Once again, we're here at the whole modification issue, something I feel we're destined to repeat again and again until Lucas kicks the bucket and the original trilogy is released in its unmodified form (come on copyright expiration!)
The parallels that some have made with the Mona Lisa, and other classic works of art, is a perfectly fair and appropriate one I think. As far as I'm concerned, a piece of art is, essentially, the physical embodiment of a vision, a tangible representation of creative expression. Whatever your vision or idea is, you pick the medium that you feel is best equipped to represent it to the full. For Da Vinci's Mona Lisa it was paint, for Lucas' "Star Wars" it was film. If that medium is not up to the challenges of accurately depicting your vision, you pick another medium. Regardless, once you've chosen your preferred medium, you stick to it ... you should generally accept its limitations and work within them.
Often, an artist will push the capabilities of the medium or, in cases such as the development of the original trilogy, redefine them entirely. Lucas, giving the guy all credit, re-wrote a lot of the rules about what can and can't be done on film by investing heavily in the creation of ILM in order to achieve the look he was going for. By doing so he changed the medium of film forever. However, even when an artist goes against all convention and makes such monumental changes to their chosen field, there are still limitations to work within, and film is no exception.
It doesn't matter whether Lucas wanted super-duper CGI creatures in Star Wars in 1977, they simply weren't possible. In creating the trilogy, he would have hit the limits of what film could do all the time, and so there would have been a million things he just couldn't do. The artist is then faced with the choice - either get realistic about what they can achieve and work within the limits, or hold off until either the artist, or someone else, breaks those limits. In the case of film, there are two unbreakable limits; time and money. If Lucas was so intent on seeing his trilogy fulfill his vision to its utmost, he would have abandoned the project until the technology was available to do it justice. This is the reason that no-one had attempted a live-action film version of the complete "Lord Of The Rings" trilogy for nearly fifty years after it was first written.
Lucas, however, had to work within the limits of time and money. Fox already saw half the budget for ANH go on effects, and there was no way a studio would say "sure George, we'll wait 20 years until it's possible to realise these films as you want them". It's not going to happen. Lucas had only one choice - compromise. Yes, that meant that his vision would not be completely fulfilled, but at least his work would get to be seen. However, once a piece of art goes public, there is a tacit agreement between the artist and the audience; I create it, you enjoy / appreciate / understand it. With Star Wars, this agreement was met by both parties.
And that's where it ends. The rights of an artist to express themself and to protect the result of that expression should always be upheld, but so too must the rights of those who appreciate that work. Once a piece of art goes public, it is an indication that the artist is finished expressing him/herself and that it is time for the work to find an audience. From this moment on, the artist should accept that the work belongs to the audience, and that if he doesn't like how it is being perceived, tough. If you're unhappy with it, don't release it until you are. When you make changes to your work before you give it to the audience, you're finishing - you're honing and refining your vision. If you modify it after you've given it to the audience, you're tampering, vandalising. You're breaking the agreement. You're showing a great disrepect to the audience who enjoy and appreciate your work by telling them, "Actually, I wasn't finished. You don't mind if I fiddle with it a bit more?"
Lucas may say that the original trilogy didn't fully represent his vision. Whether that's true or not, he does not have the right to change it after he's given it to the audience. It's like someone building a house for you and then, shortly after you've moved in they tell you "Oh, we've not actually finished it yet. We're going to be knocking down a wall or two, putting up others, changing the number of rooms, and completely re-wiring and re-plumbing it" - all while you're still trying to live there. A great artist, regardless of how grand their vision is or how much of a perfectionist they are, knows when to say "it is done". When creating "Bohemian Rhapsody", Freddie Mercury already had a song that was 5 seconds short of 6 minutes, an unheard length for a commercial chart single. It had nearly 200 vocal overdubs, and is still one of the most beautifull well-constructed pieces of contemporary art to this day, nearly 30 years after its first release. The album it was recorded for, "A Night At The Opera" was, at the time, the most expensive album ever recorded - what, exactly, was stopping Mercury from adding more to the song, making it longer, doing more vocals, more guitar, more layers? Ultimately, nothing - if the album's already the most expensive ever, what difference is an extra few thousand-quid and a couple more weeks going to be?
When all is said and done, what stopped him was his own restraint - he could have said, "no, it's still not right", but he didn't. He knew when to say when. Like all great artists, there comes a time when you know that anything else you do is unnecessary, and could potentially ruin what you already have. It's a feeling that most of us have when undertaking any personal creative project - we simply get to a point where we can say "that's it", and go no further. Lucas clearly doesn't have this. For the last 7 or 8 years, he has been constantly vandalising his own work under the guise of "completing his vision". Imagine if Da Vinci had kept modifying the Mona Lisa every time a new, better quality paint came along? Imagine if he'd given instructions to others to carry on "improving" his work as technology advanced ... after paint would have come the photograph - the Louvre would be hanging a Polaroid of some Mona lookalike ... then what? Would they now have a cellphone nailed to the wall that you could view a grainy, lo-res digital image of a lookalike? To quote South Park, "imagine if they'd updated the Colliseum every few years - we'd just have a big douchey stadium now".
Lucas can crow all he likes about an artist's rights to modify his own work to complete his vision, but the fact is IT IS NOT HIS WORK. Film is one of the few artistic mediums that is a collaborative effort. Yes, it generally represents the vision of one person, but it ultimately is a work created by many. "Star Wars" may be Lucas' vision as director / writer, but there are hundreds of others who made that work what it is and, when he modifies it, he is paying a great disrespect to everyone involved. When he pastes Hayden Christensen in to the final scene of ROTJ, he is disrespecting the work of Sebastian Shaw. When he gets Temura Morrison to re-dub the stormtroopers and Boba Fett, he is obliterating the work of the original performers. Imagine how you'd feel if, for 20 years, you could claim "hey, I was the voice of stormtrooper #2 in Star Wars" - it's a bit lame, but it's something to be proud of, something for your grandchildren. Now imagine that, in the interests of fulfilling his vision, Lucas has erased your lines and re-dubbed them with someone else. The fact that you were ever in the movie will be erased from history - your voice gone, your name removed from the credits - when all the old copies of the original trilogy have decayed to nothing, your contribution to that work is gone for good.
George Lucas needs to understand that, although his name crops up more than anybody's in the Star Wars saga, they're not his movies. They're Mark Hamill's. They're Alec Guinness'. They're even Hayden Christensen's. But most of all, they're ours. Without the audience, art is just an exercise in self-gratification. It's the audience that makes a dumb space movie into a work of filmic art and a cultural phenomenon. And with film, the work belongs to everyone involved, unless you do everything yourself. This may explain why if anyone is ever going to make a movie without actors, it'll be Lucas. He seems so focus on his singular vision, that absolutely everyone involved must feel like an obstacle. "Damn actors, they never perform it exactly as it is in my head" ... "Bloody effects supervisor making excuses about technology not being advanced enough yet" ... "I'm an artist, and I want to express my vision!"
In the interests of the memories of a huge number of people who feel that the art they enjoyed as a child is being corrupted by its creator just to satisfy his own need to produce something that, in his mind, is a flawless and perfect representation of his vision, I have one thing to say to George Lucas ...
George, please, for the good of us all ... quit making movies, and take up the Etch-A-Sketch ...
This post has been edited by DistantAngel: 16 September 2004 - 04:44 AM
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