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Why Star Wars Should be Left to the Fans
Aguazul writes "The BBC has an interesting take on George Lucas's meddling with our memories: 'Fans of Star Wars are not happy. Someone has been tampering with their movie history.' They speculate on who really owns a piece of art. Even the artist doesn't really know what he's created, and a work doesn't become 'something' until given value by an audience: 'the artist is merely the medium for his or her work.' Many people contributed to the Star Wars trilogy. Is Lucas' over-inflated idea of his own importance in the process the reason he is stopping people seeing the unmodified originals?"
>> Even the artist doesn't really know what he's created, and a work doesn't become 'something' until given value by an audience: 'the artist is merely the medium for his or her work.'
the writers, producers, costume designers, actors, etc are really irrelevant in the creative process. no, its the
talentless consumer thats really the creative wellspring of artistic work
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, known as the Copyright Clause: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
I think that's a reasonable and praiseworthy understanding of what art, and copyright ownership, should be for. The time of creator-control should be "limited" to something like 14 or 28 years (one generation), as was originally intended. Afterward, it belongs to the world.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Uh, no. Your cell phone does not produce better footage than a 335mm film camera.
The film stock might have aged badly due to poor preservation, but that is not the same thing at all.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
off of bittorent. My childhood memories are now restored. No more CGI blinking Ewoks, no more yelling darth, no more han shoots last. So to all the fans out there, relax and just download the originals (besides, I already paid for them decades ago on VHS).
It's Lucas' right, but he's an ass for not letting us have the restoration without additions as it's something that had to happen whether he was going to crap it up again or not. So you're right, and everyone who wants his head on a pike is right, too.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That whooshing sound you hear is the point flying over your head.
No one argues that Lucas isn't the legal owner. Of course he is, and of course he has the legal right to do whatever he wants. "Own" is metaphorical in this article, and your entire comment is irrelevant.
Yeah I was a die hard jedi wannabe, up until about season2 of clone wars crappy cartoon. When I realized the stupid clone wars was gonna be ridiculously long like the afghanistan war
READ TIMOTHY ZHAN BOOKS
I don't see any reason we should give Lucas any less than the complete and total control over his creations enjoyed by Homer, Shakespeare, and Bach. To afford him anything else would be tragic.
Lucas was ONE of the artists, and it's clear from his later tinkering that his vision of characters such as Han Solo is NOT what ended up on film. So that sad douchey fatsack is wiping out the beloved movies (the combined vision of Lucas, co-writers, actors, etc...) to replace them with his vision, loved seemingly only by himself and his sycophants. It is not one mans creation so why should he get to destroy it? He could release his vision and a clean copy of the original edit but he would rather destroy cultural icons (sort of like the Taliban, come to think of it). Fuck him bloody.
Uhm, most films are about fictional characters. Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Harry Potter, Avatar, to name a few.
But it IS a defining moment, because hey, this guy is going to deliver our heroes to someplace safe. But he just shot someone. In cold blood. Can we trust this guy to bring our heroes safely to their destination? Who knows. We're excited and tense.
And now we have this new version. Where he politely follows the Geneva convention and Rules of Engagement of civilized people everywhere. No ambiguity - we can trust him. We wait for the inevitable discovery of his golden heart. Meh.
There is a huge difference there that changes the whole movie up to where he overcomes his greed. It's open heart surgery on a living movie. And I hate it.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
It's what he did in the late 90's when he released the special editions of the 4,5,and 6. I full support the idea of the star-wars franchise universe taken out of his hands and in it's place give him a box of crayons to play.
Greedo seems to be the poster child for complaints, but the Original Star Wars (1977) is ruined pretty much start to finish for me. There is so much ridiculously out of place tacked on CGI it makes me gag.
IMO, what was done to the the original 1977 Star Wars, is as bad as taking "Jason and the Argonauts" and replacing the stop motion work of Ray Harryhausen, with CGI.
He has taken a historically significant special effects movie and added a bunch of lame CGI on top and turned it into a running joke.
For myself, I am only interested in having even a decent DVD copy of just the original 1977 movie (the old DVD box set version is not DVD quality).
I have no interest in anything else Lucas has done.
It's the rabid fanatics who have an over-inflated idea of their own importance.
They are consumers. Numbers. Statistics. Buyers.
