hairy_hen said:
The Lowry stuff definitely didn't happen until 2004.
The reason that shot in particular looks so bad in the official release is because it is one of those Harmy alluded to earlier: scanned into the computer using outdated 90's film scanning technology, composited into frame along with outdated 90's CGI, printed out to film, then rescanned into the computer again in 2004 and subjected to additional degraining for the Lowry process. It has been through significantly more generation loss and destructive processing than a typical projection print, as exemplified by the -1 scan.
The whole movie doesn't look that bad, just the parts that have been through all the stages of crappy digital alteration.
Film, to a 2k scan, add cgi, to film, to another 2k scan and then Lowryized. Whew! Then add in poor color grading for good measure.
Wouldn't this type of generational loss include almost every scene that was digitally altered in 97 and then not redone in the 2004 edition?