“So, my nerdiness is getting in the way of my geekiness. I was thinking the other day what I would do if I had a time machine. Would I go back to witness some important historic event? Would I do something like see what the dinosaurs are really like? No, I’d go back to 1996-7 and kill George Lucas with a Shovel.”
Thus begins the wonderful track from Werewolves and Lollipops entitled “At Midnight I Will Kill George Lucas With a Shovel” by comedian Patton Oswalt. Yes, it’s funny and ridiculous, but part of the reason why it’s so damn funny is because there is a lot of truth behind what’s going on here. Star Wars is considered by many, and even by people who, aren’t even nerds and geeks, to be one of the best science fiction movies ever made. It blazed the way for science fiction to become mainstream and profitable again. The ressurection of Star Trek was built on the success of Star Wars in 1977. The story of Star Wars is the story of success it’s true, but it’s also the story of the one director and one man’s vision of how this story should unfold. Or at least that’s what LucasFilm and George Lucas himself wants everyone to believe.
Vision and perserverance are the two major themes behind the rise of George Lucas. It’s pretty clear that Lucas always wanted to make a Star Wars-like film. American Graffitti only exists because Francis Ford Coppola challenged Lucas to write a script for a regular movie. Lucas sat on Star Wars, because of rejections and script problems, for almost five years. The road to actually creating this mammoth of a project was plagued with script issues, prop problems, cast conflicts, and directorial constraints. Yet through all of this there was a good movie lurking. The power of the simplistic and cliched, but memorable, story and broadly painted, but interesting characters, pushed through all of this. The greatest thing that George Lucas ever had was the company of some of the most notable friends in all of cinematic history; Brian DePalma, Francis Ford Coppola, John Milius, and Steven Spielberg. With colleagues and friends like this to act as a sounding board and the perisisentence to see the project through, Star Wars ignited a science fiction rennaisance.
Lucas is rightly regarded as a technical visionary and Industrial Light and Magic along with Skywalker Sound became names bandied about in professinal filmmaking. Star Wars was a blockbuster phenomenon and because Lucas had the foresight to capture and exploit the merchandising rights to Star Wars, his split with the Director’s Guild didn’t really hurt him that much. So George set about making the inevitable sequel. Difficulties with handling his growing empire and the disasterous experience that was personnally directing the first Star Wars movie, Lucas hired screenwriters, producers, and Irvin Kershner to direct. As a result, the story was tighter, the movie was better paced, and the quality of the acting improved dramatically. The Empire Strikes Back is one of my all time favorite movies for those reasons. Star Wars and Lucasfilm were at the top of their game in 1980 when Empire hit the streets, but like any good wave it has a crest and a trough.
For whatever reason, the hands-off approach didn’t sit well with Lucas and when it came time to do the other invitable sequel Lucas pushed himself back on the set again. His directing second unit work and supervising overall activity on set was apparently irritating to Richard Marquand, the director hired to take the helm of Return of the Jedi. In short he got his sticky little fingers back in the pot, problem was nobody knew yet to swat them away.
I would argue that the Star Wars succeeded in spite of Lucas. Surely there was driving force behind the film, but it was not really Lucas perservering and by all accounts the first take of the film was dreck. For Empire, it was George Lucas doing what he did (and does) best, working to better things behind the scenes. He financed the movied with his own dollars, he paid the DGA fines against Kershner and Kasdan, he created the environment that those fine fellows worked in. Best of all there were no Jawas, Ewoks, or silly words with too many vowels. Empire was the best of Star Wars.
This article, despite the somewhat misleading opening paragraph, is not about the Star Wars prequels. As awful as they are and as possibly relevant to the topic of GL keeping the fuck out of the actual “making” part of filmmaking, this is about the good old Star Wars. Before there were episode titles, before Jar-Jar, before the Dark Time.
