raiders of the Lost Ark..........To be digitally edited!!!! (1 Viewer)

[cafink]

I mean, like was already said earlier in the thread, nobody has bashed Peter Jackson for digitally removing the car in The Fellowship Of The Ring?

Well, I wouldn't "bash" anyone for making the change, but I would definitely have preferred the shot to be left alone.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Carl, that's the thing. Had they noticed it originally they would have taken it out. Had they had the technology at the time they would have taken out the reflection

 

[cafink]

But they didn't, and no amount of editing, tinkering, or reworking is going to change that now.

Movies are a reflection of the time and place in which they were created. I'm not interested in seeing what "Raiders" would look like with the benefit of the latest in filmmaking technology; I'm interested in seeing the "Raiders" of 1981, flaws and all.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Had they had the technology at the time? What? GL wouldn't have had to redo Star Wars!

Maybe it should read, If they had noticed it while they were shooting it, they would have rearranged the lighting and removed it.

I know this won't happen but if both versions came out separately, I'd take the one with the reflection. It shows that nobody is perfect, and even though I may not have known about the error before, now that I do I just feel that it was something they overlooked. Big deal!

We're getting into that GL discussion again... ho, hum.

Glenn

 

[Jesse Skeen]

What if they had digitally removed all the Pacific Bell signs on the pay phones in "Die Hard 2", which is supposed to take place on the East coast? To me that's the funniest thing about that movie- the error was noticed right away when it came out in theatres and it stands as a testament to the ridiculousness of the movie. If they had "fixed" that for the first video release, this would not have been such a well-known mistake and given the movie slightly more credibility than it deserved.
The car in Lord of the Rings should have been left in the theatrical version DVD if it indeed showed up in the prints; they could have just cleaned it up in the "Extended Edition" since that's the "I wasn't happy with how the theatrical version turned out so here's how it should have been" version- I have no problem with those as long as BOTH versions are available.
BTW "Battlefield Earth" was re-edited for home video release- I haven't seen that version but the theatrical release was a classic for fans of bad movies. It's a great tragedy that this isn't available in its original form.

 

[John_Berger]

To me, a classic blunder is in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. When Azeem and Robin are pushing the catapult, look up in the window behind and above them and you'll see a black-shirted crew member trying desperately to get out of the scene. I've seen the movie dozens of times, but I never noticed this until I watched the Special Edition DVD a few weeks ago. Certainly, I'm not the first person to have seen this.

Did that crew person ruin the entire movie? Absolutely not. You know what? Neither does seeing a reflection in a piece of glass.

The way that I look at it, removing things that were in the theatrical release just for the sake of "fixing them up" where the "fixes" provide no improvement to the plot or story is needless revisionism.

Whether S.S. is serious about "fixing" the reflection or not remains to be seen. But considering the political correctess (read: "needless revisionism") that he pursued with the E.T. DVD release, I would not be surprised at all if he decided to do this. I would be immensely disappointed, however.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

BTW "Battlefield Earth" was re-edited for home video release- I haven't seen that version but the theatrical release was a classic for fans of bad movies. It's a great tragedy that this isn't available in its original form.

The most noteable deleted scene was a ludicrous one where Terl hangs a few humans over a canyon to see if they can fly. I was in too much agony by that time to really recall detail, but I know that was deleted

 

[cafink]

Jeff, do you mean that the scene in question was part of the original theatrical release, but deleted from the home video version? Or that the scene was absent from the original theatrical release and then reinstated for video? The latter is the most common use of the term "deleted scene" but it sounds to me like you mean the former.

 

[Jeff Jacobson]

On top of this, a huge amount of players puke on [seamless branching] because their manufacturers didn't bother to implement it properly (Mostly cheap chinese, Apex, Sampo etc)

I have a Sampo and it also "pukes" on non-seamless branching titles.

 

[Nelson Au]

Interesting debate here.

While on the subject of using glass for movie trickery, it's amazing to find a goof in Stanley Kubrick's 2001. That film is so well made with such great illustions everywhere, it's fun to find the small smudge on the glass used for the floating pen when Dr. Floyd is asleep on the shuttle when he's on his way to the space station.

If he wants to fix the reflection on the glass, let him do it. It's his movie.

 

[Dave Poehlman]

Movies are a reflection of the time and place in which they were created.

This is a good point. I suppose you could compare it to colorizing. Perhaps the director would have liked the film to be displayed in full color, however, the technology wasn't there... does that make it okay to go back and add color to the film later?

I must admit, reading these debates has got me waffling a bit on the subject.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

A lot of the supposed problems with 2001 are the result of the way the image was sourced. The vast majority of them would not have been visible in theaters.

 

[Patrick McCart]

I think a lot of people are making a mountain out of a molehill.

If no one found out this was done until the disc was released and scrutinized, most wouldn't even realize it's gone.

 

[David W Johnson]

Indy's whip will be replaced with a walkie talkie and his gun will be replaced with a spongebob doll. Just joking...

I welcomed many of the additions to Star Wars Episode IV and thought that they added quite a bit to the film. However, I can't say the same for the additions to Episode V and VI. Empire was perfect the way it was before the additional footage. It wasn't needed. There really was no hope for Return of the Jedi.

As for E.T., the changes were subtle enough that I wasn't distracted at all from the artistic intentions of the original. I was glad that the original was included in the E.T. gift-box set.

I just pray that no footage is removed to Raiders of the Lost Ark when it's released on DVD. I think Temple of Doom needs all the help it can get, and I feel that they can leave The Last Crusade the way it is.

In regards to an earlier post: The fly doesn't actually go into Belloq's (spelling?) mouth. It flew away just as it hits the corner of the actor's mouth. Yes...It sure LOOKS like it went in, but if you look close enough, you can see that the now famous insect flies safely away.

 

[David W Johnson]

>>>>Movies are a reflection of the time and place in which they were created. I'm not interested in seeing what "Raiders" would look like with the benefit of the latest in filmmaking technology; I'm interested in seeing the "Raiders" of 1981, flaws and all.

Wouldn't it be awesome if they digitally updated the movie, "Wargames" and have Matthew Broderick playing Global Thermonuclear War on a current Windows XP system?

Leave GOOD movies alone!

 

[Tony Whalen]

I think a lot of people are making a mountain out of a molehill.

Amen to that. We're talking about a reflection here. Not removing a scene, or digitally altering the scene in such a way that it changes anything.

 

[Dave H]

I've never noticed the reflection in the 100 times I have probably seen the film. So, it won't be any different to me.

 

[BrettB]

NO GLASS = NO CASH
Not great but it's the best I could come up with.

I'm trying to imagine what the menu explaining the two seamless branched versions of the film would look like.

Try as I might I simply can't comprehend how someone could be upset about removing the reflection. I'm not saying that those who will be upset if the reflection is removed are wrong, just that I can't quite understand it.

Some positive news: This thread went 73 posts before a walkie talkie joke surfaced. That is quite encouraging.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

Because it sets a trend. If it is accepted, they won't hesitate to make more changes in other movies, which could lead to sloppy directing. You see, they can just say, - 'Well, we'll fix it up for the DVD!'

Glenn

 

[Dan Rudolph]

Glenn?? THis would have been fixed for the theaters if they had noticed and had the technology to fix it and/or budget to reshoot. These days, people do have the technology. So why would they let things slip through to the theaters and fix them on DVD? It's just as easy to fix them before they hit theaters. The only reason Fellowship wasn't fixed earlier is no one noticed it.