George Lucas vs. the Stormtroopers

[derek]

box office mojo has an interesting article regarding all those fans who think lucas has ruined the orignal trilogy and has no right to edit his work......http://www.boxofficemojo.com/commentary/?id=1477&p=.htm


i'm just as big a star wars fan as anyone, and except for the greedo/han shootout(which is vastly improved on the DVD) i just can't seem to get upset about the additions lucas has made. it's not like he made radical plot changes, like making luke the villan or the emperor good guy or something....... lol

[stillakid]

Interesting. I was reading through the forum discussion and came across this item:


Q: Why did you change your mind and decide to put the original three movies out on DVD now?

GEORGE LUCAS: Just because the market has shifted so dramatically. A lot of people are getting very worried about piracy. That has really eaten dramatically into the sales. It really just came down to, there may not be a market when I wanted to bring it out, which was like, three years from now. So rather than just sit by and watch the whole thing fall apart, better to bring it out early and get it over with.

Ironically, Lucas is pushing guys like me toward piracy. After hearing about the atrocious vandalism he is inflicting on the saga, my first reaction wasn't to run out and buy a copy of the new SuperNifty Edition. The first thing I did was seek out and buy a DVD burn of the original Laserdisks. Had Lucas merely done what most fans wanted and released the original versions on disk, then his reasoning above would be valid. But he didn't and presumably won't so I wouldn't be surprised one bit if his own "flawed" and "hated" and "incomplete" versions :rolleyes: become extremely popular in the "black market." Yeah, sure, we'll always have a number of Lucas-ites who love every new version he puts out more than the last, but I'd wager that the original originals would sell even more than anything else he put out. (I'll even go so far as to suggest that most people who bought the new SuperNifty versions had no idea that further changes had been made...so suggesting that the high sales equal support for the changes isn't valid.)

[Rocketboy]

I'm pretty sure most people that bought the DVDs (if they knew about the changes) just didn't care about the changes, or if they did care, they didn't care enough to not buy them. I think it's a small handfull of fans that will refuse to buy the official DVDs and won't even make a minor dent in sales.
For the most part, I like or don't have a problem with most of the changes. The only things I still don't like is the whole Greedo thing which still looks bad (and still looks the same to me) and Han's altered dialogue on the skiff (from ("Trust me," to a mushed and non-Harrison sounding, "Icanseealotbetter")

And saying that Star Wars movies is apiece of art that everyone owns is garbage. You don't own Star Wars. You own a copy of it. It's just like owning a print of a famous piece of art. Now if you actually owned say, Nighthawks, and Edward Hopper wanted to come in and alter it by adding more people (which I'd like to see!), then you'd have a right to *****.

From the link:

The assertion that Mr. Lucas has no right to add Gungans, Greedo's first shot and Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker's ghost amounts to advocating censorship. Those who lay claim to Star Wars share the same premise as the thug who acts on that notion: force.

Audiences have the right to reject what George Lucas creates -- and recreates -- and, as the creator and owner, Mr. Lucas has the right to change his movies -- whether he puts Chewbacca in pantyhose, recasts Ewan MacGregor as an Ewok singing "Your Song" to Jar Jar Binks or smashes Artoo Detoo into a thousand pieces. As one lone fan put it, when asked why he does not object to Mr. Lucas' changes: "It's his story." Bravo!

[Devo]

didn't care enough to not buy them

I fall into this category. I'm fine with special effects improvements. The Han/greedo thing was better in the original cut and Lucas' reasoning for the change is flawed but I've never lost sleep on it. I guess the change I am most unthankful for is Vader pointlessly being shown returning to the Executor in the ESB special edition. It c*cked up the editing of that sequence. But....I had to have ESB on DVD, whatever version.