I think a few of the things we are seeing and complaining about are are just differences in how we've been seeing them for years on pre-dvd media and how they are supposed to be seen. We all know about all those garbage matt boxes, right? Well, when you darken the transfer those garbage matts should be less noticable. I think some of what we are seeing is that for years we have been watching this films from fairly poor transfers. TV, VHS, and LD don't have that high of an image and the TV's they were made for matched how they were scanned.

I think a lot of the issue is that these films were dark originally and we just aren't used to it. Also, I've been watching the special featured on the BRD and I've noticed a lot of variation in how the scenes from the films ended up transfered into the making of documentaries. I've noticed a lot of sabers with non-white cores and other oddities that were issues with the 2004 DVD's.

I'm not saying that a lot of these issues shouldn't have been dealt with, but that they are inherent to the films themselves. There is some fading damage (leading to magenta fiery glows when they should be very while), and some scenes have been over color corrected manually and there is a lot that needs to be fixed, but the crushed blacks and some of the other issues I think are part of the way we are used to seeing the films transferred compared to a more accurate transfer. ANH was color corrected to closely match the technicolor print. As none of us have seen that print and how the colors stand out, I don't think we can really judge.

I'm not saying the 2004/2011 versions are perfect, but I think they are closer to the theatrical presentation than the TV/VHS/LD versions were. One way to judge is to look at the period prints from the movie stills and look at how dark they were. They weren't as light as the TV/VHS/LD transfers.