Tuesday, Sep. 07, 2004
He looks as if he might die. Gaunt and grim, young George Lucas paces the set of Star Wars, in Pinewood Studios near London. He and everyone else know the movie is hurtling toward chaos. His favorite toys — R2D2 and C-3P0 — keep breaking. The actors are fretting because he won't talk to them. (Carrie Fisher recalls that Lucas "lost his voice at one point. We didn't know that for days.") Industrial Light & Magic, his band of cybergeeks back in Los Angeles, hasn't finished its computer shots — because ILM is still building the computers. The 20th Century Fox board of directors is sending unhelpful memos (e.g., the Wookie should wear pants). The Fox boss, Alan Ladd Jr., has insisted that the last two weeks of principal shooting be done in one manic week. And the frail 32-year-old with a galaxy of ideas in his head seems near implosion. As Mark Hamill recalls, "He really looked like he was ready to burst into tears."
That was 1976, as portrayed in the new documentary Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy. On May 25, 1977, Star Wars opened, and it instantly altered the way Hollywood would do business, tell stories, reinvent reality. Yet at first the moguls didn't understand the revolution Lucas kick-started. "George was enormously farsighted," Gareth Wigan, the Fox executive on the Star Wars set, says in the documentary. "The studio wasn't, because they didn't know the world was changing. George did know the world was changing. I mean, he changed it."
He keeps making history, and changing it. On Sept. 21, Lucasfilm Ltd. will release the Star Wars Trilogy on DVD — unquestionably the most eagerly anticipated debut in the dominant home-movie format. (Last weekend, more than two weeks before it could be shipped, the box set was No. 1 in Amazon.com DVD sales.) The films — Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi — will look sharper than ever. They will be adorned with many beguiling extras, such as an interactive video game, Battlefront, the making-of documentary and a peek at next year's completion of the saga, Revenge of the Sith — which, whatever you've heard, will be the series' final chapter.
Be warned: this is not your dweeby uncle's or your inner child's Star Wars. Not the trilogy that opened in 1977, 1980 and 1983, but the newer improved special editions of 1997, the ones with some new footage and updated computer effects. Says Jim Ward, president of LucasArts: "Those are the versions of the film [George] had always envisioned. It's really an artist's prerogative."
In the documentary Lucas speaks of perfecting "things that I had to give up on because I just didn't have the time or money or the power." The DVDs have even newer shots that tie elements of Lucas' first trilogy and his more recent one — you may be able to spot a cameo by a current star who was in diapers when Jedi was made — to make the grand story line flow more coherently.
This kind of coherence begets controversy among the caretakers of movie tradition. For them, New is never Improved, and Lucas' decision to release the updated films without the cherished originals is sacrilege. (Steven Spielberg, who updated his E.T. in 2002, issued a DVD with both versions.) "Sure, the effects work isn't up to today's standards, but it's the effects work that we saw," says Harry Knowles, geek in chief of the movie website AintItCoolNews. "It's about the preservation of the original art."
For many fans, the purest film in the four-disc package will be the documentary, directed by Kevin Burns. This 2-hr. 34min. making-of masterpiece, of which 1 hr. 30 min. will be aired as a special on the A&E network next Sunday, contains illuminating interviews with Lucas and more than 40 actors, technicians, friends and commentators, as well as screen tests and outtakes from the filmmaker's archives. Lucas, whose first professional gig was directing a making-of film of Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People, commissioned his own 16-mm document on the shooting of Star Wars. Some of that footage appears here. In a way, Lucas was the first Star Wars collecto-maniac. And Burns was the second. In the late '70s he dove into Dumpsters for posters and trailers, many of which are used to ornament this film.
Burns (no relation to the documentarian brothers Ken and Ric) traces the origins of the saga that started as a handwritten proposal, called The Star Wars, that made the studio rounds in 1973. Universal and United Artists passed on it, but Ladd said yes, famously giving Lucas the merchandising rights that made the filmmaker's fortune. Lucas spent half a year casting the film, testing young actors: William Katt for Luke, Cindy Williams and Terri Nunn for Leia, Kurt Russell and Perry King for Han Solo. He went with Hamill, Fisher and an actor friend who had dropped by to pitch lines to the other aspirants: Harrison Ford. After a hellish location shoot in Tunisia, where Sir Alec Guinness (as Obi-Wan Kenobi) held the crew together with his graciousness and star quality, shooting moved to Pinewood, and the real ordeal began.
