I’ve probably said this before, but for my money, one of the most enjoyable blockbuster experiences of the year was “Kong: Skull Island.” Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts gave his giant ape a grand adventure, with plenty of well-staged spectacle. However, if you’re catching up with the movie on HBO, you’re missing out on the full extent of the carefully crafted mayhem.
Vogt-Roberts has hit Twitter and called out HBO for airing an airplane edit of “Kong: Skull Island.” As we all know, airplane edits — boxed in and sometimes censored versions of movies — are hardly are indicative of a director’s intent. Why on Earth HBO, who spend a lot of time and money courting A-list filmmaking talent to work under their roof, would show these butchered versions instead of the real deal movie is a bit baffling. However, Peter Atencio, the director of “Keanu,” weighed in on Vogt-Roberts’ thread, noting that HBO only plays movies in their correct aspect ratio if they’re contractually obligated to.
In short, they assume audiences don’t like those black bars at the top and bottom of their flat-screen TVs:
I hate this, went through the same thing on Keanu. We need to all join together and fight this. HBO should care about filmmaking enough to want to make filmmakers happy but not playing the wrong aspect ratio.
— Peter Atencio (@Atencio) November 28, 2017
Nope, HBO refuses to play anamorphic movies in the correct ratio unless they're contractually obligated to. It's now the first part of any deal I make for projects. Completely ridiculous that they don't do it when even tv commercials are letterboxed these days.
— Peter Atencio (@Atencio) November 28, 2017
That's impressive in and of itself, I love the idea of certain sequences at least remaining scope. I fought hard for Keanu, but even though I did a 1.85 airline cut a lot of them still played the 4:3 cut, which was infuriating. I got the "it's a comedy, who cares" excuse a lot.
— Peter Atencio (@Atencio) November 28, 2017
I got a long history of this… MASH UP was the first show on @ComedyCentral broadcast 16:9 in SD. Which I give them mad props for and seems like an eternity ago. I'm sorry they hit you with the 4:3. That's brutal and so painful.
— Jordan Vogt-Roberts (@VogtRoberts) November 28, 2017
This isn’t the only battle filmmakers have had this year with protecting their work. Sony‘s plan to offer cleaned up versions of their catalog titles, removing any objectionable content for sensitive viewers, was met with fierce backlash from many directors. Eventually, Sony offered filmmakers a chance to opt out of the program, and it seems like they’ve scrapped it all together (the website promoting the clean movie program is dead).
As for HBO, it doesn’t seem like rocket science — show movies as they were intended. For a company that prides itself on top-tier programming, it’s bizarre that this is going on.
