More ruminations on the 70mm film cells. Here is a frame that looks too yellow-green:

I noticed that the colors of the packaging (cropped out here) seemed off compared to another photo under natural light, so I began adjusting the image - reducing the contrast, trying to fix the white-balance. Here are two attempts:

Seems closer to me - I still think that these cells have more accurate color than we've assumed, but those very greenish images on Jedi1.net just weren't scanned or balanced right.

The lack of sound striping on these cells makes me wonder about the origin of the 70mm element used to make them. ESB and ROTJ are striped; most of the ESB cells seem to come from a low-fade copy, while ROTJ is definitely not low-fade. But as I said before, the SW cells have no soundtrack on them - you can clearly see 2.5 inches of blank on the left and right of the sprocket holes. I don't think the striping deteriorated/flaked off; there's no visible evidence of it ever having been striped at all.

The packaging copy says they are "hand-cut from a master print taken from the original internegative" - I wonder if they had to make a new 70mm print of SW just for these cells, or if they had an un-soundtracked 70mm print with relatively intact color just lying around. The world may never know...