I don't want any sort of digital cleanup or recompositing. I want them to take an interpositive that preserves the color timing of the original, clean it photochemically, and scan it at 4K. All effects are exactly as they were in the theater in 1977/80/83, no grain would be removed, etc.

"If you can get the separate elements you MUST recomp them" - no. You really shouldn't, as recompositing them with modern tools is re-doing them, and is not representative of how the effects were done at the time.

I don't care how much the "artists of the time ... hated the final results." What they made captivated generations, and to alter it in any way is to do those very same artists a disservice.

Dirt, dust and print damage are a different beast entirely. Leaving it to preserve how it was is like saying, "I took this photograph in 1945, left it in a drawer, and it got dusty. I'm gonna frame it, but not clean it first, since that's how it's looked since 1945."

"If we applied your arguments to restoring the OOT there wouldn't be any restoration."

Do you consider the Back to the Future Blu-Rays to have been restored? They didn't recomposite the effects for that, and it looks magnificent. That's what I want for Star Wars.

Restoring is about getting it to look as good as it could have looked when it was originally released, not upgrading it to compete with the films released today.