Well, there are a few schools of thought on this one... the first school says that the medium is as much a part of the movie as the means in which it was concieved. That is to say, Pixar tells stories, using both computer animation and the big screen to deliver the story. The "look and feel" of film was something the director was very excited about in this case.

The other, more technical school of thought, is which medium best represents the original vision of the director and lighting director. The answer to that is that the movie's are made in a file-format that's WAY better than DVDs (about 9 times as many pixels, for one thing, and way more colours), and optimized to look best when viewed on this one particular, super-calibrated, closely watched, monitor sitting in a locked room with no windows and perfectly controlled lighting. The movie was mastered on this very special monitor.

From this source, a version for digital projection was mastered - and fell victim to the drawbacks of digital projection (blacks aren't very black, and there aren't nearly enough pixels). Similarly, a version for film was made - and fell victim to its drawbacks (film can get damaged easily, reds aren't quite saturated enough). It comes down to a case of "pick your poison."

For the Incredibles, many people preferred the film version because so much of it takes place at night (where film has WAY better blacks and detail in the darks), and the lack reds was corrected for colour theory magickary. Not to mention the whole movie has a nostalgic mid-70s feel that film lends itself well to - the medium is part of the story.

Hope that helps, always ready to geek out,

Babak

PS the digital version of the movie is pretty darn tootin' good too. Especially if you see it on a 2k digital projector (the only one in the bay area is at pixar).