Several months back I posted an April Fools Joke (which you can catch up on here), where I pretended to report on how George Lucas was going to once again tinker with his classic STAR WARS trilogy and rerelease them in theatres. Again. Funnily enough one person (Jim Dorey) responded in the comment section: “Well don’t laugh just yet - he WILL be re-releasing these movies but they will be in 3D.”
Well, Mr. Jim Dorey (whose blog you can check out here) has proven to be eerily prophetic. According to DreamWorks Animations CEO and 3-D maniac (seriously, he thinks this will happen?) Jeffrey Katzenberg, George Lucas is in fact working on giving his STAR WARS films the old 3-D treatment. The funny thing is - putting aside my loathing of Lucas - after my great JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH 3-D experience I have to concede that it might actually be really cool and fun to see that galaxy far far away catapulted into the third dimension. But only the original trilogy. Curse you, Lucas. You actually have me looking forward to something you’re working on.
It’s pretty common knowledge in my circles that I have no love for George Lucas. In fact, in my crappier modes I have been known to call him a “money-grubbing Ewok.” A loving moniker I’ve given him based on my admittedly outlandish theory that he modeled the look of the Ewoks after himself (seriously, do a side by side comparison, you’ll see what I’m talking about). However, if ever there was an argument that could convince me he isn’t some superficial capitalistic, cash-cow milking, creativity stifling, fan-disregarding, brand-name draining filmmaking force, it would be John’s incredibly well thought out and written piece over at The Movie Blog.
Though I think perhaps John overestimates Lucas latent level of talent - dormant or not - there’s no denying that AMERICAN GRAFFITI and the first two STAR WARS demonstrated Lucas has got “it” somewhere in him, it’s just an “it” that has not - as John points out - been capitalized on since, largely because Lucas can’t seem to pull himself away from his franchises. It’s a great insight, and the author goes on to offer some helpful advice on how Lucas can break out of his creative rut. Definitely worth checking out, if for no other reason than a surprisingly dead-on allusion to LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS.
Much like he did with the original trilogy a few years ago, George Lucas apparently has decided to go back and re-release THE PHANTOM MENACE, ATTACK OF THE CLONES, and REVENGE OF THE SITH as special editions. It seems the Grand Master of the galaxy far far away is still not quite happy. It’s probably best to let the man speak for himself:
“Though we certainly did our best with the technology that we had at the time we made these movies, we were never quite able to realize the original vision I had for them. Now that moviemaking technology has grown with leaps and bounds, we now have the opportunity to make these movies exactly the way I had always imagined them in my head. I recently re-watched the LORD OF THE RINGS movies, and was really impressed with how well Peter Jackson did with melding together CGI and non-CGI effects. So with these Special Editions we’re going to go back to some of the model based effects we were using back with the original Star Wars.
These Special Editions aren’t just about re-releasing them with new effects, though. There were a lot of story elements that I just wasn’t happy with. For example, I thought the romance between Anakin and Padme was not given enough screen time, especially in EPISODE II, and I’ll be re-inserting some extended scenes of them in the fields of Naboo that were cut from the original theatrical release. It also seems that Jar-Jar Binks really struck a chord with kids, so there’ll probably be more of him too.
I think Star Wars fans will relish the opportunity to see these films the way I meant them to be seen. This isn’t a Director’s Cut so much as a final cut of the movies. It’s not going to make much money for us in the end. It would make a lot of money if I wasn’t rich. But I’m not doing it for the money. I’m doing it as an artist with a particular vision, and hopefully moviegoers all over the world will be able to share it with me.”
Currently the plans are to stagger the releases of each of the three films throughout 2009, with EPISODE I coming out in February, EPISODE II in July, and EPISODE III in November. The Special Editions will then hit Blu-Ray in 2010. There are currently no plans to release the original cuts on Blu-Ray.
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