July 5th, 2004

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THX 1138 and Messing Around with Movies

I haven’t thought about it for very long, but I’m generally opposed to messing around with movies after they’ve been released. It seems to me that just because you can CGify your early work, it doesn’t mean that you should. I suppose re-release, as in the Star Wars movies, is a decent excuse, but it’s still a questionable move.

This kind of revisionism is a very new phenomenon. Magritte wasn’t pitching up 15 years later to say, “actually, I meant to use a mango, not an apple”.

If I’m a student studying George Lucas’s career, I want to see the THX 1138 he made in 1971, not the one he revamped thirty years later. The worst case of this was Spielberg getting all ethical and removing a few guns from ET. Insert inevitable Jar Jar Binks joke here.

By the way, if you haven’t seen THX 1138, check it out. Thanks to the Tagliners lads (don’t miss Mark Hamill’s facelift) for the link.

Comments: One Response so far

Peter
July 5th, 2004
11:22 am

I agree about revising movies. Why not put that time and money and effort into making another movie?

Furthermore, there’s the problem with revisionism. EG. the revised Star Wars trilogy. I don’t have a problem with expanding on what was already there (e.g. more views of Cloud City in ESB, a shot of Coruscant at the end of ROJ), or even including a scene that was cut from the original release (e.g. the Luke-Wedge conversation, or the Han-Jabba conversation).

I do have a problem with changing the plot or characters. E.G. Han, Greedo and who shot first. If Han shot second, that softens his character, presumably in keeping with George Lucas’ aim to make movies for children. That also raises the question of how Greedo could miss Han’s head from a distance of about 40 cm.

If you’re determined to revise a movie, expand but don’t alter. But, again, it’s better to make another movie. I think this highlights the problem with Lucas: a film-school geek who had a surprise hit summer movie, made a Death Star’s weight in merchandising money, followed it up with a much better sequel (ESB which was at least in part written by other people) and then begin the downward spiral with ROJ (redo the fighters versus the Death Star scene and the horror of the Ewoks). Lucas has been coasting on a string of flukes he had in the late 70s-early 80s, and accumulating bad karma ever since. He used to be Luke, now he’s Jabba.

Star Wars is interesting in that what keeps the fans loyal is NOT the core texts, the movies. It’s all the secondary (Expanded Universe novels and comics) and tertiary (fan fiction and films) material that inspire love and loyalty.

There’s already a revised version of TPM, except it is by an unknown fan. I haven’t seen it, but I hear it is an improvement. It seems to me that there will be more revisions of texts in the future, and that will lead to more battles over the meanings of theose texts.

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