You_Too said:
Though I think the technicolor prints must have been made from a different interpositive than the GOUT. (Remember that the GOUT doesn't even have the theatrical subs.)
The suddenly correct aspect ratio and severe cropping in the Greedo sequence in the Technidisc transfer suggests that the theatrical subtitles are present on the main source - a theatrical IP. It looks like the subtitle free material spliced in is of inferior quality, don't know how the THX/GOUT transfer compare, there's a lot of DVNR present there, so it may be hard seeing any difference to adjacent footage, but I recall it's a lot better treated in the THX master except for the DVNR, no extensive cropping like in the Technidisc transfer.
THX Technical Supervisor Dave Schnuelle about the process of making the Definitive Collection;
"One small difference from the original films is that in letterbox transfers we prefer to put any subtitles in the black border beneath the actual picture area. Thus we didn't use the same interpositive as the theatrical one, because that one contains subtitling already. In tracking down the elements, we found that the only ones in the vault were ones with subtitles- these clearly weren't the first generation off the camera neg because they had to have the subtitles burned in. So a massive search was undertaken and the first generation IP's were found in a special vault having only opticals in Los Angeles."
This comment doesn't seem accurate since it was possible to have your cut negative on A and B rolls and the subs on a C roll. Anyway, reading these words again, it seems to me that the first generation IP's he describe they found was only used for the subtitle segments of the films, at least on the first film. If that was the case why not use it as the source for the entire film? Beats me.
Also, the IP used for creating the SWE (Technidisc) and THX video releases seems to share certain damage/dirt spots with the IB Technicolor prints based on screenshots and footage I've seen, so it's not impossible that they were made from the same IP, but then they would need to include the infamous damage in the Tantive-corridor, would be interesting to know if it was present on those prints as well.