I mean, Cameron is a douche, but he's right in this case. There's a lot to complain about with his body of work, but grain levels just aren't on the list.
It's a straw man. A lot of the 4k cameron remasters are not good. Color correction being extremely off being one of the biggest sins.
Also. His argument is awful "my team has done this forever"... Well they've done it wrong, guy. Literally have not heard of any other movie getting criticism for a 4k remaster except his
They focus on the grain reduction nagging in Aliens when that was not even that big of an issue.
My main problem with these recent 4K releases was True Lies, it has straight up AI hallucinations in it, I really doubt he rewatched the final product at all.
The grain isn’t the issue. They are straight up AI upscales filled with artefacts and barely any use of HDR colour capabilities. Fan edits have done better jobs.
He made some really good movies barely watchable with AI upscaling. Imagine walking by a bridge construction and you ask the guy responsible why the two ends don't line up and he says: get a life loser, i build a lot of bridges.
Modern social media gives a huge voice to the dipshits who just want to be mad at something. So they find some miniscule issue they can be made at and social media amplifies it as if it were a legitimate critique.
Most of these types of "complaints" can be safely ignored. Just as Cameron points out here, with no fucks given to their feelings.
So what's wrong with a little grain? off colors? I mean, the audio world is shifting back to vinyl because it is imperfect but unique in a way that you can only appreciate when you hear other versions and dislike them because they don't "pop, skip, smoosh" the same way as you record does.
The vinyl analogy can be used for these 4k remasters, but it's more akin to using AI to clean up audio in a vinyl recording and adding a bunch of distortion in the process.
Bad question framing and bad answer. The issue is the AI distortions, not the grain. Cameron surely knows this, so he's responding with a straw man.
Get a life? It's your industry, man. And maybe don't denigrate the people buying your movies. Lots of other studios get this right.
That said, I think the online criticism of True Lies (haven't watched the Aliens disc yet) is overblown except for maybe 3-4 scenes where it's super obvious, awful, and distracting.
They used AI upscaling. Not only it completely defeats the point of a release like this, it looks like a blurry mess that's paradoxically also oversharpened. People's faces jump from looking like a mannequin to one of those Ren & Stimpy closeups
Too many Ks. Unless you have a really really huge TV or you sit super close to it, and also have absolutely no vision problems, there's a pretty good chance you're not gonna tell the difference between 1080p and 4k.
I don't really think going higher than 1080p really does much for a movie, after that point the finishing returns start to set in unless you have an absolutely giant TV or you're sitting super close to a still pretty big TV. Maybe for vidya games or something it could make a difference or something filmed in native 4k could potentially look a bit better but especially for something being digitized from a film negative, it can be a choice between keeping analog grit or smoothing it all out digitally and I'd prefer a movie shot on film to continue to look like it was shot on film.
So you've also had recently the 4K transfers of Aliens and True Lies that came out. It did get blowback in the fan community, some feeling that the image quality wasn't as high as they wanted it to be. You obviously have a very high standard. So l'm wondering what you thought?
When people start reviewing your grain structure,
they need to move out of mom's basement and meet somebody. Right? Im serious. I mean, are you fucking kidding me? I've got a great team that does the transfers. I do all the color and density work. I look at every shot, every frame, and then the final transfer is done by a guy who has been with me [for years]. All the Avatar films are done that way. Everything is done that way. Get a life, people, seriously.