Stranger Things is being edited retroactively by Netflix? | Hacker News Reader

Stranger Things is being edited retroactively by Netflix?

gq-magazine.co.uk

122 pointsmetadat149 comments

The writers claim [1] the story is untrue and others have apparently independently verified that scenes don't seem to have changed.

ADDED: They did apparently retro-edit around a plot hole but not what people were getting upset about.

[1] https://twitter.com/strangerwriters/status/15519011967005900...

It’s all just Mandela effect and fans needing reasons to be mad.

There’s a notable “off-season” effect in TV subreddits. When there’s no new content but people still want to chit-chat, crazy theories and over-analysis start to get popular.

Its weird to have an article about the dangers of editing that doesn't clearly identify what the dangerous edit was. Seems like the hand wringing was about a scene the article-author incorrectly said was edited, so the article updated, but now the article is an empty shell of criticism without substance.

Could that same criticism not also be applied to this very news article that was retroactively edited or 'George Lucased' as the writer refers to it as.

This is the real story, but not a new one

No, because the article admits to the change:

> Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that a season one episode of Stranger Things had been edited retroactively to remove a shot of Jonathan photographing Nancy while she was changing.

From the article, here's the edit: It's a simple mistake of an expansive series costing $30 million an episode, really: the creative team set an episode of Stranger Things 4 on March 22, forgetting that it had been established as Will Byers' (Noah Schnapp) birthday in the earlier season.

So can someone explain to me why this is a plot hole? If the episode took place on March 22nd, Will Byers' birthday, we would expect... a birthday party?

It's about a close-knit group of friends. You'd expect that someone would either mention it, or Will would be upset that nobody mentioned it.

It is odd that the whole dialog among very close teenage friends doesn't mention that it is the character's birthday at all. It is kind of clear in the episode that the writers just didn't realize it.

Basically the whole episode revolves around one character's emotional difficulties and Will feeling a bit ignored by their mutual friend who is in town, all while Will's mother has suddenly left town the night before after giving a hasty, extremely vague and obviously fake excuse to her sons & other characters – read through the lens of "it's supposed to be Will's birthday" it makes all his close friends and his mother seem insanely cruel to be completely ignoring his birthday when in fact that wasn't what the writers were going for, they just didn't realize the visual date matched a line of dialog from a prior season.

But it's kind of awesome that they were trying to show how Will was feeling ignored, and the writers actually forgot that it was his birthday. It's delightfully meta.

"In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is a magic xylophone, or something? Ha ha, boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder."

I find it ironic that the article itself was edited after the initial posting, per the disclaimer at the bottom. If Netflix added such a disclaimer in the credits of the episode, would that make it more acceptable to the author?

I can't speak to the author's views, but it would to me. There's something very disconcerting about the ability of digital media to be "memory holed", and the Streisand effect is no longer a sure thing, in the age of big tech censorship infrastructure built by popular (media) demand.

At least with TV shows this isn't a problem. Everything is dumped on day 0 so the original releases are preserved. It wouldn't surprise me if there are hundreds of thousands of copies of the original releases floating out there due to torrents.

It was actually a much bigger issue in the past. You pretty much cannot get the theatrical release of the star wars episode 4. I think the best we have are the laser disc rips. To me, that's a a bigger "memory hole", happening way before big tech.

> You pretty much cannot get the theatrical release of the star wars episode 4. I think the best we have are the laser disc rips.

There is the "Silver screen edition" of Star Wars (first of the first, even before it got the "Episode IV"), but it only happened due to enormous efforts of fans who got an original print that should have been destroyed, digitized it with a homebrew machine, and painstakingly restored it frame by frame. That's a really fascinating story.

Journalists have been doing this the last few years without using a disclaimer. Personally, I think it's completely different as film and music is art. If this was done with music it would be especially damaging. Imagine your favourite songs being remastered and arranged for the worst. Artists could rework unsuccessful albums, which is weird.

Kanye has done this. Multiple times I believe, but notably with different versions of "The Life of Pablo" on music streaming services.

Earlier versions of the article can still be found on the Wayback Machine. [1]

The original article called the alleged removal of that scene, "wimpish laziness."

