They’re not tech people, they’re theater people. And they’re easily wowed by the big new fancy-smancy tech that is “cutting edge”
We’ve seen this before, with George Lucas’ special edition Star Wars and the prequels being full of the finest CGI 1999 could offer. It’ll probably be a decade or two before this stuff is anywhere close to looking decent.
That scene was good even if the CGI was bad. Or maybe I’m biased because I read the novelization first that included it.
That scene sucks because Han would not fucking walk over jabbas tail and make him squeak without being iced by other members of the crime syndicate. It would be like some nobody runner pinching sonny and calling him a microdick and then just walking away unscathed.
I mean they have eyes. They look at the results and decide they like it. Looking at this, I think it looks worse, but it’s not hugely different and I can easily believe it looking better in motion. (The picture in the body. The post-picture looks better in the version that has multiple colours, can’t tell if that’s new or old, but I doubt the technology chose to make it all blue on its own).
I don’t think the people at the top actually sit down and watch the entire process. They are just told it will make the picture “clearer” or “sharper” or “more up to date” or something, they’re wined and dined and constantly told how “advanced” this stuff is. If they’ve put a lot of money into “updating” something they’ve done, they probably don’t want to admit to themselves that they just wasted millions, they’ll focus on the positives of it, rather than the negatives.
Neither James Camwron or George Lucas are theater people in the slightest. They’re film people and both did works that were incredible technical achievements. Both of these guys are camera and lense and lighting and editing system nerds first and do the theater stuff so they can get a budget to do the technical stuff.
Sorry, I’m adopting a “once a theater kid, always a theater kid” approach.