Star Wars - Behind the Scenes Special

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

But this may be a good thing. The profit motive will eventually induce him to re-release "the originals--like haven't seen them since 1977!" You can count on it.

[Joshua Starnes]

I strongly doubt it. Lucas doesn't seem to do anything out of sheer need for money.

As far as that quote goes, I completely agree with him. If I showed a rough cut of my work to someone and then later showed them the final cut, and they liked the rough cut better but I liked the final cut better, well to bad for them. In the end, I'm going to tell my story my way.

[Brack Craver]

Look Joshua, me and the millions of other kids who went to see that movie multiple times and then bought all those crappy plastic toys and trading cards are what made Lucas rich. All this nonsense about what it would have cost to release the original ("which is on VHS"!) is a load of crap. He should have been like Spielberg and given his fans both versions. Obviously he doesn't give a damn about the people who made him famous. He's a GENIUS. Yeah, right. Howard the Duck was pure genius. Phantom Menace is simply brilliant. Give me a break. This guy's ego is out of control. I don't know. He is who he is. Star Wars is good but it's no Dr. Strangelove. He can do whatever he wants to it. And besides, this gives me a good excuse not to give someone as arrogant as Lucas anymore of my money. There's a ton of better movies and directors who aren't fetishists for the latest technology but are instead concerned with the art of moviemaking. Lucas' most recent work proves the guy is clueless. Just my two cents. Sorry for the rant.

[John Hudson]

Brack

No apologies needed. I completely agree.

[Yi Fong Yu]

have you guys seen his THX1138? it's quite good. for a person that made that... i think he's still pretty kewl. we shall see what he's upto post episode iii.

[Keith Loh]

If I were to make a science fiction film, it would probably be like THX1138. Sparse, simple, using as much available resources as possible. Spend everything else on story and character.

[Joshua Starnes]

Look Joshua, me and the millions of other kids who went to see that movie multiple times and then bought all those crappy plastic toys and trading cards are what made Lucas rich. All this nonsense about what it would have cost to release the original ("which is on VHS"!) is a load of crap. He should have been like Spielberg and given his fans both versions. Obviously he doesn't give a damn about the people who made him famous. He's a GENIUS. Yeah, right. Howard the Duck was pure genius. Phantom Menace is simply brilliant. Give me a break. This guy's ego is out of control. I don't know. He is who he is. Star Wars is good but it's no Dr. Strangelove. He can do whatever he wants to it. And besides, this gives me a good excuse not to give someone as arrogant as Lucas anymore of my money. There's a ton of better movies and directors who aren't fetishists for the latest technology but are instead concerned with the art of moviemaking. Lucas' most recent work proves the guy is clueless. Just my two cents. Sorry for the rant.

Well - he's never called himself a genius, so I don't know where you get that from. And it was your choice to give him money.

I asked a question earlier about the obligation to the fan versus the obligation to the artist. Personally, I think the artist' obligation to himself outweighs what a fan may want, but of course it is impossible to convince a fan of that.

It sounds like your projecting your dissapointment over not getting what you want onto Lucas and why he's not doing what you want. If you've read Lucas' writing about film or heard him speak about it, you'd find someone very concerned with the art of moviemaking (which releasing the orignal version of Star Wars has nothing to do with). He's not clueless about what fans want, but he's made a decision to please himself and he's standing by that.

[John Hudson]

I agree; the ARTIST' responsibility is to his/her self. That being said:

I still am not buying it. Lucas has done nothing in the form of FIlmmaking (I am speaking literally of the ART of filmmaking, being a filmmaker, making films). Yes, he has accomplished tons in the techincal side (ILM, THX, etc) but his last good film was STAR WARS.

His constant tinkering is butchering. It's like going back and replacing all the FX in the orginal TERMINATOR because they're outdated or not what CAMERON wanted.

I think he is CLUELESS to what the fans want. He is the ARTIST (I wince even calling him an artist at this point) and he is biting the hands that FEED him.

[Christopher C. Murphy]

You know, I've been steering for the longest time towards Lucas bashing. But, the closer we get to the Star Wars DVD release...and the Episode III release, I guess I'm changing my opinion.

If you really think about it - who EVER makes a movie from their heart that doesn't take it with them to the grave? I mean, we're all on here as filmmakers or video producers. I've never approached my work from a "fan" perspective. I've always tried to follow a "vision" I have with any given project, and if time and money weren't a factor I'd re-visit just about everything I've done and tweak it.

Having said that, I think that I'm starting to lean towards Lucas' main point. He's basically saying, "It's my creation and you can't change my viewpoint to a fan perspective." I think that I've finally got it.

