Baronlando said:
But if some of those original composite shots are just too far gone, what can you do. That one particular stock was defective, and I assume those shots are just rotting and getting worse all the time? Close Encounters had the same issue I believe, (the same defective stock from '77) not sure what the solution there was.
Maybe they utilized the separation masters? Apparently there was 62 shots in total that was on that unstable CRI-stock in Star Wars, some of them includes the Stardestroyer capturing Leia's ship and some of the shots of X-wings flying through the Death Star trench.
There seems to be some problem with the color separation masters on Star Wars though, Tom Christopher, the Lucasfilm editor in charge of the restoration - "the preservation effort was botched, (separation masters) mostly by a failure to clean the negative before copying it, and the studio never bothered to inspect the final results. Far from constituting a single studio's sin, such neglect of corporate assets was endemic to Hollywood at the time, and remains widespread today.
As a consequence, the restoration team was forced to struggle with a negative that was not only dirty but badly worn, from making thousands of prints, and was seriously faded, even though it had been stored at prescribed temperatures and humidity in a vault 650 feet down in a salt mine near Wichita, Kan. Blue skies and rich blacks had lost their luster. Silver had almost vanished from the emulsion in certain scenes, like the prelude to Kenobi's duel to the death with Darth Vader. Flesh tones had turned pallid. Strobing effects and those red fluctuations had mysteriously appeared. Some parts, such as the Tatooine desert sequences shot in Tunisia, had never had much luster to begin with. ("Star Wars," it's useful to recall, was first considered the slapdash work of a brash young upstart.) Other pieces weren't even original negative, but intentionally degraded duplicates that Mr. Lucas had stuck in to avoid emphasizing the quality of adjacent optical effects, some of which were so crude as to be almost unacceptable.
Eventually 748 of the 2,228 shots in the movie were redone in the course of creating a new negative, from which some 2,000 new prints have been struck for the current national release. (Similar though less extensive work has been done for the two sequels, "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi.")
Mike Verta have also mentioned that the separation masters are incomplete, apparently there's entire color channels missing for at least a couple of the reels.
But it can be done especially with modern tools, I think that Robert Harris have mentioned it in the past, there are lots of films that don't have original negatives that have been restored. And there also have to be existing IP's in decent shape for at least making a good looking blu-ray transfer. I have definitely limited knowledge in the field but even I understand that it's not impossible to completely restore Star Wars, Lucas just want us to think so. There's also good looking IB Technicolor prints out there. As you've said Baronlando, these kind of things are done every Tuesday. ;)