James Cameron’s True Lies is now out for purchase in 4K, but the restoration is already proving to be controversial.
After many years of being unavailable, James Cameron’s True Lies is finally out as a title we can purchase. iTunes just released the 4K remastering for Digital Download, alongside two other James Cameron classics, The Abyss and Aliens. The 4K Blu-ray will be out in March, but the movie’s possibly AI-assisted restoration is already proving to be controversial. Our own Luke Ryan, who ran the long-running Movie Endings Explained series for us on JoBlo Originals, took to Twitter (or X) to post some disturbing screenshots from the film, which suggests the film looks far different now than it did back in 1994.
Having watched the 4K restoration on iTunes myself, I’ll admit that in motion, the movie looks better than it does in the stills Luke has posted. However, it also looks quite different from how it used to, with actors having a too-smooth appearance, which makes me think Luke is correct in his assessment that AI enhancement was used rather than a negative scan of the original elements (or rather – some combination of the two). Simply put, the 4K version of the movie shouldn’t look this good, as we’re talking about a movie that’s 29 years old. Restorations like this are a kind of revisionist filmmaking, although one could argue that Cameron certainly has that right as the movie’s director and producer.
The Abyss and Aliens have a similar look, but it’s a little less noticeable in those older films than it is in True Lies. End of the day, I don’t want to dissuade anyone from buying True Lies. It looks fantastic, and it’s great to finally have the movie available to own after many years of it being only available on a non-anamorphic DVD. But this kind of restoration reminds me a bit of how some early Blu-rays were overly DNR’d, with Predator being a notable early example, in a way that made the actors look waxy. Eventually, the film was re-released with a more normal look. That said, I wouldn’t hold my breath for a new version of True Lies as Cameron, the perfectionist he is, had probably gone over every frame of this restoration, with it looking exactly how he wants it to.
Do you think he went too far? Let us know in the comments.