Does it change my view that I'd like to see Han Solo fire first? No. I've got my opinions, but overall I guess that I wouldn't like someone to tell me that I shouldn't update or change anything I've ever created. It should be my option, first and foremost. If I do it, well...it should be respected in the realm of "artistic expression" just like when it was created.

The fact is...Lucas made art the first time around, and now he's doing it again and using previous work to do it. (putting the old stuff with new stuff) That's artistic work in and of itself....so, we have to almost look at the new stuff as NEW stuff. We all loved the originals untouched, and we did get them that way before. It's a new day, new art....

Murph

[Joshua Starnes]

I think he is CLUELESS to what the fans want.

Actually, it seems that he knows exactly what the fans want (both in terms of the ST DVDs and the Prequels) but he has realized that what he wants and what the fans want are two different things and he has decided to do what he wants.

[John Hudson]

Don't get me wrong guy's; in fact C. Murph has made a nice assessement.

I love STAR WARS/EMPIRE/JEDI (Have some Mixed reactions about JEDI)

I completely do not even get or dig the new ones. Is this because I am older? I don't know. I still have the filmmaking passion and trip out when a film touches me; these new Star Wars films mean nothing to me.

Will I see the final installment? Of course I will. It will be closure to a childhood long lost.

Will I but the DVD's coming out this month? Definaely. I have a4 and half year old that knows nothing of the original STAR WARS films. He is in for a treat and I want to see them again on my sorround sound system!

I'm not bashing literally. I just dont like him altering the originals or for that matter making them UNAVAILABLE forever. I sont think he's that great of a filmmaker as revolutionary as the orignal SW was/is.

What does this mean? It means I can still have an opinion on it. It means I dont have to like it. It means nothing.

[James Emory]

How do you think Empire and Jedi would have turned out if Lucas's first choice for director, Steven Spielberg, had worked out? Spielberg was not allowed to direct Empire because George had quit the director's guild and Spielberg was still in it. How's that for politics? I tell you what. I really, really respect George for standing up to the studios. But, I think he needs to at least give us all a choice to have the Star Wars we knew then as well as the latest version. It's just like my brilliant analogy I made earlier with the adopted and biological parents that noone even acknowledged.

[John Hudson]

Thats an interesting question and would RAIDERS have gotten made if SS did EMPIRE?

No matter the case, it comes out TUESDAY (I think) and Ill be sitting my 4 and a half year old down that night to say son:

"You don't know jack about STAR WARS now pay attention."

Maybe Ill fast forward through the JABBA TAIL SCENE! LOL

I read in EW (subscription is a gift I swear) that the ROMOURED episodes 7,8 and 9 are forever shelved by LUCAS. (Good.)

[Yi Fong Yu]

if you get this week's entertainment weekly there is an interview with lucas. i think this is the BEST interview in regards to this topic. if this doesn't answer it, then i dunno what will!

here:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What's the line between restoring a film and altering it? Obviously, the versions of the Star Wars Trilogy and THX 1138 on DVD go far beyond what we saw in theaters.

GEORGE LUCAS: Film is so expensive, and it's run by corporations. They just take it away from you, and it's frozen in time at the point where it got yanked out of your hands. I've been lucky enough to be able to go back and say ''No, I'm going to finish this the way it was meant to be finished.'' When Star Wars came out, I said it didn't turn out the way I wanted -- it's 25 percent of what I wanted it to be. It was very painful for me. So the choice came down to, do I please myself and [finally] make the movie that I wanted, or do I allow the audience to see the half-finished version that they fell in love with? If you really look at it, there's hardly any changes at all. The thing that really caused the trouble on Star Wars is the whole question of whether Han Solo or Greedo shoots first. The way it got cobbled together at the time, it came off that [Han] fired first. He didn't fire first.

EW: So you consider this a correction?

GL: It's a correction. [When I made Star Wars] I said, ''Well, I don't have that shot, so I'll just, you know, fudge it editorially.'' In my mind [Greedo] shot first or at the same time. We like to think of [Han Solo] as a murderer because that's hip -- I don't think that's a good thing for people. I mean, I don't see how you could redeem somebody who kills people in cold blood. Every [other change] is, you know, I wanted to have a good matte painting here. Nobody seems to mind the [idea of a] ''director's cut.'' But to go the next step and say, had they given me another week's shooting, or another $50,000 to finish these matte paintings, this is what the film would look like -- well, it's not a matter of changing your mind. Star Wars was not meant, in the end, to be seen more than once in a movie theater. It was designed to be a large theatrical experience that, if you saw it once on a giant screen, would blow you away. But this was before there was such a thing as DVD. If you went down and sort of analyzed it and looked at it frame by frame, you can see the tricks that are going on. There's a lot of stuff that's very thin, as in any old movie.

EW: Can you envision a future in which a filmmaker who didn't get the actor he wanted the first time can drop in a new performance to ''perfect'' the movie?

