A Certain Point of View: Star Wars, George Lucas and the right of artists to tweak their works

When I bought my first true "attach to a television set" DVD player (as opposed to a DVD-ROM drive on my PC) in the fall of 2000, I purchased it not only because my DVD collection was growing and I needed to play the 10 or so movies I had at the time on some other venue than my computer, but also with the expectation that George Lucas and 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment would release the original Star Wars Trilogy on this wonderful new format.

 After all, the 1977-1983 trio (Star Wars: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi) had been released on all the other home video formats, including Betamax and VHS videotape and the "father of the DVD," the laserdisc. Indeed, the Star Wars Trilogy has the distinction of being the most reissued film set in video history, starting with each film's first initial VHS release in the mid-1980s, then various box set re-releases since, ranging from CBS-Fox's circa 1988 "plain vanilla" version, then the 1995 THX remastered edition, which was followed by the 1997 Special Edition, which in turn was superceded by a 2000 reissue with new packaging. Surely, with so many VHS versions having been released like so many Imperial probe droids, a DVD version wasn't far behind...was it?

But with Star Wars creator Lucas still in the middle of making the "prequel trilogy" at the turn of the century, it wouldn't be until the fall of 2004 that Star Wars fans and DVD-philes would finally get the crown jewels of the Skywalker Saga. And just as the prequels ( The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones ) have been focal points for criticism and controversy (while still making lots of money), the Classic Star Wars Trilogy has been both eagerly awaited and panned by fans who long for the "unaltered" originals without the changes made by Lucas for the 1997 Special Edition.

As a Star Wars fan of 1977 vintage, I can understand the attachment most fans feel to the original cuts of A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. Most of us from the '77 Generation were quite young at the time (I was 14 when I first saw what was then known as Star Wars sans Episode number and subtitle), and as the making-of documentary so accurately puts it, those films changed the way films are made and marketed forever. Suddenly science-fiction...well, space opera, really...was fun and vibrant again, a far cry from the visually impressive but often dystopian visions of Planet of the Apes, Silent Running, The Omega Man, The Andromeda Strain, the enigmatic 2001: A Space Odyssey and even Lucas' own THX 1138. These were movies that were, more often than not, either downbeat or warned about the downside of technology. The effects were often quite good -- indeed, some of the same technicians and visual innovators who worked on 2001 and Silent Running would end up working on Star Wars -- but they rarely left audiences feeling giddy or positive about life or the future. (I was only five when 2001 first came out, so I can't verify this from personal experience, but I have heard that some people did smoke a joint or two while watching this Stanley Kubrick classic, so some viewers went home high as kites. But that doesn't mean the film left them feeling "giddy or positive.")

Also, it's important to remember that Star Wars hit theaters at the tail end of a very "down" decade (actually, more like a decade-and-a-half), what with Vietnam, Watergate, the energy crisis, the increasing violence in the Middle East, the loss of confidence in ourselves and in humanity in general. So many of our movies were about violence and anti-heroes who rarely spoke softly and always carried a big stick. And of course we had Jimmy Carter sitting in the Oval Office, telling us to set our thermostats at 78 and speaking about "malaise."

I didn't go to movies a lot in those days; my mom gave me a small allowance as a kid and my older sister took me out every once in a while, and most of my friends were my age or even younger, so I didn't see all those downbeat films I mentioned earlier. I also wasn't too keen on politics, but I was aware that the general mood was not that optimistic -- and I do remember not really liking President Carter all that much, even though I couldn't have told youwhy at the time.

But when Star Wars premiered in May of 1977, it really marked a quantum leap in cinematic storytelling. This very straightforward story about a young budding hero who goes off on a mission to save a Princess from a fascist Empire, aided by a wise warrior-mentor, a cynical space pirate and his alien copilot, and a pair of Laurel-and-Hardy robots struck a chord in the hearts and minds of millions, and soon Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, C-3PO, R2-D2, and especially Darth Vader were household names. Many of my friends caught the Star Wars fever from the very start and went two, three, four, or even five times to see it. Believe it or not, I resisted for quite a while; I was actually turned off by the TV ads, particularly by Vader's villainous visage...it looked too much like a cheap Japanese movie. (In those days, my idea of a good film was A Bridge Too Far, one of those big, expensive all-star cast war movies.)