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20220727142524/https://www.gq-ma...

The article even mentions Star Wars and George Lucas, something that happened 20 years ago, yet pretends this is the start of a dangerous trend. Cause it's TV (or streaming) instead of a movie / home video release I guess?

I'd also point at this big old list of media effected by 9/11[1] - I think the most notable one at the time was 2002 Spiderman which released a trailer containing the two towers initially that was then edited (along with the movie) to remove that landmark.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entertainment_affected...

Editing something innocuous but associated with trauma just feels... wrong.

History happened. No need to create a past and future-projected vacuum as a consequence of past events.

It felt right at the time to many people. The two towers trailer scene was specific to the trailer according to them at the time, so not having that scene was apparently already the plan. The way the film was, I certainly never felt the lack of the towers but would have been pulled out by their presence.

Spiderman was edited before its release, in April 2002, after the 9/11 attacks.

I’m guessing this along with the other changes to the film post 9/11 but pre release were the creators wishes and reflections after the attack. You have to remember it was less than a ~6 months after the attacks. This wasn’t history. This was the here and now and it was a massive trauma on a lot of people at the time.

Granted. But we're now 20 years later.

There are other, older movies with the towers in them, and yes, seeing them certainly stirs up emotions unexpected by the directors at the time.

But the World Trade Center existed as a structure. And something terrible happened to it.

Avoiding it now, even by omission, feels like avoiding an important part of history.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. If a movie is released today, it obviously wouldn't have the towers. And a movie released in the past right after 9/11 would edit them out because it was still fresh in people's minds and most people agree that it was the right decision.

Are you saying that the movies/trailers/TV shows should be retroactively edited to re-include the towers? Isn't retroactive editing a bad thing that we want to avoid. That's what this entire post thread is about.

> Are you saying that the movies/trailers/TV shows should be retroactively edited to re-include the towers?

I didn't get that from their post at all. In fact I think you are in agreement.

If your movie is set before 9/11 it should include the towers.

If your movie was released before 9/11, it shouldn't be edited to remove the towers.

This movie was released after 9/11, presumably (based on not having the towers) also set after 9/11. I don’t get the original complaint at all.

For a movie coming out in 2002 and set in "the present day", I would think keeping the towers would be distracting and introduce an "alternate timeline" problem that further distracts.

OTOH if you don't, then you have something like the 2002 Muppet Christmas Special where they put Kermit in an "It's a Wonderful Life" scenario. We see how the world would be different if he had never been born. There's a scene set in New York where a random shot shows the WTC in the background, insinuating that Kermit was somehow responsible for 9/11.

Obviously that was never the intention of the producers but it ends up being a huge distraction from the rest of the story of the special.

It's not easy being green.

4chan's /tv/ will produce a list of 100+ examples of censorship by the streaming platforms if you go make a thread about it.

To be honest, I just personally don't care because I didn't trust the streaming platform that made 'Cuties' and '13 Reasons Why' with moral matters to begin with.

"Cunningham's Law" - make a post saying it _hasn't_ happened to get the truly comprehensive list.

What in particular was wrong with Cuties and 13 Reasons Why? The former is an exposé on pre-teen sexualization and the latter depicts teen suicide.

With purely hosted media there is no way for purist fans to ever have the "original" or whatever version of it, unlike the people who were swapping around laserdisc and 35mm versions of the unspoilt cuts of Star Wars, etc.

In this specific case you could buy Stranger Things Season 2 on Blu-ray which would have the original version on it. But that is probably getting to be a rare case, especially since you can't buy Season 3.

Torrents work like a charm here.

That's not something that can be relied upon. I've seen numerous torrents die from all seeders dropping off, to attackers poisoning metadata thus making it impossible for any new downloaders.

Torrents as a whole may seem like the cockroach that never dies, but individual torrents die all the time.

Whether the old HN claim that “storage is cheap” is true or not, preemptively downloading everything you might be interested in (or all new releases) is one solution to this problem.

Which is what the data-hoarding crowd has been doing for a while. Storage is relatively cheap, you can get extraordinarily large amounts of it for a few thousand USD if you aren't super concerned about five-9s uptime and Google still lets small team-sized business customers store petabytes for basically zero additional cost if you're OK with near-line retrieval times.