For all of its flaws at least Return of the Jedi was a complete film, there were very interesting moments vis a vis the Emperor, Vader, and the resolution of the Luke/Vader conflict. Jedi wasn’t great, but at least it’s watchable. If I had my druthers, I’d have wanted Lucas to make other choices, but it’s too late now, it’s not like you can go back into a film that was already released and make substantial changes. Wait… What? You have got to be fucking kidding me!
I remember when Lucasfilm launched the Star Wars Special Edition. I was excited, having been born after Star Wars premiered, I’d never seen the movie on a screen larger than 20 inches and if there ever were a movie that needs to be seen on the big screen, surely this was one of them. I went I saw it, I still thought it was a great movie, but something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on bothered me. Years later, the second round of special editions came out on DVD and I was excited. All I had were tapes that had started to sucumb to the rigors of being run through my VCR hundreds of times. So I plunked in Empire, it had been a while since I’d seen that movie, specifically looking for the new changes. I saw them easily, you know why? Because they stood out so tremendously against the pacing and the action of the original movie. One of the extended scenes in Empire is Darth Vader boarding a shuttle back to his Star Destroyer. What. The. Fuck. It’s right after Luke and he have had their climactic battle and Luke had apparently jumped to his doom rather than submit to Vader. So right after the most tense sequence in the film, where the audience is unsure if Luke is going to be rescued by Leia, Lando, and Chewie, we have the villian boarding a ship!?
I was dismayed. I continued to watch the remastered 2004 editions looking for more incongruities. I went back to Star Wars and found all of the CGI splattered across the screen incredibily distracting and irritating as well as supremely out of place for the film. In one sequence in Mos Eisely the action is completely obscured from view by some computer generated donkey. Oh, and Greedo shoots first. Putting aside that I don’t care for most of the additions, generally they were purely cosmetic. When the additions make substantial, but often subtle, changes to the characters and their motivations and results then as a filmaker you aren’t “doing what I couldn’t in 1976″, you’re changing the tone of the film. There are three scenes that deserve special attention that were either altered or added.
1. Hayden Christiansen as Anakin Skywalker at the end of Return of the Jedi. Aside from being a slap in the face (mask?) Sebastian Shaw, it doesn’t make any sense. Why would The Force have returned Anakin back to his younger self? It didn’t do that for Obi-Wan or Yoda. There is a theory out there that this is supposed to be pre-corruption Anakin, but doing that is idiotic for other reasons. A return to a pre-corruption Anakin would elminate the whole character arc that he had. It would obviate the need for the redemption and lessen the impact of the prophecy that Anakin would bring balance to the force. Aside from that it’s clearly just a blatant attempt to shove the bastardized world of the prequels into the original trilogy. Considering that it shows exactly how much out of step the prequels are with their older brethern, I don’t know what it accomplishes in the story. The replacement of the voice actor in the Vader speaking to the Emperor scene also runs in this vein.
2. Han and Jabba meet in Mos Eisley. Yes I know that this was scene that was cut from the original movie. Then again, most things that were cut from movies were cut for a reason and the film is generally better off for it. Problem: this conversation is made for comedy. Jabba is portrayed as a bumbling obeident fool, with Han Solo pushing him around and poking him in the chest and what not. Why is Han afraid of this space worm again? Jabba is so obsequious in this scene that it doesn’t even seem like the same character as the more menancing and evil Hutt in Jedi. Maybe it worked better when Jabba was a human; that’s right Jabba was originally a human. Maybe the interaction worked better and the back and forth was better or maybe this fucking scene was cut because it doesn’t add anything and slows down the pace of the rest of the movie. Plus there is the bit where Han steps on Jabbas tail and the Hutt squeaks. In hindsight it should have been warning of grave things to come.
