Quote:
Originally Posted by Kryptonic
It's simple as this - fans don't have a say in anything regarding content. If they don't like what's going on with a series or franchise, then they can stop paying to watch the movies. Obviously, they didn't. Lucas or any filmmaker should absolutely never listen to fans, most of whom have absolutely terrible ideas about creative decisions. Just because you bought a ticket, doesn't mean you "own" the film, it just means you can sit there and watch another persons art. Same if you buy a disc or a digital copy - it's just a copy of the film that you can watch. You don't "own" the film. You can certainly have an opinion about it and criticize it, but that's where it ends. These pedantic fanboys who bitch and moan all the time just need to grow up and either let it go or be an adult about it and realize that your are just an audience member, nothing more. If you want to be creative, by all means. Man up. Write a Star Wars book or draw a comic or create your own art in whatever medium suits you. Until you reach the level of Lucas. Until you are a truly creative and imaginative individual, your perspective on the situation is severely lacking.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kryptonic
Quote:
Originally Posted by thebard
Does Lucas have the right to alter Star Wars and eliminate the originals (and let's be clear, this is the point. I don't argue that he can tinker all he wants; the unavailability of the originals is the issue here), because he owns the rights to the intellectual property, or because he is the creator of the material?
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Both. It's his, not yours. Deal with it. Grow up. The fan community (not just SW fans) needs to stop acting like entitled brats. |
Except that he no longer legally owns it. He USED to. But he sold it off to Disney. And legally they can do whatever they want with it, barring any issues with Fox and whatever rights they have (temporarily or long term) with the films and the distribution of them.
Here's my attitude on this. I know in advance that you will disagree with it, but I'm going to say it anyway.
I'm in favor of "artistic rights" up to a point. And IMO they do hold a lot of "weight" in the matter and should be taken into strong consideration in any debate of this type. However, they should not be treated like this end all, be all infallible precedent that cannot be contradicted under any circumstance.
There certainly are issues with people making changes to other people's art. And overall it's something that I largely disagree with. So, I don't think that Disney should go and make their own new changes/additions/alterations to the existing films, for example. Certainly now without, at minimum, Lucas's approval and input.
That being said, when someone's art is simultaneously a commercial product... which is VERY MUCH what movies like Star Wars are... the commercial product aspect has to be taken into consideration and weighed as part of the equation, both ethically and legally.
From the ethical point of view, the argument is that Lucas is the artist and he should have his say, and has word should outweigh that of any other individual person. And okay, fair enough to a point (of course some people argue that the director is the artist, and he did not actually direct TESB or ROTJ, but I digress on that issue).
But to me there's another ethical standpoint that needs to be taken into consideration... that of the audience. My attitude has been and continues to be that under the most ideal of circumstances, any and all forms of recorded/electronic entertainment.... movies, TV shows, music, video games, etc.... once released should be continually available. It's one thing if something goes "out of print" for a time, but it should be made available again. No, it won't be for free. If a movies, for example, comes out in a new edition with new extras or on a new format, we have to pay for it again.
To me once something is created and put out there for public consumption, it becomes part of what I like to call the "entertainment stratosphere." Big or small, successful or a flop, each movie, TV show, and so forth has an impact on those to experience them. Even if a TV show that is generally considered crappy by many comes out and is quickly canceled, odds are someone out there liked it. Are they obligated to keep making this low rated TV show? No. Do I think the people who liked it should have access to the episodes that were produced? Yes I do.
Now, obviously some things have a much bigger audience than others. And as such, if we were to create a hierarchy of which pieces of entertainment are more important than others in this respect, obviously those with the largest fan base and the biggest cultural impact would be much higher on the list than a short lived TV show that most people hated and quickly forgot about.
The original versions of the original trilogy very much fall under this. They had very significant cultural impact. They were given many awards and recognition. They launched a whole new way that people looked at movies. Are the flawless? Hell no. But to quote Mark Hamill on what George Lucas did with those films, "He took scotch tape and Popsicle sticks and
really made something out of it."
Now, while I do feel that of all past versions and variations this UOT takes the most precedent based on the above 'hierarchy' concept, I do feel that the other versions that were made inbetween the UOT and the current editions should also be made available (i.e. the 1997 theatrical special edition versions). Likewise, even the prequels in their original versions should be made available. Despite me not being very fond of Episode 1 overall, I do think that people should have the option to watch the version with the (IMO crappy looking) Yoda puppet, with the pod race scene cut as it was in theaters, etc.
