Gizzy2000, yes, you are correct.

If all they used as their starting point was a new scan of the negative "as is," it's conformed to the '97 version of the movie.

Quite a bit of that is still the true original negative or at least dupe neg to replace the o-neg that was damaged/faded beyond repair. A good 85% of the neg, give or take, is still one of those two things and would still count as the true original.

The remaining 15% or so is stuff that didn't exist until '97, like the digital recomposites of the fx shots and the new cgi stuff. None of that would count in any way as the unaltered original.

The unaltered original version of everything that got replaced was, hopefully, put into storage and not destroyed. If preserved, it would still be a viable source for restoration of the unaltered trilogy.

In any event, I think we've determined that this new scan has to be from the o-neg and not the '97 interpositive. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, though.