Comment by etempleton
4 hours ago
They could, but it would require some work to get it right. This is very similar to conversations that happen regularly in the retro game scene regarding CRT monitors vs modern monitors for games of a certain era. The analog process was absolutely factored in when the art was being made, so if you want a similar visuals on a modern screen you will need some level of thoughtful post processing.
Disney 100% has access to colorists and best in class colour grading software. It must have been a business (cost cutting) decision?
I’m reminded of the beginning of the movie Elf, where the book publisher is informed that a printing error means their latest book is missing the final two pages. Should they pulp and reprint? He says,
> You think a kid is going to notice two pages? All they do is look at the pictures.
I’m quite sure bean counters look at Disney kids movies the exact same way, despite them being Disney’s bread and butter.
With Star Wars you have a dedicated adult fan base that’ll buy up remasters and reworkings. Aladdin? Not so much. Especially in the streaming era, no one is even buying any individual movie any more.
I'm a 39 year old man who ground his VHS of Aladdin to dust in the 90s, and bought the Blu Ray because I can't say I can rely on streaming to always exist.
Steve Jobs' type attitude vs Bill Gates type attitude (in the 90s). Or, Apple vs Microsoft.
The Disney of yesterday might have been a bit more Jobs than Gates, compared to the Disney of today.
The vast majority of people will not care nor even notice. Some people will notice and say, hey, why is it "blurry." So do you spend a good chunk of time and money to make it look accurate or do you just dump the file onto the server and call it a day?
To speak nothing of the global audience for these films. I'm guessing most people's first experience seeing these movies was off a VHS or DVD, so the nostalgia factor is only relevant to small percentage of viewers, and only a small percentage of that percentage notices.
How can we get away from this mindset as a society, where craft and art are sacrificed at the altar of "it's not monetarily worth it."
There's a fucking lot of things that are not worth it monetarily, but worth it for the sake of itself. Because it's a nice gesture. Or because it just makes people happy. Not to sound like some hippie idealist, but it's just so frustrating that everything has to be commoditized.
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Just dialing down the red and blue channels a bit makes it much closer for several of the early '90s releases (look at that Aladdin example from TFA)
Disney do pay for industry leading colorists. They chose to favour a more saturated look for Aladdin et al. It is reasonable to prefer either. I can't imaging what happened to the greens in the Toy Story examples if they are accurate.
And ultimately, what you need to achieve acceptable CRT effects is resolution. Only now, with 4K and above, can we start to portray the complex interactions between the electron beam and the produced image by your console. But the colour banding that caused the hearts of The Legend of Zelda to show a golden sheen is still unreachable.
Reminded me of this article about some retro games on crt vs lcd-
https://wackoid.com/game/10-pictures-that-show-why-crt-tvs-a...