With each change and alteration, a new version was put out there in the "entertainment stratosphere." Each version is the way that someone out there remembers is. People like to point out how those who have grown up with the altered versions don't clamor for the originals like older fans do. And that's probably true to a point. But I have seen a few comments from people who grew up with the 1997 VHS tapes and/or 2004 DVDs (including one or two buried somewhere deep in this very thread) in which such people have said that they didn't understand how the older fans felt until they saw the clip from the Blu-Ray version of ROTJ with Vader yelling "Nooooo!" That put it in perspective for them.
Should fans have input as far as further changes to be made? For the most part, no. If Lucas were still apt to tinker with them further, I do think he would do well to take a few suggestions into consideration. Of all of the things that he did change, I and many others are actually quite surprised that he never completely redid all of the light saber effects for all 3 movies. Some of those effects, especially in ANH, are pretty rough looking by today's standards (even when ignoring the color timing issues that started with the 2004 editions and are still present on the BDs).
But otherwise no, I don't think that he has to go out of his way to make further, specific, new changes per fan requests. But the older versions that were already previously released? Yeah, I think those should come out. And now that he no longer owns them, they likely will.
This brings us over to the legal/commercial side of things. Now, as much as I ethically believe in my "entertainment stratosphere" argument, I also realize that it isn't realistic to expect all content, especially the most niche and commercially unsuccessful content, to be made available at all times or repeatedly through various reissues over time. So not all short lived TV shows or movies that bomb will be made available over and over again forever. Heck, right now with Blu-Ray we are seeing some studios reluctant to spent the money to release many catalog titles and are licensing them out to smaller outfits like Mill Creek and Echo Bridge.
But Star Wars hardly falls under that category. While I'm not as convinced as others that a UOT release will set or break records, I am relatively certain that it will sell well enough to justify any work that needs to be done in order to release it. And now that Disney owns the property, and it's no longer Lucas who is the legal owner of it, it's highly more likely that we will see it's release.
Whether you feel that's fair or not to Lucas, it's likely going to happen. He chose to sell it off, and this comes with the territory. Franky I don't feel that it's disrespectful to him at all for them to release the UOT.
Lucas ultimately wanted something that he couldn't have... his "ideal" version of Star Wars. When the films were reissued in 1997, they were toted as being his "definitive vision" of Star Wars. Lucas talks about how films aren't "finished", but instead are "abandoned" in order to release them (all of this is on the 1997 VHS release), and how he decided to go back and "finish" his abandoned films. The problem is that he was apparently never happy with the end result, given that we got two more sets of changes since them. Even if the 2004 changes can be argued as "needed" to line them up better with the PT (in my opinion a sign of bad story telling when you have to go back and edit the parts of the story that have been told already to fit with the new parts), there's little excuse for the 2011 changes... (it's not like the "technology" to make Vader yell "nooo!" didn't exist in 1977, 1997, or 2004).
Ultimately no matter how much
closer the current versions are to whatever he wanted to do in the first place, ultimately they are still compromised and abandoned films. For one thing, had the technology that he had at his disposal in recent years when he made the Special Editions and PT been available when he made the OT, they would have turned out to be very different movies than what we have now even after the changes. He would have made different directorial decisions when shooting the films and what the scale of the whole thing would have been, etc.
Changing the films as they exist simply adds in a small amount of what he wanted in the first place. But he's still compromising with himself in the process. Not to mention that if he was really putting his artistic desires ahead of the business side of things, he would have dumped a lot more money into the updates (even if it meant not making it all back and taking money out of his own pocket, given that he was already extremely rich) to make them look as best they can.
Watch any version of the scene in A New Hope where Han walks around Jabba and steps on his tale, for example. While they improved the look of Jabba in 2004 over the crappy 1997 version to be more "on model" with how he looks in ROTJ and
TPM, he still looks off and his animation is pretty flat looking compared to how he looks in
TPM (plus his coloring if off, too, but that may be due to the larger color timing issues of those films, assuming that the updated CGI Jabba was dropped in and the color timing was then adjusted). The animation just doesn't look as good as he does in
TPM. But moreover, the next time you watch that scene, stay focused on Han. It looks REALLY crappy when he steps on Jabba's tale and walks around him. The originall footage had him walk around a human character without stepping up onto anything. The editing they did for this makes him look blurry with the focus/blurriness varying, and the motion of him stepping up and back down is VERY choppy. Even if this is the best that they could do in 1997, there's really no excuse why it couldn't have looked better in the update that have happened since.
The point is that Lucas has pretty much just become a mad tinkerer. Obsessed with trying to improve what most others consider to be a masterpiece of it's time to try and make it into, what in his eyes will be the masterpiece that he always wanted it to be, but ends up doing more damage with each improvement.... frustrating fans more and more while ultimately still not really pleasing himself (it would seem anyway). It's like someone who keeps getting plastic surgery to try and look young again, but just looks more and more fake and unnatural with each operation.
