OK, EVERYONE'S forgetting one thing... Beauty and the Beast wasn't the first film done on CAPS. That honor goes to The Rescuers Down Under.
Let's take a look at the colors on THAT one!
Here is the original trailer from 1990:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVrjCyPhoxE
Now this is a clip from the Gold Collection DVD:
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Notice that the colors are brighter for this DVD transfer.
I think the problem with the Beauty and the Beast colors isn't really the CAPS system but the film transfer they did on it. It seemed like it was a really old system and thus made the films that much darker.
I mean, check out this trailer for the Little Mermaid (not made on CAPS):\
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Now the trailer for Aladdin, made in CAPS:
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Both movies were done in different inking techniques, and yet both look very darker back when they were originally released. I believe its because of the type of film they used, affecting the lighting, color motifs and many other aspects of the movie.
Check out this trailer for Homeward Bound:
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It's very dark.
Now for The Nightmare Before Christmas:
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Neither of these movies were drawn and inked on a computer. They were filmed and transferred onto another type of film. And both of these movies received a high definition transfer on their respective DVD and Blu Ray releases.
This is because we live in an era of digital film, where details are sharper, clearer, more defined. If you try to bring an old movie like that completely untouched, it is going to look bad... VERY bad. All flaws will be made more noticeable and it will be darker, more dirty.
Can there be mistakes in the transfer process? Of course. But is there some sort of conspiracy to "ruin" these films? Absolutely not. And that's why we tend to mock that sort of discussion, because it eventually dives into crazy conspiracy theories where people BELIEVE that they KNOW every detail about the movie and that the actual people involved are wrong in what they say.
And those are my thoughts: the darker transfers are likely the product of the film medium used, and that they needed to change and update the resolution so the DVD and Blu-Ray releases don't show the film's age and severe problems.
We now return to our regularly scheduled programming, brought to you by Milk Buds, Dora the Explorer and Lamp Chop's Play Along:
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