is it likely that LFL destroyed the 1985 interpositive spoken of here: http://savestarwars.com/gout.html
what would the quality of this artifact be like today, if it were available to be scanned and restored?
The one thing I will give George is that he is a packrat/horder. He doesn’t get rid of anything. I doubt that those interprositives have gone anywhere. They would be a decent source for a OUT restoration with very little cost. And from what I’ve seen in comparing the BR to the GOUT, yes the original negative was cut, but everything cut out could be scanned and reassembled. The original negative should be easy to recreate. For ANH this is especially true because they went to the expense and effort to make a 3 color separation master. They did not strike anything from it and by the time they needed it, in the early 90’s when they realized the original negative had faded badly, the three strips of film had shrunk at different rates and there was not way at the time to restore it. Today that is a simple digital procedure and it would take very little effort to scan those, align them, and clean them up for a full restoration of the original theatrical version. Assuming George has kept everything like he usually does.