G4 - Feature - This Ain't Your Daddy's Star Wars

This Ain't Your Daddy's Star Wars

written by Steve Dove on Monday, September 20, 2004

If there’s one thing that I’ve picked up from being and hanging around a lot of geeks in my lifetime, it’s that we are a fickle lot. It’s not “what have you done for me,” it’s “what have you done for me lately,” that resonates with the people, and there are no exceptions. Remember The Matrix? Two years ago every nerd worth his weight in Mountain Dew was willing to trade his vintage He-Man pajamas for a chance to be first in line for the next installment. Two sequels later and not even the lowliest of cosplayers would be caught dead in Neo’s black trench coat. Such is the way of the geek--a way of comparing the incomparable, cherishing the “classics” with indefatigable nostalgia, and tearing apart most anything new or, even more blasphemous, attempts to alter sacred films, television shows, novels, or comics.

And among these sacred intellectual properties, none is more hallowed, more esteemed, or more devotedly followed than the original Star Wars Trilogy. So let’s just say that I was less than surprised to read a bevy of complaints about George Lucas’ further alterations to the original three Star Wars films as they were finally set to be released on DVD.

A First Step into a Larger World

Now I remember when the Special Editions were released in theaters, a very welcome event for me as I wasn’t even born until a scant sixteen months before Return of the Jedi was released in 1983, completely missing the original theatrical runs of the films altogether. Like so many unfortunate young fans, I wasn’t able to experience that first moment of Star Wars when the Star Destroyer comes booming overhead on a giant screen with a thundering sound system. I had a little pan-and-scan video cassette on a mere forty inches of old Zenith television and tinny mono sound. My initial experiences with The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi were pretty much the same. I remember wondering what it was like for my dad when he first sat down in a similar theater and saw what I was seeing.

And I remember the great tumult that was, to put it into a succinct phrase, "Greedo shoots first."

I am of course referring to the scene from Star Wars in which Han Solo is confronted by Greedo, a Rodian bounty hunter, in the Mos Eisley Cantina. In the original version, the one my daddy saw in the theater, Han, seeming to sense some real danger from the wily alien, decides to bust a blaster bolt in his little green, snout-nosed face and then calmly saunters off, flipping an extra credit to the bartender and dead-panning, “sorry about the mess.” In the Special Edition of the same film it’s not Han whose blaster goes off first, but rather Greedo’s, who misses allowing Han to still shoot him dead. Now, I really didn’t have a problem with the change save for the fairly jerky animation that the effects wizards had given Han as a reaction. But oh, I seemed to be in the minority.

It's as if Millions of Nerds Suddenly Cried out in Anger . . .

Never before or since have I seen the kind of geek fury as I witnessed when people came streaming out of that theater, cursing the name of George Lucas. The kind of vitriol that flowed outward from the internet on the subject of the Special Editions was the kind of venom that only the truly jaded can produce and would only be eclipsed by the raw, seething hatred that some seem to harbor for the prequel trilogy. People were literally acting as though George Lucas had ripped a page out of their family Bible and wiped his butt with it. I kept expecting to turn on the television to see the Pope publicly condemning the Special Editions followed by congress stating that George Lucas’ film-tampering was corrupting America’s youth.

And the controversy didn’t end with Greedo—everything that was added or changed, from the new Mos Eisley sequence in A New Hope to the removal of the infamous “Yub-Nub” Ewok celebration song from the end of Return of the Jedi was being dissected and lumped together into this mass of “how dare he mess with our movies.” It was as though every hardcore fan of these films, of the entire Star Wars universe, had felt like Lucas had desecrated the memory of their youth. They acted as though forever more, when the Star Destroyer boomed overhead after the opening crawl of Star Wars, instead of the fond remembrances of that first moment, all they would see is a goofy-looking green alien making the worst shot of all time.