There is. A web rip version of a given piece of media dating to sometime right after the premiere is as close as you can get to a “canonical” version without obtaining the master files. This is for pure-digital content, but things often get released on BR so that’s even higher quality source.

Yeah, Kanye West was notorious for doing the exact same thing for his album « The Life of Pablo » on music services back in 2016.

https://www.xxlmag.com/kanye-west-the-life-of-pablo-changes/

I think the medium is the main difference. An old movie you have on tape or whatever physical media and would need to go buy an additional copy of a new version of it. Whereas something primarily on streaming can change on you without notice and you cannot go back and watch the original.

Plus in the case of Lucas it was in a new "Special Edition" which contained other edits too. It was never passed off as the original version, and part of the selling point was the edits. Rather than an update in place without any notice.

> Plus in the case of Lucas it was in a new "Special Edition" which contained other edits too.

Is that true? If so, it didn't last for long. There's no way to legally watch the original Star Wars now, unless you can find a physical VHS or Laserdisc.

That's how I remember it being at least but that was in 1997. They had a whole new theatrical releases for them and all that. They even sold a DVD set with the original theatrical versions as bonus material [1]. But they have lost the "Special Edition" moniker at some point. And the edited versions are the only thing available for streaming.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20060517020346/http://www.starwa...

Here ya go, Stranger Things season one on DVD, where no one can change it: https://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Blu-Ray-Collectors-Exclusive...

Personally I don't mind this change just fixing a plot hole by changing a word. And yes you can buy Season 1 and 2 but what if they did it in Season 3 which you can't buy? It just so happens in this case that they did it to a season which you can buy but being able to buy seasons on physical media is becoming rare these days.

If they change season 3 before you can buy it then one day you can tell your grandkids about how they changed it.

> on DVD, where no one can change it

That can easily be changed if the DVDs are manufactured on demand. It would just mean changing the source files.

but the DVDs that are already out in the world can't be changed

Exactly my thoughts as well. It's different with streaming than with something on a physical medium. With DRMed content it's a little different, because nobody can ever go back and see it (unless the rights-owners save the original allow them to do so, which seems unlikely if the thing is controversial enough to warrant an investigation in the first place).

They didn't stop editing Star Wars 20 years ago, unfortunately. See Disney+ editing the scene between Greedo and Han Solo to make Greedo say "Maclunkey[0]" before shooting him.

And yes Greedo still shoots first because we live in the worst timeline.

More, the author saw mention of it pop up on thier Twitter feed, so wrote an article to cash in on the current "controversy" with no actual research beyond Twitter.

Even on TV, HBO retroactively edited out George Bush's head from the spikes Joffrey makes Sansa look at in season one of Game of Thrones, all the way back in 2011. George Martin just joked about it in his interview on the upcoming House of the Dragon.

JRR Tolkien modified "The Hobbit" to better accord with what he had developed about Gollum and the One Ring for the upcoming "Lord of the Rings". He even retconned the modification, making the original version (published in 1937) the one that Bilbo told people. This is not a new thing.

What was changed?

> In the original 1937 edition of "The Hobbit" Gollum was genuinely willing to bet his ring on the riddle game, the deal being that Bilbo would receive a "present" if he won. Gollum in fact was dismayed when he couldn't keep his promise because the ring was missing. He showed Bilbo the way out as an alternative, and they parted courteously.

> As the writing of LotR progressed the nature of the Ring changed. No longer a "convenient magical device", it had become an irresistable power object, and Gollum's behavior now seemed inexplicable, indeed, impossible. In the rough drafts of the "Shadow of the Past" chapter Gandalf was made to perform much squirming in an attempt to make it appear credible, not wholly successfully.

> Tolkien resolved the difficulty by re-writing the chapter into its present form, in which Gollum had no intention whatsoever of giving up the Ring but rather would show Bilbo the way out if he lost. Also, Gollum was made far more wretched, as befitted one enslaved and tormented by the Ruling Ring. At the same time, however, Bilbo's claim to the Ring was seriously undercut.

http://tolkien.cro.net/tolkien/changes.html

In the original version of The Hobbit, the ring is just a magic ring and Gollum willingly bets the ring on the riddle game. When Gollum can't find the ring, he instead offers to lead Bilbo out of the cave.

