Slashdot Mirror
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?"
Noooooooo!!!!!!!
>> 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
The originals could be released in THX and HD. That's the point. He keeps changing the editing too though. I'm not that bothered overall. Some of the changes have been good, some bad.
which is totally what she said
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
"The public's interest is ultimately dominant over all other interests."
and
"Attention should be paid to the interest of those who are yet unborn, who should be able to see this generation as it saw itself, and the past generation as it saw itself."
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
It is morally right that the creator of a work should have complete control over it for all time immemorial. You don't see people messing with The Iliad -- it exists today in exactly the same format that Homer wrote it down, and the changes that he penciled in to later editions have been faithfully reproduced. The same is true with the plays of Shakespeare, which are always performed with exactly the same script and stage directions that the Bard himself took to the copyright office before the original performances. And music also has never been altered after composition -- the composers intent is always honored by the performer, and the audience would demand no less.
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.
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
I suspect changing character defining moments isn't "a thing in the background". I don't care much about Star Wars any more, though, so he can change whatever he wants: he's already crashed it into the ground as far as I am concerned.
The music was in MONO for God's sake. And the cars run on gasoline and tires - they should fly! And that part where the cops in Jerry's Cherry get the transmission pulled out of their car, it should be a great deal more AWESOME with fireballs and stuff! There is so much that Lucas could fix in his own childhood by reworking American Graffiti, why does he keep tinkering with Star Wars?
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).
I think the real question isn't what someone is allowed to do to their own art, but what happens to our collective memories? I wold love to share my childhood memories with my grand kids, and for the most part I can... But thanks to Mr. Lucas one of the biggest influences of my childhood has been lost forever. Out of respect for all of us who have made him rich beyond any of our individual dreams he should allow the theatrical releases to issued on BluRay as well. It isn't my place to tell someone how to make their own art - As an artist myself I know that an artist doesn't ever really finish a work they abandon it, but at the point that art becomes a part of our collective conscience we should be able to revisit that memory. My two cents.
change it.
In the new cut, did they put in the cantine scenes from the death star?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sv5iEK-IEzw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ2yRTRlMFU
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
There is an exellent article outlining what Lucas has done to the original negative. tl;dr: in the 90's Lucas restored the negative of the original release, and then subsequently nearly completely butchered it while at the same time destroying all copies of the theatrical release (except privately owned vhs and laserdisks, of course). At this point the only thing that exists is a 1080p scan of the film. All of the restored negative does still exist, though. It's just not assembled into something that could produce anything. It is possible to re-assemble that restoration, which by all accounts is stunning.
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
Indeed, you touched on an important catch-22 of trusting the fanbase.
The Star Wars prequels were written and filmed long after much of the "Star Wars expanded universe" had been established. This in itself didn't contribute to the terribleness of the prequels; Lucas had fan expectations in mind when he wrote the prequels, though. Darth Vader and the Jedi in general were given way too much importance, the dialogue scenes were sloppy and only served to connect the different settings to the plot, and the trilogy in general was a vehicle to sell merchandise and fan works. One of the things that made the original trilogy well-rounded (or at least the first two films) was that the writers weren't too influenced by the fanbase; they focused on writing characters as parts of a self-contained film rather than letting the most popular characters hog the limelight. Listening to the fans can sometimes take a series in a much-needed direction, but it can also be a huge mistake.
I think an interesting parallel is the BBC TV series Red Dwarf. It was originally was made on a shoestring budget where you could see the 100W light bulb in the back of the model ship in shots. later, after the show had been well received and the budget had gone up considerably, they went back and "remastered" the first three seasons. They cleaned up the footage nicely, but then they also went and CGI'd it, edited some of the dialogue and generally messed about with it.
the reaction to this version was generally pretty negative and fans weren't happy with the changes made. Now if you go and buy the show on DVD, it's the original version you'll find. The remastered is pretty hard to find. The BBC took in board the criticism and gave the fans (you know, the ones paying) what they wanted, which was the original show they fell in love with.
david
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.'"
