In his mind he did, though. When they included those old laserdisc transfers on the 2004 release.
Unaltered Original Star Wars Trilogy on Blu Ray?
- Thread starter Edraven99
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In his mind he did, though. When they included those old laserdisc transfers on the 2004 release.
Has anyone considered that he only had a handful of film ideas to boot? I mean the guy comes from a background in art house movies with little in the way of narrative and he's been revising his biggest success from its inception until moments before he sold ownership.
His contemporaries made tons of other films but as a director, a filmmaker/ writer, he never really went that far. Now he did build all these companies, produced, and raised a family but as a filmmaker alone he never came up with a lot of varied content.
Perhaps the need to revise SW constantly was because he'd run out of ideas? I'm not suggesting it was a good idea to do so, but merely positing a motivation to explain why he made those choices.
His contemporaries made tons of other films but as a director, a filmmaker/ writer, he never really went that far. Now he did build all these companies, produced, and raised a family but as a filmmaker alone he never came up with a lot of varied content.
Perhaps the need to revise SW constantly was because he'd run out of ideas? I'm not suggesting it was a good idea to do so, but merely positing a motivation to explain why he made those choices.
In my opinion, George’s best work is only being seen now, in his smaller, more personal films that he said he would be making when he sold Lucasfilm:
I think Josh Robert Thompson's theory is likely correct. He had the idea that the Prequels were actually those small independent experimental films that he always claimed he was going to make one day. The only part of George's statement that wasn't true is that they wouldn't be seen by anyone. I mean George did by all accounts get to make his movies, his way, without interference from anyone. Who knows?
That romaine review though! Freaking brilliant!!!
That romaine review though! Freaking brilliant!!!
Right, right. I was even hearing Queen's "Flash!" in my head as I was typing that. Train of thought jumped the tracks.He couldn't make Flash Gordon, not Buck Rogers.
If one steps back and looks at the entire timeline of his work, it's pretty apparent his first four films, ish, were "his". THX certainly is. It's about as impenetrably '60s/'70s art-house thinkpiece philosophy wank vignette as you can get, up there with other luminaries of the period. American Graffiti, Star Wars, and Indiana
Empire he made because he wanted money and it was something he could do in a setting he had created, but he'd already moved on in his head to the jungle-adventure serial and delegated much of Empire to others. ROTJ and the Prequels are definitely technical masterpieces, but they're not very well-written or creatively shot. He wasn't "trying" any more. Too far away from his original inspiration, too many changes (making Anakin and Vader one person, for instance, or not having the big Wookiee battle) for him to still feel as invested. Plinkett is spot-on when he shows George and Rick and some of the ILM and Lucasfilm folks sitting in the screening room looking at the climax of TPM and you can see that they're not liking what they're seeing. They're uncomfortable, something's off, it's not going the way it should. And no one knew how to work their way back out of that corner they'd painted themselves into.
Star Wars and Graffiti he tried to "fix" because he wasn't happy with how restricted he was in what he was able to do at the time. I'm honestly a little surprised he never released a "Director's Cut" of Star Wars where he undid Marcia and Richard's re-edit (well.... he did put the Jabba scene back in Star Wars...). He tweaked Empire and Jedi for much the same reason, once Fox told him "all three or none" for his restoration project that became the Special Editions. But we've known, uncomfortably, for some time that the "genius" of Star Wars and Empire was the team he built that he was a part of. That those films wouldn't exist, or be as good, if it had been only him or everyone but him. The first hint of "George's Star Wars" was ROTJ, increased in the Special Editions and TPM: Speed, slapstick, and laser swords. It is telling, to me, that the substantive alterations people working on the Special Editions were pushing for -- like the cleaned up death of Obi-Wan or Yavin being in the sky during the end battle -- ended up not being completed, but George made sure we got the ronto photobomb, the replaced Wolfman, the droid smacking the other droid, the wampa reveal, and "Jedi Rocks".
I am pretty sure that when he looks at the first two films, he sees everyone else's hands all over them, knows if it weren't for them the films wouldn't exist, and kept looking for ways he could reclaim them a little more, and never wholly satisfied with the result. Hence the Special Editions as released, then as released on home-video, then as released on DVD, then as released on BluRay, then as they are now on Disney+ -- George's final edit. Six clear revisions, and probably more subtle tweaks between. Never mind alternate sound mixes and dialogue that's been out there since the beginning. I feel like a choose-your-own-Star-Wars is about the only way to go forward from here. *lol* Give everyone all the takes, all the camera angles, all the sound mixes and alternate dialogue, all the cut scenes, and a stripped-down editing software suite, and let 'em learn elementary filmmaking... How it's ultimately the editor who makes the movie we see -- but he's limited to what the director and cinematographer shot, and they're limited to what the writer(s) wrote and what the actors can give them.
The only way we'll likely get an unaltered (which first-release version, though?) OT is through fan efforts like the ones discussed the last couple pages. George isn't interested in those films, and Lucasfilm won't violate his "vision".
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That's dancing around his original motivations. When he couldn't be a race car driver, because of his eyesight, and became the photographer for his local track. How he saw what the guy who filmed the races, who he shared darkroom and assembly space with, did with the footage from the multiple cameras set up around the track, he got fascinated with editing, how the editor controlled what people see. That's what he went to USC for. That's what he and Marcia did for their bread and butter day jobs. He basically wanted to be a documentarian (see Redtails). The rough-cut of Star Wars looks like a war documentary. It's slow and plodding in all the places a History Channel special on WWII or Vietnam tends to be. He created ILM for the technical tools he needed. He's always been more about filmmaking technology than the films themselves. They're a means to... a different means.
