However, only some people think the restorations are bad, and now they have a surprising advocate – noted film preservationist Robert Harris. Harris is the man behind the famous restorations of Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus, The Godfather trilogy and many more. In a post to Home Theatre Forum, he acknowledged how different they look, but also explained that’s not necessarily a bad thing. On True Lies, “Shot 35 and blown up to 70, the visuals of the new 4k UHD are absolutely not what the film was upon release, but the secret sauce works, and allows a presentation that appears far better than it might without it.”
In a post about Aliens, he elaborated a bit more on why these restorations have his approval. “Original prints were on the grainy side, as a higher speed stock was used. I always thought it looked fine, as that was the look. No problem. But there were those who felt that it was too grainy. Enter the new 4k UHD from Disney via Fox, and it has an entirely new look. And it’s a look that I like. Very much! The image has been de-grained, with zero loss of resolution, which if anything as been slightly heightened. Color are meticulously reproduced. And there’s an overall clarity that is new to the film.”
As far as Harris is concerned, these restorations have been done the right way, and there is a lot of logic behind what he says. Cameron always favoured shooting his film in a process called Super 35, as it allowed him to print a larger film frame on the stock that would make the home video releases look better. In True Lies or Titanic, he was able to show the films in 2:35:1 scope theatrically. Then, when reformatted to 1:33:1 (the standard TV ratio in the era before widescreen TVs), he could reveal more of the frame at the top and bottom, avoided the pan-and-scan look common at the time, making the films play better at VHS. The downside was Super 35 was grainy. This wasn’t super noticeable on DVD and even 1080p Blu-rays, but it proved problematic on 4K, hence the restoration.
But the issue here is that True Lies and The Abyss never had an official HD release. They've been streamed briefly and there is a HD bootleg of True Lies in Spain but the best available official quality was DVD. The Abyss wasn't even an anamorphic DVD and that's been the only official version to buy for the last twenty years.
I watched (a rip of) the DVHS HD release of True Lies with some friends about a year ago. I think it’s a US release. It looked ok.
Your point still stands. An obscure format release that few ever owned hardly counts. And the DVHS definitely looks like an older style master.
Yeah, I think the DVHS is the source of the Spanish bootleg but it's had a few fine filters run over it as well. I watched True Lies when it hit Disney+ and years earlier I found an Amazon rip. Those were definitely different masters from his the 4k now looks.