"The first cut of Star Wars," Burns' narrator says, "was an unmitigated disaster." Lucas fired the original editor and hired a trio of cutters, including his wife Marcia. The director suffered severe chest pains and was found to have hypertension and exhaustion. But he had no time to rest; to finish the effects he had to lean hard on the ILM team. "George was our general," recalls effects maven Ken Ralston. "We were his soldiers. And we're all fighting this single battle to get this film out." The film did come out, with results you know. At around the same time, Lucas' marriage collapsed.
Burns sees parallels between the filmmaker and his creation: Lucas and Luke. "Luke took this journey of battling the empire, and Lucas battled to prove that there was another way of doing things," he says. "Both led this band of people who share his faith." For Lucas, the memory of Star Wars is not the revelation of fantasy and fun that it was for viewers in 1977, but an anguished series of compromises and chest pains. Isn't it natural he would want to change that — to make the films better, by his lights, but also to rewrite in his mind the physically and spiritually painful experience he endured? To keep changing Star Wars is anathema to many fans, but to Lucas it may be the highest form of therapy.
The Associated Press
Updated: 2:51 p.m. ET Sept. 15, 2004SAN RAFAEL, Calif. - George Lucas never figured on a 30-year career as a space pilot. Once “Star Wars” shot into hyperspace, though, he found it hard to come back down to Earth.
Making its DVD debut Tuesday, Lucas’ original sci-fi trilogy — “Star Wars,” “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi” — began as an experimental foray into old-time studio moviemaking for Lucas, whose first two films had been far removed from usual Hollywood sensibilities.
“I’d already started this other idea, which was to do a kind of a classic action adventure film using sets,” Lucas said over lunch at his 2,600-acre Skywalker Ranch. “I’d never worked on a set, I’d never worked at a studio. Never made a traditional movie. So I said, ‘I’m going to do this once, just to see what it’s like, what it’s like to actually design everything, work on a soundstage, do an old-fashioned 1930s movie.
“And I’ll do it in that mode from the 1930s Saturday matinee serials, using kind of 1930s and ’40s sensibilities, and I’ll base it on sort of mythological motifs and icons. I’ll just put it together in a modern form, and I’ll have fun. That’s how I got into that. I did it because it was an interesting move into an area that I thought I’d never go into.”
Three decades later, Lucas is preparing to launch the last of his six “Star Wars” films. Next summer brings “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith,” completing the prequel trilogy that tells the story of young Anakin Skywalker’s metamorphosis into the villainous Darth Vader of the original three films.
Fans have eagerly awaited the first three “Star Wars” films on DVD, a release Lucas initially intended to delay until he finished “Episode III.”
Some will be miffed that the original theatrical versions are not included in the “Star Wars” boxed set, which features only the special-edition versions Lucas issued in the late 1990s, with added effects and footage, including a scene between Harrison Ford’s Han Solo and crime lord Jabba the Hutt in the first “Star Wars.”
AP: Why did you change your mind and decide to put the original three movies out on DVD now?
Lucas: Just because the market has shifted so dramatically. A lot of people are getting very worried about piracy. That has really eaten dramatically into the sales. It really just came down to, there may not be a market when I wanted to bring it out, which was like, three years from now. So rather than just sit by and watch the whole thing fall apart, better to bring it out early and get it over with.
AP: Why did you rework the original trilogy into the special-edition versions in the late 1990s?
Lucas: To me, the special edition ones are the films I wanted to make. Anybody that makes films knows the film is never finished. It’s abandoned or it’s ripped out of your hands, and it’s thrown into the marketplace, never finished. It’s a very rare experience where you find a filmmaker who says, “That’s exactly what I wanted. I got everything I needed. I made it just perfect. I’m going to put it out there.” And even most artists, most painters, even composers would want to come back and redo their work now. They’ve got a new perspective on it, they’ve got more resources, they have better technology, and they can fix or finish the things that were never done. ... I wanted to actually finish the film the way it was meant to be when I was originally doing it. At the beginning, people went, “Don’t you like it?” I said, “Well, the film only came out to be 25 or 30 percent of what I wanted it to be.” They said, “What are you talking about?” So finally, I stopped saying that, but if you read any interviews for about an eight- or nine-year period there, it was all about how disappointed I was and how unhappy I was and what a dismal experience it was. You know, it’s too bad you need to get kind of half a job done and never get to finish it. So this was my chance to finish it.
