OK---here is the definitive proof that the O-neg is in good condition----enough to generate a 1st generation interpositive print that Rick McCallum himself described as perfect to a foreign magazine way back in 1997:
Question: The scenes which were not digitally remastered, but only chemically restored are still looking faded or have a color tinge. You see the shift between the the new scenes and the original material.
Rick McCallum: Here is what we were talking about this earlier. One of the most frustrating things is, if you could see the print that stuck of the original negative that we have done - it's perfect. It's not perfect in terms of the colorrestauration, because we still have a long way to go. We will need to scan the movie. In propably five years, when scanning technology drops at a cost that isn't so prohibitive anymore. Now it would cost 10-12 millions Dollars only to scan the whole movie. We just can't do it. Possible we take 2-3 years to be able to restore the color back to its original. We did the best that we could within the technology we have today. This is one of the big challenges for us in the future. The problem is, film is a chemical process and it's like alchemy. It's magic. If you do a print and the developer bath isn't as clean or whatever it is - it's very hard to stain, because it's a photo-chemical process. It lives, it breath, it changes on every print. We are hoping to drive the technology to a level to distribute movies electronically. So we can incode in digital data the color, the contrast and the level that the soundtrack has to do. No theater owner can screw us up again. It's not just the theater owner, it's this bizarre process called filmmaking that is still so fragile. It's hard to believe that we actually had to restore a film that's only 20 years old. Film is an inherently instable medium. It's there and it's changing every day. It feeds on itself, it destroys itself. But it's not only Star Wars. The whole films of the 70s are at risk. With the success of Star Wars all the studios are rushing back trying to protect their films. They are inherently what gives them value. But I apologize for the shift. It's something that goes beyond us. That is the thing what is most frustrating.
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