Guillermo del Toro says owning physical movies is a “responsibility”
Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has spoken out about the importance of physical media in the age of streaming, comparing the responsibility it brings to Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451.
Responding to a post about Christopher Nolan’s comments on the matter, del Toro took to Twitter to state, “Physical media is almost a Fahrenheit 451 (where people memorized entire books and thus became the book they loved) level of responsibility.”
Continuing to emphasise the responsibility that comes with owning physical media, del Toro concluded, “If you own a great 4K HD, Blu-ray, DVD etc etc of a film you love… you are the custodian of those films for generations to come.”
Del Toro’s comments follow Nolan’s criticism of streaming services in an interview with The Washington Post, in which he stated, “There is a danger, these days, that if things only exist in the streaming version they do get taken down, they come and go.”
Nolan also criticised streaming before a Los Angeles screening of his latest offering, Oppenheimer. During the event, the director spoke about the importance of Blu-rays and the unreliability of streaming services.
“Obviously, Oppenheimer has been quite a ride for us,” he began, “and now it is time for me to release a home version of the film. I’ve been working very hard on it for months. I’m known for my love of theatrical and put my whole life into that, but the truth is, the way the film goes out at home is equally important.”
Accordingly, Nolan put a lot of care and attention into the “Blu-ray version… and trying to translate the photography and the sound, putting that into the digital realm with a version you can buy and own at home and put on a shelf so no evil streaming service can come steal it from you.”
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