George Lucas to re-release the original Star Wars trilogy... again!

[mr3urious]

http://io9.com/5835951/darth-vader-...original-trilogy-blu+rays-listen-for-yourself

George Lucas is not satisfied with turning the puppet Yoda in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace into a CG creation. Or just fixing some of the wonky lightsabre effects in the original trilogy. He's going a bit further.

Lucas had promised that fans would have a few new details here and there to notice in his newly remastered HD versions of his classic trilogy — and now the first details are leaking out. And fans are not happy. Some of the fans have gotten hold of the Blu-ray footage, and they're dissecting it at TheForce.net, the Blu-Ray.com forums and the DVDTalk forums. And a couple of changes to the soundtrack have already become apparent, at least if some recent leaks are to be believed.

I understand they're his films, but just because he can mess with them doesn't mean he should. I wouldn't be surprised if Lucas really does digitally remaster his home videos, like in South Park.

 

[D'Snowth]

That's a perfectionist for you.

Some are more extreme than others: no matter what, they can never be 100% satisfied with their own work, even if others think it's fine just the way it is.

 

[CensoredAlso]

This is a good example of the negative side of perfectionism; when it seems to become almost a compulsion and obsession to change everything in order to make it "better." But the result is that fans are just more and more turned off by the result. Sometimes it pays to listen to the reactions you get and not assume everything you do is correct, heh.

Not to mention what he's done is so disrespectful to history. It's an old comparison, but it's like if someone tried painting over the Mona Lisa with modern techniques. Even if that person was Da Vinci himself, it would still be insulting.

He's basically been telling his younger fans that old is bad and new is good. Even though he was clearly proven wrong with the prequels.

 

[Sgt Floyd]

Ugh...why do they have to "improve" on things that do not need to be improved on? Like the lion king. They re-animated parts of the movie, and that is what was on the platinum dvd. The "theatrical" version is just the edited version without the crappy song (anyone know the status of the diamond dvd?)

Its one thing to release a directors cut with improvements and still have the pure original available, and another to kill everything loved about the original work to make it better, and release only the "improved" versions.

P.S. I've never seen star wars *shot*

 

[Drtooth]

He's basically been telling his younger fans that old is bad and new is good. Even though he was clearly proven wrong with the prequels.

Younger fans nothing. He's telling HIMSELF that new technology is what he wanted. He's fooling only himself. Young fans know it, old fans know it, even people who tried VERY hard to give him the benefit of the doubt know it. Deep down he thinks he's making the film he thinks he wanted to make, but in reality, he's just changing the films more and more for every new release until one day, they're completely different movies.

I will say, I am one of the few that actually liked the added Han/Jabba sequence in the first film... but a biased as Jabba's one of my favorite characters. And if he really wants to go in and fix everything, give Jar Jar Binks Clumsy Smurf's voice (from the cartoon, not the movie)... I mean, the character is essentially the same thing.

The Nooooooooooooooo that comes out of throwing the Emperor RUINS the film, if that's the case. Especially how I interpret the film, as Vader sees the monster he had become, and realizing he's been nothing more than a pawn of a power hungry leader.

Still, if he can at LEAST get the non-special editions as bonus features on these disks and makes them anthro-wide screen, at LEAST it's something.

 

[TSSD]

SaveStarWars.com has a GREAT speech that goes against things like this, here's a piece of it:

People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians, and if the laws of the United States continue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society. The preservation of our cultural heritage may not seem to be as politically sensitive an issue as "when life begins" or "when it should be appropriately terminated," but it is important because it goes to the heart of what sets mankind apart. Creative expression is at the core of our humanness. Art is a distinctly human endeavor. We must have respect for it if we are to have any respect for the human race.

These current defacements are just the beginning. Today, engineers with their computers can add color to black-and-white movies, change the soundtrack, speed up the pace, and add or subtract material to the philosophical tastes of the copyright holder. Tommorrow, more advanced technology will be able to replace actors with "fresher faces," or alter dialogue and change the movement of the actor's lips to match. It will soon be possible to create a new "original" negative with whatever changes or alterations the copyright holder of the moment desires. The copyright holders, so far, have not been completely diligent in preserving the original negatives of films they control. In order to reconstruct old negatives, many archivists have had to go to Eastern bloc countries where American films have been better preserved.

