the crimes of george lucas ('90s on)

it's basically impossible to get your hands on a '77 release version of Star Wars now, right?

Watched a few minutes of Uncut -- cute, but points off for using that "Episode IV" shit in the crawl.

well you're not going to like that they remade the extended version either

I probably wdn't notice, haven't watched SW since the '90s

On the bright side, the "Episode IV" title crap was added in 1981, and afaik that was the only change that was made until the revisionist 90s

interesting, i grew up seeing the 'episode iv' in the beginning and just always assumed it was in the original theatrical release

GL was making Star Wars changes from day one. In 'Empire of Dreams' Mark Hamill talks about getting a call on opening day to schedule some time to re-do voice work for the mono release.

There hadn't been a popular space opus in eons when SW came out, Hollywood mostly expected it to stiff... so probably even Lucas wasn't confident enough to think he was gonna make 5 more.

also he invented the idea of the 'first trilogy' much later, come on now

I supposed so, but I haven't "read up"

I don't think Lucas was that confident in his ability to sell at all by that point. American Graffiti didn't really make up for the fact that THX 1138 was a battle where he wouldn't make cuts the studio wanted and then it bombed. The whole American Zoetrope enterprise had kind of bombed itself by the time he came around to Star Wars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_sequel_trilogy

Given the initial success of Star Wars, the pressure on Lucas to produce a sequel grew.[4] The extension of the initial film into a franchise, originally an homage, became a reality. Over time, conflicting reports concerning the number of sequels have been published.[4][6] In 1978, a Time magazine article reported that the newly formed Star Wars Corp. would be producing "Star Wars II, and then, count them, ten other planned sequels."[7] By the release of The Empire Strikes Back, Nicholas Wapshott was writing that "at least a further six films are planned." Wapshott noted that the stories were different from the original Hollywood serials by having individual stories despite their overall arc: "Star Wars may be the first feature film serial made up of consecutive stories."[4] In 1983 the nine-film saga was reported by a Time article[8] and The Times review of Return of the Jedi,[9] in The Washington Post[10] and the "9-film epic saga" plan continued to be repeated into the late 20th century and early 2000s.[11][12][13] The authors of the 1983 Time article briefly described the prequel trilogy, which they said would portray the "political intrigue and Machiavellian plotting that led to the downfall of the once-noble Republic." Of the sequel trilogy, they wrote, "Their main theme will be the necessity for moral choices and the wisdom needed to distinguish right from wrong. There was never any doubt in the films already made; in those the lines were sharply drawn, comic-book-style. Luke Skywalker, who will then be the age Obi-Wan Kenobi is now, some place in his 60s, will reappear, and so will his friends, assuming that the creator decides to carry the epic further."[8]

apparently as early as 1978 they were talking about a bazillion other Star Wars movies but the whole triple trilogy thing didn't get codified until 1983

http://webspace.webring.com/people/vm/mikebeidler/starwarsliteraturecompendium/blmcnty2.jpg

Can't find the first two panels, but here's the payoff

I think the real crime of george lucas was to not admit he has a mental defect that causes him to wake up every morning and NOT think "hey I'm kind of tired of Star Wars, how about if I give it a rest"

Oh wait, here it is:

http://webspace.webring.com/people/vm/mikebeidler/starwarsliteraturecompendium/blmcnty1.jpg

it's basically impossible to get your hands on a '77 release version of Star Wars now, right?

i found it on vhs at goodwill a couple weeks ago for $1

I don't think the originals are on blu-ray but you can still buy the DVD dual pack, I believe.

Ah yes, the infamous DVD where they used the crappiest original transfer they could for the non-SE's.

And I believe also screwed up its aspect ratio

Is the preferred approach for SW fans still to download cleaned-up copies of the laserdiscs? lol

Yes it is and its a reason why there's such a long thread of hate devoted to George Lucas.

There is a "Despecialized" version from the usual channels online

Pretty sure the Holiday Special is what made it clear to him that he couldn't just pass Star Wars off to other filmmakers, which was his original plan. At first he wanted it to be like James Bond, with different people making SW movies, maybe in sequence, maybe prequels, maybe following different characters and stories, etc. The absolute disaster of the Holiday Special sort of put a nail in the coffin and solidified the 'This is my vision' aspect of the whole thing. I think that's the best explanation, really.

yeah, but Empire was largely handled by other filmmakers and screenwriters b/c he was working on Raiders of the Lost Ark on another part of the planet, and is a reason why that film is the best.

I was reading something elsewhere about how Lucas' divorce being one of the most important ones in Hollywood in the last 30 years. You had the most powerful independent(sorta) filmmaker severing connections with the one person in existence who could tell him "no." After that, he could happily wander off into any batshit unregulated direction he wanted.

Hell, Marcia Lucas saved SW, and one of the rumored reasons why Lucas kept/keeps changing & re-editing the flick is to get her name offa the credits and cut off her royalties.

