I’ve amassed quite a large collection of 4K Blu-rays, and while I like to pick up the latest releases when I can, I find myself gravitating toward older releases a lot more often than I used to. I’m not just talking about stuff from the ’90s like Titanic or Jurassic Park, although those films do look excellent in 4K — there’s a debate about Titanic, but I don’t want to get into that right now.

What I’m talking about are the classics. Casablanca, Dracula (and the rest of the Universal Monsters), The Wizard of Oz, and Lawrence of Arabia all look excellent on 4K discs. In the case of Dracula, this is a movie that’s approaching a century old that looks like it could’ve been filmed today. Well, maybe it’s an exaggeration, but I think we take for granted how old some of these movies are and how good they look.

4K is currently the best format available to consumers, and it plays a massive role in restoring these old films and keeping them accessible today. On top of that preservation, we’re also getting the best quality we can get. You might be wondering how something so old can look so pristine, and the answer is that it was shot on film. While things like 4K resolution seem new, we’ve been able to hit resolutions much higher than that for a long time.

It’s all in the film stock

We still have performance left on the table

Film doesn’t have a set resolution like a digital camera, and as a result, it can hold a lot more detail. How much that matters to the average person is up for debate, but 35mm film, which is what Casablanca was shot on, could theoretically reach heights much higher than 4K. This is why putting something like that onto a 4K disc makes the movie look excellent, and there could also be some trickery at work here as well.

Using Casablanca as an example again, we’re talking about a movie that’s had several home video releases over the decades, ranging from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray to 4K. If you watched a DVD version of this movie to death, swapping to a 4K disc is going to be mind-boggling. What’s more fascinating is that there’s higher quality being left on the table. 8K TVs are a thing, but they haven’t caught on in the mainstream, and I’m not sure if they ever will. If they do, there’s a wide range of older films out there that can take advantage of them.

What might shock you is that 35mm film, in all of its glory, doesn’t even compare to 70mm. As you might’ve guessed by the name, 70mm is roughly double the resolution of 35mm, and it can hit numbers even higher than 8K. Lawrence of Arabia was shot on 65mm film and then printed on 70mm for theaters, and that’s why its 4K restoration looks fantastic. If we ever move on to 8K TVs and 8K discs, this film could get another boost in quality and have room for more.

When you put that into perspective, it’s a lot easier to understand why people flock to see movies like The Odyssey and Oppenheimer in 70mm IMAX. Not only are you doing it for the aspect ratio, but you’re also doing it for the massive leap in picture quality.

This is also why some digital films don’t look great

Locked resolution isn’t the greatest

A lot of movies from the mid-2000s were shot on digital. The Phantom Menace was shot on 35mm film, but director George Lucas swapped to 1080p digital on both Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. At the time, the Sony HDC-F950 that shot Revenge of the Sith was a cutting-edge camera, but as time has gone on, it’s clear that it had limitations. Both of these movies are still passable, but the leap from 1080p to 4K for them isn’t as big as it could be, since they are permanently capped at 1080p with no extra wiggle room like film has. Both movies have 4K releases, but they’re just upscales. There are still performance gains from HDR, but many people are just fine with the regular Blu-ray versions of the Star Wars prequels.

Modern cameras such as the ARRI Alexa, can shoot in 4K, so when those movies come to 4K, they look excellent. Of course, people thought the same about the Star Wars prequels when they were shown on 1080p screens. Since it looks like we’ll be sticking with 4K for a while, we’ll be okay in terms of picture quality. If we move into the 8K TV space, then those same limitations will pop up again since digital is just locked at this resolution.

Digital versus film has long been a debate, but there’s no question that digital movies can still shine. Denis Villeneuve’s Dune franchise was shot on the aforementioned ARRI Alexa, and those movies look great. The question is what will those films look like when 4K isn’t the standard? Only time will tell.