In a new interview for Ain’t It Cool News, Steven Spielberg goes on the record as being opposed to any further digital revision of his work:

(In the future) there’s going to be no more digital enhancements or digital additions to anything based on any film I direct. I’m not going to do any corrections digitally to even wires that show. If 1941 comes on Blu-Ray, I’m not going to go back and take the wires out because the Blu-Ray will bring the wires out that are guiding the airplane down Hollywood Boulevard. At this point right now I think letting movies exist in the era, with all the flaws and all of the flourishes, is a wonderful way to mark time and mark history.

Italics mine. He goes on to note that when he did give in to the Lucas-ian temptation to tinker with his early masterpiece, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, both versions were released on DVD so consumers could choose which version they wanted to watch (the way it should be done, in my opinion, whenever there are multiple variants of important movies… especially movies whose titles begin with the word “star” and end with the word “wars”), and then he adds, “When people ask me which E.T. they should look at, I always tell them to look at the original 1982 E.T.”

Steve, I can’t tell you how good it feels to have someone in your position vindicating my purist theories. Thank you. Sincerely. If by some miracle some assistant of your stumbles across my little blog and relays what I say here back to you, thank you.

Unfortunately, though, Steve later says he’s attempted to convince the Great Flanneled One of the wisdom of this position and he just can’t. And if Steven Spielberg can’t, probably no one can. Sigh…

Incidentally, Steve also makes an interesting comment about the 1953 War of the Worlds (another favorite of mine) that’s worth a click-through, and a longer version of the interview is supposed to be posted next week, so if you’re interested, keep an eye out over there.

Hat tip to Michael May for alerting me to this.