can hope they listen to what I ask. Even still, it's their property.
