Has Digital Filmmaking Ruined the Look of Movies?
For most of cinema’s history, movies have been captured on strips of photochemical film, producing images with a natural texture—24 frames per second of grain, shadow, and colour that felt tangible in a way audiences rarely questioned. Today, nearly everything is shot digitally, and while films have never been sharper or cleaner, something about the image feels different, and audiences have definitely noticed.
One of the most common complaints we hear—particularly when it comes to streaming movies—is that everything looks the same. No matter the genre, the cinematography often feels slick and manufactured, with low contrast and soft, flattened lighting. It all tends to blend together into a homogeneous mass of forgettable images. The shift from photochemical film to digital filmmaking takes much of the blame, but is digital really the culprit?
Digital Vs Film
Shooting on film is expensive, and that cost once forced directors and cinematographers to plan carefully and compose every shot with intention. The sweeping desert vistas of Lawrence of Arabia, the painterly candlelit interiors of Barry Lyndon, and the lurid, nightmarish colours of Suspiria were all captured on film, with deliberate choices baked into every frame.
Digital filmmaking, by contrast, is faster and cheaper—but that speed has encouraged studios to demand rushed workflows and minimal time in post-production. This has gone a long way towards making modern movies look interchangeable. Too often, the process leans on a familiar crutch: “We can fix it in post.” Except no one actually has time to fix it.
There’s also been a noticeable shift toward “natural” colours and lighting. On paper, that sounds harmless, and it certainly works for many films, but it’s hard not to miss the bold colours, deep shadows, and expressive darkness of older cinema. This isn’t the case for every movie, but in many, it feels like a compromise made for safety’s sake. Flat lighting and neutral contrast play nicely with HDR grading, survive streaming compression, and remain consistent across wildly different display setups for global audiences. Why push the envelope when “good enough” is adequate for most people?
But too often, I find myself pulled out of a movie simply because it looks so drab when it shouldn’t. Take Wicked, for example. When you think of The Wizard of Oz, you remember the blazing Technicolour imagery: the ruby-red slippers, the bright yellow brick road, the glowing emerald green of the city itself. Despite taking place in the same world, Wicked feels muted. Elphaba’s green skin, Glinda’s pink dress, and the Emerald City all seem to be begging for more saturation.
Director Jon M. Chu has defended the film’s colour grading. “I think what we wanted to do was immerse people into Oz, to make it a real place,” he told The Globe and Mail. “Because if it was a fake place, if it was a dream in someone’s mind, then the real relationships and the stakes that these two girls are going through wouldn’t feel real.”
It’s a defence filmmakers often reach for—the idea that heightened colour somehow undermines realism—but it’s not especially convincing. The real world can be vibrant, dramatic, and visually overwhelming. Cinema may sometimes exaggerate reality, but it never diminishes it.
Digital Can Be Beautiful
It’s safe to say that I love film. There’s an organic texture to it that’s hard to beat, and I’m grateful that directors like Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, and Paul Thomas Anderson can use their influence to continue making movies on film. It’s hard to say how long that will last; Matt Damon, who stars in Nolan’s The Odyssey, even recently said he suspects the fantasy epic will be the last big movie he makes on film.
If true, that would be a shame, but digital filmmaking isn’t the villain here. Like any tool, it depends entirely on how it’s used and the talent behind it. Movies such as Blade Runner 2049, The Holdovers, The Green Knight, Zodiac, Hugo, Life of Pi, and Mad Max: Fury Road prove that digital cinematography can still produce images rich with emotion, texture, and personality.
The issue isn’t that digital looks bad, it’s that too many movies are afraid to look like anything at all. In chasing universal accessibility, studios have sanded down the edges that once made films visually distinctive.
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