^^ this seems really likely and more so than bad critical reception, because if that was the case, he would have seriously rethought his ep2/ep3 strategies. From what I've gathered, the only people to push back successfully against his impulses have been women -- Leigh Brackett was apparently responsible for the majority of the Empire Strikes Back script with some editing/completion by Lucas and screenplay work by Kasdan.

Eh, most of Brackett's script didn't make it through to the shooting script. A lot of ideas were jettisoned and I don't recall much of the dialogue sticking around. You can read it here. Kasdan didn't work from her script at all on his version.

And not only that, but Kershner and the actors did a lot of revising right on the set.

I stand corrected!

short version of how Marcia L saved SW?

Star Wars was originally slated for release in Christmas 1976; however, delays pushed the film's release to summer 1977. Already anxious about meeting his deadline, Lucas was shocked when editor John Jympson's first cut of the film was a "complete disaster". According to an article in Star Wars Insider #41 by David West Reynolds, this first edit of Star Wars contained about 30-40% different footage from the final version. This included scenes that have never been seen elsewhere along with alternate takes of existing scenes. After attempting to persuade Jympson to cut the film his way, Lucas replaced him with Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew. He also allowed his then-wife Marcia Lucas to aid the editing process while she was cutting the film New York, New York with Lucas's friend Martin Scorsese.

there's a bunch of stuff about Marcia being critical to the editing process in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls iirc

"Star Wars may be the first feature film serial made up of consecutive stories."

I find this funny because I think of The Empire Strikes Back as the canonical (and first?) example of "Make one film - it does well - declare it a trilogy and end the second with TO BE CONTINUED". Not as bad as the Matrix's "Make the second film twice as long and cut it in half somewhere", but still definitely a thing.

Also I had assumed that the Part IV was initially the same sort of thing as "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away", a cheap way to give depth to the backdrop using the Magic of Words.

The Star Wars website used to have (er, ten years ago) a collection of "behind the scenes" recollections of the casts for the films - pretty much all the Empire ones are "And then Kershner thought of something or let one of the ad-libs (like "I know"!) stick and everything was better".

Empire is amazing and awesome, but i bet there were some moviegoers back in the day that thought "I am your father" was an irredeemably silly shark jump moment.

literally no one thought this

Yeah you are probably right. But Lucas had similar fears about Yoda.

I was interested in why Obi-Wan lied, and his weak-ass plea in Jedi ("he killed the SPIRIT of Anakin") kinda ended things for me

haha imagine if the prequel trilogy had actually existed

"Why did he lie to me?"
"Apparently he chopped yr dad's arms and logs off, then let lava wash over him"
"... oh"

Poor Ewan. They made Obi Wan as dull as dishwater in the prequels.

I was interested in why Obi-Wan lied, and his weak-ass plea in Jedi ("he killed the SPIRIT of Anakin") kinda ended things for me

"what i told you was true... from a certain point of view" is iirc how obi wan's totally lame explanation to luke begins.

And Lucas kinda lampshades it in Revenge of the Sith:

YODA: Destroy the Sith, we must.

OBI-WAN: Send me to kill the Emperor. I will not kill Anakin.

YODA: To fight this Lord Sidious, strong enough, you are not.

OBI-WAN: He is like my brother ... I cannot do it.

YODA: Twisted by the dark side, young Skywalker has become. The boy you trained, gone he is . . . Consumed by Darth Vader.

Empire is amazing and awesome, but i bet there were some moviegoers back in the day that thought "I am your father" was an irredeemably silly shark jump moment.

HI DERE.

I may be the only person on ILX who has consistently thought that all the SW films outside of the very first non-special Star Wars were complete horseshit.

they really missed a great opportunity to humanize Kenobi with his explanation of why he lied.

interesting, i grew up seeing the 'episode iv' in the beginning and just always assumed it was in the original theatrical release

― Gukbe a lady tonight (some dude), Monday, January 23, 2012 5:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

this completely changes my understanding of the universe

One of the bits that ML helped was her suggestion that George changed how he was editing it. I can't remember the line, but the difference in approach is between cutting to the action vs cutting to the dialogue. Marcia had him switch it up and the film improved by leaps and bounds.

The Red Letter Media/Plinkett vid on RotS really gets into how lazy/shitty he's gotten as a director, and how him wanting to shoot everything on green screen cramped a lot. It really is worth watching.

Shooting everything on green screen & computer compositing is also how they made early 90s computer game cinematics. Check out Luke Skywalker in something that's basically a primordial version of the prequels style:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpxItq_r7to

lolololol correct

i played those games growing up and was like "...................."

then i saw the prequels and was like ".................."

Aw, I liked WIng Commander III.

Still, games in the mid-90s were lousy with FMV crap. If you want a giggle, check out the cast for Privateer 2.

Yeah, give me the stilted cartoon opening animations of Wing Commander II any day.

i liked wing commander 3 a lot, i have been trying to torrent it for 1+ years

just saying