After reading through several threads over on Bluray.com forums, it seems that James Cameron now wants his older films to look a certain way.
If you didn’t know, new 4K presentations of Aliens, The Abyss and True Lies were released today on various digital platforms in the US.
Rather than simply perform 4K scans of the original negative like other transfers, Cameron has tweaked the picture, including the use of AI, to make the films look brand new.
The best way to describe this is by repeating a passage I saw on the discussion of Aliens.
I didn’t hate it. Part of the problem is there’s this cognitive dissidence with these new transfers. They’re too clean…but not waxy. They should be grainy, but they almost look digitally shot. They’re sharp but don’t look edge enhanced. It looks great. But it seems wrong… Color timing looked proper. Shadow detail was great. Blacks are deep without crush. The new 5.1 mix is a lot more active, you can tell it’s an Atmos downconvert. No, no new sounds have been added.
And there’s proof that AI tinkering doesn’t always work…
Generally, it sounds like True Lies is the weakest of the bunch (interestingly, the bonus features include interviews from 2012 which confirm a 2013 Blu-ray was prepared but never approved by Cameron) followed by Aliens and then The Abyss comes out on top relatively unscathed.
At the end of the day, it’s all down to personal preference. It’ll be interesting to read the reviews.
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That’s interesting. It’s not as egregious as Lucas fancying up the Original Trilogy (and not giving us the option of the originals too) but I kinda feel like I just wanted the original Aliens or The Abyss. However, some clean up would have been needed, I suppose the question is, where do you stop?
People are now wondering what the quality was like of previous scans. As I said, a Blu-ray looked to be ready in 2012 for True Lies (is that what Disney+ is using?) And of course The Abyss has appeared in HD on several streaming platforms albeit rather briefly (and are available on the high seas).
There are two quick reviews here from Bill over at The Digital Bits.
Aliens is a great film, and in many ways the perfect sequel to Ridley Scott’s ‘haunted house on a spaceship’ sci-fi horror tale. While Aliens in 4K Digital is a remarkable experience, it also takes some adjustment. But that’s completely understandable. At the end of the day, film is an artistic expression. And people’s appreciation of that art—including its remastering—is going to be subjective. Still, there can be no doubt that the film now looks and sounds exactly the way its director wants it to. Your own mileage may vary.
True Lies may not be a truly great action film, but it is a pretty darned good one and it’s a fan-favorite to be sure, featuring some terrific stunts, plenty of humor, and solid performances all around. Lightstorm’s 4K remaster definitely isn’t going to please every fan of this film, but it should please most of them. Either way, True Lies certainly looks better here than it ever has before on disc, so the result is generally a win (and the image ought to look a little better still on the physical 4K UHD early next year).
An underwater pressure cooker with a dash of Close Encounters of the Third Kind for good measure, James Cameron’s The Abyss—particularly its Special Edition version—is a very good and decidedly unique thriller that first revealed Cameron’s interest in submarines and deep-sea exploration, an interest that would not only lead him to Titanic but to the actual wreckage of the Titanic and eventually the bottom of the Challenger Deep. The Abyss in 4K Digital is a remarkable experience, featuring a striking restoration of the film that should please all but the most picky A/V enthusiasts (and it should look even better on 4K disc in the coming months).
Well, at least in the case of Aliens, I still have the prior Blu-ray release. Not true for True Lies or The Abyss, although there is the region-free release of the former. I’ll give these a shot and decide for myself which I prefer, knowing there are fallbacks. I do like film grain—a moderate amount, at least.
If you’re referring to the Spanish Blu-ray of True Lies, that’s a bootleg (yes, Amazon Spain sells bootlegs, apparently the law is more relaxed), that was made from the D-VHS transfer that had a few filters applied to improve the image. By all accounts, it’s a very decent Blu-ray.
Apologies if you already know this.
I didn’t! Thanks for the info
Here’s High-Def Digest giving their thoughts on the transfers. - Is Cameron the king of 4K?
