An interesting debate really.
I would say that while I certainly enjoy the original Star Wars Trilogy, Indiana Jones Trilogy, and Terminator Franchise, etc that there is something lost. A bad sequel, prequel, or relentless unnecessary alteration certainly does have a negative effect on my love of a film series. It's difficult to remove myself enough from the changes/ bad choices to not be adversely affected by them. Let's face it, we all love these kinds of movies! If we didn't, forums like this wouldn't exist, and we wouldn't debate endlessly about the films that inspired us. No one can deny that fact, and if you do, you're being willfully ignorant.
But with that being said, that's why I choose to keep my collection of films to be the versions that I grew and fell in love with. With the exception of having high def captures and up to date pictures for prop, costume, and model replications, I try and keep my collection to the kinds of source materials that I had at the peak of my fandom. And by peak, I mean the time where I felt so confident in the abilities of my favorite directors that to me they could do no wrong.
Its been really fun to rekindle that sense of wonder by having source materials or novels, or resources that at the time I wished could have been more in depth, or had better pictures of the props/ costumes I'd always loved. Part of what makes that sense of wonder reignite is the fact that they didn't have all the information I wanted. It brings me back to a time where my imagination could fill in the gaps and in my mind I could come up with any story I felt fit into the context of what I did know.
In some ways it's been really great to explore new films in series that I love. It was exciting to go see the prequels on opening night. Who wouldn't be? This was a BRAND NEW STAR WARS MOVIE! But when they were over, I think a lot of what disappointed me was the fact that it cemented what would considered canon. And there was no undoing that. Now what I'd imagined would never be.
While we should choose to be knowledgeable, in the case of fantasy and imaginative story telling, sometimes less is more. To be able to fill in those gaps that we never knew with our own stories was a huge part of what made us love those films so much. With the advent of DVD and the internet, it has been a boon to those of us who want to create and own a piece of our favorite worlds. Now we can source exact materials for our replicas. But while that has given us great leaps and bounds into having the best props, models, and costumes available, we've also traded our sense of wonder for it.
So to those who still lament the lousy follow-ups, let down prequels, or alterations of their favorite films I suggest to think of a time where it seemed like there was nothing else in the world more important than those movies you loved growing up. Think long and hard about the storybooks you used to collect, or the expanded universe novels you used to read, the action figures you used to display, or the magazines that had great photos of the props and costumes you loved so much. Buy them. You don't need all of them. Just the ones that mattered most to you. The books that you read over and over. Even if they don't hold up to your story telling sensibilities as an adult just revisit them as a way to remember that excitement you felt when you first read them. And watch the movies. The versions you sat and watched growing up, thinking all the while how exciting it was to see Luke Skywalker ignite his lightsaber for the first time. Or watching Indiana Jones outrun that giant boulder in the beginning of Raiders. More often than not, what we miss about those first excited viewings of our favorite film were the memories attached to them.
There are reasons for why we love these things, and thankfully those reasons tend to run far deeper, and hold a place in our hearts that goes far beyond any disappointment from a lackluster sequel. Those reasons are really memories, and we can access them anytime we want.
