Your thoughts on revisionist film making...

Post by **Wonderlicious** » August 12th, 2005, 6:39 am

What is your opinion on revisionist film making? It is a somewhat controversial aspect of film making, so I wondered what your opinion was. I'll make a section for each aspect of revisionism and sum up my thoughts in each one.

Extra Scenes
As long as the original is still intact in some way or another , I am fine. If it is something like the incidental "Morning Report" being flung into The Lion King when it had nothing to do with the film's production (read: getting more bums on seats than a simple tribute or improvement), I'm not entirely happy about the thing, yet otherwise, I'm fine.

Effects Enhancement
This is E.T./Star Wars style stuff that I'm talking about and I'm not too fond on this one. For example, we have E.T., which I first saw during its theatrical rerelease a few years ago. That was the enhanced version and even as a fourteen year old, I didn't like all the digital effects that had been inserted when seeing a comparison with the old effects. I recently happened to find the old DVD of the film (despite it being out of print) and watched the original theatrical version and found it far more enjoyable than the new version. I don't like the attitude of digitally enhancing films at all, as it seems to reflect modern day lack of consideration towards old special effects and techniques (which, in my opinion, can sometimes be more lifelike). If it gets out of hand, what will happen next? Will the characters of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty be made to look like the CGI people of Shrek? Will the flying sequences of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang get a pixelated makeover? Is there a chance that the penguins of Mary Poppins will look like the penguins of Madacascar? You don't need flashy pixel images to enjoy a movie; The Wizard of Oz has many dated effects, yet storywise, it reaches near perfection.

Censorship
I can see the point of it, yet I don't always agree with it. It won't stop me buying a DVD, yet I will always look for the unedited version (or the nearest to). That's one plus from living in the UK; the Region 2 version of Melody Time is unedited, leaving the cigarette in Pecos Bill's mouth. I also believe that the unedited version of Make Mine Music was released here in the 1980s on video, so I'm continuously looking on EBay to try and get it if it pops up again (which it does from time to time).

Film restoration
I'm not sure that you'd call this a part of revisionist film making (one could say so due to noise being removed, colours changing slightly), but I am not really opposed to this in any way. I think that sometimes it is overdone such as all grain that was naturally there being removed and things such as some of the raindrops in Citizen Kane vanishing, but not all the time. I normally think it's best for older films to retain its original soundtrack and not a remix (one of the reasons that I'm happy to have bought the Region 1 Mary Poppins; the Region 2 edition just has the 5.1 mix), yet if it's not, I'm not going to cry about it. Plus, preserving great films like Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland that would die a horrible death (thanks to the print rotting away) is a good thing.

Post by **Macaluso** » August 12th, 2005, 11:56 am

Effects Enhancment and Cencorship = no no

Film Restoration is completely awesome.

Extra scenes are also awesome, but only if their just that: Extra.
Having Morning Report in the lion king completely changed that entire scene, and it sucked. With morning report in there, they didn't have the part where Mufasa tells Zazu to turn around, which he does reluctanly, and then it's all quiet while Zazu stands there scared.

It was just... dumb without that scene, and morning report itself was stupid.

Post by **Meg** » August 12th, 2005, 4:56 pm

Yeah, really stupid. My fellow TLK fans and I really dislike it - Most people would have prefered 'Shadow Lands'. I wanted 'He Lives in You'...but...oh well.

Post by **Macaluso** » August 12th, 2005, 5:13 pm

I wouldn't have minded as much if the entire scene wasn't changed because of it.

Post by **Ben** » August 12th, 2005, 6:52 pm

No time to reply in full right now, but good topic!

Post by **Brandon Neeld** » August 12th, 2005, 10:10 pm

Censorship really bugs me more than anything. I can appreciate most forms of restoration (I can always go back to the original if I liked it better) but this is ludicrous. Anyone else find it odd that we blame today's highly scrutinized and edited films for corrupting the youth but going back to the days insensitive cinema that showed Pacos Bill smoking a cigarette and Elmer Fudd getting the devil beat out of him come from an era when kids were problem free? Something really isn't adding up here.

Besides, who wouldn't love to see Edna plop a camel in her holder for The Incredibles 2? Look at her - you know she must!

Post by **SingingDuckGirl** » August 14th, 2005, 12:01 am

Yeah, really stupid. My fellow TLK fans and I really dislike it - Most people would have prefered 'Shadow Lands'. I wanted 'He Lives in You'...but...oh well.

Shadowland is awesome! I wish they had stuck that in instead. The only thing is that it might be wierd having the animated, male Rafiki singing instead of the girl on Broadway, but I'm sure it could have worked out better than what we're stuck with. He Lives In You is in LK2, so they probably couldn't have done that. I still love that song though.

Post by **ShyViolet** » August 26th, 2005, 12:49 pm

Extra scenes are also awesome, but only if their just that: Extra.
Having Morning Report in the lion king completely changed that entire scene, and it sucked. With morning report in there, they didn't have the part where Mufasa tells Zazu to turn around, which he does reluctanly, and then it's all quiet while Zazu stands there scared.

It was just... dumb without that scene, and morning report itself was stupid.

Exactly. The reason that song was never included in the first place was because it was not necessary. And if they have to put extra scenes in, couldn't they just make them like a separate feature, like deleted scenes? (I know they include both the theatrical and updated versions but that just seems silly to me. And if you only have VHS you get stuck with the sucky one whether you want it or not.)
I HATED the change, and I hate almost every "adjustment" to a classic film bar restoration, which I am for...(even though the new Beauty looks kind of weird to me, I don't know why

) I hate Human Again too even though I know it's in the Broadway Show.

Though ''He lives in You" is an awesome song, I still wouldn't want it to be right in the film, I'd rather have it separate.

I still can't believe that Spielberg took out the guns and the "terrorists" line in ET (terrorist changed to "hippie", which makes no sense and takes away that authentic early 80's feeling, which like nowadays terrorism was an important issue.)

And the guns to walkie-talkies?? Realllllllly stupid. Why doesn't he just take out the scene with Eliot kissing the girl because it constitutes "sexual harassment" or something?