You may not realize it, but your brain is waging a battle against itself every time you watch a film. Every film is its own universe with its own laws, and how those laws compare to those outside that universe determine how your brain interacts with the film and evaluates it against reality. But if you're making your own work, it might be worth stepping outside the norms.
All film exists on a spectrum from realist (an almost literal copy of the real world with all its traits and rules) to formalist (highly stylized films in which anything goes). Nonetheless, each film silently details the rules of its universe at its outset, and we implicitly expect it to consistently follow them, which is where poorly written or produced scenes can go awry. Most films these days tend toward classicism, which is the middle of the spectrum, borrowing elements of formalism to enhance their story, but with the eventual aim of appearing realist. After all, it's sneakily clever in a way: realism requires less suspension of disbelief, but if you can enhance it with the freedom of formalism without giving away said enhancement, then what a reality you've created. We as a culture seem to have acclimated to such a way of doing things, but as filmmakers, there's something to be said for the formalist end of the spectrum. Watch the video from Patrick Willems above to hear the argument for the fantastical.
[via No Film School]
Visual style is just a language, and using a language that is normally associated with a different subject or genre changes an audience's perspective on that subject or genre. In photography, we see it all the time, so much so that it becomes commonplace.
It's hard to remember, but all those great photos of pets that are lit and photographed as if they were portraits of people were not always the norm. Photographing that way, now though, is said to "bring out the pet's personality". Why? Is it because they have more personality? Or is it because the visual style makes us relate to them differently?
In my opinion, the thinking on this video is way off. It isn't realism v. formalism, it's the visual language of "dramatic" movies v. the language of comic book / scifi / fantasy movies. Another way to frame this is that it's telling a "childish" story (comics) through an "adult" visual language (thrillers/drama). Any time you do that, it changes the way the audience relates to it.
It could be argued, that the naturalism of the color grading is deliberately put against this very surreal story (superheroes) so that it can be taken seriously, that audiences will relate to the characters in the same way they relate to characters in a drama, and that it will "feel" grounded in reality (but not actually realistic in the academic, film theory definition).
But it could also be said that the audience instinctually understands that "drama" usually takes place in a fictionalized version of our reality rather than the Speed Racer universe, for instance. To a certain extent, it would make the superheroes "more real" to an audience because the visual subtext is that the world they are seeing is THEIR world. Although this is not rational, their emotions instantly understand the language and go with it.
In a way, I think the comments about realism and relatability probably are closer to understanding what the filmmakers were doing than the author of this video. I think he has over-thought it a bit.
Having enjoyed the Speed Racer movie, I now feel better about myself.