The Good The Bad and The Ugly has been updated to have an intense gritty color grade on iTunes, when it previously had a clean "natural" look.

iTunes swapped out my old purchase of the movie with a new version with a new color grade.

Album Link: https://imgur.com/a/Ub5MO5R

Last May, I gathered a bunch of stills from this film for a video project I was working on, but I came back to revisit the movie today and it now has an intense color grade that alters the natural look it previously had. The skin tone looks off, as if the footage was dipped in acid.

There's a 4k release of this film that's coming out in one month, so my assumption is the studio chose to update the old digital versions with the latest iteration of the film. By studying the comparisons, more of the image is restored giving characters better head room, so that's good.

But why apply a modern color grade to a classic film? Did the original print of the film look this way back in 1966? If so, that's totally fine, as we can all agree the movie should appear the way Sergio Leone intended. It's a strange precedent to set, where you can purchase a product, only to have it suddenly change against your will.

In defense of iTunes on altering purchases, I bought the Rambo 5-pack, then a month later the extended edition of Rambo 5 appeared as a bonus extra. But what if you bought Star Wars, and then they randomly updated the movie to another "Special Edition" against your will?

Submitted March 25, 2021 at 09:06AM by TriforceSkywalker https://ift.tt/3tQLvkr