The digital enhancement of movies doesn't always go down well with examples like the original Star Wars trilogy re-release where George Lucas added a bunch of CGI objects and characters to the movies that led to widespread criticism, mocking and just outright hate for the touch-ups to those movies.
Steven Spielberg is another example of a director changing one of their movies with CGI when he digitally enhanced his beloved movie E.T and during an interview with ScreenRant for his new movie Ready Player One the topic of enhancing previous work came up and it seems he has learned his lesson as he went on to say
"Well, I got in trouble for doing that. When E.T. was re-released, I actually digitized 5 shots where E.T. went from being a puppet to a digital puppet and I also replaced the gun when the F.B.I. runs up on the van, now they have walkie talkies. So there’s a really bad version of E.T. where I took my cue from Star Wars and all of the digital enhancements of A New Hope that George put in, and I went ahead, because the marketing at Universal thought we need something to get an audience back and see the movie so I did a few touch up in the film, and in those days, social media wasn’t as profound as it is today but what was just beginning, you know, erupted a loud, negative voice about how could you ruin our favorite childhood film by taking the guns away and putting walkie-talkies in their hands among other things. So I learned a big lesson and that’s the last time I decided to ever mess with the past. What’s done is done, and um, I’ll never go back and do another movie I’ve made and I have control over to enhance or change"
So it looks like we won't be getting a re-release of Jaws with a CGI shark or Jurassic Park with newer looking dinosaurs.....which is probably a good thing. Are you guys happy that more of your beloved movies won't be re-released with digital enhancements? Leave your comments down below.