‘2001’ Unrestored 70mm Trailer: Christopher Nolan Presents the Definitive Edition of Kubrick’s Masterpiece
Not strictly related to Criterion, but related to film/restoration in general.
What are your thoughts on this? Something that leapt out to me is this:
"This is the unrestored film - that recreates the cinematic event that audiences experienced fifty years ago," says Christopher Nolan about the new restoration.
Isn't that a bit paradoxical?
“For the first time since the original release, this 70mm print was struck from new printing elements made from the original camera negative,” Nolan explains. “This is a true photochemical film recreation. There are no digital tricks, remastered effects, or revisionist edits. This is the unrestored film – that recreates the cinematic event that audiences experienced fifty years ago.”
It seems that Mr. Nolan is conflating restoration of a film with revising a film. I think most film buffs would agree that there is a huge difference between restoring a film (making a film's image look clear and crisp by removing damage from age so it looks new) and revising a film (adding new digital effects, changing colors, or even adding new scenes or removing scenes). The former is what Criterion does, and the goal is generally to make it look as close to the original vision of the director as possible. The latter is what George Lucas did with Star Wars, and what studios did with Terminator 2 and Predator, and it is generally viewed as negative by fans.
So I feel touting this as "unrestored" is just kind of a bizarre marketing gimmick that misses the point of restoration. An unrestored copy of the film would be marred by age and generally look pretty bad. A restored print of the film would look closer to what audiences saw in the theaters back in the 60s.
Furthermore, here is the trailer for Nolan's new release. People elsewhere on reddit are noting how different the colors look compared to previous blu ray releases. Now, it is possible that this discrepancy in color is due to the trailer editing house trying to make it look like a modern movie. This is plausible, as the whole trailer has a very "modern" vibe to it. It honestly reminded me of the 2016 Ghostbusters trailer with the "50 years ago" title. And I see some people in the YT comments initially thought this a was a trailer for a remake/reboot of the original (without context I can understand why they'd be confused if this popped up in their feed). This is a 50-year-old hard science-fiction movie cut into a modern action-blockbuster trailer. But if this is actually what Nolan's "unrestored" version looks like, then I am very confused how he thinks he is being faithful to the original.
Thoughts?
Posted Apr 21, 2018, 7:35 AM UTC · edited
From what I gather, I think Nolan intended to say that this 70MM print that is being toured is not a 4K scan of the original elements (put through any computers or whatnot), but rather actual celluloid from the original elements that have in fact been cleaned up, restored and compiled into a complete film and thereby preserving that genuine warmth to film that he talks often about. Obviously the disc version we’ll be getting is from a 4K scan but this one will preserve the way it looked fifty years ago—hence “unrestored”; so not as sharp and colorful as we’ll be seeing it on our 4K TVs.
That’s at least how I read it.
Well, technically going back to a pristine negative isn't a restoration. They're just producing a new interpositive from the original negative.
If that's what they did, then this is not a restoration.