Even the “digital” home video remasters deliberately departed from the theatrical colors to create a specific “aesthetic” to their look.
The 04 and 11SEs, I really don’t know what they we’re going for. Incompetence maybe?
The 1920SEs have gone for a muted and more desaturated look. Empire has a green/blue push introduced, whilst Jedi has a red push making everything look kinda brown. However in these releases there is pretty good shot to shot consistency so you can do a lot with a single color correction to the whole films to improve them.
Check out Jedi Destiny if you’re interested. We’re also working on Empire atm.
If memory serves me, George wanted the 2004/2011 releases to have a similar look to the prequels…which really doesn’t work on films from the late 70s and 80s. I think if the blacks weren’t crushed, highlights weren’t clipped and the overall saturation was brought down by 20%, they could’ve been better.
I REALLY don’t know how to feel about the 2019 releases. They just look so desaturated. The original cuts weren’t that saturated to begin with, but they still found ways to make the image vibrant. You aren’t wrong though, a bit of correction would definitely work considering the image is consistent in color. In fact, don’t the 2019 releases base the color timing on the 1997 releases? Obviously not one to one, but I compared certain frames to 1997 scans and they match up with the exception of color temperature.
I’ll definitely check that out. Been looking at newer projects lately ever since I joined recently. I’m a kid in a candy store right now.