Last week saw the 30th anniversary of The Empire Strikes Back, and along with it came discussions about the best way to watch the film and what we can expect from future re-releases. Michael Kaminski wrote the exhaustively researched and illuminating book The Secret History of Star Wars, so he knows damn near everything there is to know about the film stock used to shoot the film. George Lucas famously said that the original film "doesn't exist" anymore, but is that accurate?

How exactly does Star Wars exist now? What are the challenges and possibilities involved in re-releasing a perfected original cut? How do the bootlegs stack up? Let's find out.

Many prints exist

We asked Kaminksi about the master copy of the original Star Wars. What does it look like now? "The term 'master copy' is slightly vague, because there are various kinds of print masters of different generations," he told Ars. The original negative is conformed to the 1997 Special Edition, meaning the physical copy has been cut and edited with CGI "improvements." With sections of the film being too damaged to work with, parts of that print were taken from other sources. "You never throw away your original negative, so I must assume that any pieces or shots that were removed are in storage somewhere at Lucasfilm or Fox," he explained.

Kaminski points out that a duplication of the original negative—commonly printed for the sake of protection—doesn't seem to exist for Star Wars. Something better was created, though: separation masters. "These are special silver-based copies that do not fade, and in theory should be almost identical in quality to the original negative itself, so even if the negative was destroyed you still have a perfect copy (which is the point of making the separation master)." Duplicates from these prints were used to replace damaged sections of the negative during the restoration before the release of the Special Edition.

That's not all, however. "There are also Interpositives and master prints. Interpositives (and Internegatives) are the color-corrected masters that theatrical prints are duplicated from, and were used in the past to make the home video telecines from 1985-1995." Another common practice is keeping print masters, which are high-quality, fine-grain prints kept in the eventuality that no other higher-quality copies or masters are available.

What this tells us is that Lucas wasn't lying—the original copy of Star Wars is, in fact, gone. What exists in its place is a composite film that has been restored and spliced together with Special Edition scenes and sections from other, later prints. There exist enough film copies and back-ups to re-create the film, however, so nothing is impossible in terms of a more classical high definition re-release.

Why film? Shouldn't this all be digital?

It's unclear how the film exists digitally within Lucasfilm, but Kaminski does know one thing: the scanning done in the past has become obsolete. "The 1997 SE scans were done in 2K and the 2004 Special Edition was done in 1080p, but now the standard is 8K (4 times the 1997 SE and about 7 times the quality of the 2004 SE), and the color reproduction is better too," he says.

While it may seem counter-intuitive, the original film remains important as the most robust way to store this information. Hard drives fail, and data is vulnerable to time. "This may seem silly because everyone always talks about how fragile film is, but film is the most robust, durable image technology we have ever invented. There are reels of film that date back to the 1920s that still look pretty good." He claims that color Eastman Kodak film has a half-life of around 50 to 60 years. Oddly enough, the negative film used in the 1970s to shoot Star Wars is less stable than the film used before or after. We'll get to a point where all we have left are digital copies, but technology has only recently allowed digital copies to rival the original celluloid in quality and detail.

Time to talk bootlegs!

In 2006, an official re-release of the original trilogy was brought to DVD without the annoying CGI updates seen in the Special Editions. The quality was impressive, but the film is shown in non-anamorphic widescreen, a major annoyance for fans of cinema. This is where the fans have stepped up to improve upon Lucas' official releases with high-quality bootlegs.

"Any bootleg made before 2006 is lesser than the 2006 DVD because they were made from the Laserdisc, while the 2006 DVD was made from the master tape that the Laserdisc was derived from and thus is one generation higher in quality," Kaminski tells Ars. "For a 20-year-old analog tape, it does look pretty decent." Bootlegs created after 2006 have used the DVD transfer for better quality video.