AP: Why not release both the originals and special editions on DVD?
Lucas: The special edition, that’s the one I wanted out there. The other movie, it’s on VHS, if anybody wants it. ... I’m not going to spend the, we’re talking millions of dollars here, the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it. But I want it to be the way I want it to be. I’m the one who has to take responsibility for it. I’m the one who has to have everybody throw rocks at me all the time, so at least if they’re going to throw rocks at me, they’re going to throw rocks at me for something I love rather than something I think is not very good, or at least something I think is not finished.
AP: Do you pay much attention to fan reactions to your choices?
Lucas: Not really. The movies are what the movies are. ... The thing about science-fiction fans and “Star Wars” fans is they’re very independent-thinking people. They all think outside the box, but they all have very strong ideas about what should happen, and they think it should be their way. Which is fine, except I’m making the movies, so I should have it my way.
AP: After “Episode III,” will you ever revisit “Star Wars”?
Lucas: Ultimately, I’m going to probably move it into television and let other people take it. I’m sort of preserving the feature film part for what has happened and never go there again, but I can go off into various offshoots and things. You know, I’ve got offshoot novels, I’ve got offshoot comics. So it’s very easy to say, “Well, OK, that’s that genre, and I’ll find a really talented person to take it and create it.” Just like the comic books and the novels are somebody else’s way of doing it. I don’t mind that. Some of it might turn out to be pretty good. If I get the right people involved, it could be interesting.
Live Vote
Should George Lucas have released the original versions of his "Star Wars" movies? * 1184 responses
AP: Why not release both the originals and special editions on DVD?
Lucas: The special edition, that’s the one I wanted out there. The other movie, it’s on VHS, if anybody wants it. ... I’m not going to spend the, we’re talking millions of dollars here, the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it. But I want it to be the way I want it to be. I’m the one who has to take responsibility for it. I’m the one who has to have everybody throw rocks at me all the time, so at least if they’re going to throw rocks at me, they’re going to throw rocks at me for something I love rather than something I think is not very good, or at least something I think is not finished.
AP: Do you pay much attention to fan reactions to your choices?
Lucas: Not really. The movies are what the movies are. ... The thing about science-fiction fans and “Star Wars” fans is they’re very independent-thinking people. They all think outside the box, but they all have very strong ideas about what should happen, and they think it should be their way. Which is fine, except I’m making the movies, so I should have it my way.
I like the one about, at least if I'm gonnna have rocks thrown at me, I'm gonna have rocks thrown at me for something I love {paraphrasing}
That's great. I mean, it is his baby. I write and do visual arts and I tweak stuff all the time. Most of the OT changes I totally agree with. Most are just asthetic anyway, like opening up Bespin, very very good idea. The musical number, all right, maybe it wasn't what it could be, but whatever, I can stomach it. The whole Greedo thing has come to a moderately ok comprimise, I can live with the DVD version. I love the Jabba scene in ANH, when I read the script I really wanted to actually see it. I mean, overall, the changes really aren't that bad. The core movie is still there, the archetype heroes are there. The drama is there. The struggle is there. The mysticism of the force is there. The real deep reasons why its become a cultural phenonmenon are still there. So what if he wants to change a few minor details and asthetics? We still get chills when we hear Vader's speech in ESB to Luke. We still go wow that's evil every time an imperial officer hits the deck clutching his throat (some of us even still laugh at that!). We still love AT-AT's, Yoda, all of it's still there. So I don't see why everyone is so MILITANT about changes. And I know some people understand, and I understand not liking EVERY change, but all in all, does it really need to go past, "yeah, I wasn't to thrilled about __________ being changed". I mean, you can still enjoy them as a whole. Everything that bore its' way into your subconcious, all the mythology, its still there. I just don't see how people get so angry about the changes. Ok, it's not minute for minute the originals, but does the Death Star still get destroyed? Is Luke still a hero? Is Vader still a bad mother-shut your mouth? Is Lando still a space pimp? Doesn't the Empire still tople at the end of ROTJ? Ok, then why do people get so worked up over such, when you really look at it, minor touches?
OT DVD release article
Sep 8th, 2004 02:24 AM
