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I would call the man stupid, but he seems to have made everyone from infant to elderly talk about his movies for 35 years and counting. Not to mention 3 or 4 generations of toy collectors.

We've always been at war with Greedo

*le sigh*

@Rorie 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:

I would call the man stupid, but he seems to have made everyone from infant to elderly talk about his movies for 35 years and counting. Not to mention 3 or 4 generations of toy collectors.

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:

who cares?

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:

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.

@StealthMaster86 said:

It seems that Han shot first and Greedo shooting because of reflex.

Geeze...you can even see they badly CGI'ed Han's head to move to the left a little bit...

@hrn212 said:

I'm now convinced that Lucas managed to create such a wonderfully morally gray character like Han by accident. I mean if he truly understood the moral nuance of a character like Han, how the heck could he assume that Han shooting first would make him bloodthirsty? Wow I sound like a fan-girl. lol.

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:

Its only a matter of time before Lucas is just going to have only Greedo shoot and have the shot ricochet back off the wall to kill himself, while Han just sits there.

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:

@StealthMaster86 said:

It seems that Han shot first and Greedo shooting because of reflex.

Geeze...you can even see they badly CGI'ed Han's head to move to the left a little bit...

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?