“No film should be re-edited based on the ‘lenses’ we now use”

O film director Steven Spielberg criticized the idea that the films should be re-edited to cover modern-day sensibilities.

“No film should be re-edited based on the ‘lenses’ we now use, either voluntarily or by being forced to look through them”said the 76-year-old filmmaker, admitting it was a “mistake” to re-edit ‘ET’ in 2002.

At the time, in some scenes with law enforcement agents, the police guns were replaced with ‘walkie talkies’. An “error” that Spielberg had already admitted in 2011, the year in which he announced that, for the 30th anniversary edition of the 1982 film, the weapons would return to their original place.

“I should never have tampered with my own work files and I don’t recommend anyone doing that. All of our films are a kind of signpost of where we were when we made them, what the world was like when we share these stories. So I really regret reposting this“, considered Spielberg, at the TIME100 summit.

When asked about the recent reissue of works by Roald Dahl – in which words like “fat” were changed to “huge”, disappearing some like “black” or “white”, “crazy” or “insane” -, the director said: “To me, it’s sacrosanct. It’s our history, it’s our cultural heritage. I don’t believe in censorship like that.”

Steven Spielberg’s ‘The Fablemans’ was nominated for seven Oscars at the 2023 film awards. The filmmaker has already made more than 30 films in his career, which began in the 1970s, highlighting the film ‘Tubarão’, from 1975.

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