For many of us, it was our first taste of really fun space-fantasy along the lines of the old Flash Gordon serials that, in part, inspired Lucas to create his "galaxy far, far away." The story was deceptively simple (it was, as 20th Century-Fox's teaser poster described it, about "a boy, a girl and a universe") yet drew upon myths and archetypes from most of the world's literary and religious traditions. Its universality and accessibility made it extremely watchable --there are no long bits of expository dialog explaining how a ship flies into hyperspace or the workings of a lightsaber. In the Star Wars films characters hop into a spaceship or start using a gizmo without having to say, "Okay, we are going to switch the fusion reactor to on, begin a prelaunch countdown, check the gobbledygook generator to see if the quantum reaction is nominal, then go into orbit." They just get in, close the hatch, and fly into deep space the way we get into our cars and drive to the Shop N Save.

And yet, beneath its comic book-like storyline, there was a whole universe of big-time mythology that grew in complexity as the trilogy progressed. Luke Skywalker's character evolved from the earnest farmboy whose destiny is to follow in his dead Jedi father's footsteps and to confront his killer to Jedi trainee who discovers that Darth Vader didn't kill his father but is the man formerly known as Anakin Skywalker. The journey from point A to point B entailed rescuing a princess from the Death Star, losing his surrogate father and first Jedi Mentor, surviving space battles, hostile planets and hungry creatures, avoiding Imperial pursuit, undergoing Jedi training with a 900-year-old Muppet...er, Jedi Master...on a swampy planet, losing his hand and his trust in the world in a lightsaber fight, and confronting an ugly truth...that even the best person can become "twisted and evil."

So it's really not that hard for me to understand why Star Wars fans long to see the films as they remember them before 1997. They accepted the films as they were released, with flaws and all. Boring desert towns and sometimes less-than-perfect effects don't bother many of us, because for us it's the story that matters, not the fact that Jabba's scene in A New Hope was cut because the technology to replace a human actor with an animated alien wasn't in existence in 1976 or that Cloud City's interiors were really cramped and not quite what Lucas wanted to show but couldn't.

As a writer, however, I can also understand Lucas' point of view. When I watched Star Wars: Empire of Dreams on the Bonus Materials disc, I realized how close Lucas came to having a nervous breakdown or even a heart attack during the production of Star Wars: A New Hope, which he wrote and directed. Not only did he have to make compromises to his vision of the films because the technology wasn't in existence or there wasn't enough money or time, but the studio was antsy and wanted changes made; one studio executive worried about Chewbacca's lack of pants. There were sequences he disliked, such as the famous cantina scene, because the aliens were too few or looked too much like humans with masks. He vowed that if he ever had the money and the ownership of the films, he would someday fix the flaws that bothered him the most.

I can empathize with the man. Sure, I love the films as they were, too, which is why I haven't given away my THX non-Special Edition boxed set as I have other films that I have replaced with DVDs. But I wasn't the guy who lost weight, sleep, peace of mind, and even his wife while creating the Star Wars saga....Lucas was. I may have helped Mr. Lucas become a billionaire with my purchases of Star Wars-related items over the past 27 years, but if he wants to edit his movies until they match what he saw in his mind's eye, I'm not going to say Hey, you jerk, you can't do that! I like the movies the way I saw them as a kid! And, by the way, regarding the prequels.... If he's happy making small revisions here and there and making the movies more consistent with Episodes I, II, and III, it's fine with me. I sometimes read some of my online stuff and look for flaws...and I fix them when I feel it's necessary. (Of course, I'm not creating anything that's setting the world on fire and, so far, there aren't any Alex Diaz-Granados action figures in the toy stores, but I don't like seeing mistakes in my work.) 

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy reading my first book, Save Me the Aisle Seat, available now at Amazon.

© 2012 Alex Diaz-Granados.  All Rights Reserved