What part of the process of light coming through a lens, being focused onto film, the film being developed, and then light shone through the film onto a sensor to capture a digital copy of the frame, versus the light from the lens being focused onto a sensor and digitized directly, makes the film based image ‘look better’?

Because the frames are going to be digitized, right? Nobody’s arguing that optical printing and editing by splicing reels of film together produces better looking results than digital workflows, surely?