GL: It has to do with the creative predilections of the director -- what he wants and how strongly he feels about it. But you could do that. The real issue is, who has the right to do that? I fall 100 percent on the side of the right of the artist to alter it.

EW: You've said that in Star Wars, you were trying to capture something for young viewers that would connect with the fun that you had at Saturday-afternoon serials. But the saga is actually pretty sad. If you take it as the story of the guy who became Darth Vader, isn't it a six-movie series about someone losing his humanity?

GL: But being resurrected by his children. We all have to make up for our fathers, you know. Believe me, our kids are really going to have a job making up for the sins that are going on right now. That's a classic theme, you know -- if one generation succumbs, it's up to the next generation to redeem that generation.

EW: Say that it's 2010, and I'm a 10-year-old coming to Star Wars movies for the first time. Should I start with Episode IV (Star Wars) or Episode I (Phantom Menace)?

GL: [Your order should be] I, II, III, IV, V, VI. Part of the fun for me is that one generation will have seen it backwards. For the next generation that sees it from I to VI, there are a lot of things in IV [Star Wars] that were just fantastic [in 1977] -- you know, the cantina -- which aren't going to work. In those days, you didn't put monsters in a bar. A monster was a thing that came from a spaceship and ate everybody. Now every [sci-fi] bar you walk into has got aliens. [But] what's really important is the story, and the development of the characters. Now, once you get to IV, you know Darth Vader's the main character because you saw him [in previous movies]. So when Darth Vader walks in, you say, oh, my God. Now, when you come across Princess Leia, you know that's his daughter right away, and you think, does he know? No, he doesn't know. Or does he know? And when you cut down to the planet and see Luke, you go, oh, my God, that's Darth Vader's son, and Ben Kenobi has been waiting all this time to send him on his adventure. You're waiting for them to realize who everybody is. So it is a completely different movie.

EW: You tend not to be very optimistic about whether your movies will be hits. You had grave doubts about both American Graffiti and Star Wars. Has that persisted with the second trilogy?

GL: I said, well, [Phantom Menace] is not going to work because I'm making it about a 10-year-old boy, and nobody is going to want to go see this. It's like one of these Disney movies or Benji movies. People don't want that -- they want to see Darth Vader, and I'm not giving them Darth Vader, so don't expect this thing to be a hit. And then [Attack of the Clones] is a love story. It's old-fashioned like in the '40s, you know, it's not a modern, hip, happening romantic comedy with the Olsen twins. It's kind of corny and it's using an aesthetic that is out of use now. I'm not sure whether young people are going to take to it. So at least Darth Vader is in [Episode III]. Only for two minutes, but he's in it. If you take them all together it's a fascinating saga.

EW: Watching THX -- which deals with a totalitarian culture and the consequences of rampant consumerism -- alongside the Star Wars movies suggests that you're a surprisingly political filmmaker.

GL: I'm very interested in politics, and I try to deal with political themes. The thing is, I make my movies my way, and they have sort of been taken as light entertainment. But I put in a lot of my own feelings and views. Would the Empire have referred to the Rebel Alliance as terrorists, rhetorically? That's a very politically charged word. I'm not sure terrorists have defined themselves as terrorists -- they have defined themselves as rebels. And that's what we were, you know, we're the rebels. We are a nation of terror, we came out of terrorism -- well, I mean, for God's sake, we are rebels, but the British wouldn't have described us that way. If you were to look at [Star Wars] for what it actually is -- get rid of all that cool stuff -- one of its major issues is how you get from a democracy into a dictatorship without a coup. How did the Senate turn it over to Caesar? How did France turn over their republic to Napoléon? And how did Germany hand their country over to Hitler? That's embedded in the three films that are coming out now. When the third one is put in, you'll say, ''Oh, I see how that all works.'' The controversy is going to be that people expect some horrible, horrific thing to happen to [Anakin] that caused him to [become Darth Vader]. It's much subtler. It's something that everybody faces -- when you're looking at yourself, you can see your good and your bad, and say, ''Is this a selfish choice or is this a compassionate choice? And once I get something, what would I do to keep from losing it? Would I make a pact with the devil to keep it?''

EW: You're pretty definitive about not making the once-rumored third Star Wars trilogy -- episodes VII, VIII, and IX.

GL: I'm not going to do it. I'm too old. I've got other movies I want to do. And I don't want anybody else to do it, so I've locked it up so nobody can ever do it. There may be TV offshoots from people, but the saga itself, the story of the Skywalker family, is over.

(This is an online-only excerpt from Entertainment Weekly's Sept. 24, 2004, issue.)

[Kenn Christenson]

So, I guess the original Star wars movies are now "unmovies." Thanks George Orwell, I mean Lucas..