I feel that "not possible with older gear" is a bit of a stretch at this point. Movies like Lord of the Rings and transformers were created with gear 20 years old so I don't think there is anything that isn't "possible"
That said, "not practical" is probably a more apt description.
In the case of this image. It was shot in the dead of night in a large pet pool in my back yard. The only light source is literally the floating candles. It is shot at like 10,000 ISO. Not long ago getting an image this clean at that sort of ISO just wasn't possible but is now totally reasonable with the gains of modern sensors coupled with AI denoise tools.
Furthermore, the scene itself was composited using a combination of classic photoshop compositing and AI generation. Which was totally possible even 15 years ago but the time it takes to do it with modern tools has come down radically. I used to spend 20+ hours on each composite. Something like this I can now build in under an hour.
How did you photograph my demonic ex-wife? --hahaha Cool frame, Man.