There's a decent interview with George Lucas over on The Hollywood Reporter today, mostly consisting of questions regarding the Star Wars films, which saw a Blu-Ray release before Christmas and now have a 3D re-issue coming to theaters this weekend with The Phantom Menace. Of course, never being one to let a sleeping dog lie (not that it's ever really slept), Lucas feels it necessary to revisit the Han/Greedo brouhaha with this little bit of self-delusion:
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.
Let's just discuss this for a minute. First off, there's no way that Greedo shot first in the original cut of the film, no matter what kind of wide shot logistics you want to talk about. There's no gunfire sound, and obviously no gunshot coming from Greedo's side of the table. Han shoots him, sure, but it's hardly in cold blood: he had a gun in his face and Greedo all but tells him that he's going to shoot him. Han shooting Greedo under the table before Greedo can pop a shot off is not only permissible, but it's the right thing to do. Greedo's gun was a foot away from Han's face! If Han was actually going to wait for Greedo to shoot before firing back, that would've made Han the dumbest character in the entire original trilogy.
No one wants to think that Han is a cold-blooded killer who indiscriminately murders innocent people, but that's just the point: we never did. Han was about to get murdered, and by pulling his trigger first, he saved his own life and rid the galaxy of someone who obviously had it coming. There's nothing ignoble about Han's actions, as Lucas seems to think; there's no need to correct them or make them "better." He's a good man trying to make his way in a bad world and is willing to do what it takes to survive, even if it occasionally means shooting someone from under a table. This is precisely why we like him. Changing his character into one that waits for someone to shoot at him when they have a gun to his head doesn't make him a more likable character; it makes him a more stupid one.
Why do I get so riled up about this when I know I shouldn't? I would at some point like to simply banish all thoughts of the new Star Wars from my head, and live in a Total Recall-ish existence where I remembered how they made me feel when I was a kid, without any of the last 20 years or so of changes. Let's make this happen, Internet.
We've always been at war with Greedo
*le sigh*
It has come about as close as it can from the Internet with Star Wars Despecialized.
You really should have called Lucas out on that terrible, unnatural edit of Harrison Ford's neck moving sideways. Your screenshot clearly captures it. It looked really awful when they added it and Lucas should be ashamed that it is still in there.
@Jeedai_Infidel said:
this post is goofed.why dont you call him stupid for what he does , so many idiots become famous and have people talking about them... youre causing me grief
@connerthekewlkid said:
I'm with you, I mean really? This is still something for legitimate debate?
Also, everyone should email Lucas with his 1988 speech that contains the quote:
@StealthMaster86 said:
Geeze...you can even see they badly CGI'ed Han's head to move to the left a little bit...
@hrn212 said:
If you've got some time read this article -> http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/marcialucas.html.The jist is that George's ex-wife Marcia pushed him to add humanity and depth to his characters. Without her you end up with the prequels.
It's really not a matter of Lucas "losing" creativity and integrity over the years, it's that he never had it to begin with. Look who sat in the director/writer's chairs on the original trilogy. It was almost never Lucas. Look up Ralph McQuarrie for who ACTUALLY designed the original look (much of which was kept) for the characters. Look up what Gary Kurtz originally had planned for Jedi before Lucas stepped in and basically said "Nah, I'd rather make more action figures."
The man has always sucked, he's just had people around him to reign it in. Look at the movies Lucas made on his own (after THX 1138 and American Graffiti). We were warned before, we just chose not to listen.
Duders just let it rest , for fucks sake let it rest
@phoenix87x said:
Sadly, I can actually see this happening.
Christ will somebody give that lummox a Fruit Roll Up next time he gets near a microphone or something.
I used to think GeoLuc was just a guy who's sensibilities had changed. But I'm convinced he's either got dementia or Alzheimer's or maybe he's just a vindictive and trying to get back at fans he feels have abandoned him. I dunno but someone needs to take over Lucasfilm LTD before he snuffs out the last shred of dignity left in the franchise.
Next thing you know he'll be saying he ALWAYS wanted Hayden Christiansen to be the third ghost in RotJ.
"I knew young Hayden as a boy and I knew he'd be great someday as Anakin, but I had to get the older actor to hold his place until my future mindpower broccoli dingely doo di-do."
@FoxMulder said:
Look at his arm when Han shoots.
Let it go bro. Let it go.
To answer a few people: I care; insofar as it relates to the issue of an artist editing his work in an iterative fashion, especially a work that has been as culturally resonant as Star Wars.
I don't like the perpetuation of the idea that re-editing a finished work is OK. (Just so I'm clear, a remake is not the same thing as re-editing a film.) By doing stuff like this Lucas shows a total lack of integrity. Stuff like this is an attempt to rewrite film history in a way that I'm not comfortable with.
I'm sure some people will disagree with me on this point, but I do not believe that Lucas has the right to alter his work in this way. By releasing a movie, or book, or whatever, an artist is surrendering control of its content to the world. I don't believe anyone has the right to say 'oops! I actually meant for that scene to go like this. Why don't you pay for another ticket so that you can see it the right way?'. Maybe there are exceptions to re-editing plot points of a work, but this is not one of them.
To return to the question that prompted this comment: "Who cares?" No one. No one "cared" in the first place. This plot point is ultimately so minor that it didn't even need to be changed. This type of editing is like changing a period into an exclamation point. It's frivilous and unnecessary. While the change to this one scene is "minor", re-editing in this way is the slippiest of slopes. What if Kurosawa had decided to re-edit Seven Samurai so that Katsushiro was more of a badass, and then release that film as the new official version? He'd sell a lot more cheap, plastic Katsushiro action figures, but the film would be irrevocably changed.
I don't give a shit about who shot first. I care about artistic integrity.
The issue at hand that I think is 'riling up' Rorie is Lucas' "self-delusion". The first edit was good enough at the time, so why isn't it good enough now? Lucas won't answer that question and the justification for the change is utter bullshit. You would have to be an idiot to think it was an accident that the scene played out so that "it was confusing about who did what to whom". That's a bald-faced lie. Editing does not happen by accident.
The schism created by releasing a film that has a huge cultural impact, and then changing the content of that film 20 years later, concerns me. I care because when a work of art is perpetually iterated on (even when it's commercial art) it destroys the quality and integrity of the original work.
[Just a little addendum so that nothing I wrote is accidentally taken out of context: I'm not against remakes, adaptations, bonus scenes on DVDs, or touch-ups that improve the visual quality of older films, etc.. The issue I'm bothered by is the willful alteration of plot points (however minor they may be).]
Yeah, okay... have fun with that.
I wouldn't care if I could go buy a copy of the original versions. Then he could tweak and change whatever he wanted over and over again and nobody would have to give a shit.
Haha. Oh man.
It's obviously not true. The only question is: does he, himself, believe it? And if so, how?
Where does he get that I think of Han as a cold blooded killer? Han's in a "kill or be killed" situation and he's just quicker on the draw than Greedo.
Greedo is also the worst god damn shot in the galaxy, if what Lucas says is true.