Now I don’t know what was, is really, the root of some fans’ disdain for these changes. Is it the new-fangled computer graphics invading a trilogy of films that set the standard for special effects in their time? Is it that the changes were really large enough to affect the make-up of a beloved story and characters? Sure, Greedo shooting first makes Han a little less badass, but then it also means he’s not a murderer. The only change from the Special Editions that I really think didn’t jibe with the story was the insertion of the scream as Luke falls in Cloud City. It seems pretty obvious from Mark Hamill’s performance that it was Luke’s choice to fall, potentially to his own death, rather than join Darth Vader. And yeah, that’s been removed from the new DVD versions.

The Circle is Almost Complete

And now we come to the latest iterations of the films with yet more additions, still mostly minor. A good deal of what’s been changed is simply cleaning up effects shots from the originals that were missed in the first Special Editions (e.g. the optical compositing on the Rancor in Return of the Jedi), and some of the rougher effects shots that were inserted back in 1997 (e.g. the new Jabba sequence in A New Hope). The change that’s drawing the most geeeky grumbling is the addition of Hayden Christensen, the actor who portrays young Anakin Skywalker in Episodes II and III, into the final sequence of Return of the Jedi, which, while significant, isn’t even the most major change in the trilogy. Who, besides Sebastian Shaw (the actor who originally played Anakin’s ghost and Darth Vader sans helmet in the end of Return of the Jedi), really cares if someone else is standing there? Hayden Christensen is Anakin Skywalker, yet there’s this strange uproar like “how dare Lucas affiliate our beloved original films with that other trilogy.” I seem to remember a lot of fans clamoring for the prequels when they were still a concept, but now that they’re being made and not what some of the fans want, it’s like they want to disavow the prequels’ existence in favor of huddling away in some dark corner with their beloved original trilogy. Well guess what folks, come May of next year when Revenge of the Sith debuts, you don’t get to use the word “trilogy” for just the orignal three anymore. It becomes the Star Wars Saga and you have to acknowledge that those prequels exist and are also a part of the series' history, and inexorably linked to the original three.

The real major change to the original trilogy is the replacement of that strange lady/ape amalgam that made the Emperor hologram in The Empire Strikes Back with Ian McDiarmid (the actor who played the Emperor in Return of the Jedi and Palpatine/Darth Sidious in the prequels). Why is it major? Because this is the only inclusion of new dialogue in the DVDs, and it’s big. Remember that cliffhanger at the end of Empire, a little line called “I am your father”? Remember how that was a big surprise back in 1980? Well now the Emperor spills the beans on that way back in the middle of the film. Once again, this isn’t a “trilogy” anymore, it’s a saga, and now George Lucas, rightly I should add, expects people to watch it from The Phantom Menace to Return of the Jedi, and if they do, Luke’s parentage won’t be a surprise.

And what’s more, you won’t find the words “Special Edition” beneath the Star Wars logo on the DVD box. These aren’t “Special Editions” anymore but rather how George Lucas, with more time, a bigger budget, better technology, and a little bit of hindsight, sees his completed films. If you want your experience to be as close to what George Lucas sees in his head when he thinks about those films, these DVDs are as close as you’re going to get to date. But it occurs to me that some people don’t want that. Instead they want their experience to be as close to what they saw in their head when they first saw these films. They want to be transported back to an era they can be nostalgic about and probably one of the first times that a film really resonated with them. While I certainly can’t begrudge anyone wanting that, I do have to wonder if they’re relying too much on the dogma of their own perceptions, focusing too closely on the little details to see that the themes, the wonder and whimsy, the story, the characters--the very world they all fell in love with way back when is still there, as great as it ever was.

A New Hope

And since I know that Star Wars won’t always be in theaters, although I do expect it will see a few more opening nights in my lifetime, I for one am glad that the films, in a form as close to what George Lucas envisions, are finally available in the best home viewing format out there. After all, that’s where I first discovered the galaxy far, far away. And who knows? Hopefully one day my kids will be able to pop in the DVD of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and see that Star Destroyer roar overhead on our forty-inch TV and soak in the 5.1 surround sound while I explain just what the hell “mono” is and they can imagine what it was like for their dad when he first saw what they’re seeing.