In later versions, the bet was if Gollum wins he eats Bilbo, if Bilbo wins Gollum shows him the way out.

It is then presented that Bilbo told everyone the first story although the second was the truth. Which is why the first version appears in The Hobbit as the conceit is that it is an account written by Bilbo or at least sourced from his writings.

Modifications to new editions aren't a new thing. What's new is the way that concept interacts with DRM-protected streamable content.

If the Forces of Order got their way and copyright was fully enforced, changes to a show released by streaming only would be a lot more permanent and in a way "more retroactive" than they are today. Maybe that's just a minor example of the much more general problem of archival presented by DRM, but maybe it's a little more sinister because there isn't any outward indication of the thing being a "new edition" like there is with a book (publishing info page) or a software release (version number). So a historian/archivist would need to go around perceptual-hashing the whole content to determine that there were actually two or more versions of that one episode of that one show.

The original pilot episode of Stargate: SG1 had a scene where a woman is stripped against her will by the villain. The camera lingers over her naked body for awhile while a bad puppet alien snake slithers around.

The show was originally on premium cable and the network insisted that they include nudity. The producers hated the scene and the fans generally don't like it. The actress has said that she was lied to about how much of her body would be shown in the final cut. It's very tonally inconsistent with the rest of the series. When the episode re-airs on basic cable they show an alternate cut of scene which is much shorter and removes the nudity. This version also appears on some home media releases.

I think that's ok, right? It doesn't change the intent of the scene. We still get that the villainous Goa'uld are evil and cruel. Anyone want to argue that no, actually, the weird alien-puppet-hissing-at-a-naked-lady scene HAS to stay in for the sake of artistic purity?

Ironically the version that's on Netflix includes the full-frontal scene, and for some reason that affects the rating of the entire series: Each episode is rated M and includes a "Nudity" tag, despite no other episode containing nudity.

Is there anything more ironic than the fact that this article was corrected?

There's a difference between correcting factual errors (or typos) and changing the story to better fit current political climate.

I don't see a problem with changing a story to fit the current political climate better, assuming that the original version has been archived by someone somewhere.

This merely seems to create new opportunities for doctoral theses in Film Studies.

> I don't see a problem with changing a story to fit the current political climate better

That's what sequels/remakes are for. Ninja edits of the originals are disgusting, especially in streaming services, when you can't expect people to have the content archived.

What is disgusting about it? It's an art form and they're the artist. I fail to understand who is harmed by this.

Original article:

> Viewers who still have physical copies of Stranger Things season one noticed something odd having gone back for a rewatch on Netflix: a scene wherein one-time weirdo Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton) takes spying, lewd snaps of now-lover Nancy (Natalia Dyer) from a bush has been erased on the platform. And it's not the first time the Duffers have gone back to the cutting room after the fact.

> There's a difference between correcting factual errors (or typos) and changing the story to better fit current political climate.

It's a good thing that in this case the factual error was the assertion of "changing the story to better fit current political climate."

Without that fake bombshell (that they could have validated for $XX dollars by just buying the DVD) what is the difference between an article correction and a minor plot continuity correction?

> There's a difference between correcting factual errors (or typos) and changing the story to better fit current political climate.

Well, no, there isn't. What's important depends on what you're trying to learn. If what you're interested in is where the incorrect claim came from, then silently editing the GQ article would be exactly the same kind of revisionism as silently changing an episode of Stranger Things.

But of course, that's not the difference here. GQ made their correction correctly: with a notice attached to the new content describing what the old content said and what changes were made. That is very different from silently editing history; that is why GQ's correction is much less problematic than the hypothetical editing of Stranger Things. (It would be better to present the old content itself, rather than a description of it, but the notice is still hugely less problematic than a silent retroactive change.)

At least they tell you what happened...

Been going on for a while.

r/DataHoarder (of course) post for this news last week - commenters list minute changes they've noticed like reruns being cut for advertisements and copyright: https://old.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/w38e1z/strange...

