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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?"
The ultimate goal of a creative person should be to let others engage in the same creative process he/she is in. Creating is not just showing that something can be done (or written down in a certain way), but also showing how something can be done, so that others can improve upon it. If this aspect is missing, the artist has failed, and has just created a dead piece of work.
I dont mind him messing with it. In fact the tweaks are somewhat interesting.
However, why does he just not release the originals? I mean a directors cut thrown in with the originals and *NO* one would have bitched at all. Instead we just see the tweaked versions.
I honestly like the way they did Raiders. That was decently done. I guess he wanted people to remember some commercial he did in the 90s and not call him a liar I guess.
I think in our modern age 14 years is unreasonable and even 28 years is downright insane.
Let's say we never changed it from the maximum 28 years. This year we would see the following films entering the public domain (examples are the top ten grossing films in 1983): Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Terms of Endearment, Flashdance, Trading Places, Wargames, Octopussy, Sudden Impact, Staying Alive, Mr. Mom, Risky Business.
Nostalgia factors aside, I wouldn't exactly call those "culturally relevant" to the modern age - things move way, way faster now. Sure, in the late 1700s a book written 28 years prior would probably still be quite popular and very relevant to the times.. but the times changed faster and faster.
Something like 1 year would be more fair to all parties in my opinion, at least on an item-by-item basis. Don't most movies, games, music albums, etc. make the vast majority of their money in the first few months? Sequels wouldn't be affected because they would be filed under a new copyright.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Exactly! For an example of catering to the sample audience look at I Am legend, which I'll admit wasn't a great version of that story to start with (The Vincent Price version #1, Heston #2, Legend #3 in my book) but look what they did.
In the original ending the doctor figures out that they are not animals, and are simply trying to rescue their brethren from HIM who he realizes is being the giant douche. Instead of this ending that made it more like the book and hence the name "I Am Legend" because he IS the monster, instead because the audience didn't like that they replaced it with a Michael Bay style "blow shit up real good" ending which made no fucking sense, and totally threw away all they had been building up towards, such as the "monsters" laying traps for him when they were supposed to be mindless, etc.
While I thought Lucas with his Greedo shot first horseshit was rightly called out for being moronic and changing the character for no reason on the flip side if you let modern audiences design the movies it is gonna be a Michael Bay bomb fest, and all movies will be "Smart ass good guy falls for bimbette and blows shit up REAL good". Frankly we have enough Michael bay tripe in this world, do we REALLY want to be catering to those that keep buying that dreck?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.