THANK YOU for doing this. After doing my own discussion video and then seeing the fallout of people saying that these releases were fine I thought I was going nuts. The biggest problem is that this sets a terrible new precedent for film preservation moving forward. This needs to end here and never happen again and no one needs to follow the lead of Cameron’s insanity. Here he has tried to literally alter the format in which these films were originally made-AND done so using various preexisting scans and masters! They couldn’t be bothered to do new scans! This is sadly just the latest example of the never ending Cameron video abyss. True Lies for whatever reason gets the worst treatment and has never had a proper master as even the laserdisc master is terribly overprocessed.

I think it's very simple: James Cameron is not a film aficionado, he is a technology aficionado.

There are a lot of people out there who are pretty Cameron-brained, I saw a comment on Reddit complaining about the stream of Shogun on Hulu and he said the “the stream is so noisy, just reminds me of how much I HATE film grain.” I felt like becoming the Joker after reading that

I still only have the DVD of the first Terminator. I have no plans to upgrade it, as I feel that the standard definition suits the gritty vibe of the thing, and goes along with the low-budget sensibility of that movie.

Most sensible and down to earth take on the subject matter that I've seen. Looking forward to the rest!

Aliens in theatres originally had a purple colour to the image in a lot of scenes which has not been seen on blu ray or even DVD and now it's a blue teal and smooth af

This video transports me back to a dark night many years ago, when I watched an aged Jimmy Stewart on the Tonight Show rail against the coloration of black and white movies to Johnny and the American People. His argument was that it was a corruption of the medium that the artists used to create their masterpieces, which I totally agreed with. That is the same problem with what is happening in this case. Directors choose lenses and film type, other artists set lights, decorate sets, make wardrobes, all combined to capture the scene in a unique fashion to provide the creative result you witness at the end. 4k AI upscaling paints over the results of the endeavors of all these creative people. But, that is the trend in our culture, we endeavor to revise history and reality to fit our desire for an idealized existence. An example of this is an Egyptian proposal to repair one of the fucking pyramids! The point is; history delivers an artifact in it's intended form, plus the wear and tear of time. Attempting to repair an artifact, or make it better, and then to consider it to be what it's makers intended is incredible hubris. Because, henceforth it is something different.

Your take on this topic is entirely fair and the truth, unfortunately. The crime is not that Cameron and others like to tinker with their films. It’s that they don’t recognize the archival value of them. In effect, they are destroying a historical piece of collaborative art. If they would at least offer two versions, a true archival and a “modernized director’s cut”, all would be forgiven. I haven’t purchased any of these and won’t do so. By the way, do you believe the LOTR Blu-rays are worth having? It appears they are the best we have at this point. Great job on this video!

The first thought I had when watching that Hobbit scene was "this looks like it was shot on a go pro" - before today I didn't know it was actually shot on a go pro.

Love the dramatic intro to this I could listen to you all day I had my doubts also when these where announced I remeber seeing all these movies first time round in cinemas and loved them and still do but to see them over come by AI is shocking I won't be buying them

Great video on this!

IMO you are absolutely right as is the DamnFoolIdealisticCrusader. 👍BTW: Oliver Harper has just published his review of the Aliens 4K and he is, in this case, more or less on our side - the side of film preservation NOT revisionism. His conclusion: The Abyss is worth a buy; Aliens and True lies are not. My conclusion: I’m through with movies by director James Cameron, I definitely won’t hold my breath for the new 4K iterations of Terminator or T2. Keep the good work up!

You have to remember though, that the vast majority of ppl are watching these movies with the crappy UHD player in a PS5, on sub $350 LCD based 55" TVs with 'smooth motion' turned on, the Vivid picture preset, and the bass and surround (if they even have surround) channels turned up as high as they will go. THATS who these remasters are created for.

Strange that these releases were approved by the director! John Cameron is a perfectionist and has shown throughout the ages to set demands that have at times been extreme in his productions. He has also been at the forefront of the use of new and revolutionary technology.

I went through Stage 1 and Stage 2, which then required my Stage 3 to be: (3a) sigh a little; (3b) don't waste money on releases that would only have me fuming, and then (3c) move on with my life.

