I know they did have a brief water-based sequence, but it wasn’t used in the finished film. Am I forgetting a scene?
As the troopers shoot down Obi-Wan’s parroptile thingy transport, he falls on water. We are shown his escape (respirator included) from underneath.
I’m more inclined to agree with Cartooniverse, though the timeframe is longer than 20 years. But yes, I think the manufacturing of film stock will be an obsolete industry eventually. That doesn’t mean fetishists won’t try to do it “old school” at incredible cost and effort, but the quality of that stock is likely to not be comparable, which will only fuel the disinterest and eventual conversion of the most ardent film lover.
We in the film archival community are genuinely concerned about this simply because in order to best preserve and restore film elements, we need film stock. This isn’t an indulgence, but a professional necessity, and nobody is optimistic enough to believe the funds will be relatively available to afford the stock once it becomes, out of its rarity, prohibitively expensive.
Of course, by then, the technology may be sufficient (and costs sufficiently low) that everything will eventually be migrated to 1s and 0s. That’s progress marching on, I suppose. But there are still no satisfactory answers on how to address digital longevity, format obsolesence, labor-intensive collection migration, and all the other unknown variables that this new, rapidly-developing technology affords.
Yes, that’s the one, although GuanoLad’s also correct about excised footage that also necessitated underwater shooting. Maybe that’ll be on the DVD…