- cross-posted to:
- movies@lemm.ee
- cross-posted to:
- movies@lemm.ee
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Painting out these movie mistakes as part of a restoration is wrong. What’s in the movie is in the movie, and altering the movie to this extent is a form of revisionist history. Cinema is worse off when over-aggressive restorations alter the action within the frame. To me, this is equivalent to swapping out an actor’s performance with a different take, or changing the music score during an action sequence, or replacing a puppet creature with a computer graphics version of the same creature decades after release. Movies are a moment in time. But I digress.
I disagree strongly with this comparison. Yes, having a verion that is accurate to the theatrical release available is an important part of movie history. But director’s and other alternate cuts can be superior to the theatrical release and fixing special effects or errors on post to remove distractions on older movies is comparable to digitally editing them out before release for a modern movie. Cleaning up potentially distracting mistakes is not in any way comparable to changing a performance.
Adding new stuff like having Greedo shoot is comparable, because it changes characters. Digitally fixing a license plate falling off during a take is not.
Painting out these movie mistakes as part of a restoration is wrong. What’s in the movie is in the movie, and altering the movie to this extent is a form of revisionist history.
No, screw you.
I hate this piece with a passion. The cataloguing of “revealing mistakes” effectively ruins that scene forever for everybody. That’s way more annoying than cleaning up an obvious mistake in a subsequent revision. I hate movie nerd trivia for this reason.
It’s not just dumb staging goofs, either. Who can watch the “kicking the helmet” scene in Two Towers or the hand cut in Django these days without being immediately skyrocketed out of the movie and into movie trivia land? That, if nothing else, is why I don’t like leaving real world injuries in movies. No matter how well the actor rolls with it some nerd with a passion for DVD extras or IMDB triva pages is going to make a listicle for other nerds to quote at each other and ruin the scene for all eternity.
So hey, if the goof is the kind you can clean up with a computer to shut the dorks up forever, by all means, erase that crap away. Hell, even ones where there isn’t technically a mistake are a bummer. I know exactly where Robert Downey Jr.'s fake torso starts in that cute flirting scene where he gets his battery pack changed by Gwyneth Paltrow and I really hope they end up giving him a CG body in a remaster some day because I don’t want to be staring at the uncanny valley forever when I get to that part.
Ironically, those unscripted moments are what make a movie more realistic and immersive. The issue is the cataloging of that information like you said.
Sure, unscripted moments can be an asset, but they aren’t the thing that makes a move “realistic and immersive”. Plenty of great directors are strict and won’t do anything that isn’t on the page, even if they otherwise have a very naturalistic style.
Plus, there’s a difference between allowing for an actor improvising a reaction or a line and… you know, forgetting to erase a technician from a green screen shot for a few frames. I don’t know that counts are an unscripted moment.
Not gonna lie? I agree with this. For me, the movie is supposed to portray or give an illusion of something, and these mistakes ruin the illusion once discovered. Fully agree.
Of course, it’s curious trivia that these mistakes were released as final cuts, but we can remember them as extras on the BluRay or something. Cleaning up these scenes is fine IMO.
Yep. Especially when it comes to these obvious mistakes. It’s not like Zwick wanted his US civil war kids to be wearing Casios. The artistic intent is most of the examples here is being restored, not changed.
The article is coming at it from viewing the movie as a frozen artifact, which is reductive and nonsensical. Especially when these changes are made along with a medium change where a remastering is needed anyway. Hell, for a bunch of us many of these old movies were first seen in 4:3 pan&scan at a resolution were most of this was cut off or indiscernible anyway.
You are hitting all the nails on their heads for me here. Agree with everything. The artistic intent, definitely. That’s what I want to experience.
I feel like the author is clinging to nostalgia.
this was a fantastic read, have been meaning to rewatch RotS and am going to try and freeze frame on this guy’s face
The bottom line is that we put human hands on every single one of the thousands of shots that you see in Star Wars.
Nice little bit of psyops, there. “These are not the AI you’re looking for.”
