I actually don’t hate the color in the official release of Empire. Sure, Harmy’s 2.0 blows it out of the water, but it doesn’t scream “THIS IS POORLY DONE” like Star Wars. There are a few places where it even creates an interesting look, albeit one that isn’t accurate to any sort of reference.
I agree. And RoTJ strayed blue a bit at times even in the 83 LPP and 97 SE. Some parts in the 04 master go too far for sure. Especially on Endor and for some reason the Death Star internals during the attack on the core. As you say with ESB, the 04 master isn’t true to anything, but it is not for the most part a completely unreasonable looking film. ANH on the other hand… I wonder if proper color correction was just so far out of reach in the limited time they had, that they cranked the settings up to 11 to try to mask all sorts of problems at once.