LUCIDMEDIA

Let’s backtrack for a minute; this whole mess started in 1996 when Lucas released the trilogy in its original version “for the last time” in a special THX remastered edition. This, of course, preceded the theatrical release of the Special Editions just months later when the tinkering began with the addition of deleted scenes and new, improved CG effects. After the turn of the century, while everybody was trading up their video tapes for DVDs, Lucas once again released the trilogy on VHS with a 20-minute preview of Episode II even though he had just released Episode I on the newer format. It took until 2004 and the impending release of Episode III for Star Wars to finally make the leap to DVD in a packaged box set that included a fourth disc of bonus material.

But the release history of the trilogy is a story separate and apart from the concurrent history of the additions and changes Lucas performed on the movies between each subsequent release. For the 20th anniversary of Star Wars, the original trilogy made a triumphant return to the big screen with the so-called “Special Editions”. Lucas, claiming dissatisfaction with certain aspects of the films, used modern computer effects to augment or completely re-envision small details or entire scenes.  Further, the films were officially rebranded Episode IV: A New Hope, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and Episode VI: Return of the Jedi; so that the original trilogy would be better in line with the then in pre-production prequel trilogy.

Sometimes the changes were fairly innocuous; The Empire Strikes Back, for example, received only improved mattes for the exteriors of Cloud City and an elongated sequence involving Luke Skywalker and the Wampa creature on the ice planet Hoth. Most of the changes were regarded by many fans as a hatch job on movies that were pretty close to perfect as it was; the phrase, “George Lucas is raping my childhood,” was frequently used by the Internet fan community. In a New Hope, sequences in the Mos Eisley space port were given a CGI facelift to create a more vibrant metropolis; the climactic dog fight was given more zip and the destruction of the Death Star was given more bang for your buck. While these changes might have been harmless enough, fans were really irked by two things: the inclusion of a deleted scene featuring a CG Jabba the Hutt and the most egregious compromise of all, the bounty hunter Greedo firing at Han Solo and missing, as opposed to the original take where Han shoots first and last.

Storywise, it was important to draw a character distinction between Luke and Han; Luke as the daring do-gooder following his mentor on a “Damn fool idealistic crusade” and Han as the self-centred, cocksure space pirate who’s only along for the ride because he’s getting paid. Shooting Greedo just proves how far he’s willing to go to stay one step ahead in order to live and fight another day; once his safety’s assured, he can just toss a ten pence to the barkeep and walk away with a clean conscious. One of the reasons the triumphant, just-in-time return of the Millennium Falcon to save Luke from Darth Vader is so effective is because we really thought for a minute that he took the money and left. According to Lucas, the change in shooting order was over a matter of ambiguous morality in having a hero character killing another, albeit a bad guy, in cold blood. On the surface this sounds fine, but it kind of undermines Han’s character arc and defines Greedo as a relatively crappy bounty hunter if he can’t hit his target at point blank. As for the Jabba addition, let’s just say if it wasn’t for Lucas wanting to show off his digital toys, the scene would have been left on the cutting room floor because it adds nothing to the story and just reiterates stuff that was otherwise just said.

Speaking of pointless CG tinkering, we come to the changes made to Return of the Jedi, and while it didn’t contain as many alterations as A New Hope, they were at least as galling. In the scene in Jabba’s Palace, there’s a house band performing called Sy Snoodles and the Max Rebo band; in the original version, the band was pretty much three Muppets of varying alienness, but that wasn’t good enough for Mr. Lucas. For the special editions the Max Rebo band was promoted from an odd little jazz combo to a full-on musical revival, Lucas had apparently always wanted a big musical number in the middle of Star Wars; he thought it would be “funny”. The dead silence in the movie theatre was the sound of nobody laughing. It seemed that Lucas wanted Elton John to compose the piece titled “Jedi Rock”, but I somehow doubt even John could have saved that “improved” scene.

When the announcement came in 2003 that the original trilogy would hit DVD for the first time in the Fall of 2004, there was great elation because the versatility of the DVD format allowed filmmakers to have their cake and eat it to. Francis Ford Coppola gave us Apocalypse Now and then gave us the Redux version and Peter Jackson released the theatrical cut of each Lord of the Rings film before unveiling the Expanded Editions; fans hoped Lucas might see a pattern and give them the original cuts they loved and include the new versions he loved more. Alas, Lucas announced that this was not to be; those versions, according to the man himself, were meant to never see the light of day again.

