Monday, Sept. 27, 2004 | 8:23 a.m.
I used to believe that George Lucas and Luke Skywalker, his film creation in the first "Star Wars" films, were mirror images.
Both were once wide-eyed innocents who rebelled against the oppression of institutional constraint.
Lucas fought for his art against the old Hollywood studio system, while Skywalker waged war against the evil galactic Empire. Take your pick of which villain was more ruthless.
Then Lucas began work on his "Star Wars" prequels, the chronicles of how Anakin Skywalker, Luke's father, is seduced by the Dark Side of the Force and, ultimately, transformed into the villainous Darth Vader.
And now I can only wonder if, even on a subconscious level, Lucas is telling his own story.
Lucas, 60, has changed in much the same way Anakin changed, becoming an agent of the Dark Side (in this case, money) who destroys much of what he loves in the process.
The latest example is the release of the "Star Wars" OT (original trilogy) on DVD.
Since DVDs emerged as more than a high-tech novelty in the late 1990s, the OT consistently has been the most requested release in the format, according to industry sources.
While Lucas maintained the movies wouldn't be available until a few years after he was finished with the prequels in 2005, thousands of fans myself included went so far as to sign Internet petitions urging him to reconsider his stance.
If "Battle Beyond the Stars," a Roger Corman knockoff of the "Star Wars" movies, was on DVD, why couldn't the OT be made available?
Lucas finally relented, releasing the DVDs on Tuesday and his reason is rather telling: money.
"A lot of people are getting very worried about piracy," Lucas told the Associated Press in a recent interview about the DVD releases. "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."
DVD wars
Putting aside his intentions, I was still more than happy to grab a copy of the "Star Wars" DVD set on Tuesday morning. A clerk in the DVD section of Fry's was handing out the boxed sets faster than she could restock them. And a checkout woman said nearly every customer she'd helped in the two hours since the store opened purchased a DVD boxed set. Clearly the Force is with Lucas in terms of sales.
As for the DVDs themselves ... they prompt a mixed response.
Lucas claims he was never happy with the films as they were originally released in 1977, 1980 and 1983. So in 1997 he released the "Special Edition" of the films into theaters. Each film had polished special effects, along with additional scenes -- the most infamous being the Han Solo-Greedo face-off in the cantina in "Star Wars: Episode IV -- A New Hope."
Lucas, though, apparently never liked the fact that Han shot first.
"The thing that really caused the trouble on 'Star Wars' is the whole question of whether Han Solo or Greedo shoots first," Lucas said in a recent Entertainment Weekly interview. "The way it got cobbled together at the time, it came off that (Han) fired first. He didn't fire first. (When I made 'Star Wars') I said, 'Well, I don't have that shot, so I'll just, you know, fudge it editorially.' In my mind (Greedo) shot first or at the same time."
So the director corrected the editing gaffe for the "Special Edition" release, having Greedo, a deadly bounty hunter sitting 2 feet away from Han, shoot first and blindly miss his target by several feet. An instant later, Han fires and kills his would-be assailant.
The "corrected" sequence is laughable in its implausibility.
For the DVD release, Lucas makes a second attempt at correcting the mistake, and this time the results are more realistic. Greedo still fires first, but narrowly misses Han before he's blasted an instant later.
There are additional changes to the DVD as well, such as using Ian McDiarmid as the Emperor in a holographic cameo in "The Empire Strikes Back." This makes sense since it's McDiarmid who plays the evil Emperor/Senator Palpatine in "Return of the Jedi" and the prequels.
In the original film, the Emperor was played by a woman in a mask and voiced by actor Clive Revill.
Of course, this raises a larger question: Does an artist have the right to continually tamper with his or her work? Would Leonardo Da Vinci have gone back years later to touch up his paintings? Would Shakespeare have brushed up his works decades after they were published?
"Filmmaking is a tricky business," said Francisco Menendez, chair of the department of film at UNLV. "(Sometimes) the audiences become so immersed in the film that they believe they own the story. And when all of sudden somebody goes and makes Greedo shoot first and not Han Solo, we're like, 'Hey, that's not the way it happened.' It's almost like we had a memory and somebody is fussing with it.
"On the other hand, filmmakers are never done. If directors are allowed, they'll continue tinkering, it's almost like playing with food. And new technology has allowed that to happen."
It's not just "Star Wars" that has been affected by this technology.
Steven Spielberg enhanced the special effects in his re-release of "E.T.: The Extra- Terrestrial" in 2002. He also digitally removed handguns from the belts of government agents, replacing them with keys.
The director, though, still had the good sense to release both the original film and its newer edition on DVD.
Advances in CGI technology also allowed Lucas to revisit his pre-"Star Wars" past, 1971's "THX-1138," his first studio release.
More experimental than commercial, "THX" is the cautionary tale of an emotionally crippled society, where happiness equates to consumerism and government-prescribed drugs numb all feelings.
For the DVD release Lucas glitzed up the special effects with background shots of computer-generated cars and buildings to give the underground city more scope.
The changes, though, are more nuance than structural, akin to repainting a wall.
With "Star Wars," however, Lucas isn't merely adding coats of paint, but gutting walls and adding and deleting rooms at will.
Quite simply, it's not the house in which I grew up.
And the DVDs are not the original trilogy, at least as I and millions of others waited hours in line to see in theaters decades ago.
They are revisions. "Star Wars 3.0," if you will.
Meanwhile, Lucas refuses to release the films as they were originally shown.
"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 time, we're talking millions of dollars here, the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn't really exist anymore," he told the AP. "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."
Taking that logic, the "Special Edition" movies weren't really the finished films, either, because Lucas made additional changes to the DVDs.
And what happens in another few years when Lucas releases yet another version of the trilogy, as is rumored?
How long will he continue to tamper with the integrity of the films? When will perfect be perfect enough? Probably as long as there's a public willing to pay for it.
Decades ago Lucas espoused the perils of consumerism and eschewed the Hollywood studio mentality. Today he oversees the billions generated by his films and merchandising empire.
Still, I cling to the hope that Lucas will come to his senses. And that the once visionary filmmaker will return to making magical movies in the present and stop tarnishing his past.
That someone will get through to Lucas and help him see the error of his ways.
After all, if Darth Vader can be saved, how difficult can it be to save a director?
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