Gordon's alive! He'll save every one of us... etc, etc. Yes, Mike Hodges 1980 campy sci-fi cult classic Flash Gordon has now been given a coat of fresh 4K paint, with certain elements – visible wires etc – removed and it looks better than ever. Check out the new trailer showing off how it looks.
It's weird and wacky, and while not every element has aged as well as it might, there's a lot of entertainment value to be found in the story of an American footballer charged with saving the planet from a tyrannical dictator. Not to mention that cast – Sam Jones is the aw-shucks everyman hero, and around him is built the classy ensemble that includes the late Max Von Sydow, Brian "shouty" Blessed and Timothy Dalton.
"I’m very grateful to Studiocanal for this brilliant 4k restoration. The restoration captures perfectly the vivid colours of the sets, skies and costumes. It also corrects some of the problems encountered with the special effects system we used. With Chroma key compositing we could insert skies, rocket ships, hawk-men, pretty well whatever we wanted, into the blue backing built into the studio sets. The problems came later when we had to eliminate, for example, the wires used on the hawk-men. We were eventually successful but even then some 35mm prints were variable and the wires would be back again. With this new restoration that problem is thankfully laid to rest," says Hodges.
"Of course Chroma key is primitive by the side of the current process, CGI (Computer Generated Imaging). That said I’m pleased we stuck with the old fashioned system. CGI would have been too slick. After all Flash Gordon was a cartoon strip from the 1930s brought back to life on celluloid some five decades later."
Flash Gordon will be out as a collector’s edition Blu-ray, DVD, Steelbook and on VOD featuring brand new extras from 3 August, and you can preorder it via this link.