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During a Q&A after a 30th anniversary screening of Raiders of the Lost Arc this week, Steven Spielberg was asked how he felt about George Lucas’s insistance on continuing to tweak Star Wars until every last nerd has written an angry rant on a message board about it. From All Things Fangirl (you’ve read this already, I assume):
I was overly sensitive to some of the criticism E.T. got from parent groups when it was first released in ’82 having to do with Elliott saying “Penis Breath” or the guns … and then there were certain brilliant but rough-around-the-edges close ups of E.T. that I always felt, if technology ever evolves to the point where I can do some facial enhancement for E.T. I’d like to. I realized that what I had done was I had robbed the people who loved E.T. of their memories of E.T. And I regretted that.
BOOOOOOOOO. And then the whole audience erupted in “BOOOO”s and then they started rioting and now everyone is dead, RIP them. JK. Obviously this is a very thoughtful answer to a question he might get asked a lot, I have no idea, but one that he has at least asked himself more than once. But the thing with all of this anger about movie altering that I don’t understand is that the old versions still exist. Right? Can’t you just not buy a copy of the new version and pretend like it doesn’t exist? I do understand the anger about altering the history of the movie and then also your childhood, I guess, and leaving the updated version as the version that will continue on forever and ever, but also I don’t because that is not really true. The old versions will always still exist, and the old versions are probably what will still be played during Star Wars holiday marathons on TV. There are much worse movie altering situations we could be in. For example:
- Movies don’t exist anymore.
- DVD players disappear from every home and everyone has to buy a Blu-Ray player and all new Blu-Ray DVDs.
- Once everyone replaces their DVD collection with Blu-Rays, a superior system is announced.
- Movies still exist, but for some reason they’re all Star Wars. Like you turn on FX because it says they’re playing Fight Club, but instead it’s Star Wars. Or you buy a ticket to a movie and instead of Drive it’s Star Wars. And everyone thinks this is only happening to them, because when they try to communicate it with anyone else their words come out as gibberish.
- You can only see movies in color if you agree to live your life in black and white.
- Movies are only two-hour episodes of popular TV shows and they all cost $40 but you have to see at least two per month.
- All movie theaters go out of business because too many people are watching movies at home, but you like going to the movie theater and don’t even OWN a TV. So how do you watch movies now?
- Somehow all the dialogue in every classic film is altered, in every version and every copy of every film. You’ll be watching it with your friends, awaiting that moment when you all say the classic line outloud together, and instead of ”E.T. phone home” the line is “Can I borrow your phone?”
- Movies play when you close your eyes and you can never escape them and they’re all updated versions of your childhood favorites.
SEE? Don’t you feel lucky now? That THAT isn’t the movie altering we’re talking about? Thank you and you’re welcome. (Via Vulture.)
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The old versions of Star Wars DON’T exist though. That’s the problem. They’re there on DVD but on an intentionally shitty and non-updated transfer (I think they were ripped directly from the old Laserdiscs), and Lucas to refuse them because they’re just “rough drafts”. That’s what makes everyone so mad I think.
/nerd
**PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS THE NEW, UPDATED, CORRECT VERSION OF THE ABOVE COMMENT. NEVER READ THAT PREVIOUS COMMENT AGAIN**
The old versions of Star Wars DON’T exist though. That’s the problem. They’re there on DVD but on an intentionally shitty and non-updated transfer (I think they were ripped directly from the old Laserdiscs), and Lucas continues to refuse to release them because they’re just “rough drafts”. That’s what makes everyone so mad I think.
/nerd
Videophiles unite!
Calm down now a second, this is a family blog.
Reading those two comments made me feel like a kid again, doing one of these goddamn things–
Twelve! I got twelve.
Thirteen!
15, pay attention to the cake
Yup!
I worked on a video for a ceremony honoring George Lucas and in the video there were a bunch of people talking about how groundbreaking Star Wars was at the time with all the puppetry and special effects. Specifically, people were referencing the two moons and the explosion of the Death Star. When I went to get video of these to illustrate the point I could only get access to were the new “updated” versions with all the digital touch-ups and extra rings around the explosions. We tried using VHS footage but the tapes were worn down and the video looked awful. It got really frustrating. The people in the video were pioneers in the special effects world and the work they were championing and describing in vivid detail as being integral to their careers barely exists anymore. A similar video had been made in honor of Ray Harryhausen and you can bet all that original footage exists, in high quality format!