In other Netflix shows:

- 13 Reasons Why: suicide removed,[1] song replaced (edit: coinciding with condemnation of the show by the artist[2])

- Dark: details changed for continuity with later seasons[3]

[1] https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=378736

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/CSHFans/comments/8tloai/oh_starving...

[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/DarK/comments/ctbsbd/apparently_som...

Probably the most famous example of change for copyright is Tour Of Duty, which lost almost all its music in syndication, most notable the theme song Paint It, Black by The Rolling Stones.

Indeed. Super Natural Season 1 has entirely different music on Netflix than it does on DVD due to licensing not covering a streaming clause (there were no streaming services in 2005 when the deal was done and nobody had even thought about such a thing). Season 1 has a kickass classic rock soundtrack on DVD, and with that show the music isn't just luster on top. It's actually an important part of the show/characters.

The same thing happened with the original Queer As Folk. I assume the reboot at least got a perpetual license.

There are claims this is untrue but even if it’s true it’sa non-story and nothing new. Famously there’s Star Wars (as the article mentions) but there are plenty of others.

TV shows and movies have removed episodes from circulation (eg Seinfeld), removed scenes (eg 13 Reasons Why), added scenes (pick any Director’s Cut), enhanced scenes, enhanced or changed audio, etc.

Content as originally published isn’t untouchable. It’s only really a problem when the changes are bad. I mean fans of Star Wars have been clamoring for a release of the original theatrical version for 25+ years in large part because the changes are worse.

Published ceases tomean anything if everyone is treating everything as "in production". The point of Publishing is to render an immutable artifact fit for replication and mass distribution.

I think the point of publishing is mass distribution. The fact that it resulted in an immutable artifact and replication is just an outcome of the available technology.

Not to mention this happens all the time for "immutable artifacts". I bought a copy of the original "Shrek" book only to find it was massively different from the original and edited down to be more kid friendly. I'm sure there is some way to distinguish it by copyright date or ISBN number if you already have the knowledge the edit exists, but if most consumers don't know is it not basically the same result of memory-holing the original work as time goes on?

It is not specifically because things like ISBN exist to allow us to differentiate between different publications ( instance of publishing) of the same title.

Pretty much all institutional publishing is centered around cuts of a produced work getting a serial number. This mechanism by which further edits on a work happen without being tracked is a grave threat to library science/archival practice. Our very way of organizing information in a way that lets us keep our facts straight as a public is at stake.

It should be obvious why this is a bad thing.

Worse things have happened... like inserting ads in old reruns: https://www.slashfilm.com/516453/wtf-zookeeper-advertising-i...

and replacing music https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/arts/television/tv-soundt...

Music replacements is quite common for licensing purposes, and the fact people think it is shady is what's weird. The shady part is the damn music licensing process.

Having licensing arrangements which fail to anticipate all future potential media and distribution mechanisms for all time until the heat death of the universe (or which, even if they do anticipate some of it, don't want to pay for all future potential media and distribution mechanisms until the heat death of the universe for something that may not have any resale value in a handful of years even on current media) are the cause of this.

Its really unfortunate in the case of Scrubs, the music in that show was practically part of the script.

That kind of stuff really doesn't bother me. I rarely pay attention to anything like that anyways. Also, it is not uncommon, at least for theatrically released features, to have differences between territories not dissimilar to that kind of background object replaced/modified. Small details like that which have no bearing on the plot or affect the viewers take of the content will be changed. These edits help the producers track down which area a leak occurred.

calls it a "dangerous trend" - proceeds to provide the most mundane example imaginable, changing the date of an event to not be on a character's birthday

Just a complete nothing of an article. The follow-up claim is that it might sneakily start to happen in less popular series, such that nobody might even notice there had been changes. Oh, the humanity! Nobody might notice the tweaks, that sounds dangerous.

> calls it a "dangerous trend" - proceeds to provide the most mundane example imaginable, changing the date of an event to not be on a character's birthday

That's the post edit version. There was a different supposed edit (listed in the correction at the bottom) that was supposedly motivated by changing political mores in the original version, except that edit didn't actually happen.

