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Colorize the classics?

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  • #1497
    Nolan
    Participant

    What reaction would you have if Hollywood decided to rerelease the classic horror films colorized? I’m surprised it hasn’t been tried or has it? I would absolutely refuse to see them. There is enough unoriginality coming out of Hollywood as it is i would not put this past the powers that be.

    #1498
    Black
    Keymaster

    As long as there is always an option and every version of the film is preserved in high quality, I say go nuts.

    The most obvious example would be the original Star Wars trilogy, which is a nightmare situation:

    https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=229575

    You may or may not know that George Lucas keeps going back and tinkering, most notably with the 1997 special editions where some characters were completely replaced with CG characters. This has caused a lot of controversy with fans, not just because he’s tampering with history and our childhood memories, but because he’s actively been trying to bury the original cuts not allowing proper Blu-ray or even DVD releases of them.

    People wouldn’t care so much if he gave us the option, here are my special director cuts that are closer to my vision and here are the originals as you remember them, enjoy.

    I’ve actually been getting more into researching the different cuts of films lately, notably Halloween 6 and Blade Runner have vastly different alternate versions that interest me.

    I’m all for director’s cuts, remastering etc etc so long as the originals are also preserved in a very hands-off approach.

    For example, would I watch and possibly enjoy a colorized version of Frankenstein https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021884/ ? Sure. So long as it doesn’t in any way endanger the integrity of the original. As long as the studio didn’t just stop caring about the original and only gave special treatment to the colorized version, as long as we can still watch the original black and white version, who cares?

    I feel the same way about remakes and sequels etc that people claim “ruin” the original, it’s just silly to me. Picture a room full co-workers arguing whether the cafeteria should serve vanilla or chocolate ice-cream. Why does it have to be one or the other, why not serve both?

    Also, some films are actually shot in color and then released in black and white (so the color version may simply exist), I’m only aware of The Forbidden Zone, but I’m sure there are others.

    As far as black and white films being colorized, apparently it’s a fairly common phenomenon:

    https://wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_black-and-white_films_that_have_been_colorized

    Here’s an example:

    https://www.youtube.com/embed/Jz77RxYhtoQ

    #1604
    Nolan
    Participant

    Wow, I knew Lucas did some re-editing on the movies but did not know he actually replaced some of the characters. I need to watch me some movies…..That King Kong shot thats colorized proves my point, at least for that movie, leave the classics alone. ;)

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