Steven Spoilberg
If Speelburg isn’t dead in 24 hours I blow up a hospital.
Indeed! The filming of Star Wars (not “A New Hope”, darn it–that’s not what was on the marquee when I went to see the film) involved major breakthroughs in motion control photography, making fiction space battles between model ships look as good as actual footage of real-life airplane dogfights. Every time in the modified version of Star Wars that the original Death Star battle footage is replaced with CGI, it invalidates a little bit more of the hard work that the original special effects crew put into making that sequence look convincing.
I think the only reason that Lucas hasn’t yet put CGI Yoda into the Original Trilogy (well, the latter two, anyway) is that Frank Oz would storm the gates of Skywalker Ranch to beat his ass. “You stuck me in a bathysphere underneath that Dagobah set for days, and now it’s just GONE? Bastard!!”
Sorry, but they do. You buy the shitty update that has a bonus disc for each of the movies, and on that disc is the original.
TOO LONG, DON’T READ
Well, they did in a “special limited edition” or whatever, but that’s what Max the King of All Wild Things said above, how those bonus discs featured completely untouched editions from the Laserdisc releases. Therefore meaning that instead of being formatted in a way that makes them appear as nice as they can on today’s technology while maintaining all of the original whatevers from the original movies. So, you can buy a shitty update with a bonus disc that has the original, but in an edition that the creator doesn’t care about so much that they simply plopped it on the disc without making sure it was at its best.
I suppose the real issue with these DVDs (based on all that mumbo jumbo I said above) is that people want something in the middle. Fix up the picture/sound quality so it looks/sounds good on an HDTV/fancy sound system(?), but leave in the puppets and keep out the “NOOOOOOs” and extended song sequences and the weird yelps that Obi-Wan makes to scare off Tusken Raiders.
And further, I think the issue is that these are only available on what is now a nearly outdated form instead of Blu-Ray. Although I’m sure that, just like with the DVD releases, in a year or two they will release the originals packed in with the updated forms on Blu-Ray.
But hey! I really admire what Spielberg said!
So what people want is the exact right amount of technological manipulation of the past that they demand?
This is coming from a massive nerd who owns these versions of the DVDs and gets furious (or, if I’m stoned, unsettled and sad) iif someone else pops in the main disc instead of the good one.
Well, we are the customers, after all. If someone offers me something I might be interested in, but packaged or presented in a manner that is not to my liking, I’m well within my rights to not spend my money on it. (Exactly why several DC comic series vanished from my pull list as of this month).
I know it’s not going to happen, because there are too many die-hard Star Wars fans out there who will get the Blu-rays no matter what, but I think it would be both hilarious and a little bit of karmic justice if sales of the new set fell far short of Lucasfilm’s expectations because enough people decided to “vote” with their dollar and not buy the excessively-tinkered-with versions of the films.
My every day goal is one giant “keep out the ‘NOOOOOOs’”
Well, I would imagine what people want is technological manipulation without the addition of CGI-produced characters or extra dialogue. So if he remastered it, and didn’t throw in large CGI creatures throwing around their riders and Greedo shooting first, then it would be a non-issue. But as (maybe) mentioned elsewhere, Lucas is the kind of guy who tries to forget the past entirely (for example, the Christmas special).
It seems possible to me to clear up the image without animating over puppets, but I’m pretty ignorant when it comes to film making. It has to be possible, right?
But yeah, people putting in the first disc in those sets is a massive bummer. I was tempted to just throw them out, or at least remove it from the case, but that just didn’t seem right.
“I think of all my cherished childhood memories, it was my family and I sitting down on a Sunday, with a big bowl of popcorn, getting cozy under a blanket, popping ‘E.T.’ into the VCR and hearing Eliot say ‘Penis Breath.’” — No one.
“Movies still exist, but for some reason they’re all Star Wars.” – This doesn’t sound so bad.
well, Gabe is just going to go back and revise the post to say that “Movies still exist, but for some reason they’re all Star Wars, but only Episodes I,II, and III” and THAT is truly frightening.