3. This is the most important change made by George Lucas to any of the three films. That infamous scene in the Cantina where Greedo and Han have a chat. Greedo runs into Han, Han plays it off like nothing is going on while secretly unholstering his weapon and preparing to ice this scumbag. He talks with Greedo for a bit and then proceeds to shoot him in the chest. It’s all bluster and stalling so that Han can pull out his gun and blast him. This is one of those scenes that you don’t really think about when you first see it, but should someone change it or remove it, it profoundly changes the tone of the rest of the sequence. Lucas changed the scene so that Greedo would shoot first. I’m aware that it was “worse” in the 1997 special edition, but the fact that it’s still there, but changed says two things to me. First it says that Lucas or someone on the team was aware of just how wrong a change it was and wanted it changed back and second, that now that the change has been made we won’t acknowledge it in any meaningful way other than this. It’s essentially a “shut the fuck up” to the fans who were complaining the loudest. Why is such a change meaningful? Well, it changes Han’s character arc. Han Solo was a rough and ready guy all set to kill if it meant saving his skin or getting the drop on some bad guy. A churlish rogue, if you will. Changing that changes his characterization slightly. In this establishing scene, we don’t need to see that he has a heart of gold, that comes later when he agrees to help Luke rescue the princess and even moreso when he comes to help Luke blow up the Death Star. In writer-speak, it lessens the import of his transition from anti-hero to a genuine hero. The character arc of Han Solo is one of most interesting parts of the Star Wars trilogy. At this point we emotionally know that Han Solo is a good guy, but when you look at it from the very begining, it’s not really that clear. He’s a mercenary, he killed a man in cold blood, he smuggles, and he only seems to care about paying off his debt. Is this man someone who would sell Leia or Luke or Obi-Wan out to the Empire just to get a payday? We don’t know. I mean Harrison Ford has an open honest face, so he couldn’t possibly be evil could he?
As it inevitabely leads to, we talk about how this kind of changing is bad for audiences and ultimately the cinema. Ever since the advent of digital imaging technology and restoration, there has been a push to issue not only remastered versions of older films, but also different cuts of films in fanatstic box sets with all sorts of documentary features and behind-the-scenes information. Generally, I’m fine with that. For the most part the differences in cuts are a few lines of dialouge here and there and a bit of sex or violence that is excised that doesn’t really change the tenor of the film. There are some exceptions, but changes in cuts don’t change the way that characters act or majorly affect how plot unrolls. A strict remastering should just be that. I would think that we’d (the “we” being film fans here) all be for sprucing up the visuals and the sound to better enjoy our favorite older movies. This is the best kind of film preservation. For example the Doctor Who Restoration Team, has spent the majority of the last two decades carefully and painstakingly restoring the bits of Doctor Who to a quality that can again be realased to the public. They have stringent policy about making it appear as it was when it was broadcast, even fixing mistakes in sound editing and cue can be forbidden.
Or take another example, the Coppola restorations of the Godfather trilogy (the second of the three sacred tryptchs in film). By all accounts the master copies of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II were in terrible shape. A group of dedicated artists went through and painstakingly restored the majesty of the original film. No changes were made to edits or pacing or tone. Characters didn’t start doing unexpected things. In short a great restoration that looks fantastic and preserves the original feel of the film. I don’t think anyone would have batted an eye if Lucas had decided to just clean up the Star Wars trilogy, remaster the picture and the sound and be done with it. Hell, Star Wars looked great on the big screen and sounded great too. It was the added or changed scenes that irked so many fans. The Coppola Restorations is how you treat classic cinema, which until, the 1997 Special Edition nonsense, the Star Wars triliogy was. Now it’s still great but it has fallen from grace.
