Why did movies look so good in the 90s?

Critical response wasn't entirely monolithic: Manohla Dargis of the NY Times put Miami Vice on her 2006 best-of, and much of her praise of the film centers around its look. She also did Inland Empire, shot on SD digital...

 

I'm a little confused by your post. The "dark times" of Eastman stock? It was shot in Technicolor.

 

They only made the prints. It was photographed on Eastman ECN 5248 stock.

 

Right. I'm aware of that but I still don't get the "dark days" of Eastman. The film looked just fine at the time with rich colors, detail, etc.

Are you referring to the fading that occurred over time, the fact that the acetate deteriorated rapidly? Are you referring to the estar that was used to create the current prints?

Neither of these aspects impacted how the film looked in 1958 nor the restoration.

 

This is a mixed review at best from the lead film critic of the NY Times, A.O. Scott:

Miami Vice - Michael Mann - Review - Movies

These are not exactly overwhelmingly-positive reviews:

Miami Vice (Daily Variety)

'Miami Vice': Way Cool Then, Now Not So Hot

Miami Vice (Metacritic)

https://film.avclub.com/miami-vice-1798201907

(There were positive reviews from Rolling Stone and Richard Roeper, but I run hot and cold with those two.)

I kind of agree with the AV Club with this quote: "Like his last effort, Collateral, the film was shot in grainy digital video, which may scrape too much gloss off the dancing speedboats and ornate drug palaces that are the franchise's alluring stock in trade." The digital video look was awful to me and brought the whole movie down to the look of a cheap TV show.

Speaking purely as a Hollywood technician examining how the pictures looked, I thought they were absolute crap: way, way too "smeary", "cheap," and "electronic" (for lack of a better word), the opposite of cinematic. I've worked with Mann three times going back 30 years (some under stressful conditions), and while he's a demanding guy, I generally got along with him and I enjoyed the experiences overall. It's fair to say his tastes are not always my tastes, but that's the beauty of creative choice.

When any movie costs $135M and makes only $168M, that's very bad Hollywood Math.

 

I am fully aware of the broad critical consensus of Miami Vice. Argumentum ad populum. Most of those critics I generally do not like, as they more often than not take a rushed, superficial analysis of films (as the job requires; AO Scott is usually pretty thoughtful but has his moments of dismissive snark). I am merely trying to show that there were other perspectives, and there have been more since, a quiet minority they may be.

 

A and it did affect the restoration because it took some work to get it back to where it was.