Whoa wait, when did we go back and replace Kelly with Gabe? I’m already a version behind!!!
Yes, “Gabe” will do this.
Donna Darko
Baldo Darko
I just threw up a little.
the old versions are probably what will still be played during Star Wars holiday marathons on TV
If only that were true. The really nefarious thing about when Lucas alters stuff is that he tries to pretend the older versions no longer exist. So nobody is allowed to air them, and you can’t get access to them in anything but old formats, which is pretty lame.
The only real original SW movies I have are on VHS, and I haven’t owned a VCR in a decade. I have the late nineties versions on DVD, but I can’t get them in any HD format, which sucks because within the next couple of years standard definition is going to be the new black and white. At my house, it already is.
Never Forget.
You can transfer VHS tapes to DVD now if you really want to be able to watch your old tapes.
Yeah, man, but DVDs look like shit on my 50″ plasma. However… If I can find a away to transfer my twenty year old Star Wars VHS tapes displayed in 4:3 aspect ratio to Blu-Ray, that would solve all the problems. If I did that, and told the world how to do it, no one would have any reason to be mad at George Lucas!!!!
the propper argument should be “well, in real life you can’t go back and take away oscars from Roberto Benini and ‘Shakespeare in Love,’ so I shouldn’t be able to do it with movies either. sometimes things just ARE. life isn’t perfect.”
They took the Heisman from Reggie Bush. #pointcounterpoint
but they didn’t go and hand it to Vince Young…
george lucas didn’t take outdated graphics out of star wars and distribute them equally amongst Star Wars fans…
Isn’t it funny how much media affects us? I mean, so many of us get attached to certain movies, tv shows, bands, and saying that “sometimes things just ARE. life isn’t perfect.” is the most reasonable response to any issue of changed dialogue or Oscar winners. Unless you wrote the screenplay or lost that year at the award show, it seems silly to get so bent out of shape about this stuff.
There are more important things in life than tv, movies, etc., yet I’m signing petitions to get a Veronica Mars movie made, commenting on message boards, or getting frustrated that Inception didn’t win more Oscars, etc. As someone who does not work in the TV/movie industry, I dedicate a lot of my spare time to worrying about it.
The idea of a movie being a shared experience is being lost because every movie now has several versions. You have a discussion with your friend about a movie and say you loved this bit or whatever and they give you a blank look because they’ve seen a different version. And everyone seems to have differing opinions about what the “definitive” version of it is. If everyone is seeing different movies under the same title then the shared experience is lost.
“Blade Runner Syndrome.”
I see now! There is strong correlation between movies I find vastly overrated and movies that have been released with multiple alterations and cuts (Star Wars, Blade Runner, Lord Of The Rings, Donnie Darko…)
It’s such a stroke of luck for you that Bio-Dome only has one version. Almost as if the universe conforms to your personal tastes and wants.
Oh man, it was really weird to buy the director’s cut of Donnie Darko, only to discover that the original DVD, and all the original deleted scenes and commentary in bits and pieces still ended up being a superior version. Which shouldn’t make sense, but then you pop in Southland Tales and it kind of does?
But it gets very weird for me when someone loves the theatrical cut of Blade Runner and has never seen the director’s cut and I’m like ‘Whaaaaa?”
Cool story, bro.
I mean, I remember seeing Rocky a second time, and that time he won!
“That fucking hurts.” -New E.T.
What if for every great movie you watched you were required to see two OK movies or one really bad movie. And then there was a quiz.
The reasonale behind the backlash towards the Star Wars edits lies somewhere in the nature of the product. As an adult you buy the movie because it’s a product of your childhood and you want to share it with your children. You buy a movie and you find out it’s different than you remember it and it’s disillutrative. It’s like buying a G.I. Joe and finding it’s a UN soldier or something.
Kelly just outed herself as not a nerd.
MARRY ME KELLY
the 2011 SW Gay Edition (to woo the pink dollar demographic):
Greedo shoots first? I guess kids can’t handle that Solo is a badass, even though they could in the 70s. No more saying “penis breath”? I guess we can’t have kids getting creative in ways parents don’t officially want them to. That’s really what these revisions do: they dumb down our culture, leaving less room for chaos and subtlety and things that are startling. And dangit, I’m for all those things.
