TheBoost said:
I accept your point that to the vast majority of people who know "Star Wars" (including people who love it) it is the movies and nothing more. BUT... if we're talking about the EU we can acknowledge that it's a fictional universe thas been added to consistently for over 30 years.
I process even the good EU stuff as an alternate universe.
Like Superman, I think it would be swell if Star Wars had a seperate continuity for each property.
I do too but, again, that's not how movie-based franchises work. Everything serves the movies. Books and such are never (or rarely) treated as "adaptations". "Extension" seems to be the watch word.
And since we're running with Superman as an example, speaking from firsthand experience, I can tell you that fanbase is unspeakably fragmented right now because of concurrent live action adaptations (Smallville TV show vs. that abortion Bryan Singer presided over).
Be careful what you wish for. Between saga fans vs. OOT fans, prequel lovers vs. prequel bashers, weirdos like me who dig on the prequels but also prefer the OOT over the SE/2004, etc, I'd say that SW's fanbase is just about fractured enough.
Vaderisnothayden said:
The point was that Lucas's treatment of the OOT is not something that's done to please fans. You insisted that everything an "entertainment property" does is done to please fans, a point of view that has no basis that I know of. I'm giving you obvious examples of things being done with Star Wars that have been done to satisfy George Lucas and not the fans. Which provides examples of how not everything an entertainment property or Star Wars does is done to please fans.
I think Lucas made those changes because he genuinely wanted to do them as he thought they would improve the films... and, as a side note, he also believed that the fans would love the SE.
The fanbase speaks for itself on that one.
Looks to me like Lucas just dug in his heels out of pride. LFL knows that most fans would be interested in getting the OOT, they saw/see the bootleg market going and apparently the GOUT was a decent little earner. It's no mystery to them.
The fact that we haven't had a deluxe (can't say "special", can I?) edition DVD of the OOT says a lot about George's stubborn price in all of this.