An open letter to George Lucas:

GREEDO, THOU WILT BE AVENGED!

Dear George Lucas,

I was the first kid on my block to see Star Wars when it first came out. It was a good two weeks before any of my friends saw it and it was long before there were any Star Wars action figures to play with. It was in the summer. I tried to convince my friends to play Star Wars instead of our normal war-based scenarios. Since they hadn’t seen the movie yet or experienced any of the hype, they were less than enthusiastic about it. And when they did play, they were always getting the characters or scenarios wrong. I would often stop playing if someone wasn’t playing a character correctly or we weren’t following the plot. Eventually, all my playmates went and saw the movie and our play was more consistent with Star Wars. Upon reading this, you must think I was a really anal 10 year old, but I don’t think I was different from most other kids. We have just forgotten how kids are when they play. They set up all of these elaborate scenarios and rules when they play. I see it all the time when kids are playing. “No, that’s GI Joe’s gun. Big Jim gets this rifle.” The toys and scenarios may change but the rules are always in place. Needless to say, Star Wars changed my life. It was one of the most original things I had ever seen in my life and I thought you were a genius. My previously very slight interest in science fiction grew to an obsessive level. And it just wasn’t Star Wars that fascinated me. It was all science fiction. My new toy acquisitions were all sci-fi related. My drawings were all sci-fi related. My birthday parties took on a sci-fi tone. The records I bought had some obscure sci-fi link, such as the Meco disco versions of science fiction soundtracks. But no matter what I collected, what I read or what movie I saw, it was judged by the Star Wars golden standard. Battlestar Galactica was a poor ripoff in my eyes (although I still begged to see every single episode). Even the Star Wars Christmas specials didn’t seem right compared to the original. I justified the inconsistencies and extra scenes in the Star Wars novel as a way to liven up the story for readers. Stars Wars was a sacred document set in stone. The pinnacle in my Star Wars play was when we actually acted out the movie with the action figures. So when Empire Strikes Back was announced and Star Wars was re-released, I objected to the idea that the first movie was actually the fourth movie in an unmade saga. The beginning introduction piece was entitled “Chapter IV: A New Hope”. It was all very wrong to me. I didn’t like Empire Strikes Back nearly as much as Star Wars. I was fifteen and not as easily impressed. Many of my friends liked that it ended with the bad guys winning, but Empire Strikes Back didn’t have a real ending. There were too many loose ends. Return of the Jedi tied up the loose ends but was a horrible movie. The special effects were amazing, but the plot was so lousy that I’ve only ever seen it twice (I seen Stars Wars at least 30-40 times). It was about this time that the full marketing potential of the Star Wars trilogy had been realized and I had stopped buying it long ago. By this time, Star Wars had become a springboard to a whole new world beyond science fiction. I realized that you drew from a wide variety of resources to create Star Wars: mythology, Japanese movies, Westerns, old serials, World War II epic movies, etc. I found these things just as fascinating to be as Stars Wars. So the rumors of you finishing the Stars Wars saga no longer interested me. I realized that every new chapter in the saga would get worse and worse. It was as if you and I were playing with the Stars Wars action figures. You would say “Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker are brother and sister and Darth Vader is their father.” Then I would say, “NO, that’s not right! Princess Leia’s father died on Alderaan and Luke likes Leia. They can’t be brother and sister!” Then you would say, “Well, they’re my toys and I say that they’re related.” Then I finally say, “Well, I don’t want to play anymore” and I’d play with my Micronauts toys instead. Star Wars Special Edition proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I no longer wished to play with you or your toys. Up to this point, I would occasionally watch Star Wars on video or TV. It still packed a punch and was still one of my favorite movies. Special Edition intrigued me because I wanted to see what scenes and effects you had added. I also wanted to see Star Wars on the big screen again. I heard some rumors about Special Edition, so I went to the theater with a critical eye. Besides cleaning up the soundtrack and adding some special effects rodentia, the movie was basically unchanged except for one instance. I’m not talking about the Biggs and Luke Skywalker scene at the Rebel Base’s X-wing hanger. Nor do I mean the pointless Jabba the Hut and Han Solo scene where