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?"

Comments

Who owns the movie?

[JWSmythe]

    I think it's ridiculous when ever I hear someone saying like this.

    The owner of the movie is whoever it says in the contracts. Primarily, there are writers, directors, producers, and investors. Somewhere in contracts that you and I will never see, it shown who owns which parts of it.

    Say I was the guy in charge of special effects for a huge movie that was primarily chroma key and CGI. My staff made greater than 50% of the movie, as in this theoretical project the actual actors and directors didn't have much to do with it. At the end of the day, I, nor my staff, would "own" the movie. Nope, it's the person who had the most leverage when writing up the contracts does.

    Viewers in the theater own nothing more than their ticket stub, and the right to watch the movie once at that venue.

    People who purchased the VHS tape or DVD own the perpetual rights to watch their copy of the movie as much as they'd like.

    So back to the specific topic, the Star Wars movies. I'm not a huge Star Wars fan, so maybe I have an outside perspective here. I'm not emotionally invested in it, so I can see it from the viewpoint of the rest of the rational world.

    If the actual legal owner (the guy with the stack of contracts and bank account full from the proceeds) decides to make his directors cut, remake, revisioning, or rehashing of it, that's completely up to him. If he wanted to make a sequel "Star Wars 15 - Care Bears vs The Empire" (assuming he also owns or has licensed the Care Bears), as a claymation 12 hour epic movie, done exclusively in brown and gray clay, that's really up to him. Would I say it's a mistake? Sure. What if he decided that it should be redone in grainy black and white silent movie style, in polarized 3d, and that's the only version that will be sold in retail outlets from now on? Well, that'd be a horrible combination, and I could laugh at it in every way possible, but he's the owner. And I probably wouldn't buy it.

Do I, a fan of "Star Wars 14 - The Wrath Of Luke" have any say to what he can or can't do? No.

What if I own a copy of every movie he ever made, and own every piece of merchandising every licensed or sold relating to the movies, in their original boxes, still in mint condition? No.

What if I set up the worlds largest fan site, and everyone who's ever heard of the movie talks about it on my fan site, and it has a bazillion daily viewers? No.

What if I organize reenactments of it around the world, and bring thousands of nerds together in fully licensed costumes to perform in them, and we've even built our own licensed replica of the death star in geosynchronous orbit to perform them on? No.

Nope, it still belongs to the owner. He can use it, abuse it, and destroy it as he sees fit. If he decided to stop production of all releases of his movies, and burn the originals, so be it. He owns them, not you, I, or any fan on the planet.