Over the past ten years or so, George Lucas has seemed to go out of his way to alienate his own fan base. There were, of course, the Special Edition re-edits of the classic Star Wars trilogy, the myriad disappointments that accompanied the prequel trilogy, and the milking of our wallets with multiple home-video releases of the original films that still, somehow, never quite deliver what we actually want. But he’s also said a lot of offensive things, like his recent comment that he considers The Empire Strikes Back — generally seen by the fans as the best of the six Star Wars movies — to be the worst of the series. (I personally think this was probably not worth the uproar it provoked. I suspect it was a failed attempt at a joke, or something taken way out of context. Or maybe he just wanted to screw with our heads and he knew exactly which button to push.) The impression he often gives is that he’d be a lot happier if the whole Star Wars thing had never happened and he didn’t have any fans.
That’s why it was so surprising to read that he has offered official Lucasfilm support for the upcoming indie movie Fanboys, which follows the adventures of a group of Star Wars fans driving cross-country to steal a print of The Phantom Menace from Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch. George has also lent his approval and Lucasfilm’s assistance to a 30-minute Star Wars spoof for the animated cable series Robot Chicken (don’t feel bad, I’ve never heard of it either), going so far as to lend his voice to his own stop-motion likeness.
Could it be that Uncle George is finally gaining a sense of humor about this whole crazy thing? And that maybe, just maybe, now that the pressure of making the prequels is off, he’s even learning to appreciate his fans again? Anything’s possible… although I’ll be more inclined to believe it when I’m holding a DVD of the unrevised Star Wars in my clammy little fanboy hands…
(Incidentally, the trailer for Fanboys is online here. It looks pretty damn funny… and, in a show of cross-franchise solidarity, it even includes The Shat!)
Some of these charges seem unfair. Firstly, the “Empire was the worst” comment was clearly a joke, made in honor of an award given to a PR guy; more here. As for the prequels, I think that even if one hates them, one should at least grant that Lucas wasn’t intentionally setting out to make movies that everyone would hate. (I loved them, even TPM.) As for multiple video releases, I don’t know — the re-edits are starting to seem weird to me. I had no problem with the Special Editions the first time out, but the constant tinkering has me thinking, “Geez, just move on”; but then, lots of people engage in this sort of thing — witness Isaac Asimov’s retconning of his Foundation Universe toward the end of his career, for one example. And just about every popular film these days gets multiple video releases: the LOTR films were released in their theatrical versions, then the extended versions, and THEN in editions that included both versions at once…and I’m sure we’ll see a lot more such releases of those films in years to come.
Just to set the record straight in case I didn’t express myself clearly (which seems to happen with distressing frequency, I’m sorry to say), I don’t necessarily agree with all these charges myself – they’re just things that I’ve heard people grumble about, which I tried to play up for a mild comic effect that apparently didn’t come through very well.
I basically like the prequels, too, although I have my complaints with them and my hunch is that they will be largely forgotten in the decades to come, or remembered only as a footnote to the true classics, the original trilogy. You’re right, I’m sure, about George not setting out to make movies that people would hate — if anything, I think he erred by trying to please too many fan desires, like including Jango/Boba Fett, which I thought was totally unnecessary. There’s no denying, however, that the prequels were extremely polarizing, and George has come across as being pretty frustrated with the fans in a number of interviews. Not that I blame him… fans can be, ahem, difficult to deal with. But I do think his defensiveness about the prequels and the re-edits have exacerbated a lot of bad feelings.
Personally, my biggest frustration with George is his insistence on burying the original versions of Star Wars, Empire, and Return of the Jedi in favor of the digitally tampered-with versions. I simply don’t believe the company line that the unaltered versions no longer exist. It’s no big deal to me if he wants to market re-edited, expanded, or “saga” versions that fit together with the prequels — so long as the originals are preserved and available for those who prefer them. The LOTR comparison isn’t entirely accurate because the theatrical cuts of those films stand side-by-side in the stores with the longer versions, and I own both. I’d gladly own both versions of SW, too, if only George would provide them. But he won’t, and that frustrates me immensely.