As Unpopular As I Am

[dexfarkin]

Lucas: "To me, the special edition ones are the films I wanted to make. Anybody that makes films knows the film is never finished. It’s abandoned or it’s ripped out of your hands, and it’s thrown into the marketplace, never finished. It’s a very rare experience where you find a filmmaker who says, “That’s exactly what I wanted. I got everything I needed. I made it just perfect. I’m going to put it out there.” And even most artists, most painters, even composers would want to come back and redo their work now. They’ve got a new perspective on it, they’ve got more resources, they have better technology, and they can fix or finish the things that were never done...

"...this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it. But I want it to be the way I want it to be. I’m the one who has to take responsibility for it. I’m the one who has to have everybody throw rocks at me all the time, so at least if they’re going to throw rocks at me, they’re going to throw rocks at me for something I love rather than something I think is not very good, or at least something I think is not finished."

I know my Star Wars geek cred will get shredded for this, but you know what, I'm with George here. Fuck it. The man has made his life by drawing on what he created. Fuck the second guessers and the pissed off fanboys. I disagree with him, and I prefer the originals, but damn if I can't respect him.

Comments

[paradisacorbasi.livejournal.com]

Same here. I mean, it is his universe and his world. And from a certain perspective, he is maintaining continuity now that he has done the first three films.

[hex-16.livejournal.com]

You're not alone. Lucas has every right to touch-up his own work. It is his, afterall. A lot of Star Wars fans bitched about Greedo shooting first. I was reading a review of the trilogy DVD set, and the reviewer pointed out that Han Solo was meant to be "a reformed scoundrel, not a reformed murderer." Actually, I think it goes to far to call Han a murder if he shot first, since Greedo was clearly going to kill him. But I agree with the author's point. Han's shadiness comes from be kind of oily and slick, not from being a hardened killer. That's the essential characterization that Lucas wanted, because of Lucas's views on violence.

--Hex

[jim-smith.livejournal.com]

Only thing that bugs me is that he's never really going to finish the movies, because his eternal freedom to keep working on them is too tempting to let him stop. A guy on my friendslist was complaining about one of Luke's screams at the end of Empire Strikes Back and it took me all night to figure out if the scream had been in the 1980 version and removed in 1997, the 1980 version removed in 2004, the 1997 version removed in 2004, or absent in 1980 and added in 1997 and removed again in 2004. Ten years from now we'll probably have four versions of the trilogy, each with its own version of Han vs. Greedo and its own set of fans who resent the other three editions.

Eventually he's just going to say "screw it" and produce remakes of each one with a new cast. I don't know if that bothers me or not, but it's the only logical conclusion he can arrive at.