You'll find a lot of these older filmmakers don't like grain because they have no reverence for it, since when they came up making films before digital, grain was always a flaw that they were trying to clean up. The best film stocks were the ones that resolved grain really well. That's understandable. However, I do struggle to see how they see the end result of removing this grain digitally and think it looks right. Sometimes, it does work. I'm not an absolutist with this stuff. I understand that depending on the film, when they blow it up to 4K, the grain may simply be too much depending on the film stock it was shot on, but with Cameron, I don't know if that's an issue with some of the films. Aliens for example, I don't think was ever heavily grainy. If that's the case, just leave it. I don't see how it's worth making the shots look digitally smoothed over. From what I hear, the Titanic 4K is really well done. What happened there?

Well said👍❤

7:15, one thing that surprised me was Star Wars Episode 7 was mastered in 2k then upscaled to 4k. Episodes 8 and 9 were mastered in 4k.

Good discussion. I bought them all but I admit I haven't gotten around to watching them yet. But the thing that made me buy them was the audio upgrades. Generally that's the thing that makes me decide when to upgrade a film I already own.

I bought the True Lies 4k/BR simply for the new documentary which was pretty decent .

I think it’s easy to imagine a very busy James Cameron being offered a bonus to put out the discs. Clearly he has both right of refusal and a financial interest. He assigns the tasks to friends, signs off on everything (anything), and it’s back to Avatar. Probably the same thing with Peter Jackson and the LoTR Blu-rays.

So that was an hour. And I guess I'm sad that people don't give the same energy to _content_ as they do to form. I do make a distinction between this sliding spectrum of preference for what the image looks like versus *can you see and hear it at all*? - Am I getting the film uncut or is it still censored? It's amazing that we finally have an uncut True Lies and sad that the BBFC and Cameron are still at an impasse with the rat scene in The Abyss. - Is the image badly cropped and in the true ratio as intended, like the ongoing controversy with Stanley Kubrick's filmography? - Do we have all the music cues intact or has licensing lead to an altered soundtrack? - Have the original studio logos been retained or have they pasted new ones on top like some revisionist history. - Do we have a comprehensive list of all the special features or are we now missing content such as commentaries and featurettes that don't tow the current marketing line? So while I can understand the passion here, the George Lucas/Disney+ revisionism of actually deleting _content_ is a much more dangerous precedent.

I agree with you other than saying these are Cameron's films and we have to respect this is what he wants them to look like. The movie is part of our culture now, being the creator doesn't give him the right to endlessly tweak it. Say he decided he wanted to remove certain scenes, or wanted to add new effects, go full Lucas on it? Nah, Cameron can get fucked.

i watched "the abyss" yesterday and loved it, "true lies" the day before was a very mixed bag, haven't seen aliens and titanic yet

Well said Luke, totally agree with you on this..just a pity Cameron did these, should have been done by proper restoration people.

Some of the scenes feel like they up-scaled the 1080p film up-converted and then filtered. I don't mind seeing film grain or ISO noise. When you filter things so much - it doesn't represent the same film anymore. I really feel that these physical media vendors need to be transparent with what they are selling.

Agree with what you’re saying. I went to a BFI IMAX screening of both Terminator films last November and seeing them both on there was night and day, not sure if it’s a new transfer for Terminator 1 but it looked amazing, grain and detail present, not a sign of DNR but T2 was almost unwatchable with how smudged the image looked, the detail is gone. I remember someone was complaining very loudly of the picture quality too. It’s interesting that audiences are much more keen to see cinema screening from film print these days but sad to see these new “enhanced” restorations do ruin the experience.

It seems like anyone who questions or remotely points out the literal "elephant in the room" is rejected and ignored. It's like trying to tell all 2,229 passengers on the Titanic that there's an iceberg right ahead, but no one gives a flying Molly Brown. The Titanic sunk, but Molly survived. Now replace the iceberg with an A.I. berg and Molly feels like the only one who's taken note of the problem, whilst everybody else just accepts their fate at the hands of A.I. berg. Hollywood wants it, and James Cameron promotes A.I. with his usual outstanding performance. Film be damned. Send out an S.O.S right now....This...is....the...beginning...of...the...end...for..film...preservation. We are sinking in a technological A.I. Abyss....

