It’s an interesting and valid point that the projectors from the time would mean current scans of 35mm will be different too. However, taking for example the Aladdin screenshot in particular, the sky is COMPLETELY the wrong colour in the modern digital edition, so it seems to me at least that these 35mm scans whilst not perfect to the 90’s are closer to correct than their digital counterparts.
Whats wrong with terminator 2?
Are there like multiple digital releases, one with better colour than the other?
There's a 4K version out that does interesting things with colour grading, here's a post I found: https://www.reddit.com/r/Terminator/comments/d65pbi/terminat.... The one on the left is the remaster.
There was similar outrage (if that's the right word) about a Matrix remaster that either added or removed a green color filter, and there's several other examples where they did a Thing with colour grading / filtering in a remaster.
I own the blu-ray of The Terminator 2, and briefly owned the 4k as well. The 4k looks like dogshit, with or without HDR enabled. This is largely due to the film using DNR to remove film grain, which they did for the 4k transfer was created for the 2017 3D release (film grain is bad in 3D I guess). The transfer is also much, much more blue.
There's multiple versions of the Matrix on the trackers and the internet that I know of. The official release all look kinda different to each other:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mhZ-13HqLQ
There's a 35mm scan floating around from a faded copy with really weird colors sometimes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow1KDYc9XsE
And there's an Open Matte Version, which I don't know the Origin of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2eCmhBgsyI
For me, it's the Open Matte that I consider the ultimate best version.
See my top level comment for more info on this, but the Aladdin scan used in the article was from a 35mm trailer that's been scanned on an unknown scanner, and had unknown processing applied to it. It's not really possible to compare anything other than resolution and artefacts in the two images.
And as someone who is part of those conservation communities that scan 35mm with donations to keep the existing look, a lot of the people doing those projects are aware of this. They do some color adjustment to compensate for print fading, for the type of bulb that were used in movie theatres back then (using a LUT), etc...
I do find that often enough commercial releases like Aladdin or other movies like Terminator 2 are done lazily and have completely different colors than what was historically shown. I think part of this is the fact that studios don't necessarily recognise the importance of that legacy and don't want to spend money on it.