Lucasfilms got to show off their computer graphic compositing savvy. I’m talking about the Greedo and Han Solo scene. This is where the addition of one second of footage changed the film and my outlook on you and your filmmaking. This scene has Han Solo trying to talk Greedo, the alien bounty hunter, from killing him. As Han talks, he reaches underneath the table for his blaster. Greedo, pointing a gun point blank at Solo, says that he’s going to shoot Solo. Blam! You see a bright flash and as the smoke clears, Greedo slumps over dead. This is a great scene, which you borrowed from countless Westerns and it helps to define Solo as a sneaky smuggler character. Special Edition adds the following footage. Instead of a bright flash, we see Greedo firing a shot which completely misses Solo. Solo fires back in self-defense, killing Greedo. This new version presents a clear case of self defense for Solo and basically makes him a whimpier character. Greedo is made out to be a sloppy buffoon of a bounty hunter. As Eric Blade (curator of the Greedo web page) points out: “...he (Lucas) wanted to soften up the character of Han a little bit, giving Han a clearly defined reason for killing Greedo. It maybe that Lucas thought that the scene in it's original form did not give enough reason for Han to have shot Greedo. Greedo's doesn't say, "Now I'm going to kill you." What Greedo does say only implies that Greedo is about to shoot Han. I guess there might be people out there that didn't get that, that they didn't realize that Greedo was about the shoot Han and therefore thought that Han had killed Greedo in cold blood. (However I have never met such a person)” George, what the hell were you thinking? Why did you choose to make such a change to the plot of Star Wars? I hoped that the February 97 Wired interview with you would shed some light on the subject. There was an extremely unflattering photo of you on the cover. I felt sorry for this old, bloated filmmaker. Then I read your interview and I realized that you are just a spoiled brat. After the obligatory Wired “look towards the future of entertainment” rhetoric, the interviewers asked you, “Would you be concerned about someone making Yoda walk long after you’re dead and gone?” You go on a long tirade about authorship and intellectual property then replies, “I solved the problem by owning my own copyright, so nobody can screw around with my stuff. Nobody can take Star Wars and make Yoda walk, because I own it.” The interviewers then ask, “What about the temptation to change your own work-“ You: “That’s what I’m doing! I’m doing that with Star Wars right now.” Wired zings back: “Right, but certain changes may only be pandering to the public at large, or to political correctness.” You avoids this topic by discussing “artist’s rights”: “It’s my artistic vision. If I want to go back and change it, it’s my business not somebody else’s. Somebody bought a Henry Moore sculpture and painted it white - it was a bronze - because it fit better with her backyard. Moore was absolutely furious. The fact is, in this country you have a right to do that. Well, you shouldn’t […]” Wired: “That process works well when you have a world of originals (as in paintings and sculpture), but in a world filled with copies (videos, music albums, books), it’s a little less clear. It’s easy to mess with a copy of something, and should an artist care if I mess with my copy?” You: “An artist has a legal right to say, ‘You can’t do that.’” I have been told that the original version of Star Wars will no longer be available on video tape as the Special Edition version hits the market. It’s like that scene where Darth Vader and Obi Wan Kenobi are duelling with light-sabres. Vader remarks, “You were the teacher, now I am the master” Obi Wan replies, “Only a master of evil” Obi Wan eventually gives up the fight and Vader kills him. The moral of that story is that you should learn everything you can from you teacher, subvert it for your own means and then destroy the master. You created a great story by appropriating and mixing elements from centuries of mythology and popular culture. It was such a great story that it became a popular culture phenomenon – a true 20th century myth. By selling us action figures and games, you had me and my friends perpetuating this myth. But now you say its your story and the public can’t retell it how they want. This is your “art” and you control every aspect of it. You can subvert the story for your means. It’s not art, George. It’s a merchandising ploy. Nothing you have done has matched the success of yours Stars Wars trilogy. Why come up with a new story, when you can slap some paint on the old one and sell it. The buck stops here. Fuck you, George Lucas. I see that you are appropriating another popular myth - Midas and his magic touch. But instead of gold, everything you know touch turns to shit.

Cathartically,

Skip Elsheimer

Back to Table of Contents