James Cameron, 4K remasters, and the use of AI

The 4K remasters of James Cameron’s The Abyss, True Lies and Aliens are coming in for criticism – and AI is getting some of the blame.

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James Cameron has long been one of my favourite directors, and I’m not alone. I can still remember where I saw many of his films for the first time, especially the early titles, as I was growing up.

The Terminator premiered on BBC2 in a series called Moviedrome where the film was introduced by director Alex Cox. The Abyss I saw on a Sunday evening as it premiered on Channel 4, an infamous broadcast where the uncut version was mistakenly screened.

Being a fan, I have always purchased the latest physical media edition of Cameron’s films. I even bought into the UK laserdisc market at the wrong time, six months before the launch of DVD (I had no idea!), and purchased Terminator 2 on that format because it was the only way to obtain the film uncut in the UK, rated 18.

Of course, when the time came, James Cameron’s films made the jump to the next format, DVD, and they were incredibly successful as well. Titanic, a very basic DVD containing a non-anamorphic copy of the film and the trailer, released in the late 1990s, went on to become a bestseller. It was the first DVD to reach a million sold.

James Cameron promised a more deluxe edition would be released later down the line. These promises would become a staple of his replies as time passed. Titanic did indeed receive a multi-disc special edition, but it took six years. And once the Blu-ray format was released, it was another six years before Titanic arrived in high definition.

Despite the long wait for the films to become upgraded, a couple were left behind in the past.

The Abyss was released onto a deluxe two-disc DVD package in 2000 that featured both the Theatrical and Special Edition cuts and a wealth of behind-the-scenes information. Unfortunately, the picture was non-anamorphic (not enhanced for widescreen televisions).

True Lies was released onto DVD the following year in the UK, not without its own issues. It was released uncut by mistake and was quickly recalled. An edited version would replace it a while later.

At one point, it looked like True Lies was to be released in higher definition too, a decade ago in 2013. The bonus features on the new digital 4K releases confirm this with a new retrospective documentary that features 2012 interviews with Bill Paxton and Jamie Lee Curtis. The 2013 release obviously never happened.

So, for 20 years, these DVDs have been the only way to watch these films officially via physical media. Admittedly, both True Lies and The Abyss have appeared for short periods on streaming services in HD. For those of us waiting upon a Blu-ray disc, this has both taken us by surprise and given us hope that a physical version would be released soon after.

Actor Ryan Reynolds along with director Rian Johnson made a point of this back in 2019 which bought about a response from Cameron.

I know guys, I know – it's on my to-do list, promise. @RianJohnson @VancityReynolds pic.twitter.com/eljqtDiOX5

— James Cameron (@JimCameron) March 25, 2019

But by this point in 2019, Cameron was deep into production on his Avatar series of films, along with a sprinkling of other side projects.

Despite reports and glimpses of information revealing that new scans of True Lies and The Abyss had been completed, the final word always came back to Cameron. He was the director, and these new scans would require his seal of approval. Unfortunately, he was always tied up with his Avatar work, and he couldn’t spare the time needed to approve his older films.

The fans would have to continue to wait while Cameron kept repeating his promise that The Abyss and True Lies, “were coming”. Sometimes those promises came with dates that passed without any further news.

Then, in September 2023, a new digital print of The Abyss was shown in Los Angeles with Cameron in attendance for a Q&A. He confirmed all the work needed to bring the film to the public had been completed. The long awaited films would arrive via both streaming services and physical media.

A press release in November made the confirmation that films are coming, but we would have to wait a little longer for the discs. The announcement informed us that along with the first two Avatar films, Aliens, True Lies and The Abyss would be released in mid-December digitally in 4K with physical discs appearing in March 2023.

The wait was finally over – but as the fans started to watch these new transfers, something had been changed. Considering James Cameron is regarded as a bit of a perfectionist, these changes were quite unexpected too.

Especially as he told IGN, “it takes about a week of me there all day, supervising the transfer, correcting every shot, every little bit of repositioning and working on every pixel of the image, and I don’t want to just phone that in and I don’t want to have somebody else do it for me.”

When we watch an older film, you’ll notice that the film contains grain. In the simplest of terms, the level of grain is determined by what film stock was used at the time of production. It’s caused by small crystals within the physical film reel. Once films were presented in HD, the grain become more noticeable due to the picture’s higher resolution, and not every consumer was a fan.

In some cases, a technique knows as Digital Noise Reduction can be applied to help remove the small imperfections and it’s not uncommon for this to be used. In the right hands, it can make a film look cleaner. However, if the effect is applied too much, not only is the film grain removed but also smaller fine details are erased as well. For example, the small pores on a person’s face, as the software doesn’t know the difference.

This happened to 20^th Century Fox’s second Blu-ray release of the original Predator which was labelled The Ultimate Edition. Digital Noise Reduction had been applied so strongly that the fine detail had been scrubbed away, people looked like they were made of wax because their skin was smooth and flawless.

