Glad to have confirmation it was considerably darker on film…
Well, remember, after a scan, you can color-correct and grade the visual elements in whichever way you want. The new 4K may be film-sourced and a few points darker than the preexisting HD transfer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what it looked like on original theatrical release prints. What you see in the 4K is likely a regrade to give a film a slightly newer look. You’d need to track down an original 2004 print and have it projected to know what TSSM more or less looked like in theaters. My memory of the print shown at SVA in 2018 is that it looked identical to what’s on the home video releases, but even I’m beginning to question that because it’s been so long since I’ve seen the darn thing.
Are you certain this is how it looks with HDR, or is there a HDR grade that was supposed to be applied but wasn’t in these screenshots?
On an actual HDR-enabled display, it’s only a touch brighter than the screenshots I posted, which are tone-mapped SDR snapshots of the new transfer. But you’re still more or less seeing how the new version looks.
The regrade makes it look older