To mark the 40-year anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing a new box set of the Indiana Jones movies, restored in 4k HD — but the updates ruin the look of the pulp adventure movies. The Steven Spielberg film series starring Harrison Ford (co-created by George Lucas) is a beloved franchise, chronicling the adventures of tomb-raiding archeologist, professor and adventurer, Indiana Jones. The restoration may update the picture, but it takes away some of the original charm, raising questions about the benefits of upgrading media versus the principle of maintaining historical integrity.
The Indiana Jones franchise is the most recent much-loved movie series to get a visual upgrade. Although the upgrades do often make the picture more crystal clear, it can do so at the cost of the original's classic feel and aesthetic. For example, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings received a controversial 4K upgrade that unified the original trilogy with the later Hobbit movies. However, the upgrading look also fundamentally changed the color of the movie, robbing the picture of its warm, golden glow.
Now, Indiana Jones is the latest much-loved franchise to be subjected to this sort of revisionism, conducted as a "restoration." The new 4k versions of Indiana Jones are impressive, imparting on the movies the same brightness and clarity comparable to any adventure movie released today — but that's the problem. Indiana Jones is fundamentally a movie about the past. At its core, a pulp adventure — and it should look like a pulp adventure.
The 4k restoration of Indiana Jones increases the overall vibrancy and clarity of the original movies; yet, doing so robs the picture of the texture of film grain, and the almost-mythical tone of the original. The gel lighting and makeup used for practical effects were designed for the picture quality of the day; thus, increasing the overall vibrancy creates an inauthentic, artificial feel. This is perhaps best illustrated in the famous Holy Grail scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The Grail Knight goes from being a ghastly grey to a blue-tinged man. Walter Donovan's face as he first begins to rapidly age looks like makeup rather than the pale and sagging skin of a dying man. The lighting, which should be a warm flickering glow from the many torches and golden reflective surfaces, is an inexplicable mix of red, blue and yellow tones. The color balance made sense in the original — but in the 4k restoration, the vibrancy exaggerates the contrasting tones in a distracting manner.
The Indiana Jones 4k restoration highlights a key issue with these restorations: as movies are updated and "restored," they are also changed. This can be for the better: Universal's horror movies are a perfect example of how to restore classic films in a way that maintains the original's charm and spirit. When Universal restored Dracula, special attention was paid to repairing problems (and damage) in the original picture and audio — but no CGI was added, and the black-and-white high-contrast look of the movie was honored. By contrast, George Lucas' Star Wars films are perhaps the most infamous examples of re-releases, as the original trilogy has undergone extensive updates and changes, having entire sequences redone, altered, or added with CGI.
The Indiana Jones 4k upgrade is a misstep, restoring a film that didn't need to be restored. Yet, this is the trend for the industry, and it's not likely to end. As technology changes, mediums change — LPs are replaced with cassettes, which are replaced by CDs, which are replaced by streaming and digital downloads. And one thing will never change: the joy art brings to the consumer. The 4k Indiana Jones movies might look different, but — short of getting an ill-advised edit to remove Indy shooting first — they remain some of the best adventure films cinema has to offer.