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“We refuse to accept or even acknowledge our responsibilities as adults when there are kids movies we could be arguing about” ~ Four people
The original Star Wars films are not kids movies. They appealed to everyone and everyone saw them. And, they were perfect the way they were. That is a cinematic fact. He’s only managed to make them worse which is depressing. My father is 79 years old and even he’s pissed about the “special” editions because they’re not the movies he saw 30 years ago.
I have no joy in my life.
-mitchnmurray
What part of Ordinary People on bluray makes you think I have no joy in my life?
Probably the Blu-ray part.
Star Wars is like Doctor Who or a good comic book: Meant to be enjoyed by all.
I miss the TV versions of movies I loved as a kid. For the longest time, I didn’t know that the nuns messed with the Nazi car in Sound of Music, because that wasn’t in the videotaped-from-TV version that I watched all the time. I also didn’t know that the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion were ACTUAL farmhands on the Gale’s farm, because the TV version we had started basically with the twister. At the end, I was just like, hey! Those guys from Oz got to come with her and be transformed into humans! Awesome!
I saw The Sandlot in a movie theater (I’m 100) and in the original theatrical version there was a subplot about how PF Flyers could make someone jump higher and run faster and basically be the best baseball player ever. And when Benny got the shoes, I was in awe. The shoes were like magic and it really added something special to the movie.
So when I got older and bought the movie (first on VHS, then on DVD), I was shocked! appalled! devastated! to find that there was no longer any mention of PF Flyers in the movie. My great grandchildren now watch it with me and I feel a deep sorrow because I know that there will always be a piece of magic missing from the new version.
And by that I mean, I’ve seen this movie way too many times.
Seriously… they edited that out?! WHY. I don’t even get it.
I am going to go to my parents house, dig around in the basement for my Sandlot VHS and make a digital transfer. Benny’s PF Flyers will be preserved!
PF FLYERS FOREVER!!!!
I remember that part? And I think I’ve only seen it on TV, who knows. I do remember the PF Flyers distinctly though.
I watched 16 Candles once on TV and there was a great scene where Samantha goes into the cafeteria and sees Jakes and runs away. “He can’t see me eating!” It was maybe 30 seconds long, but for some reason was cut from the DVD release. I really don’t get it.
Usually when a director is dissatisfied with a movie that was released, he or she puts together a “Director’s Cut” and that is the bonus disc you get when you buy the DVD. And it’s called the Director’s Cut, or in some way called out that this is not the original movie.
What Lucas is doing is rewriting herstory. He is changing what no longer belongs to him. I don’t care that he released Episodes 1, 2 and 3 and that they were terrible. Those are new movies – he can be as terrible as he wants to be. But Episodes 4, 5 and 6 belong to the world. They are ours now, and he should not be allowed to change them.
It IS difficult to get the old ones for new media, and they DON’T show them on TV.
It’s kind of like when you put old, dead stars into new commercials – it’s weird and gross and crazy. Hayden Christensen was only 2 years old when Return of the Jedi was released – and now he’s in it, as an adult. Stop!
Huh. Did they just CGI Hayden in to replace the guy who played Vader’s face when [SPOILER ALERT] he’s dying with his helmet off, and then shows up as a ghost at the Ewok party? Because then imagine:
“Holy cow, everyone, I was in Star Wars! How great is that! I basically failed in life but my unborn great-great-grandkids will be able to see me in one of the funnest movies of all time! I DID SOMETHING!” — that guy, 1983-2011
Cue the Stalinism…
Spielberg then said “Or take Indy IV. I regret that. All of it.”
Keep in mind that it is a money machine. In time, there will be a version of the trilogy that is the original version, with everything intact from the initial theatrical presentation, that everyone will have to buy. Because money.
I think Lucas is immune to money nowadays. I think the issue with him is that he feels he can recreate things and make them better. So maybe some business person will say, “hey, let’s put this out” either after Lucas’ death or after years of pleading with him and he just mumbles “whatever, dad, go away” or something along those lines.