Not creators or artists.
So STFU, get out of Mom's basement, and get a life already.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
He learned from Star Wars to have a completely filled-in mythology rather than patchwork in extensions to the story. I think the success of Star Wars caught him and the studio by surprise. Its pretty obvious that he had to patch most of the subplots. For example I can tell from the first film that Princess Leia's home Planet was Organa, had always been Organa, and her father was waiting for her on Organa before Tarkin blew it all to hell, and he WAS NOT Vader. I know; she would have referred to him as her father and not her step father, but still, I'm not speaking to familial references, but plots and story lines and what seems reasonable and logical. Lucas had no intention of tying Vader and Leia together until AFTER Episode V was in the word processor (maybe typewriter still then). I think the connection between Luke, Leia, and Vader is a stretch so thin it pretty much snaps by the time Revenge comes out, and the numbering of all six films (begins with 4 and ends with 3?) is ridiculous. Brilliant if you're making one film, really kind of a mess if you had planned on six (or was it 9?) films all along.
As further evidence of this the tie-in using Shmi Skywalker and Cliegg Lars is pretty obviously forced- wedged in like a wrench in a cheesecake but was necessary to get "Aniken" (young Darth) tied up in Luke's & Leia's lives. As we have some idea of just how vast the universe is happenstance like that, (planned or not) is just ridiculous.
I'm not a hater, just sayin' Y'all can argue if you want; but there's only one man who knows the truth and he ain't gonna talk.
To show I'm not a hater I think the casting of Ewan McGregor as the young Kenobi was brilliant. He did a very good job.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
If that was a reason anyone could accept, Metropolis would have gotten a makeover years ago and the old one would have been destroyed.
The charm and a lot of the value those original versions of Star Wars had was due to the limitations and how they managed to work around them. The first scene (ya know, where Leia's ship gets badgered by a Star Destroyer) was awesome at the time, I remember how the theater went wild at the very first scene of the movie just from it being so awesome. Today, of course it isn't as impressive anymore, we're used to such scenes by now. But that's not what made the movie a classic. What did was that in its time it had the maybe best and certainly some of the most impressive special effects. Giving them a makeover does of course improve them, but it also cheapens them. Today, this is something every second movie will show. And I'm not talking about the "old" special effects, I'm talking about the remakes.
Yes, the redos make the movie look less impressive. Not more. Less. It becomes yet another space opera movie. The special effects introduced later are nothing special anymore, they're a staple of the industry. What made them impressive was that they could pull them off in that time without the aid of perfect CGI, with a lot of work and detailed models. That's what made it special and great.
Take any Anderson TV show (talking about their real, not puppet, shows, namely Space 1999 and UFO). By today's standards, of course the special effects look dated and, at best, cute. What makes both shows a classic and made them develop a cult following was that they put a LOT of work into it to make it believable with the limited means of the times.
Just like with Star Wars. Star Wars produced today would simply be yet another SciFi movie. The same special effects as anyone, and let's be blunt, the story is nothing special, it's an average fantasy story that's been transported into a SciFi setting, which has been done before and since. Today, with the "augmented" effects, it would probably drown in the rest of the genre. And, well, the second trilogy shows that quite well.
What makes Star Wars the classic it is, is, that it was ahead of its time, that it set a standard few productions could meet for years to come. And in this standard it should be preserved. Yes, it looks dated. Of course it does, it's more than a quarter century old. But "augmenting" it cheapens the achievement, it cheapens the experience. There is of course nothing wrong with giving the movie a makeover and offering that augmented versions additionally, but the original one should be preserved.
To close the circle, do you think anyone would remember Metropolis today if it had been redone and remodeled every decade to update the technology? I mean, it's not like that movie has such a great story either.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You could compare using a CGI Yoda in some portions that were originally puppet Yoda to your example, but what about such decisions as not having Han shoot first? That's different, in that there was no change in technology at all, 'just' a change in the character. What new technology allowed Lucas to capture Greedo shooting first when it somehow couldn't be done that way originally? If you're going to compare this to a program, what about rewriting, say, an Ultima game so that which decisions lead to which endings is different?
Who is John Cabal?
to say nothing of the poor buggers that did those stunning model shots, only to find no remaining example of their work to show their grandchildren.
i bet Lucas even removed their names from the credits.