In a really nice editorial rant on thedigitalbits.com today, they repeated something I had heard before: "creating the new 1997 Special Edition versions of the films... [GL] cut the original negatives. So the original negatives of the theatrical versions no longer exist."
I remember when the '97 edition was coming I saw a cool hype-documentary. They explained that they went back to all of the original composite elements that GL was smart enough to preserve. After cleaning the elements, all of the fx shots were recomposited digitally to remove artifacts, transparencies, etc that resulted from the original dated analog methods.
Now I'm no film genius, but doesn't that mean they had to build a new master negative for the S.E.? They couldn't go back to the master negative, recut it, and use a computer to print new CG characters onto the film. They had to use the original ELEMENTS and recreate the scenes from scratch re-layering ships and stuff onto background plates. Someone had to cut by cut re-edit this movie and make a new master negative.
So which is it? Why would you re-cut the master negative if it's not even involved in the process? For that matter, if all of the original elements are now clean and ready to be digitally recomposited, why can't they use them and rebuilt the OOT again (digitally) without the "upgrades"?
Maybe I'm stupid, but it sounds like they didn't get their stories straight. Can someone help me understand this?