Now that
Star Wars is making its (another) triumphant return to the big screen…well
let’s just get down to it:
Really, I
am agnostic about the changes/updates/improvements (?) George Lucas decided to
make to the original three movies. I think it should be said, however, that
there were artists and technicians, (one and the same really when working on a
movie), who poured their hearts and souls into the technical aspects of that
movie and showed audiences something they had never seen before. To go back and
redo that, to in essence say, what came before was not good enough is, well,
unkind. But within Mr. Lucas’ rights. He owned the right to do so.
And to be
fair, the technical changes he made did not change the storytelling in any way.
It simply showed the optical effects in a way that Mr. Lucas felt was more
effective for the story, but they did not change the story. For example, once
you saw the glowstick for what it was when Ben Kenobi is fighting Darth Vader,
you couldn’t unsee that. So to fix that was the right choice to make.
When Han
was chasing the Stormtroopers and rounds a corner to find, what, the
Stormtrooper locker room at shift change, was a great improvement. In this
case, Harrison Ford’s reaction as he comes face to faceplate with so many troops
was perfect and worked even better than the handful of troops as presented in
the original cut of the movie. Kudos, improvement achieved.
All except
one.
There was
one change that I feel did hurt the movie. Now to be sure, it didn’t ruin the
movie or destroy my childhood, but it is painful to watch because it took a
character moment and changed it. It took away a character’s journey.
Consider:
Han was facing Greedo, who had gotten the drop on him. What had lead to this
moment was Han’s illegal activities concerning the gangster Jabba. Suffice it
to say, Han was not the most upstanding of citizens. Faced with capture or
death, Han being the survivor that he was, killed his opponent.
That scene
said a lot about Han. It set the tone for everything he did for the rest of
movie and showed the growth and change through which he went through the next
two movies.
But that
was changed when instead of coldly murdering his opponent, Han instead, in an
act of self-defense, was forced to kill Greedo. It softened that moment
needlessly and took edge off the character of Han. Was it tough to like a guy
who killed right after being introduced? Maybe. But what a great introduction
to the character.
Besides it
just looked terrible. Greedo was sitting across that table and shot maybe three
feet and missed?!? Han didn’t need to kill him. He could have just gotten up and
walked away from the table.
When Han
was talking to Jabba, and walked around him, there was that bit where he stepped
on Jabba’s tail. In that scene they did what they could and it worked on a
level that you could tell what had just occurred. The problem was it looked
bad. It was not a convincing optical. But it made sense and the viewer could go
with it because it was Han being Han with a little show of defiance stepping on
Jabba’s tail like that. Pushing his luck, you could say.
Though it
didn’t look great at least it made sense.
Greedo
firing first and missing made no sense, (how do you miss at that range), and
looked terrible as a special effect. That little head jog that was digitized
into Ford’s neck looked weird too.
But all
that said…I really do love these movies—all six of them no less, yes I find
enjoyment in all six—and look forward to the continuing adventures in a galaxy
far, far away…
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