Why do older movies have the side parts of the film cut off?

Trying to watch old martial arts movies on tubi but I find most of them have an issue where the sides of the movie are cut off, like characters will be talking or fighting and half of them will be cut off.

I assume there's no fix for this because it's the film itself but I'm wondering why it happens?

might be a movie that was filmed in 4:3 or its a pan and scan rip of the movie that was originally widescreen but formatted to a 4:3 screen

Probably because they are ripped in the old 4:3 aspect ratio

For old niche movies the only versions available are probably going to be pan-and-scan.

That makes sense. Thanks guys, most of them are only good for the cheese factor anyway but it can still be a little annoying, especially in the fight scenes which is the whole reason to watch these movies.

I realized last week that a large part of my childhood was a lie.

In the VHS era, the text crawls in Star Wars made the lines wider than the screen itself. You had to wait until a line started to fade into the background to be able to read it. I thought this was an intentional creative decision implying that the adventure was larger than the screen could contain. Instead, it was just a matter of the edges of the screen being sacrificed to the pan and scan process of converting wide screen theatrical resolutions to home television resolutions.

I do find it pretty ironic though that the old tapes had to tell you that the film had been modified from its original format when the edges of the screen got cut off, yet nobody forces LucasArts or Disney to tell you when a movie has been revised several times with new CGI and new audio.

<_<

Because you touch yourself at night.

Sides of movies hadn't been invented yet. The first movie with sides was actually Xmen Origins: Wolverine in 2009

Jiek_Fafn posted...

Sides of movies hadn't been invented yet. The first movie with sides was actually Xmen Origins: Wolverine in 2009

lol