The hyperventilation would be extremely silly even if the original version of the article was accurate I it's description of what edits had occurred, but it is even more ludicrous given the actual facts.

From the creators: "We have George Lucas’d things also that people don’t know about"

It's baffling that they are apparently aware of how much fans hate these kinds of changes and went ahead with it anyway.

EDIT: People are replying with valid points about not all changes being bad. I guess this was a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that they invoked one of the worst examples of retroactive changes as a reference.

Surely anyone with a pirate bay copy from a few years ago could just diff the two videos to see what they changed?

Blade Runner fans strongly prefer the final/directors cut. I think Zach Snyders Justice League was a hit. Lucas’s edits were just terrible.

Some of us Blade Runner fans despise the final/directors cut.

With Blade Runner they've also been good about keeping all versions available. Unlike Star Wars where you'll probably just have to cringe your way through that Jabbas palace song.

Did you know J.R.R. Tolkien rewrote the Gollum scenes in the Hobbit in a newer edition to better fit his new book series, The Lord of the Rings?

I'd say a little more nuance is needed than automatically dismissing any change as bad.

Does it though? What, exactly, is _dangerous_ about it?

Seems like its just something new, no need make such a fuss. Does every headline really need to be so apocalyptic.

Like old Marcus said:

    Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

> What, exactly, is _dangerous_ about it?

Media is going to turn into software, where customers will become beta testers because studios know they can just go back and fix any mistakes.

Soon, there will be "digital deluxe" editions which contain extra scenes and you can change characters costumes.

Scene-level micro-transactions.

/s?

Neat, was just getting annoyed at the ridiculous getups of Emily in Paris the other day.

It's not like Stranger Things is a courtroom record or SEC filing. Who cares if they want to retcon a made-up story? I think in the digital age, it should be trivial to keep records of what's changed and let people access the no-longer-canon versions if they are hardcore fans, but let the 99% of casuals just see what you want them to see. Honestly, it could make for some really interesting non-linear storytelling.

It seems odd to not mention how Kanye basically launched a MVP of Life of Pablo and kept iterating on it…

https://www.xxlmag.com/kanye-west-the-life-of-pablo-changes/

I think it’s a good thing to stop thinking of art as immutable and more of a living thing.

He’s done the same thing with DONDA as well, essentially.

Grab torrents of the originals while they're still available if you wish to preserve access to the unadulterated versions.

Is there a better option?

Retconning content on streaming services was something I was once concerned about, but eventually told myself wasn't a realistic worry. If anything it was on my mind because when it happened before (Star Wars, as someone else mentioned) I found the retconned/altered versions to just be....in my own opinion, a lesser version than what came before it.

This, combined with music streaming services suddenly 'disappearing' albums (usually for licensing reasons) is what's nudging me back towards just buying and ripping physical media again (or....yeah..pirating).

Just wait until they use deep-network actor-replacement to retroactively recast 'Frank Underwood' in 'House of Cards' to someone less-offensive than Kevin Spacey.

A song I listen to regularly on Spotify once got changed to a slightly different mix, and it totally messed with my brain for a while. I realize in this case it didn't actually happen, but it can and does across the internet regularly. In the cases where I do catch it with no mention of an edit, it causes unsettling dissonance.

Maybe I'm starting to see why Twitter doesn't want an edit button.

Don't see a problem here.

It might turn into another woke crusade to make old movies inoffensive.

Is that why all the Tarantino movies are suddenly half as long as they used to be? /s

Texas had 1,586 books banned from high school libraries [1] in the last year. Is that the kind of "woke crusade" you're referring to?

[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/04/07/us/b...

depends what was in the books, many "woke" books are just inappropriate for kids.

That's actually what I expected the article to be about - I was honestly surprised when it turned out to be something so mundane.

Imagine going to a restaurant, ordering something on the menu like steak, fries and salad. Instead of the typical 30 min. waiting time, the dish will now be ready in 10min. they tell you. First, you get the plate with fries, then 10min later the waiter comes by with salad, and then 10min later another plate comes around with the steak. Now imagine the chef forgot some seasoning so they run out and season your plate while you are eating.

