OFFICIAL: Library of Congress had original prints replaced with 1997 SE — Page 5

SilverWook said:

A world in which THX-1138, Star Wars, and Raiders were never made? Perish the thought!

Star wars and raiders were great in spite of Lucas; if GL was never involved in these films, they would still be the great films they are without any compromise. 

THX, however, I have never seen and have no plans to do so. Especially as it has been eliminated and replaced with a 2004 remake that is probably not worth it.

He has erased Marcia from the history books. What's to stop him from erasing eight films? We live in an age of reckless corporate power (LFL is definitely no exception): they can do whatever they want, and everyone outside the system is impotent.

Harmy said:

Sorry, but that's a really stupid statement, STAR WARS and Raiders would not be the great films they are if GL was never involved, because they would not be. Period.

Star wars: it would be exactly like the PT in tone and style if it wasn't saved in editing by Marcia Lucas et al, and dissenters like Harrison Ford and Gary Kurtz to restrain GL.

Raiders: this is really a Spielberg film, when he was still a good director. If GL was taken out of the equation, it wouldn't affect the film that much.

I'm sure in some alternate universe, someone else could have come up with the ideas for star wars and raiders if GL did not exist. He wasn't the only person in the universe to have seen old movie serials.

That still does not address that Lucas is on a mad quest to destroy the original versions of the SW saga, THX, and american graffiti; and he appears to be succeeding on that front with the advent of the absence of the LOC safety net. Private owners of the OUT are going to be under threat in matter of time to surrender their copies to be destroyed by LFL. Do you think GL/LFL cares about private ownership rights? They don't,because corporations like LFL have more power that they have had in the history of incorporated businesses, I keep saying this, big corporations are able to supersede any law in any country to make a profit.  So we have keep open the idea that the OUT may actually be lost. No one wants to talk about this scenario, but we should.

Yeah that Legacy thing is interesting. I've been hearing that more lately, from people with more legit experience than I. (that the 1997 restoration screwed up a bunch of things visually. I'd always taken for granted that that was the one thing they got right, using the Technicolor as a blueprint, restoring the proper colors and look, etc. Theatrically anyway, I know the home videos had problems)

georgec said:

Harmy said:

Nobody is arguing that he did, man ;-)

What I'm saying is that without those franchises created specifically by Lucas we'd probably have equally entertaining films perhaps comparable in subject matter.

Another way to think of it is if Edison didn't invent the light bulb, someone else probably would have done so later on. :)

Exactly. The problem is that GL has a perfectionist streak that goes against the preservation of these films. If SW was done by another person, maybe we would have the originals on Blu-ray by now, and there would be nothing to discuss.

You'd have something else, but it wouldn't be Star Wars.

I'm not interested in something else. The Last Starfighter and Star Trek:TMP are decent films, but I don't own either and I certainly wouldn't be on a forum discussing them. I'm here because we got Star Wars, with every single frame that we saw in 1977. 

Even to this day there still hasn't been anything close to Star Wars. Nothing with such scope and humour and imagination in a sci-fi world that incorporates fantasy. 2009's Star Trek and Last Starfighter--the latter of which clearly would never have been made if it were not for SW--are the closest. But they don't come close!

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Geez, that's like saying if Leonardo DaVinci didn't paint the Mona Lisa, somebody else would have.  You can't really believe this, can you?

DuracellEnergizer said:

 

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Geez, that's like saying if Leonardo DaVinci didn't paint the Mona Lisa, somebody else would have.  You can't really believe this, can you?

Anything is possible in an infinite multiverse ;-)

 

I agree. At least Da Vinci wasn't a megalomaniac and forbade people to see the Mona Lisa.

This current conversation is just........wow. :P

As for the Library of Congress issue: That sure does suck.

generalfrevious said: [...] The problem is that GL has a perfectionist streak that goes against the preservation of these films. [...]

I can agree that whatever he suffers from is going against the preservation of the theatrical versions. Yet when you ask me what it is - it is most definitely not perfectionism.

Would George Lucas be a perfectionist, he would not only have put in every change he deemed necessary back in '97 (and improving them along with progress of technology with each new release), but he also wouldn't leave mistakes like broken colour timing, missing or wrongly coloured lightsaber blades, etc. in his special editions.

You may argue that he used to be a perfectionist, when he still was struggling to establish a brand (or multiple ones if you put into account the companies he's founded).

I really don't know what he's suffering from these days, a lazy streak of "delusions of grandeur (tm)", perhaps?

This whole "if we didn't have SW we'd have something else just as good" idea is like saying "I wish I never met my ex-wife even though she gave me two great kids I love dearly, because I could have just met another woman that would have given me two different kids that would have been just as great."

In other words, it's a really stupid idea.