Let’s take a look at two sequences from two good films and see what happens. We have the aforementioned Greedo/Han Solo sequence and the scene from The Godfather where Michael kills Sollozo and McKluskey in the resturant. Imagine, if you will, Michael Corleone coming from the restroom and immediately shooting those two in the back of the head as they ate their spaghetti. Sounds like a minor change, right? Well here’s why it’s not. See, Michael was the doe-eyed youngster who was on the outside of the family business. His father had plans for him to be a lawyer or a politician or somesuch. He was naive. Still, family is important to him and he wants revenge for the shooting of his father. Tom thinks it’s a bad idea, but Sonny (the headstrong impatient one) immediately latches on to it. You get the sense that Vito wouldn’t condone this; after all that was just business. So why is this important to how soon Michael shoots the two villians? It goes to his motivations, yes immediatly gunning them down is the plan, but his hesitation shows that maybe he’s not ready to go all the way into his family’s life of crime and violence. Eventually he realizes that he’s gone this far, there really is no choice. The hesitation is key. Just like Han shooting the unsuspecting Greedo. It goes to the arc of Michael’s character and how he changes from an innocent youth to a cold calculating bastard. If he went right after that and shot Fredo, it wouldn’t make any sense, but to have Fredo killed later on shows the steady escalation of Michael’s entrenchment into the criminal society.
Would anyone forgive Francis Ford Coppola if he made that kind of a change to The Godfather? Maybe. Maybe it’s a little change that doesn’t mean all that much. Maybe if that was the only thing changed. Movies, more than anything else on this planet, are sums of their parts. When you start tinkering with those pieces, bad things can happen, formerly great movies can be derailed tinkering with even the most innocous sequences. This is why a good editor can make or break a film. This is why editing is an agonizing process for directors. More often than not, those kinds of cuts actually make movies better and most of the stuff cut was done so for a good reason. I’ll admit that being concise is certainly not one of my strongest suits, but I do understand the need for it and why it is so effective when it can be done properly.
In no small effect, when a movie, a book, or a song is released to the public it becomes part of the public conciousness. In essence, it belongs to the public to a certain extent. Not that the creator can’t and shouldn’t get control of how it’s released or how much they charge for it, but at some point you have to point to a product and say “it’s done”. The kind of revisionism seen in Star Wars is sickening for what it did to the movies from a purely artisitic and enjoyment standpoint, but also from a moral and philosophical standpoint. Lucas has claimed that this is about ensure that his vision for Star Wars is consistent and complete. As the creator of the franchise, he certainly has some claim to the moral right of how a particluar envisioning is established. On the other hand, the director of the film is more responsible for the vision of the project than some crackpot in Marin. Lucas only ever directed Star Wars. There is a reason that they never let him back in the chair after that movie. His universe will continue without his input long after he’s dead. I heartily predict that the effort to contain and control his “vision” will be all for naught as someone will buy the rights and “reboot” it in thirty years time. And it will certianly be better in almost every conceivable way.
Damnit George! Star Wars isn’t yours anymore. It has become part of the cinematic gestalt. Nerds love it. Regular audiences love it. Fuck, I haven’t even watched any of the Star Wars movies in over 6 years because of how distasteful those edits are to me. I didn’t think that anything could ruin Empire for me, but it’s become a collateral damage situation. The need to tinker, the need to keep changing after the horse has left the barn is an understandable urge, but it’s one that every artist really needs to control. Between remastering old classics and totally destroying the franchise with the prequels (as well as his disasterous attempts to “fix” the Indiana Jones franchise), George Lucas has gone from a respected filmmaker and genre genius to the punchline to a bad joke in less than twenty years. That’s the most impressive story about this whole debacle. Run your company George, leave the playing the sandbox to those who are good at it.
PS: The title of this post comes from a fabulous song by Jonathan Coulton “A Talk With George”. No infringement is intended as usage of that phrase was made firmly with tongue embedded in cheek. Go buy it though, great song.
PPS: As long as we’re going to go buy things. Go buy “Werewolves and Lollipops” by Patton Oswalt. Also a great album, funny too. Again no infringement intended.
PPPS: Last one I swear. DON’T go buy Star Wars on DVD. You’ll regret it. If you haven’t ever seen it, try to find an old copy like a VHS tape or something. Make it a retro movie night on retro hardware. Don’t give Lucas any more money, then maybe he’ll get the idea.
