Like many people my age I tell time by Star Wars. That is, there is post-Star Wars history and there is pre-Star Wars history. And many people, as I do, believe that Star Wars wasn’t just a movie. I have heard some describe it as a spiritual experience. If it wasn’t that for me, it was at the very least, a new (and of course an old) mythology, and a beautiful example of crafted storytelling.

Star Wars, 1977, was perhaps the first time I realized I wanted to tell stories. I didn’t just like them. I didn’t just like hearing them or reading them. I knew I wanted to make them. I have heard directors talk about Star Wars this way too.

And of course, no doubt like many people, I’ve been waiting to get the Star Wars trilogy on DVD. But I’m nervous. I’m nervous that George Lucas, now that he is a corporation, now that he is part of the dark force he rebelled against so beautifully in his shining youth, I’m nervous that he will probably mess the whole thing up. I sincerely hope that the DVDs will have, not the mid-1990s restored movies on them, but the originals. If he’s clever and if he’s been listening to criticism, he will be smart and perhaps have on the DVDs the restored movies as well as the originals. But I’m guessing he won’t. I don’t want to see Jabba the Hutt in the first movie. He wasn’t there. No, I’m quite sure he wasn’t there. I don’t want to see the new collection of creatures on Tatooine, either. They aren’t part of the story. They weren’t there. And the thing, the Wampa, that wants to eat Luke in the snow in the Empire Strikes back. We didn’t see him the first time. It was clearly better that way. Not seeing the monster is stronger and smarter. Has Blair Witch taught Mr. Lucas nothing? Evidently not.

George packages his galactic ego as artistic integrity. When he restored (revised?) the movies, just before the release of the seriously bad and miscalculated Phantom Menace, George marketed them with the tag: “I finally get to make the movies I wanted to make.” The movies he wanted to make, apparently, are chock o’ block with shocking color, audio, effects, and digital masturbation – the same elements that ruined Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones – and he took those things and squeezed them, insidiously, into the originals. He used to be a genius. There’s no question. The audio guy he hired for Star Wars, his space opera, was still smart enough to look for “organic” sounds. This says a lot about the standard operating procedure then. Even though the movie is fantastic, is alien, they were still looking for organic.

I finally get to make the movies I wanted to make. Pshaw. Van Gogh didn’t like Starry Night. It’s now an icon of his work. Could you imagine if Van Gogh reworked that painting years later? An artist leaves a thing alone because, whether a failure or a success, it becomes a shared experience, a community experience. The artist, the speaker, the writer, the director, doesn’t get to recall it and change it because he no longer owns it. It is owned by the collective conscious. No, artistic revision serves only one thing: Ego. If God suffered an ego – and we all hope that He doesn’t – if God suffered an ego, perhaps this time He would just start over at Noah since the whole of creation seemed like nearly a wash before that. As a matter of fact, because He’s God, he probably could have done that the first time, but because God is not George Lucas, He didn’t recall, He just restarted.

Clearly, George has received a lot of criticism for Episodes 1 and 2 as well as his revisionist tendencies. But it’s also clear George adamantly resists criticism. It’s that resistance that is primarily responsible for the brilliance of the first three movies. As an example, he took a lot of trouble, and a whopping fine, for putting the credits at the end of his first three movies. But now, the same resistance to criticism will junk his new movies and, most remarkably, his early ones. What’s the difference? In his youth, this criticism resistance marked his genius; in his senility, this resistance marks only his ego.

If you are looking for George’s ego, look to the DVDs. If they are released without the original version, without the shared collective conscious, that will be the measure. And I expect to find it, his ego that is, — yes, despite a bevy of criticism —, smeared all over it.

SS