Sam Jacob's essay in ArtReview uses the upcoming Baz Luhrmann film 'EPIC: Elvis Presley in Concert' (2026) as a springboard to explore the cultural and technical implications of digital restoration. The film, a spinoff from Luhrmann's 2022 Elvis biopic, draws on 59 hours of previously unseen footage from Elvis Presley's 1970 and 1972 Las Vegas performances, recovered from Warner's Kansas salt-mine archive. Using Peter Jackson's Park Road Post technology—including Machine Assisted Learning (MAL) for demixing audio and video—the damaged, fragmented material has been digitally scanned, reconstructed, and enhanced to 4k resolution with 12-channel sound, presented in IMAX cinemas.
Jacob argues that this project exemplifies a broader cultural shift: the 'frictionless fantasy' of perfect preservation, once aimed at the future (as with the CD), now targets the past, reprocessing archival material for contemporary consumption. The essay questions the rhetoric of redemption and 'supercharged authenticity' that surrounds such restorations, noting that while Luhrmann claims 'there's not a frame of AI,' the technology blurs the line between preservation and improvement. This matters because it reflects how culture increasingly mines historical IP for value, offering an enhanced, spectacle-driven version of history that is simultaneously document and sensory excess, raising questions about authenticity, memory, and the commodification of the past.