This is as good a place as any, RogueLeader!

I’m so on the fence about this. On the one hand, I totally get it. There’s such a warmth and charm to this aesthetic, and the films do suffer from a lack of cohesion.

On the other hand, it’s like I was saying in my Clone Wars thread about the “rocks in the stream” approach to editing: There’s such a momentum now behind the current output, that the volume of ‘new’ stuff is going to quickly eclipse the ‘old’. If we want to bend the new content to match the old, we risk giving ourselves a Sisyphean task as new content is constantly output. Should we add film grain to the existing eight non-OT movies? And future movies? And episodes of the live action shows?

That said, I see exactly where you’re coming from, and perhaps there is a middle ground. I think the ‘best’ Star Wars aesthetic is somewhere between:

A sharper and colour-fixed Original Trilogy, with improved but not overwhelming CG (like Adywan’s)
A slightly less shiny Sequel Trilogy, with a bit less obvious CG, and a bit more of the ‘lived-in’ aesthetic.
A more PERSONAL Prequel Trilogy. This one’s hard to explain. I feel like everything other than the Prequels is about character moments and close-up face shots, but in my mind the PT all happens at range, it’s either full-body shot walk-and-talks or it’s full-body shot combat. I don’t feel ‘drawn in’ to the characters - literally, in terms of how it’s shot.

I would then conclude that the Mandalorian probably nails this just right. Lived-in, realistic, good-looking without being CG dependent, modern direction, but compatible with the OT source. And luckily, that’s likely what they’re going to continue with.

So, I’d argue that yes, there’s certainly value in normalising the aesthetics - but into the ‘modern’/Mando standard, because I think (1) that standard best represents what we’ll get more of and (2) because it’s good, what it may have lost in classic charm it gains in its ability to tell a story via a modern directing language.

Therefore, I’d propose the following:

Prequel trilogy gets a humanisation pass. Via zoomed-in/cropped AI upscaling, careful shot selection etc, the actual shots themselves are modified and re-timed to best match a modern directing style. Removal or changing of the most egregious CG which takes you out of the experience - gungans, the featureless Naboo fields, the plasma chambers finale (change it to more of what a Star Destroyer’s power core looks like [since they have similar geometry] via the mammoth task of extreme shot masking). Absolutely then applying a good colour grade to match the (modernised) OT and then, certainly, some film grain - but film grain with the goal of matching say Mando, rather than necessarily the OT.
Solo gets a regrade to match the OT (I think it’s very teal, isn’t it?)
Rogue One, yes, there’s a good argument to make it the first part of the “Original Quadrilogy”, so you could perhaps go heavier on matching it to the OT.
Original Trilogy gets Adywan. Thanks, Adywan. The only thing I can think to highlight here over whatever Ady has proposed is the removal of any obviously CG creatures that just didn’t age well. Jabba and some of the Mos Eisley creatures stand out the most. But you could possibly do a little more with shot selection and pacing to make it feel a little more modern.
Sequel Trilogy gets toned down on the lens flare front, and coloured to match the originals/modern standard (TROS is very yellow?)

But the goal, with all of this, would be to kind of bring everything up to the modern version of the classic aesthetic, rather than to bring everything down to the classic version.