Cameron’s Aliens is a very grainy film due to the 1980s film stock that was used during its production. The film still contains a lot of grain on the Blu-ray and even though the levels were carefully reduced, it still looks wonderful and the detail is retained.

In recent times, Digital Noise Reduction has gained a new ally, artificial intelligence. In particular Park Road Studios, owned by Wingnut Films – the production company of director Peter Jackson – has been actively developing this artificial intelligence aspect and used it extensively. It refers to it as propriety deep-learning algorithms.

It was used to bring the old films of World War I up to a modern standard in the remarkable documentary They Shall Not Grow Old.

The technique was also used for Peter Jackson’s more recent Beatles documentary Get Back. The grainy 16mm original material was restored into colourful high-definition footage that looked like it was filmed yesterday – but not everyone was happy with the results.

As Martin Liebman of bluray.com mentioned in his Blu-ray review of the documentary, “the image has been heavily processed. The picture is not particularly clear and in fact looks downright smudgy. Grain manipulation is obvious, rendering the image appearing far less than naturally filmic. Fine details are hard to come by. Even in close-up the picture struggles to overcome the processing that flattens the grain and smooths out detail.”

Which brings us to here.

It seems that this AI-driven approach has been deployed on this recent crop of Cameron titles available to buy, with varying results.

It’s been suggested that Cameron has been using these propriety deep-learning algorithms in order to reduce the film grain to a level where it looks like it has almost been removed completely, but still retaining the fine details. However, this is more prevalent in some titles than others.

Cameron’s 1997 film Titanic was recently released on 4K Blu-ray disc and has generally garnered high praise for the picture quality. The 4K resolution and digital wizardry has improved the fine details in the picture (except on computer visual effects shots which had to be upsampled as they were generated in a resolution lower than 4K back in 1997).

If we look at another eagerly awaited film, True Lies, it appears the use of these digital tools have created a picture quality quite different to what was expected.

I must stress that I have not seen the films first hand but there are plenty of screenshots on the bluray.com forums that show what has happened to the picture quality. Also, these digital films are comprised of smaller files for streaming purposes, the physical disc versions will always have a better picture quality. The encoding, for streaming purposes, may also have a slight detrimental effect to the picture.

But even after that disclaimer, you can’t deny that something strange has been going on. Have a look at these examples of different transfers. What has happened to their faces on the newer 4K release, the bottom screen capture? It appears that a level of detail has removed with the picture sharpened to enhance the details.

Apparently, this looks better in motion, but reviews do mention that the picture definitely has a processed look that makes it feel like it was shot in the last few years as opposed to 1997. It’s certainly received a mixed bag of responses, with some loving the fresh new-look while others are simply aghast with it.

Aliens has also had the same treatment, and you can check out a comparison here (click on the picture to swap between the Blur-ay and the new 4K version) to see how you feel about this new remastering technique. But the deep learning algorithms have also thrown up a few anomalies that look strange in stills, but again, I can’t comment on the film in motion.

Listen: Film Stories podcast – Aliens.

Here we can see that something has happened to Michael Biehn’s face, particularly his eyes. We can speculate that the deep learning algorithms have detected a face in the dark background of a scene and made an attempt to enhance the image.

If you wish to delve further into this topic, the bluray.com forums are filled with comparison screen captures and examples of anomalies. These have been long awaited titles and the discussion is rife to put it mildly. 

Revisionist history is nothing new in the world of films, and it has come in different cloaks over time. George Lucas has inserted whole new scenes and updated visual effects with CGI for both theatrical viewing and home video formats of his Star Wars films, for instance.

On the other hand, Steven Spielberg has used tools to fix little errors and hide older technology. Matte lines created by optical compositing, a side effect of 1980s visual effects technology, were removed from the Indiana Jones films for the Blu-ray release.

Even James Cameron got into the act for his Blu-ray release of Titanic. A couple of shots revealed lighting equipment in the background, while another featured a hill when they’re supposed to be out at sea. Cameron used digital tools to erase minor film flubs.

Cameron has been known to be a perfectionist with tight controls about his work. So why has he now decided to embrace this new technology to make his films look different?

While the average viewer will be pleased with the results, I feel it’s the fans and film purists who have been left disappointed after so many years of waiting, myself included. Also, will anyone else be swayed by this to use on their own back catalogue of films.

While Titanic has been given the most praise, from all accounts, The Abyss, one of the most awaited high-definition transfers, has also been well received (not that we’ll be seeing it in the UK). The new tinkering has been applied, but it is reported to be not as harsh as True Lies and Aliens.

Relying on chatter and screen captures from across the pond is all we have until the discs are released in March and April, and we can read the reviews, purchase these discs and judge the results for ourselves. It’s been a very long wait…