If you followed any of the online discourse related to The Devil Wears Prada 2 in the run-up to its release, you’ll recall much back-and-forth over the new film seeming to be, in terms of its pre-release trailers and TV spots, not as bright, colorful or otherwise “cinematic” as its 2006 predecessor. The question of why some films look and feel smaller and visually drabber than those before the 2010s (and beyond) has become almost mainstream discourse. I won’t pretend to have an expert opinion, and the explanations range from creative to financial, from an industry-wide switch from film to digital to an early-2010s change in real-world lightbulbs from sodium-based to LED that affected how the world looked to our cinematic eyes.

Anyway, having missed the All Media screening before release, I caught up with 20th Century Studios’ comic follow-up this past Thursday at Regal Sherman Oaks Galleria. Or more specifically, I saw the film in one of roughly 50 locations currently offering “HDR by Barco.” Having recently interviewed the Executive Vice President of Barco Cinema (an industry leader in laser projection, among other bullet points) for the conversation that this post is setting up, I wanted to wait until I had sampled Barco’s “High Dynamic Range” format before publishing.

I can attest that the film looked and sounded spectacular. Yes, it was a massive screen inside a giant auditorium, one big enough that walking up the stairs from the first row to the last qualifies as exercise. Without comparing this new(er) format with the likes of Imax and Dolby, The Devil Wears Prada 2 in “High Dynamic Range” looked every bit as richly colorful and eye-poppingly bright as the washed-out trailers did not.

It wouldn’t be the first time a film I thought looked “at least as shiny as expected” in theaters looked duller and more washed-out when viewed at home on a VOD or SVOD platform, and that didn’t used to be much of a surprise. And I do wonder to what extent this discourse is, in part, about folks who mostly consume their filmed entertainment in non-theatrical environments being the ones who tend to send the “trending on X” narratives. Anyway, the goal isn’t just for this $100 million comedy to look superb on a currently exclusive and more-expensive “premium” large format but for it to look as good as hoped at every theater near you.

Fortunately, Mr. Gerwin Damberg agrees with me on that front. Amid roll-out of laser projection as par for the course to plans to make Barco HDR both more widely available and potentially less of a premium offering, at least some of the conversation concerns the challenges, pitfalls, perils and promises of a future where every random matinee of any random movie at any random multiplex will be expected to look, sound and play at least “this” good. I am heartened by theater companies investing $2-3 billion in upkeep and improvements, while concerned about the increasing emphasis (at least in media and industry discourse) on “premium large formats” as the do-or-die variable for a successful theatrical release.

There’s a fair share of science, tech and commerce in this 38-minute conversation, even as Mr. Damberg stressed that (my words, paraphrasing, etc.) he hopes the visual upgrade will be less quantifiable and more just subtly impressive to most general moviegoers. Frankly, this is one where I didn’t have to chime in all that much. Oh, and because this was recorded just before CinemaCon, I didn’t get a chance to ask him about his thoughts concerning Disney’s InfinityVision, but maybe that can be the hook for a sequel.

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