Oldfan said:
Lucas is a strange one. On the one hand he is clearly a very generous man. He is a very intelligent businessman. I like his stance on the importance of education and his desire to help it improve any way he can. And he also has demonstrated in the past his desire to protect films so that future generations can enjoy them.
Yet then look at what he has done to the fans regarding the original trilogy. You can't even catch the originals on tv anymore for crying out loud, since he won't allow it. Why does he have such hate for us all? Granted we have thrown a lot of hate his way over recent years. But much of that is because he's denying us the one thing we've been asking for since the dawn of DVD. Many of us were bitter, or have become bitter over the years, about the quality of the prequels. That cannot be undone. But I think we can all agree that if he had released this recent blu-ray collection with the original trilogy intact, as originally released, all would have been forgiven. Instead he's given us another reason to feel like he hates us.
Yeah, I was reflecting on the Duality of George Lucas tonight, myself.
It's really interesting, and I don't think I can name another person who is so universally loved and a cause of frustration for so many people at the same time.
I don't think most of us would say we hate the man (perhaps in a fit of rage over the latest change in the latest boxed set for the latest year), or that we wish him ill, especially in light of his charitable work and other such; in fact, from my time here and other, similar places, I feel like we all think he's a good man, and we are all grateful for creating something that is such a big part of our lives and film history, and it's because of those reasons that places like this, and things like the petition and all the fan vitriol exist.
But at the same time, I don't (personally) know a single person who is not also ridiculously frustrated by his insistent, admitted intentional suppression of the original versions of his films and apparent lack of concern about the quality of the prequels and therefore the "health" of his intellectual property. I don't know a single person who doesn't feel some sense of betrayal and anger and alienation at the whole fiasco, that an entire portion of their childhood is being destroyed and some feel it so deeply that they can't handle it and just renounce the entire franchise.
And, again at the same time, I don't know a single person who doesn't want to be able to go back to loving Lucas, patch things up, and hand him their hard-earned money for a copy of the unaltered original films and just be done with it all.
It really is an incredibly fascinating dichotomy.
