George Lucas discuss the changes to the Star Wars Saga

 

In the old days, fans used to talk about how great Star Wars was back when the original trilogy was released. However, nowadays many just complain about how bad the prequels were, or how George Lucas keeps “ruining” the franchise with his alterations.

The saga just recently came to Blu-ray last September, and surprise, more changes were made. And with the franchise returning to cinemas, The Hollywood Reporter asked Lucas if we could expect any additional alterations:

“Changes are not unusual — I mean, most movies when they release them they make changes. But somehow, when I make the slightest change, everybody thinks it’s the end of the world. That whole issue between filmmakers and the studios with the studios being able to change things without even letting the director of the movie know … I’m very much involved in that [so that’s not happening here]. … My job is to try to make the best possible movie it can be — and the current version is the Blu-ray version. That’s the one that’s been made into 3D. But it’s just a conversion. We haven’t made any changes other than the 3D,” he said.

Perhaps no alteration is as controversial as Greedo shooting at Han Solo (Harrison Ford) in A New Hope first. Here’s what Lucas had to say about that. “Well, it’s not a religious event. I hate to tell people that. It’s a movie, just a movie. The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down,” he said.

Lucas also commented on other changes made to the films: “It’s the same thing with Yoda. We tried to do Yoda in CGI in Episode I, but we just couldn’t get it done in time. We couldn’t get the technology to work, so we had to use the puppet, but the puppet really wasn’t as good as the CGI. So when we did the reissue, we had to put the CGI back in, which was what it was meant to be.”

“If you look at Blade Runner, it’s been cut sixteen ways from Sunday and there are all kinds of different versions of it. Star Wars, there’s basically one version — it just keeps getting improved a little bit as we move forward. … All art is technology and it improves every year. Whether it’s on the stage or in music or in painting, there are technological answers that happen, and because movies are so technological, the advances become more obvious,” he said.

While I don’t share Lucas’ opinion that “all art is technology”, If so, then Michael Bay’s Transformers films are masterpieces. However, most of the changes that Lucas has made don’t take away from the magic the films have, in my opinion. Sure, having Greedo shoot first does take a bit away from Han’s character in that he was first portrayed as the “shoot first, ask questions later” type character. And having Vader scream “Nooooooo” while throwing the Emperor to his death did ruin that scene, and replacing Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christensen didn’t make a bit of sense. But having Ewoks blink, or adding an additional scene with Jabba the Hut, or the minor stuff that many fans complain about doesn’t take away what made the franchise what it was.

Matt Keith

I’m just your everday movie nerd.

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