I like the colours, they’re a lot more authentic to what a real desert looks like. It’s not like the colours were actually toned down, that’s really how they look in real life and I’m fine with that.
I don’t get what’s so bad about Kynes being gender swapped. As long as they keep the personality and role of Kynes, which they did, gender and race are superficial details which do however make large portions of the audience feel more included.
I’ll make my own fan-edit where I will crank up the colour saturation to my liking.
As for gender-swapping Kynes, I just couldn’t get behind it. I didn’t like it when they announced it and I don’t like it in the movie. Period.