In fact, Lucas did have surprises for fans in the DVD package—further tinkering with the movies by including prequel material, like having Hayden Christenson appear as Anakin’s ghost at the end of Jedi and getting Ian McDiarmid perform new dialogue as the Emperor in Empire. A further enraged fan community made their dissatisfaction known, but swallowed their rage to buy the special, special edition DVDs anyway, for it was clear that Lucas was going to be as good as his word in regards to the films’ theatrical cuts. But then came word earlier this year that Lucas was saying “uncle” and delivering 2-disc, sold-separately Star Wars, Empire and Jedi that contained the theatrical cut and the 2004 versions. So case closed, everybody’s happy now, right?

Not so much actually. The problem this time appears to be that Lucas was rather light on the technical specifications for these editions, like including the widescreen, but not anamorphic widescreen transfer and only Dolby 2.0 digital sound as opposed to the updated 5.0, exactly the same specifications as the laserdisc release of the trilogy in the 90s. Even Lucasfilm officials had to admit that the Man’s heart just wasn’t in these de-specialized editions because he considers the 2004 edits to be the “canonical” version of the original trilogy. So this can pretty much be interpreted as Lucas just paying lip service to the fans that so desperately wanted to see these films as they originally enjoyed them no matter what they thought of the special editions.

Just like the technical presentation, not much else has changed from one DVD release to another as the special features for each film are basically the same as the 2004 release, with the one exception of a demo for the new Lego Star Wars video game. Furthermore, the rumour mill has it that an all-new “archival edition” which will include further changes to all six movies will be released on Blu-ray in time for the 30th anniversary of Star Wars next year. Whether or not this collection will contain the theatrical cuts of the films as well is unknown, but either way it looks like fans will be digging back into their wallets to buy Star Wars again within the next year.

Much like Samuel L. Jackson’s final repose when confronted with a batch of poison ropes set loose on a 747, I think fans have reached a boiling point so far as the original Star Wars trilogy and its many, many variations goes. For what seems like the first time, there’s a low grumble from Star Wars fans about the logic and rational in being forced to buy yet another substandard triad of movies they already own four, maybe five times. Not so long ago, there would have been no grumbling or no debate, just the fact that there was a new edition of Star Wars and how much. Besides, how many more versions can there be? At least Peter Jackson stopped at two ,and there’s a whole ton of things in the Lord of the Rings books he could go back, film, and paste into a new extended, extended cut of the trilogy. With the release of the Special Editions, Lucas had this to say about his tinkering with the trilogy:

There will only be one. And it won't be what I would call the 'rough cut,' it'll be the 'final cut.' The other one will be some sort of interesting artifact that people will look at and say, 'There was an earlier draft of this.' The same thing happens with plays and earlier drafts of books. In essence, films never get finished, they get abandoned. At some point, you're dragged off the picture kicking and screaming while somebody says, 'Okay, it's done.' That isn't really the way it should work. Occasionally, [you can] go back and get your cut of the video out there, which I did on both American Graffiti and THX-1138; that's the place where it will live forever. So what ends up being important in my mind is what the DVD version is going to look like, because that's what everybody is going to remember. The other versions will disappear. Even the 35 million tapes of Star Wars out there won't last more than 30 or 40 years. A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD version [of the Special Edition], and you'll be able to project it on a 20' by 40' screen with perfect quality.

Certainly, Lucas has every right to take the movies he created and do with them as he sees fit, but his analogy is faulty. Sure there are early drafts of plays and books, practice versions of famous paintings, variant cover art for comic books and the like, but there comes a time where all artists let it go. They don’t “abandon” their works, as Lucas suggests. Instead, they move to the next work and the next challenge; they don’t constantly revisit a past work in a vain attempt to claim some degree of perfection that is probably always outside the person’s grasp to begin with. Lucas’ problem for a long time has been that he’s basically answerable to no one; he’s never had to justify his artistic or business decisions because the only one he has to justify it to is himself, and he’s cool with what he’s done.

So are these new editions worth your time and money? I guess if you’ve been waiting for the reissue of the theatrical cuts with baited breath since their last release a decade ago then go nuts; for everyone else, I wouldn’t waste the effort to get to the video store. To plunk down 25 bucks a piece for a 13-year old transfer and special features that I already have is of no interest to me; I’m too old to not be on to Lucas’ game by now. There’s been a lot of joking on message boards that there’s really no way to be sure that we’ve gotten the ultimate edition of Star Wars until the day after Lucas’ funeral. (But then again Tupac is still releasing new albums a decade after his death.)

I figure I have one more set of Star Wars buys left in me, and knowing my luck I’ll buy the Blu-ray discs and it’ll be HD-DVD that’ll be become the common, new format.