Blue Harvest Blu-ray Blues

I find it a piece of irony that the new, and once again updated hd blu-ray release of the Star Wars sextet is being released in the same week that The people vs. George Lucas comes available on blu-ray as well. The latter is a documentary piece of film criticism that any serious film historian, or Star Wars fan should see. The former is sure to be loved by the film historians as fodder for criticism, and hated by Star Wars fans. I’m a bit of both. I write film and theatre reviews for the Martlet and studied film as part of my MA. I also have Darth Vader tattooed up a good part of my right arm. Now I hear tell that Lucas has tampered with the original trilogy even further, whilst again mandating that retailers remove all former versions from their inventories. He's like a child with ADD who's created the perfect lego spaceship but just can't resist adding bits every time he plays with it. And Lucas’s efforts to eliminate old versions are more than just a marketing mandate. It’s as though he wants to re-write film history. “No, no. Those older versions never existed. This is the real Star Wars.”

In the newest version of the original trilogy, along with all of the changes made just before 1999 to “match” with the new trilogy, apparently the ewoks are now animated to blink. Ok. So far I can live with that. Also the massive door to Jabba’s palace that R2 and C3PO approach is animated to look even more massive. Alright. Pointless, but alright. More x-wing fighters are being added to the attack on the second death star. Well, that can only be cool, if equally pointless. Elderly Obi-wan has a newly added battle cry of some sort!? What!? Now that compromises characterization pretty severely, and I’m not so cool with it. And when Vader tosses the Emperor into the reactor core in Jedi, he now howls a lamenting, “Noooooooooooooo!” presumably in an effort to ‘match’ the same cry he lets out in Episode III upon discovering that Padmé is dead. My response?: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo! I used to love that moment of anagnorisis, of redemption, of death and resolution. It was very oedipal and entirely cathartic. Now it will just be goofy.

In The People vs. George Lucas, Lucas’ public and political outcry against the colorization of classic black and white films is represented as the ultimate hypocrisy. I kind of have to agree. I understand that Star Wars is a playground, but isn’t there ample new material that could be made without tampering with the original? Lucas seems to misunderstand the mythical place the original three movies occupy in people’s hearts, memories, and in film history. He also seems to have a need for all of the episodes to meld together in an entirely congruent narrative whole, but he only focuses on doing that visually. The very storyline that he deployed in Episodes I, II, and III creates incongruencies. For example, how is it that Leia has at least some memory of her mother in Jedi but Padmé dies in childbirth in Revenge? Is she referring to her step-mother on Alderaan? How is it that Kenobi hasn’t gone by Obi-wan, “since, oooooh, before [Luke was] born,” but he is present at Luke’s birth as Obi-wan?

Admittedly, none of these incongruencies bothered me much. I liked the new trilogy, as blasphemous as that probably sounds to die-hard original trilogy fans, but allow me to mitigate. I think that some of the die-hard fans are just as guilty as Lucas of trying to tie the trilogies together. The original trilogy is only worthy of hatred if they make some claim to appropriate the mystical glory of the first three. I found it fascinating how Lucas managed to create a pre-history that was already written, but my association ends there (except that midi-chlorians really bothered me). If the old trilogy never existed and these movies came out as new science-fiction, I bet everybody would have loved them. In their own right, they’re great! (Jar-jar Binks and the performance of Hayden Christensen notwithstanding). This hatred can only act to shy Lucas away from making Episodes 7, 8, and 9. I want those to be made! What honest Star Wars fan doesn’t? Fortunately, Lucas’ egomaniacally-driven financial leviathan may prompt him to make 7, 8, and 9 anyway. Otherwise I have to wait fifty years after he’s dead for the rights to become public and watch them made then. I’ll be dead by then too, though. Maybe his daughter will make them. Ok, ok, so we need George Lucas to die, like, right now. But I digress.

I don’t mind some of the changes that were made in the previous revised release. I couldn’t have cared less if Cloud City was given a more colorful look through its windows, and the removal of the smudged force-field under Luke’s speeder went entirely unnoticed by me. Unlike Han shooting second [at Greedo in the Cantina in Mos Eisley], which seriously compromised his original melodramatic characterization as a roguish hero. I liked Empire better when I genuinely didn’t want such a “scoundrel” as Han kissing my beautiful damsel-in-distress princess. Likewise, Jabba appearing in Episode IV as a simpering worm really detracts from his more ominous presence in Jedi. And wtf is with the growly-voiced jazz-blues singer in Jabba’s palace? Sy Snootles was truly creepy until that little artistic manipulation ruined her! “Wuh-oh!”

As for the blu-ray, ewok eyelids really does little to hinder my enjoyment of the film as it represents a piece of 1983 heritage to me. Fortunately, it seems Lucas’s ‘corrections’ are becoming less and less invasive, but even the slightest change will give offense to the truly emotionally invested. My beef? For all the ‘corrections,' Vader’s helmet still blows in the wind in the shaft on Cloud City? Isn’t that damn thing part of a vacuum-sealed iron lung?! Lucas should have corrected such genuine little mistakes as that, and left the blinkin’ teddy-bear eyes alone!