A New (Secret) Version of "Seven"

PLUS: A New (Less-Secret) Version of "Alien: Romulus"

Author

Steve
January 14, 2025

Greetings Hollywood tech nerds!

In this week’s post:

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A New (Secret) Version of Seven

A little over a year ago, I wrote about the controversial UHD Blu-Ray release of True Lies, wherein Park Road had applied its deep-learning “optimization” process to the 4K scans of the camera negative, resulting in unsettling moments throughout the film where the faces of actors are weirdly AI-enhanced.

Courtesy of Corey Atad via Twitter, there’s another less-obvious but equally interesting bit of tinkering on another UHD release: David Fincher’s Seven!

The entire post is a fascinating roundup of the changes made. According to the poster:

I stacked the BD and UHD to compare, and I saw that nearly every shot involving camera movement (pan, tilt, zoom, or dolly) had been subtly stabilized and smoothed. It seems Fincher utilized the latitude afforded by the Super35 frame to make these tweaks.

The differences presented are subtle alterations and not obvious like Tom Arnold’s unsettling AI face...

…yet I find myself disturbed nonetheless. There’s something icky about the past 25+ years of post-release tinkering, from Star Wars to ET to these modern “upgrades”. I don’t need to see an AI-“enhanced” face, I just want a good scan of the negative. I don’t want the camerawork smoothed out 30 years later, what if that takes away from the visceral feeling of the film?

This is different than something like a director’s cut, an alternate version that is labeled as being different. These are an opportunity for us to examine different ideas of a movie, for example the two versions of Ridley Scott’s Legend.

What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear them: [email protected]

A New (Less-Secret) Version of Alien: Romulus

Speaking of post-release tinkering, the Alien: Romulus available on home release formats is different than the theatrical version in one crucial way: they’ve updated the scenes featuring the posthumous Ian Holm performance as the android Rook:

As a result, [director Fede] Alvarez ensured that the home entertainment release of Romulus features a new-and-improved Rook. “We fixed it,” he confirms. “We made it better for the release right now. I convinced the studio we need to spend the money and make sure we give the companies that were involved in making it the proper time to finish it and do it right. It’s so much better.”

Since the character was always created through “a mix of techniques”, it meant recalibrating the various elements, both practical and digital, that brought Rook to life. “[Animatronic puppeteer] Shane Mahan actually did this animatronic of Ian Holm based on a head cast from Lord Of The Rings, and that was the only one in existence,” says Alvarez, noting that, further into production, the choice was made to lean much more on digital effects. “What we did [for the home entertainment version] was revert a lot more to the puppet,” the filmmaker says.

A helpful Redditor posted a comparison using the original digital release of the film against what is on the Blu-Ray.

My opinion: the only fix that could be an improvement would have been to get rid of the character entirely. The creepy fan service instinct to include zombie cameos in movies is baffling. You have actors who have played androids in Alien movies who are still alive! You could create a new character! There are so many options besides this stuff.

Sadly, given the immovable nature of Hollywood releases and the working conditions of VFX professionals, it is likely we will see more of these post-theatrical attempts to fix onscreen issues.

Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:

The death of net neutrality is a bad omen. (link)

Some of the best stuff at CES. (link)

NBCUniversal debuts a “Live In Browse” feature on Peacock. (link)