Well, I received my set of various bits of a 35mm release of the Little Mermaid. I believe that they likely are from the original 1989 release since the film doesn't seem to have any digital audio encoded onto it and all I can see is two track analog audio on the film. That said, perhaps some of the 1997 re-release film sent out lacked the digital audio? Hopefully not.
Anyway, assuming I do have 1989 original 35mm film, I have to say that I think those reaching back to the analog versions, dealing with the lo-res in favor of getting the true, original look and colors.... are probably just staring at a blur for nothing.
Granted, it's hard to yet really compare, until I digitize, since it's hard to stare at calibrated HDTV and lit film and the same time, but for what I could do with that for now, my feeling is that:
NONE of the home versions (well the ones as seen and captured in the comparison here, taken from the discussion over in the blu-ray section:
http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/walt-dis...u-ray#comments) look accurate to the 1989 (well, what I hope is film form the 1989 release!) theatrical release!
Granted, I don't know how those VHS and laserdisc frames were captured, the capture process itself could potentially distort things itself, but as shown there, neither than VHS NOR Laserdisc look to have particularly accurate look compared to the actual film itself. And there is perhaps a reason NTSC was called Never The Same Color Twice (then again, I think that said those were from a Danish release, which probably means PAL, but whatever the colors still seem nothing like the film at all).
As to what does things like the way the trident glows better, not sure, my parts of the 35mm release don't have any of the scenes where the trident lights up.
It's also tricky since the colors do change from scene to scene as they lit it differently and I don't necessarily have the scenes to match the ones on the website above, but I do have a couple that are the same and a few close.
Anyway, the bottom frames, the newest blu-ray, actually do seem in some ways actually maybe heading towards the most accurate overall, but not entirely. Sort of like some mix of the bottom three frames (2006 Platinum DVD, 2013 Diamond blu-ray , 2019 Signature blu-ray) plus that stuff that simply looks like none of them would be most accurate.
That 2013 release actually seems to more often get her sea shells closer to the correct color I think, the 2019 often makes them a bit too dark and a bit too saturated, although in a few scenes, the 2019 is more accurate. Sometimes the 2019 maybe makes her skin a touch too saturated and a trace heading too pink. OTOH, it generally seems to make her tail more vibrant and rich than most other versions, which is more accurate, if sometimes STILL not intense and vibrant enough! The 2013 sometimes makes her tail not vibrant enough or certain greenish elements a trace too blue perhaps. The 2006 makes her tail vibrant too, but sometimes gets maybe a bit too greenish.
None of them seem to get Flounder as deeply saturated as he seems to be in the film at times and many skew too pure yellowish (too much towards a lighter, bluer yellow).
In some scenes, Sebastian's red is absolutely glowing in the film, none of the home release clips shown on that website come close to matching the brilliance and saturation of his red in some of the scenes as seen on film.
It may well be that some of the colors in this film are also simply beyond not just NTSC/PAL colors but beyond sRGB/REC709 color gamut. I'll have to compare to the wide gamut UHD and see if that brings some of them to the film's intensity.
In the jellyfish scene shown on the website, none of them make that scene look correct.
The 2013 blu-ray has the background above her head too blue-skewed and her tail is not nearly vibrant enough and a touch too blue-skewed. Only the 2019 blu even begins to get her tail vibrant enough, but still falls short of the film. None of them come even wildly close to how popping beyond popping intense red Sebastian is in the film there. On the film the jellyfish looks vaguely like the top half of the 1999 DVD combined with the bottom half of the it on the 2019 blu, sort of.
Regarding where she pops up to meet the Albatross and is with Flounder, I don't quite have it to where he holds the fork/dinglehopper, but near that it seems like (assuming the rendering of the way they colored the scene didn't change more than I think between the part I have and what is shown on the website):
VHS and Laserdisc have very poor colors compared to the real film all around.
Only the 2006 DVD and 2019 blu make her tail remotely intense enough, but I think the 2006 DVD probably make her tail likely a bit too green-skewed.
None make flounder quite the right shade, none saturated enough.
None quite seem to have the shade or saturation of her shells quite a match.
None seem to quite have the color of the sky right, maybe the bottom two are getting closer although only the 2006 has some of the extra subtle alternate shades apparent in the film, not that it gets the blue part right.
The VHS, Laserdisc, 1999 DVD all seem to get the sky rather wrong.
But take this with a grain of salt until I get some of the 35mm film scanned (will do it with a pro as far as typical photographers go scanner but yet amateur level compared to some Hollywood drum scanner, but it seems to have accurate colors, hopefully enough for this to be valid, and, even if not a wet drum scanner, at least has diffused lighting) and can compare things on a more even basis, although probably only the wide gamut captures will realistically capture the film so unless you have a wide gamut monitor you may not get to really see what the film looks like either, I have a feeling. Hopefully it captures the affect at least in wide gamut format.
On a side note, the original 35mm theatrical presentation may not have accurately matched the original cells. Film does do certain odd things color-wise at times. So as to what version is closest to the original cells, who knows (but it could hardly be the VHS or Laserdisc).
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