Digitising doesn't take away the look of film. Star Wars looks so bad because it's had every single property of film - what makes film look like film - stripped away from it. The retimed colour is the least of it's issues. The biggest issue is the massive dynamic range compression coupled with excessive contrast boosting. The result is a high-contrast yet, paradoxically, flat image. There is no depth. Additionally, its been edge sharpened, the clipping is some of the worst I've seen and the grain structure is poorly resolved. I have loads of Blu-rays which represent the look of film accurately. If you check out any release by Criterion you will see how film-to-video transfer should be done. Warner and Fox (excluding Patton) catalogue titles are also outstanding.

This preservation is far and away the most important because it's the only one (that we have access to) that will represent this film the way it was originally screened. It's being done professionly and with great attention to detail. And it looks like film. In fact, these guys are doing a better job than a lot of big studios and its no understatement to say, looking at the level of damage to some of these clips, that their accomplishments are outstanding.