There's nothing wrong with making new editions. The problem is that he is trying to eradicate the originals from history.
(+1, Disagree)
The problem isn't so much that George is perpetrating a fraud. He is suppressing the originals. Part of his "ownership" is a social contract with the rest of us. It's part of the deal he made when he got to publish the originals and get a monopoly on their copying and distribution.
George owes us a usable copy of the original. That's a 35mm print BTW.
Also, his attempt to create derivative works and call them Star Wars are fraud and should be pointed out as such and perhaps even prosecuted as such.
Quite often whining about "following the rules" when it comes to copyright tends to be entirely one sided and in favor of publishers.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BMgegut3UM
I think this speaks for itself.
If the IT world put as much effort into reforming the system as they have bitching about Star Wars we'd get regular raises periodically instead of having to re-interview every 2 years to keep our old jobs.
It's unfortunate that that is considered laudable. Ultimately, people like George need to be grateful for the fan support. Star Wars was great, in its way, but screwing around with people's memories is a great way to piss people off. Especially if you go in and muck around with something that has become such a substantial piece of the culture.
There is no difference between "commercial" art and any other kind of art, except style and perhaps meaning.
--
make install -not war
This topic has been getting a lot of attention recently. The guys at Red Letter Media just interviewed the director of the movie The People vs. George Lucas which examines the question in detail.
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
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)
.. that's like comparing a story in a book to the mechanical process of projecting images on a screen in such a way to make the illusion of motion.
a more apt analogy is rewriting Romeo and Juliet to have them live and then going to all the libraries and throwing out the older copies to replace them with that one because it has a more positive feel to the current right's holder.
really? on blu ray? without digitally enhancing them?
My cellphone produces better quality video than the cameras they used in the 70's to film the original movies. If they were to keep the original image quality I wouldn't be surprised if they fit the entire first trilogy on a single dvd
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/film-resolution.htm So you are saying your cell phones camera is 175 megapixles at 24 frames a second or better? I would be very interested as to what brand of phone you own.
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.
If Lucas is that fucking bored, he can make an Old Republic Trilogy (without loads of CGI crap. Move back to those old effects.). That would be wicked.
Obviously his own viewpoint has changed since 1988 in his speech to congress or at least his viewpoint to his own work. If you have seen the behind the scenes of the new trilogy Rick McCallum is one of the major reasons he seems to be so insulated from bad decisions. I don't think he could criticize George if he tried. Also, seeing the American Zoetrope behind the scenes on THX 1138, he is now the exact villain that Francis Ford Coppola and he described as the old world studio that they dealt with in the 1970's. The fact that people can't watch the movies that they watched in 1977 in highest fidelity of today's technology is disturbing. It has to be more than money, more than ego, more than revision for him, I can't pinpoint why he wouldn't release them. Obviously, from outpouring of fans he will make money regardless.
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?
. E.T.'s message is more of a liberal 'guns are bad' attitude than an attempt at indoctrinating us into a police state.
It hardly matters, we still lose the social and political background of the time and reduce the value of the work in the process.
So in 20 years, I am entitled to make a personal copy of something I can't find to buy? Great, that'll do a world of good.
My only shot would be to pirate a copy from someone who made a digital copy when it could be found.
More to the philosophical point, copyright is a bargain struck with the artist. They get protection for a limited time (though that time seems to be growing awfully fast) and the work that is protected goes into the public domain afterwards. The ORIGINAL version of Star Wars enjoyed the protection, why should the public get stiffed on the other half of the bargain? Would Mr. Lucas care to surrender the copyright protection?
As for the outtakes, if Lucas believes he has any sort of copyright on those, then yes, they are owed to the public domain when the copyright runs out. Otherwise, no.
You think people would not buy those new versions if the only thing he did was to improve the picture and sound quality to be closer to the cinematic experience? I betcha even MORE people would buy the DVDs. Do you think people buy them because of the alterations and not despite them? If you want to cite capitalism, at least realize that he could sell more and not fewer copies if he just did a quality improvement without changes to the content.
