“For the first time ever, this world-changing image is shown… in colour.” …. repeats the narrator, again and again, as if we hadn’t quite grasped it the first nine times.

“For the first time ever, this world-changing image is shown… in colour.” …. repeats the narrator, again and again, as if we hadn’t quite grasped it the first nine times.

It’s hard to compete with Peter Jackson when it comes to restoring footage. I do think they did a great job cleaning up the film but the colorization is average overall and sometimes below par. I used to teach high school students how to do this in photoshop who produced the same level of quality with no prior knowledge. A few are excellently colorized which leads me to believe there was not enough budget for this project. You can see where the colorization “goes outside the lines” in so many of the other photos. Footage from the rich people’s home movies were well done, perhaps because they were better preserved. 

The direction of the editing is lacking as well. I would have liked to see motion graphics and/or a visual time lapse of the archeological site to give a better understanding of where exactly Carter found King Tut. The first half of the doc uses repeated photos and video clips multiple times. I almost turned it off because of this. It’s a shame because the second half turns out to be quite good. Especially when they find Tut’s sarcophagus at the end.  

The premise was promising and I wanted to enjoy this but ultimately it was not the level of quality I expected from Disney or Nat Geo.

It’s hard to compete with Peter Jackson when it comes to restoring footage. I do think they did a great job cleaning up the film but the colorization is average overall and sometimes below par. I used to teach high school students how to do this in photoshop who produced the same level of quality with no prior knowledge. A few are excellently colorized which leads me to believe there was not enough budget for this project. You can see where the colorization “goes outside the lines” in so many of the other photos. Footage from the rich people’s home movies were well done, perhaps because they were better preserved. 

The direction of the editing is lacking as well. I would have liked to see motion graphics and/or a visual time lapse of the archeological site to give a better understanding of where exactly Carter found King Tut. The first half of the doc uses repeated photos and video clips multiple times. I almost turned it off because of this. It’s a shame because the second half turns out to be quite good. Especially when they find Tut’s sarcophagus at the end.  

The premise was promising and I wanted to enjoy this but ultimately it was not the level of quality I expected from Disney or Nat Geo.