timdiggerm said:

penguinofgreatness said:

(With the exception of the snake reflection. Why?!)

Like removing fuzzy matte-boxes, it's removing something that would not have been visible to theater-goers during the original run. Darker projection makes a huge difference in what is visible.

It was visible in the original theatrical run (there was a little geeky chatter about it even then--"hey! guess how they did this shot! you can see the reflection!"). It just wasn't a big deal, and it continued to not be a big deal when it was visible on VHS and Laserdisc. Yes, I am old and saw this movie lots of times in the theatre.

Modern audiences expect their visual effects to be flawless. Past audiences merely expected visual effects to be convincing. We used to see reflections, boom mikes, obvious matte paintings, and even occasionally wires and that was perfectly acceptable to most people at the time. This really is a cut-and-dry case of changing a movie to fit changing popular aesthetic sensibilities.