That's pretty tame, IMO. I feel like Souls bosses like the Leechmonger or the Gaping Dragon, are originally much more grotesque than the changes made to the Vanguard demon. Even the Asylum Demon in Dark Souls is based on the Vanguard demon and seems more unsettling than that.

I feel like this guy works out at least. It's the tutorial boss that you're expected to die to. By the time you meet him, you've been playing the game for about 10 minutes, you probably haven't really got a feel for the controls or how to fight a boss, and he shows up to scare you, and you die to him, most likely in about 5 seconds. The original stony version does the job, and so does this one IMO. You fight another one later on in the game as a slightly-stronger-than-average enemy, but by then you're equipped to handle him, and it's a pretty quick battle again.

I know I'm not someone who cares that strongly about the integrity of the original vision, but I feel like given the 15 years between the original and the remake, even if Fromsoft themselves had remade it, we would probably be seeing similar changes.