That is how it feels to buy software nowadays. Software companies, including game companies, are somehow getting away with this because it's not something people are demanding. It is so much easier to release your product half-done and then incrementally fix things with patches and updates. It's a lot harder to release a product close to 100% on launch day... yet we expect that from hardware products most of the time. Why can't software companies spend extra time making sure they have a solid product for launch, and consider things like patches and updates as failures instead of a viable strategy?

This sort of thing has apparently been a huge problem for pro wrestling fans. The WWE owns a massive back catalog of shows and pay-per-views from various wrestling companies over the years, and they have no problem with editing out music they no longer want to license, blurring or bleeping foul language or audience signs which weren't originally censored, completely removing entire segments, etc., such that even though they've made almost every program they've produced available to stream inexpensively, there's still a black market of trading old VHS rips and home video recordings of the same shows since they sometimes contain significant bits of content that are heavily-altered or completely missing from the streaming product.

Netflix isn't starting a dangerous trend; merely continuing one that's been quite prevalent in the home video industry.

I'm sure it's not important to the point, but I get a chuckle out of the "retroactively editing" phrase. Pretty all editing is done retroactively. I suppose the only other option is to pause recording live.

They don't say why it's "dangerous". This is as close as they get.

>One day patches might become as commonplace in screen media as they are in video games, and that is a truly worrying precedent for consumers and the integrity of art alike.

>Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that a season one episode of Stranger Things had been edited retroactively to remove a shot of Jonathan photographing Nancy while she was changing.

In the long history of narrative art (books, plays, oral), editing, changing, updating is the norm not the exception.

And human civilization has survived. So I think we will also survive this.

I don't really see a problem with this. It's entertainment - who cares? The real problem is when car and plane companies start treating their customers as free beta testers. Looking at you, Boeing and Tesla...

There is some precedence for post-publication edits. They are available for many ebooks [1] and have also occurred for prominent films [2].

[1]: https://www.thebookdesigner.com/updating-your-ebook-after-pu...

[2]: https://gizmodo.com/george-lucas-was-incredibly-specific-abo...

When I was younger I was pissed this scene was cut out of the Simpsons for syndication:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhsmtWrjEI

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSimpsons/comments/sjlqds/i_told_...

I think all’s fair as long as they use semantic versioning and make all versions available.

Patch release: edit out small cosmetic issues like visible booms or bad audio levels.

Minor release: correct plot holes, re-add deleted scenes, re-write cringy dialogue.

Major release: soft or hard reboot, major rescore or script rewrite, upgrade to more attractive actors.

The latter would clash with use of integers in movie titles to mean sequels, but they’re going out of fashion in favor of colon-delimited sub-titles anyway.

I sort of love the idea of closing this very minor plot hole around Will's birthday. It definitely takes advantage of streaming and seems like a great use for the super deep fan base.

On the other hand, what Lucas did to Star Wars sort of helped with plot around Han Solo and Jabba, but also added gratuitous special effects that didn't change the story. Maybe there can be a standard of what is acceptable for post-release media edits?

Friends was found to be rendering into reruns adverts for movies which hadn't yet been released when the reruns were airing (2012 IIRC).

The precedent has long been set.

I’m loving the irony that an article about the problems with retroactively editing a published work contains a retroactive edit to fix a mistake.

According to Buddhism doctrine, thinking of things as permanent while they are ephemeral is the chief reason of suffering.

(Addendum: nothing is really permanent).

Odd article. This strikes me as the same idea as one of the touted benefits of web development, that bug fixes can occur in one place and roll out to everyone.

I might be concerned with outright censorship. And maybe Lucas took it a bit far? Suppose productions could get lazy. On the whole however, this does not seem "worrying" to me in the least. Bring on more 'bug fixes' I say.

The damning thing here is that the error was made in the first place.

The first three seasons had 25 episodes released over five years, and apparently nobody in the production team for season 4 remembered that there was a birthday scene in one of the episodes. Either nobody working on the most expensive tv show in the world has seen the show, or, more likely, someone higher up said "who cares".