I find the issues with Lucas very ironic, really.
I know he had issues with the studios, and to an extent rightfully so. With his early work (i.e. THX 1138, American Graphitti), he was upset with how the studios would change and edit his films without his consent, and he wasn't happy about that. An understandable feeling for him to have, and an issue that I'm sure many other filmmakers (and I'm sure many of us) disagree with as well.
But the irony comes in with how much his obsession to take control almost parallels Anakin's path to the dark side...
After losing his mother and being concerned for Padme's safety, and with the belief that the other Jedi are against him, he goes off the deep end, kills younglings and so forth, all in the name of doing what, in his VERY skewed view, is right and needs to be done to protect himself, his loved ones, and to do what he feels is, in his warped mind, best for everyone (despite all of the murder that he commits in the process or doing things to save lives).
Lucas became so obsessed with the problems that he had with the studio system and with being able to control his own films and he managed to create the worst-case scenario of the opposite of all of that. He wanted to improve his existing films and tell the backstory to them, and believed that he could do so in such a way that everyone (or at least the vast majority of people) would be on board with it, and see that it was for the better. He believed that people wouldn't care about those older versions once they saw his improvements. That didn't happen. He got tunnel vision, and became so focused on his vision that he couldn't really see what he was doing in the grand scheme of things. He felt that anyone who didn't agree with him were evil and out to get him, just like Anakin feels Obi Wan is doing at the end of Episode III as they go into battle.
Lucas took personal offense to those who do fan edits... a feeling that I can somewhat understand... but applied his frustration with that to the fanbase at large, most of whom have likely never seen a fan edit, let alone made one. The problem that he fails to realize is that while most people have not actually made or watched a fan edit, his constant tinkering and reissues of the films in new versions has resulted in people saying and thinking, "Well, I like this aspect from this version better, but this other version was better in this regard, and I still think no version got this other thing right".... in other words, each fan is essentially building their own preferred fan edit in their head largely because of his changes. By way of making these different versions and people who have viewed the films many times seeing each of them, he has created a scenario where for many people, the changes, themselves, stand out more so than the story, and become the new focus. And when he refuses to release the original versions in reasonably good quality, he creates his own set of headaches when the changes become the focus.
This is why it's generally not a good idea to change a film, especially with newly created content and/or effects, years after the fact, and refuse to release the original It's one thing if an alternate cut (i.e. director's cut) comes out using footage originally shot but not used, but even then the original version should be made available, especially when the new version comes out many years later.
And this is why Disney now possessing the property is a good thing overall. Lucas became the extreme example of an artist in control of his art to the point of it being of it being for the worse. This was the artistic rights equivalent of negative studio involvement. Disney seems to let it's various divisions (Pixar, Marvel, and now Lucasfilm) pretty much "do their thing" with no more interference than is necessary. But at the same time, they are a business and listen to what their customers want. This will likely mean the UOT in the not too distant future.
While we, as fans, many not be in a position to dictate what content should go into a new film or new edition (something that I agree with to a point, but again not completely... good ideas are good ideas regardless of the source... while most fan ideas are likely pretty bad, there could always be a 'diamond in the rough'), I don't think fans are out of line to request the previous versions of the films, or to state what they did not like about them. I don't feel that we have to be on "Lucas's level" to do so.
What constitutes "his level" anyway? Making movies in general? Making movies with a level of success akin to that of Star Wars? (only a handful of people would qualify for that). And if we have to be on his level to pass judgement, shouldn't that go for those who praise him as well? Even high praise and compliments is a form of criticism.
It's funny how those who defend Lucas give him all of these "free passes" that no other filmmaker seems to get. They are "his story" and we should leave them alone. We shouldn't criticize him, the PT, the OT changes, or anything. He has the right to do whatever he wants.
I guarantee that if more filmmakers did to their films what Lucas did to his, many of those who praise and defend him now would take issue with some movie somewhere along the lines being changed with the original suppressed.
I don't feel that it's "entitlement" for us to simply request access, which we will have to pay for anyway, to the UOT. Demanding that George Lucas give each of us a personal apology in person for what he has done would be entitlement. Simply asking for a product to be made available, which we will have to pay for, is not.
Most filmmakers would appreciate and be happy about their fanbase being that enthusiastic about their movies and wanting to have them in their collections in the best quality possible. But when Star Wars fans want it, some how we are acting "entitled." The selective reasoning that only applies in defending Lucas and his films is unprecedented.
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