He's a nerd who always just wanted to screw around with other nerds and come up with new ways to do the thing. He just needed to make things with enough commercial appeal to keep being able to tinker. He's always uncomfortably walked that knife-edge. On the one hand, he's awkward with all the attention and doesn't really know what to do with it. On the other, he knows he needs it to keep being able to do the stuff he wants to do and also get a whole valley between him and his neighbors.
I didn't know the early part about his life. I knew the broad strokes. The car accident that changed his perspective on life and becoming more serious. Looking for a purpose. I wasn't aware that he made his living as an editor in his early career though but it makes sense.
I've long maintained that as much as I love it, Star Wars isn't his real film making legacy. His technological innovations are far greater than his creative work because it paved the way for countless others to make their dreams become a reality. I'll always admire him for that.
I've long maintained that as much as I love it, Star Wars isn't his real film making legacy. His technological innovations are far greater than his creative work because it paved the way for countless others to make their dreams become a reality. I'll always admire him for that.
A lot of true movie “magic” back then to be sure. It’s still rather stunning it all came together and was such a catalyst for all that came after. Thinking such a thing only happens once a lifetime.
This. Even he's gone on record many times to say that he's more of an editor than a director. I think a combination of his love of racing and animation (something he's also deeply interested in) worked in his favor to be an editor because he knew when and how to cut on action. Many anecdotes have been told by actors working with him, at the end of takes, he'll ask them, "Is that how you want to do it?" and if they say 'yes,' he'll move on to setting up the next stuff. His "directing" is more or less collecting material so that he can make the movie in post. He's always been reluctant about doing it.
Having said that, he is definitely a visual type of person. We all wouldn't be here if it weren't for what he still managed to capture even if he isn't like Coppola or Scorsese.
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Between graduating from USC and making the cinematic version of THX, he was working at American Zoetrope up in the Bay Area. Everyone wore every hat there, but he stayed on the technical side of things. Coppola told him he needed to actually write a movie and actually direct a movie to get a proper sense of what he needed to tell those people he needed in the editing bay. Paraphrasing. Those are two things George always was uncomfortable with. Bullet-pointing ideas, jotting down notes during a boring lecture -- that was one thing. But actually working through the whole process of banging out a script was tedious and often frustrating. As directing meant interacting with people and being able to clearly communicate what he wanted them to do. Machines are safer.
Oh, absolutely. His instincts there are spot-on.
That's one of the things you pick up on right away when watching behind-the-scenes footage of the filming of Star Wars. Harrison. Harrison had worked with George before, was doing the cabinetwork for George's house, was comfortable enough to tell George where to stick it, and George was too awkward to push back. And Mark and Carrie took their cues from Harrison. When Harrison's giving George crap, they join in. Harrison rewrote -- at least slightly -- most of Han's dialogue. It had to have given George fits, but it resulted in much more natural acting from the principals. Compare that to, say, how veteran actors like Liam and Sam and Ewan and Natalie deferred to George's judgment in TPM. All that had changed between was how those working with George had come to view him.
CB2001
Master Member
But he should have done it with the last release on Blu-Ray. A choppy Laserdisc copy of the film, and it was in Pan & Scan, shows how little he cared about the versions of the films that gave him an audience in the first place. But the fact of the matter is that I doubt his "the original versions are completely gone" story.
I completely agree with the fact that Lucas is more of an editor than director but having said that he needed a lot of help to tell his story coherently. Without Marcia, Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew as editors, ANH would have been a mess.
I think of Lucas as a man who created amazing technology through film. He had a a story influenced by Joseph Campbell, Flash Gordon, Dune and Kurosawa but without the special effects group, MacQuarrie and countless others we wouldn’t be talking about these films today. Also, try to imagine the films without the amazing music from John Williams (thank goodness for Spielberg)! His vision is achieved when he works with the team he assembled, not so much when he goes it alone. (Like the lead singer of a great band who splits from the group and proceeds to make mediocre albums the rest of their life.)
joberg
Legendary Member
Apart from the Dykstraflex and its ability to repeat, perfectly, the movement needed to make the SFX work, no "new" tech was invented by the crew at ILM. They simply used a very old blue-screen tech (1930) and pimped it with that computerized camera. One word people: analog
They relied on all the tricks in the book that were used since the inception of cinema (list is too long).
Yes, Lucas was influenced by the old adventure movies, from Flash Gordon, Captain Blood, Robin Hood, etc...He grew up with those and that's why SW a NH had that "innocence" about it. And yes, he's a great editor, not necessarily a great director
They relied on all the tricks in the book that were used since the inception of cinema (list is too long).
Yes, Lucas was influenced by the old adventure movies, from Flash Gordon, Captain Blood, Robin Hood, etc...He grew up with those and that's why SW a NH had that "innocence" about it. And yes, he's a great editor, not necessarily a great director
Now, now, let's be fair; Lucas didn't know how to and what to tell of A New Hope at the start, so he filmed whatever and would figure it out later (standard fare for him). He immediately had problems after he gave the footage to his first editor on the project, John Jympson (an old-school editor from Hard Day's Night, Zulu, and early Ealing films) who put together a conventional cut based on what he got. That was the rough cut that put everyone off and is what that video is about. Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew were brought on, along with Lucas' wife, Marcia, with input from Lucas himself to reassemble everything. That was only after the rough cut, and when they figured what Star Wars should and should not have (or needed).
It would have continuous additions almost up until release, famously the opening crawl, suggested (and rumored penned) by Brian De Palma.
It would have continuous additions almost up until release, famously the opening crawl, suggested (and rumored penned) by Brian De Palma.
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xwingfighter
Active Member
I have felt like that since the releases of episodes 1-2 & 3 after those epic failures the cat was out of the bag so to speak...nothing new just rehashed ideas!