Or more likely an over-worked compositor got the task of Camcorder-ifying 8K footage weeks or days before it needed to get shipped and chose a date at random among the dozens of other creative decisions for that single shot. Those in the review process had a mountain of things to review and these scenes shot 5 years apart didn't click in their minds.

In an industry where boom mics, guys wearing jeans in ancient Rome, the entire movie Cats, all make it onscreen then I really don't think we have to ascribe so much thoughtlessness or malice to this one.

> The damning thing here is that the error was made in the first place

I actually thought the opposite when I first read it - I wondered "who the hell would have noticed THAT?!"

What about that coffee edited out of Game of Thrones.

Probably not very familiar to the HN crowd, but in the past, Rooster Teeth has also retroactively edited episodes of the CGI show RWBY.

So far, I only recall them doing this to fix animation and editing errors, but it has made viewers on Reddit get a bit Mandela Effect-y (when they thought they saw an animation error which was no longer visible in the updated version on the streaming platform).

If I publish a novel, and I identify a typo, is it "starting a dangerous trend" if I correct in the second printing?

You’d think this would easy to verify for the author - Stopped reading after this

Star Trek original has been changed: all exterior shots & many view screen shots were replaced with modern CGI that severely clashes with the set designs. It is obvious and obnoxious, looks ridiculous, and does nothing but harm to the show.

Huh? Looks much better and does not clash IMHO, they did their homework on the restoration. I welcomed them even though they could probably do even better. Guessing economics and luck of the draw limited the quality to just pretty good instead of excellent.

But, still an order of magnitude better than the "dirty bowling balls" look of the original. Perhaps a few lighting tweaks and a rerender at higher resolution could improve it a bit at a low cost.

Editing old things is fine, provided they indicate what they did and when. Like a small blurb among the end credits would be fine. Editing is tool that is good or bad only to the extent the motives of the person using it are.

I feel that most comments here miss the spot: the problem is NOT about a "new corrected" edition... but about the REPLACEMENT of the "original edition" by a new one ! It's like rewriting history...

So, the problem is not really if it's something mundane or something really important, it's about controling our memories.

I have no problem to "update" some movies, only if the original movie is not available anymore. If you can "delete" old versions, what will "truth" mean along the way ?

To be more clear: how long since we will change "movies" (and history, and memories) to be conform to the taste of the day ? When you see an old movie, it can be "sexist" for example... but you can explain it wrt to the times when the movie was done. There's some "contextual" informations in every movies... and we may quickly lose this if we start editing

But git proponents are always telling us to rewrite history to make it more understandable? :-D

I find Netflix editing a joke out of Final Destination, which isn't a Netflix film in any way, to be far more egregious. I was surprised they could even do that legally - I assume it was done with the parent studio's permission.

So, there is a another classic/non canon/alternative timeline/dimension/earth no.xxx/whatever/ version of a beloved fictional narrative you can choose to buy or not?

Like, say, the Bible?

Maybe they can edit out the HTML from the PC in the latest series.

I'm glad people are raising awareness for this sort of thing.

I guess the Blu-rays of the first two seasons will go up in value. It’s a drawback of the decline of physical media that it becomes harder to track retroactive changes.

There have always been numerous “editions” in popular titles; theatrical, XYZ screen size, TV rebroadcasts, director’s cut, remastered, XYZ country, XYZ language, etc.

Cool, link me to the "Original cut" hosted on Netflix of the mentioned episodes.

Having different editions is fine if it is transparent, and moreso if prior versions are available.

Netflix is able to track when viewers jump off in an episode. I’m wondering whether this information will be used soon to retroactively optimize the story line.

News agencies do that now, and they are fighting internet archive at the same time. I wonder what truth will be next century :)

Ooooo a choose your own ending where if you only happen to have watched it between february and march it makes sense?

No thanks.

Release version 2 of the episode, keep the old one available.

[edit] that's how book editions work

Is that what they did when they removed the n-word (nigger) from Huckleberry Finn?

I think it would be better if there were the expectation of published change logs.

Doing it to fiction seems ok. Doing it to news, that is a whole different story.

So what was allegedly changed?? The article doesn't elaborate.

another reason to "download your own media", if it happens to be true

that will be necessary to adapt movies to contemporary ideas of politcal correctness.

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