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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?"
Noooooooo!!!!!!!
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
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).
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.
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.'"
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.
Actually, the thing there is that it's only been in the last few hundred years that artists were willing to start taking credit for work they produced. Prior to about the 19th century, it was God or a muse that did the work, the artist just put down on paper or however else the results.
The consumer is where the works ultimately go, if they're not able to soak into the consumer then there isn't really much art going on. Personally, I find it annoying, but ultimately have to accept that it's not what I make of my work that ultimately matters, it's what the viewer makes of it. Sometimes it's pretty amazing and other times it's pretty depressing.
As far as Star Wars goes, I've been saying for years that George needs to recognize that at this point the fans own the work, and that he really needs to rerelease the original versions, perhaps rescan and remastered, but from the original materials with the highest fidelity in mind. It's arrogant of him to not recognize that he managed to bottle lightning and to leave it as is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BMgegut3UM
I think this speaks for itself.
But even if you wouldn't go as far as saying that the interpretor sets the meaning, maybe we could all agree that going back and modifying a work that you've made is a shitty thing to do if that work already holds meaning for millions of people. As is pointed out in TFA, this is exactly what Lucas did that started this debate
The problem isn't that Lucas keeps going back and re-imagining / revising things. The public has no problem with a directors cut, director's recut, special edition directors re-re-cut...ad nauseum. Its lucas' ip and he's free and welcome to remaster it as much and as often as he likes.
The public however strongly objects to arrogantly being denied what they want.
Me, i want the the THX edition in HD. That is all. No extra scenes. Just a remaster of the original. There is a big market for that. People would be happy to tolerate Lucas indulging in as many editions and remakes and recuts alternate endings, inserted scenes, cgi replacing actors as he likes, if only he'd satisfy the demand for this ONE thing.
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)
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?