Here's a blurb of John Williams talking about changing the films:
The Hollywood Film Music Reader by Mervyn Cooke
CB: These films are classics. Why tinker with them now?
JW: Well, this is a very interesting question. If the Star Wars Trilogy yis a kind of classic, why would w e want to tamper with it? I'm not particularly in favor of coloring all the old early films in black and white and might come down on the side of saying, leave things alone. That's one side of the argument.
The other side of it is tru for music also.
*omited*
Some sage said that a work of art is never finished, it's only abandoned. That's really true of all of us; it's like one of our children. You never finish trying to groom itl the chlid could be 60 years old, and you're still saying, "Well you look better if you dress this way."
So I think George is well within the predictable and understandable and probaly correct area of an artist's prerogative to continue to try to want to improve what's he's done. He complained that he didn't have the animatics 20 years ago and he wants to do it now. So I think on the one hand don't tamper with it, and on the other an artist can, ,shoudl and, I think, must be excused for wanting to continue to improve his or her work. That's the two answers.
The third answer could be for those traditionalists who awnt the original the way it is--it's there. They don't have to go; they can listen to the Brahms without his latest edition. So they can see the original version and they can also see the new, updated George Lucas wish-list for his work.
I think it's a wonderful question and the answer has to admit all of these possibilities for us to be fair.
CB: The original negative for Star Wars was in horrible condition.
JW: I didn't know that.
CB: Because of the stock that they were using at the time. What is your take on the whole idea of film preservation and how that affects both the films themselves and the scores?
JW: I can't speak with an expertise about film preservation, but I can talk emotionally and not as a serious art historian. I would make this observation: In the last 20 years or so, I've been very heartened -- I guess we all have - by the conscoiusness that has emerged about preservation.
Yeah it's a wishy washy nothing... That's JW!!