I’m not in the habit of writing about Star Wars these days, but there is something that SW creator George Lucas has expressed that I’d like to comment on– something particularly irksome. I’d like to preface this by saying that the original trilogy of films (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi) was a big part of my life growing up. Like most things, it inhabited a special time and place. It was a modern mythology we could always return to for inspiration or simply escapism. And that is better than trying to re-create it. We live now in an age that can’t let go. Our society– or at least, the movie corporations– want to reboot or (with AI) re-animate what was once unique to its time. Moviegoers live in a multiverse of endless derivations where nothing is gone for long.
When an online friend commented that there was “not much Star Wars content in the early 1990s,” I thought to myself, “Well, no, that’s because Star Wars was over.” At least, for most of us, it was– as likely to return as a Beatles reunion tour. But then came the clumsily-executed prequels starting in the late 1990s, which revealed Lucas’ agenda to replace film itself with digital filmmaking. He believed his story ideas had expanded beyond the practical effects of old and that he had simply waited until computer technology had caught up with what was in his mind’s eye. As it turned out, those digital environments and characters became as temporal as last year’s screen saver on my work desktop. The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones are nearly unwatchable movies, and Revenge of the Sith‘s saving grace can be credited primarily to the presence of actor Ian McDiarmid. The films simply never measured up to the standards set by the original trilogy. Most fans of my generation have known this since 1999 when we were introduced to Jar Jar Binks.
Trying to recapture that past (1977-1983) was the tragic flaw at the heart of Disney’s takeover of the franchise. Instead of imaginative stories set outside the Skywalker universe, the sequels gave audiences what they thought they wanted, but no one wanted to see their heroes as they were now depicted: cynical–or dead. Better to remember them as we last saw them in 1983 during the Ewok celebration. The sequels were poorly imagined films with no master plan from the outset. These films were made by fanboys like J.J. Abrams– not by visionaries. And the bottom line was all that mattered to Disney. There was one standalone film, Rogue One, that was the best of the new era, and there are various TV series on Disney+ that have their fans. But these feel more like edgy network dramas than anything resembling the fun and joy of the 1977 film. It’s all streaming content now– not the theatrical “events” we had in the 1970s and 1980s.
The problems started with the 1997 re-leases of the original films. No question it was a wonderful experience to see these films in a theatre once again, but it was somewhat tempered by the “enhancements” George Lucas had made to them. I won’t belabor the point that most of these changes were unnecessary and not very good. You know it’s bad when an online fan creates a hologram version of Jabba the Hutt that actually plays better than George’s digital version seen in the ’97 re-release.
The issue is that George felt, as the creator, it was his right to change these films as much as he wanted. Legally, that is true– at least until he sold out to Disney. The problem is that an artist should not change the work once it is released to the public. I stress that point. Once an artist releases his work to the public, that experience becomes communal. This is why we all remember these films a certain way. But to offer new versions as replacements is another matter. I refuse to watch any version of Return of the Jedi— a film that I loved in 1983 and even in 1997– that replaces actor Sebastian Shaw with Hayden Christiansen. George wanted to unify his stories, but by doing so, he was bringing everything down in the process of shoehorning in new material. George Lucas is guilty of the artist’s version of what pop singer Michael Jackson had done with plastic surgery. You think it’s an improvement each time, but it just keeps getting uglier. And there’s no one around you to stop you– only yes men.
So no, George, you didn’t have the artist’s right to change the original work and replace it. Other filmmakers offer extended versions and special editions, but the directors with artistic integrity will not erase what they originally gave to the public. You can restore, but you do not alter.
~MCH
The last time I felt those old feelings for Star Wars: Luke comes to the aid of Leia in The Last Jedi (2017).