skyjedi2005 said:

If Star Wars was destroyed by time and no good copies exist anymore, then where did they get a source for the gout, and how did they print up those 70mm film cels ? I have been asking this for years.

the 2006 "GOUT" release was probably sourced from the digital tape masters that were done in the early 90's that they had hanging around in the archive.

But the notion that the original no longer exists is more a philosophical statement on Lucas's part. It exists in whole or in part in vaults and private collections all over the world - I doubt there would be any major difficulty finding footage to splice in where necessary. The workflow I'd go for if I were in charge of reassabling the OOT versions would be to get the 1997 SE negatives scanned at 4k then just drop in OOT sections from whatever source is best on a case by case basis.