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The texture of the film grain makes Mulan and Aladdin really look better. The large simple filled sections look like they have so much more to them.

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The one frame they showed from the Lion King really stood out. The difference in how the background animals were washed out by the sunlight makes the film version look significantly better.

I'm not sure if I'm just young enough to be on the other side of this despite seeing all three of those Disney movies as a millennial kid (Lion King and Aladdin were VHS mainstays in my house, and I remember seeing Mulan in theaters), but I honestly don't find the film grain to look better at all and think all three of those bottom images are much more appealing. For the Toy Story ones, I think I'm mostly indifferent; I can see why some people might prefer the upper film images but don't really think I'd notice which one I was watching. I'd definitely think I'd notice the difference in the 2D animation though and would find the film grain extremely distracting.

To me it's much worse. You can't see all of the detail the artists drew, and there is noise everywhere, even specs of dust.catches. Whenever I watch a film based movie my immersion always gets broken by all the little specs that show up. Digital is a much more immersive experience for me.

This is an interesting take when you look at the gas station Toy Story example and consider the night sky. In the digital version the stars are very washed out but in the film version the sky is dark and it's easy to appreciate the stars. Perhaps it's unrealistic when you realize the setting is beneath a gas station canopy with fluorescent lights, but that detail, along with some of the very distinct coloring, stuck out to me.

> To me it's much worse. You can't see all of the detail the artists drew, and there is noise everywhere, even specs of dust.catches.

In the lion king example you weren't meant to see all of the detail the artists drew. In the Army men example the color on the digital version is nothing like the color of the actual toys.

They originally made those movies the way they did intentionally because what they wanted wasn't crystal clear images with unrealistic colors, they wanted atmosphere and for things to look realistic.

Film grain and dust can be excessive and distracting. It's a good thing when artifacts added due to dirt/age gets cleaned up for transfers so we can have clear images, but the result of that clean up should still show what the artists originally intended and that's where disney's digital versions really miss the mark.

To me this just sounds like cope over the poor process of transferring digital to film. Destroying detail and color since it couldn't be accurately captured is a deviation from what the artists produced. Even if you think it looks better to you, it was mistake. They would have tried to copy it the best they can, but it's not perfect and the colors can change overtime.

...I guess you didn't read the article? Because the entire article is about how the artists intentionally skewed the digital colors so that they'd look as intended on film (and wrong / exaggerated on digital displays)

> You can't see all of the detail the artists drew

That's the point in that Lion King frame, though. They drew it planning for it to get washed out by the sunlight effect, and when it's not it absolutely ruins the "vast crowd" effect they were going for because you can clearly see there's no more animals in the background and it's just 20 guys standing there.

If that were true, why didn't they draw the crowd thicker in the half that is not as washed out.

Which is of course highly subjective; you could argue that film grain is an unwanted but unavoidable side-effect from the medium used, just like other artifacts from film - vertical alignment issues, colour shifting from "film breath", 24 frames per second, or the weird sped-up look from really old films.

I don't believe these were part of the filmmaker's vision at the time, but unavoidable. Nowadays they are added again to films (and video games) on purpose to create a certain (nostalgic) effect.

I don't think this comment demonstrates an understanding of the argument. An unavoidable side-effect of the medium is part of the medium. You will consider unavoidable side-effects when you are building something for a particular medium, unless you are stupid. If that unavoidable side-effect were not part of the medium, you would have made different choices.

Colorizing a black-and-white film, for example, is not ever restoring the original intention or vision, even "subjectively." If the makers of a black-and-white film had been making a color film, they would have made different choices.

This does not mean that you should not colorize black-and-white films, you should do whatever makes you happy. I honestly can't wait until AI is recreating missing scenes or soundtracks from partially lost films, or even "re"creating entire lost films from scripts or contemporary reviews and cast lists, and expanding films to widescreen by inventing contents on the edges. But this will not be restoring a vision, this will be original work.

I agree with you, but "better" is subjective, and this change was ON PURPOSE because most consumers would disagree with us.

It's why they all have "motion smoothing" turned on all their TV's too. Yes, it's animation, but the Blu-rays look "higher resolution", and look "smoother" and less "noisy".

All the artistic benefits you and I see are lost on most watchers.

It does, but much more important to me is the color grading. The white point in the film versions is infinitely better.

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