In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be "replaced" by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.

Oh by the way, do you know who gave that speech? None other than George Lucas himself, when he spoke in front of congress in 1988.

 

[CensoredAlso]

Oh by the way, do you know who gave that speech? None other than George Lucas himself, when he spoke in front of congress in 1988.

Ouch! Lol. Well, it's always easier to tell when someone else is making the mistake, as opposed to yourself.

I remember the South Park guys saying that they occasionally felt like going back and altering the South Park movie, but they wouldn't, because they remember how annoyed they were when Lucas did it to Star Wars, lol.

 

[D'Snowth]

Well you know, a filmmaker's worst and toughest critic is himself; not just filmmakers, but any artist is his own toughest critic. It's only natural that THEY see all the flaws and mistakes because it's THEIR work, and they knew how it SHOULD have turned out according to their plans, their visions, their imaginations, etc.

Other examples include veteran writer/producer Larry Gelbart - M*A*S*H is one of the most successful television series of all time, and he's responsible for that. He's often said that years after the show went off the air, he still would rewrite certain scenes, certain dialogue, or entire episodes in his head constantly, he's even actually written different versions of scripts out on paper just to see how it would turn out as opposed to the original. He even wrote "what-if" scripts after the show was off the air (such as a version of theblack-and-white interview episode that happened earlier when Trapper John and Henry Blake were still part of the cast).

Animator John Dilworth has said in interviews, he is never 100% satisfied with the animated films he's done, and likens his work to the story of the bishop who boiled an egg for the pope, and when the pope ate the egg, the bishop asks him how it was, to which the pope said, "It was good in parts".

Many artists think back on what they've done, and think of things they wish they could've have done differently, but only a small number of them, like in this, George Lucas, actually go back and change it to their liking.

 

[Drtooth]

Ouch! Lol. Well, it's always easier to tell when someone else is making the mistake, as opposed to yourself.

Yeah, but as I said, no less than 10 years later he diluted himself into thinking the opposite for his own movies. He wasn't always like that, it's just something that gradually happened. I once had a writing professor that thought that his problems were over when he got a computer and word processing... he thought it would take less time, but instead it took even longer. Things were too easy to go in and correct, and he became a perfectionist. When he had a typewriter, he wanted to make as little mistakes as possible, and things couldn't be changed without having to redo a page. So things back then STAYED the way they did.

I will say this... the ONLY people to get revision right was Toei with Dragon Ball Kai. I saw a whole lot of terrible fillers that just dragged on and on. Now it only takes 60 episodes to get to Goku destorying Freiza! Before then, 60 episodes wouldn't probably even be the "It's OVER 9000!!!" episode. A Spirit bomb that takes only an episode and a half? Unthinkable!

 

[RedPiggy]

*gets ready for the flames, LOL*

*inhales*

I'm willing to bet money that our own little techno geek property founder (Jim) would've ended up doing the same thing. As I've noted elsewhere, one thing that struck me about JHH is that it started to become obvious that Jim was getting into "hey, lookwhatIcando" and not "let's make sure there's a story worth telling." True, this was far more evident in the Muppet parts than the Storyteller parts, which were usually great. JHH just seemed more like an excited kid showing off his new software. One can bet that he would have done exactly what fans are (mostly) hotly against: "fixing" movies. I know Labyrinth fans despise the idea that, say, Tim Burton might redo the movie. However, Jim really would've done it too, at least late 80s Jim. Don't believe me? Have you ever seen that YT clip of Jim Henson promoting the idea that with handheld video cameras, it will revolutionize the world, yadda yadda yadda? Sounds great, right? But the road trip "movie" shown after his little intro is a boring piece of crap. It looks like a bunch of guys making a road trip home movie. It can be argued for being "revolutionary", but, I'm sorry, the ONLY revolutionary part is actually the idea of posting your dumb home movies for everyone else in the world to see. At least, that's the lesson I get from watching that awful mess.

It may sound like heresy, but Jim and George shared a lot of taste. They both wanted to be awesome storytellers for the stuff floating around in their heads, but as time wore on and movie magic began to catch up to their imaginations, they basically said "screw my imagination ... I'm gonna play with neat new toys now".