What he does is to cheapen the experience, not enhance it. By adding CGI and other "enhancements" he makes people judge those movies by today's quality standards instead of having them apply the view of having a three decade old piece of art in front of them and judge it by the limitations of that time.
To give you an example what I mean, take Star Trek TOS. Would TOS be such a cult hit if it was redone today with today's technology? Most likely not. The writing was atrocious, the acting ... let's say slightly amusing and the plots had holes big enough to fit whole planetary systems through. But it's judged against other 60s SciFi shows, and compared to them, it was a shining gem amongst the crap. Remade and remastered, it would be judged against today's SciFi shows, if only against TNG or Bab5, and compared to them it just plainly reeks. What set the show apart was not the writing or acting, it was the (for its time) believable special effects, the (for a SciFi show of the time) rather three dimensional characters and pretty well done props. When you take away special effects and props (by "enhancing" them to force people to compare them with today's standards because the effects and props ARE comparable to contemporary shows), what's left is a, for this time, rather plain, stereotypical character makeup and unbelievable plots.
By "enhancing" effects, you get people to compare an old movie with contemporary ones, and usually this means the movies stink. Because you can't "enhance" acting or plot, and they (and the taste in them) changes greatly with time.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Your claim about God and creativity is roughly correct. God was the creator; it was the role of artists to reflect the majesty of God's creation. See M.H. Abrams The Mirror and the Lamp. The development of the idea of authorship was partly a response to the upheavals of the industrial revolution. I have attempted to explain this in a video about the invention of the author. The video description includes references for further reading.
To address the larger point, audiences are significant contributors to the value and meaning of artistic works, as I explain in a video about audience labor. For something like Star Wars I would even suggest that the audience is the major contributor. However, the artist remains the largest individual contributor to his or her work, and before the audience gets involved they clearly haven't contributed much. It is the hits, not the also-rans, that in a sense belong to the audience.
Taking credit for their works was instituted in pre-modern copyright law. In 17th century England copyright was a censorship regime for licensing publishers, rather than a mechanism for rewarding authors. In order to allow the crown to keep tabs on who wrote what, the law required authors' names to be printed in books. Taking credit for their writing was a response to government monitoring, not the assertion of proprietorship that it later became.
Finally, Lucas is hardly the author of his films. Many, many people worked on them. The habit of giving credit for a film to a single person obscures their essential contributions. The recent copyright suit against one of the guys who made the storm trooper helmets gives a hint at how copyright can unjustly focus all credit in one individual.
except Lucas didn't barge into my home and remove my decaying old VHS tapes.
No, but if you tried to make your VHS experience available to other fans on a mass scale, you'd have legal copyright proceedings against you which could end in jail time. Is that any different?
This is precisely why the "Copyright Term Extension Act" was awful law to begin with. 17+17 years should be plenty of time to make a heap of money off of a movie, book, or piece of music. Certainly George Lucas has made more than his fair share of money off of Star Wars, and that money did incentivize him to go out and make the prequels. Had the original 17+17 rule for copyright been in effect today, the copyright on Star Wars would be expiring this year instead of 100 years after the death of George Lucas.
The role of copyright is intended to be a temporary monopoly only, after which it should be available to the rest of humanity to explore, adapt, change, and use to add to our culture. We should be seeing Chad Vader meet Darth Vader, but copyright is going to keep that from happening.
Also, copyright violations ought to be a civil violation, not a criminal act. Widespread mass duplication where you have violated a restraining order after being caught and repeat violations.... perhaps those folks could be incarcerated. For ordinary folks like you or I, we should only have to face a legal team that might take our house, or car, but not our liberty. That is just plain wrong and was not the point of the copyright clause in the U.S. Constitution nor does that really fit the crime in terms of reasonable punishment to fit what is happening if you violate copyright.