Very true. this kind of restoration is going to mess with the temporality of the next generation

13:14 amen brother, well said ✊

Regarding the Cameron films considering they are all from the 90s it kind of feels like the chroma key work back in the day was probably very visibly in lower resolution after composting then the original film elements so using this upscaling makes the output of the overall film seem more appeasing then seeing the seams of the process. Kind of reminds me of Jurassic Park on 4k which had some heavy use of manipulating to hid the seams which in some scenes gave a very processed look. So processing the whole film then Just those scenes with heavy use of old chroma key process are now harder to see and pick out since the they have fixed as much as possible to hide the seams then Ai Upscaled so the chroma parts as well as the captured portion are seamless the same in depth and resolution. I say this as I watch about an hour in and faces look like they have detail missed out by this process but also exhibit good amount of minimized film grain which has detail onto its own different then a digitally shot product but parts that would have been composited are almost blurry but very sharp at the same by comparison. In motion it looks great for a film that hasn't seen its fair day in HD and 4K resolution but enjoyable once you get use to this. I did end up having a DVHS capture at 1080i that I burned on Blu-ray many years ago so have seen it in HD resolution but recall having my player natively play it at 1080i to the TV which was an accepted resolution for the TV but if I tried upscaling to 1080P it had motion issues. On a finer note the bathroom scene has very impressive squib/bullet bursting perhaps one of the best I've seen on film. Its like a street brawl in the bathroom with some guns in the mix and comes off very convincing with elements that are damaged like fixtures and water lines. Extremely well Choreographed.

To me I don’t care how good the tech with AI in film restoration can get, it’s an abomination to the craft and the hobby. From the beginning of the format, it’s been known that films that were shot (and edited) ON FILM have benefited the most from 4K upgrades and the reason for that is the ability to see more of the detail in the grain. The idea of making a program that removes the grainy look and artificially puts the details back is so ass backwards to me, I want that grain! That’s the romance! That’s part of the illusion and the draw to the entire format! I’m glad this issue has mostly only plagued movies like Lord of the Rings and Cameron’s movies because those are movies I loved when I was younger but over the years my love of Cameron & Jackson has soured a bit anyways. I still appreciate them both but for me owning LOTR or any of these Cameron releases would’ve been mostly for nostalgic purposes so I’m fine avoiding them. I just hope this practice doesn’t become something that other studios or directors seek out more and more. Revisionist attempts at films hardly ever work out well, especially for die hard fans of the property’s in question. I agree that Cameron should have the ability to do whatever he wants with his films, but as someone who makes and releases music, I personally feel that once something is out there for the whole world to consume and appreciate that it no longer belongs to you and that if you want another version made available because you think you improved it, you need to keep the original in tact for people who already loved it the way it was and don’t want it to be different.

I don't know if Peter Jackson invented the Ai upscaling for film but he certainly pioneered it with his 4Ks of King Kong, LotR, the WW doc and then The Beatles doc Get Back... I blame him for all this. Cameron just does not care about his back catalogue. He cares only about Avatar.

If anyone wants to look at a great fan upscale done right, I'll give a shoutout to my friend Owen Davies' 4K upscales on KZfaq, particularly his fan upscales of the 2005-2008 standard def era of Doctor Who. I'm really not fond of AI upscaling on film sources but I give upscaling video a pass and Owen in particular has done a better job with the first four series (especially S1) than the BBC's two attempts at upscaling those seasons themselves. They look genuinely impressive and not giving off an uncanny valley vibe, while also remaining faithful to the original image (as in facial features and environments aren't scrubbed away, the colour grade is intact etc). He does great work.

The Twin Flicks video on American Graffiti was a disgrace

37:30 Your comments seem to have been deleted.

Wait, I just got to the point of the video where you say that you don’t have the new discs. Does that mean that you haven’t seen them yet? Because if you are going off the digital streaming versions, then WTF? If that’s the case, borrow them or whatever, but watch those and make another video saying whether that made any difference. To me, I can’t see how you could possibly think The Abyss doesn’t look great.

Hard Pass on anything He touches or approves.

I think no sorry I know that 4K is the biggest rip-off in physical Media. They advertised it as 4 times better then HD. And it certainly isn't that. And also Dolby Atmos that's on most of these discs off that's a Riff Off as well

Yup. Too desperate to stay relevant. Lucas also suffers from this bullshit.

I feel for you. While I love many of Cameron's films, I'm slightly emotionally detached from this whole affair. I hate that it's happening and what it might mean for the future, but what was done to Memories of Murder and some of Wong Kar-wai films affected me more personally. I'll probably get Aliens and The Abyss at some point (I'm slightly ashamed to admit, but I've never sat through the entirety of True Lies before - or Titanic, for that matter - it's just never appealed to me that much), but I can wait until they're 10 quid a pop, I don't have a 4K TV yet anyway. As a matter of fact, I recently got Blu-rays of (the good) Alien films for the first time, and I watched Aliens just last night. I don't understand how someone could think that presentation looks too grainy - if anything, it didn't look as grainy as I expected it to look. Put some proper snow on that bitch, as far as I'm concerned :)