Heilemann said:
I do take issue with the knee jerk portion of the fanbase, which manages to turn any and all conversation into Lucas bashing. I find that unproductive and profoundly ignorant.
I'm personally interested in the examination of the material itself; in the fanedit community and the historians, who actually contribute something to the conversation. That adds value, rather than noise and cynicism (that was why I embarked on Kitbashed in the first place).
It's very interesting to me to evaluate this new material and how it changes our perception of how the movies were made, or who the people working on them were at the time. It's completely uninteresting to me to have another swing at the Lucas/Kurtz piñata, and oh isn't it strange how the movies became worse after Empire etc.
It is interesting to me why the quality of the storytelling and the tone of the movies changed; and those reasons are rarely as simple "Lucas is stupid/greedy/megalomaniacal/etc! Oh, how everything was better with Kurtz around."
I see it as film history, and I don't see the worth it hammering on the same nail over and over. Especially without a few beers around.
Well said, and I see where you're coming from, and I agree with you for the most part. It's just that not everyone has that intention when bringing up stuff like this. Most of it speaks for itself anyway. The Kurtz/Lucas fallout I brought up a few pages back comes from a genuine interest on my part to understand how things actually turned out. From Kazanjian's words you get the impression Kurtz was going to be replaced no matter if he let ESB go over budget or not. Other info even seems to suggest he was lightly involved on the pre-production of ROTJ. I just find this interesting, that's all. And I personally think it's worth discussing as he was a big part of the "Star Wars family" for many years.
At the same time, there's no mystery why there's a huge dissatisfaction and bitterness directed towards Lucas among a large group of the fanbase today. Things haven't exactly been sugarsweet for the fans of the classic trilogy for the last 20 years. I'm not saying that there's need for beating that old dead horse over and over again because of it, but the reality is that it might unfortunately be here to stay because of Lucas himself.
The making of books and the deleted scenes etc, are truly great stuff but at the same time it makes the absence of the actual films treated with the same respect even more silly.
SilverWook said:
Problem is, we've been teased with the possibility of seeing this footage since the days of Laserdisc. (Definitive Collection, not!) And when we finally got to see some on DVD, then find out there's more, one gets the sense they're holding back, and trickling this stuff out ever since. I don't know of any other franchise that keeps dangling that tasty carrot in front of fans, then yanks it back once we get a bite.
This stuff should have been on the Blu Ray set. Nobody would have minded if it mandated an extra disc to hold it all. Not everybody owns a Apple device, believe it or not.
The original films should also have been on the Blu Ray set but this is Star Wars, what can you expect. I'm pretty sure most of this stuff was "found" around the time they prepared the 2004 DVD set (some of this in shorter form appeared on that bonus disc.) There's definitely more stuff from where that's coming from. They know exactly what they're doing and it works perfectly. It's a franchise with such a loyal fanbase, where the creator can basically spit his fans in the face for almost 20 years and they still buy his products. The carrots on future sets may be Casting Auditions, From SW to Jedi, The lost Making of ESB (some of it appear in this material), the 1980 John Williams doc (some of it appear in this material) and on and on, that well will not be dried up anytime soon.