Lucas Talks Movie Changes, Han/Greedo, SOPA/PIPA, More
- February 10th, 2012
- Posted in Movies . News
- By Rob
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By Rob Siebert
Editor, Fanboy Wonder
In a recent interview, George Lucas talked at length about changes he’s made to his movies, the controversy regarding whether Han Solo first the first shot at Greedo in A New Hope, and the current status of the fifth Indiana Jones movie.
On Changes To The Star Wars Movies: “Changes are not unusual — I mean, most movies when they release them they make changes. But somehow, when I make the slightest change, everybody thinks it’s the end of the world…My job is to try to make the best possible movie it can be — and the current version is the Blu-ray version. That’s the one that’s been made into 3D. But it’s just a conversion. We haven’t made any changes other than the 3D.”
On Han and Greedo: “Well, it’s not a religious event. I hate to tell people that. It’s a movie, just a movie. The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.”
On CGI Yoda in The Phantom Menace: “We tried to do Yoda in CGI in Episode I, but we just couldn’t get it done in time. We couldn’t get the technology to work, so we had to use the puppet, but the puppet really wasn’t as good as the CGI. So when we did the reissue, we had to put the CGI back in, which was what it was meant to be.”
On SOPA, PIPA, and Online Piracy: “Everybody wants movies, everybody wants television shows, and everybody wants digital media. It’s just up to the government to sit down with both sides and write a reasonable bill. I think what they’ve got now is a flawed bill, which is not unusual, but that’s all it is: sloppy legislation. Which has to be fixed. If we go much longer without [good] laws, most people won’t pay attention [until] they arrest somebody who’s making $50 million a year — and then you realize that there’s hundreds of millions of dollars being siphoned off, and it does affect the music business, the film business, and eventually, the software business. Everybody’s in this together.”
Lucas image from famenetworth.com. Greedo image from greedoandhan.blogspot.com.
This guy is so out of touch. “Changes are not unusual.” GL should know that when other movie-makers make changes to the DVD, it’s usually sound editing or picture enhancement or something like that. That is entirely unlike any of the changes he’s talking about here.
As for his take on who shot first (i.e., not wanting to show Han as a cold-blooded killer), I understand the sentiment, but it just doesn’t make sense. Why? Because Greedo was holding him at gun/blasterpoint! If Han hadn’t done that shot under the table like in the original version, then he would have been killed.
Or maybe Greedo is just that terrible a shot. I mean, how good can those huge eyes of his be for gun work? And on CGI Yoda “looking better” than puppet Yoda, Mr. Lucas here is positing what is obviously an opinion as statement of fact, and is essentially telling fans to go jump in a lake. Personally, I don’t mind Yoda either way, but I can understand that use of CGI would make it easier to film stuff with Yoda. But I still don’t like Lucas telling Star Wars fans off.
The Government didn’t build ticket booths so GL’s movies would have value and exclude non-payers. The Government therefore shouldn’t be created “ticket booths” for products over the Internet either! Let the free market devise ways of protecting the value of products. You have no right to the value of your home- this is up to the free market. Senator Orrin Hatch thinks the Government should be BLOWING UP computers without due process to stop copyright infringement- this is absolutely ridiculous.
http://www.dethronehatch.com/orrin-hatch-is-no-friend-of-the-internet/