If you had your choice, would you have wanted George Lucas to stop after 1977?

Since the BluRay announcement of the SE's only last week, many of us here have just put our hands up at Star Wars.  Being a SW fan is the ultimate catch-22.   If you buy the Bluray SE cause you want to still somewhat enjoy the movies, you are funding Lucas and his hatred for the originals.  If you don't buy them and stick with Non-Anamorphic, you are sacrificing yourself to watching a crappy transfer of the movies you love.

So if anyone had the ultimate choice:  If you could go back and time and convince George Lucas to stop making movies after 1977, would you do it?  Now you are giving up Empire and Jedi for all you OT fans, so this is not an easy question.

But we would essentially be getting a BluRay Star Wars movie next year like one of Lawrence of Arabia, Citizen Kane, or Wizard of Oz.  A single classic movie with a great transfer to the original version, with loads of interviews in the context of 1977, remember Vader is not Lukes father now, and no Lucas revisionism.  We wouldn't be arguing about the SE, the PT, is Jedi the start of the downfall of Star Wars?  It would just be the Classic Star Wars that we would all buy, and not think twice about.

No way I would give up ESB.

I wish he had given up Star Wars to other people after ESB and had concentrated on other things.

He could have stayed around as an advisory voice but his total control over Star Wars has been to the detriment of both Star Wars and his general artistic career.

If you look at his documentary work and his early editing flare it was a loss to art.

Though he has made a lot of money and pushed technology along he has become a bit of a Caligula.

TV's Frink said:

No way I would give up ESB.

 Agreed, i just couldnt forget about the greatest movie ever made .

Bingowings said:

I wish he had given up Star Wars to other people after ESB and had concentrated on other things.

That is more or less how I feel.  He should have left ROTJ - and any potential prequels - in the hands of Kurtz and others.

I would have wanted him to stop after 1989, as I love all three original SW movies and all three original Indy movies.

I know ROTJ was a worse movie than SW or Empire, but it was the first movie I ever saw, and I can tell you that the excuse Lucas sometimes gives us, that the "movies are made for kids" really works on ROTJ. As a child some of my favorite bits were the Ewok stealing the speeder bike, Wicket hitting himself, the Ewok with the stormtrooper blaster, Jabba knocking 3PO, etc, basically all the stuff adults hate about ROTJ. It's a wonderful children's movie really and some of the more "adult" stuff, like the Emperor scenes are also really well done.

The first two weren't made for kids though, they were made for family viewing (everyone).

ROTJ exists in pretty much the same realm as the PT (Star Wars with clowns and a puppet show).

The first two were exciting and had humour but had none of the fart and poop jokes that little kids are meant to love and very little OTT slapstick.

This allowed the dark scenes to fit into the story instead of sticking out like a sore thumb.

Look at the beginning of ROTS with the comedy droid antics it doesn't sit with Anakin being horribly burned alive in the same way as Luke and Han being chased by Stormtroopers fits with the charred corpses of Owen and Beru or the sliced arm on the cantina floor.

It's not quite as bad  in ROTJ but the slapstick, the Tarzan call, the comedy droid torture, the burp jokes really don't fit what we learned was the Star Wars universe from the first two superior films.

A family film is not the same as spicing a children's film with an adults film.

I'm not saying ROTJ doesn't have its flaws, and I know I'm biased cause I loved it as a child.

However, putting it together with the prequels is too harsh. ROTJ has heart. ROTJ has some emotions, something the prequels completely lack. The duel, when Vader is taunting Luke that maybe Leia might join the dark side and Luke loses it, is one of the most powerful moments in the trilogy, no scene in the prequels can even come close.

Diego said:

I'm not saying ROTJ doesn't have its flaws, and I know I'm biased cause I loved it as a child.

However, putting it together with the prequels is too harsh. ROTJ has heart. ROTJ has some emotions, something the prequels completely lack. The duel, when Vader is taunting Luke that maybe Leia might join the dark side and Luke loses it, is one of the most powerful moments in the trilogy, no scene in the prequels can even come close.

 I have to respectfully disagree.   The reason many of us here give Jedi a pass and not the PT, simply because it has Luke, leia and Han, and we were invested in those characters.  Jedi has alot of the same problems the prequels do with editing, kiddy tone, and sense of malaise in certain parts of the movie that it seems like it is going through the motions just to get to 2 hours. 

I have always said that the biggest failing of the PT is that I personally don't give a rats ass about the characters.  How can you care about a movie if you don't care about the characters???  So what happens is the only reason you are following the movie, or the trilogy, is simply because it is an extension, or prelude to the OT story we all fell in love with. 

If Lucas had retired in 1977, there's no guarantee he wouldn't be doing the exact same thing now with regards to suppressing the originals. In fact, I think a main part of that reason is because he hasn't been able to move beyond Star Wars, it's become his whole existance and so he obsesses over perfecting in his 60s a film he made in his 30s. Retiring in 1977 might have just exaggerated this. All he would have had is THX, Graffiti and Star Wars and he'd probably have tweaked all three to even greater levels than their respective Special Editions currently exist as.

The cure is really the scenario where Lucas followed through on his promise to make other kinds of films. When he started  saying that again in 2005 I thought maybe he was serious this time and it would be the antidote to the Star Wars Spell that has enslaved him, but sadly he was too afraid to try it. It's too bad, because I think Lucas' real talents don't get seen very often, like Coppola said "Star Wars robbed America of one of its most challenging filmmakers." I think the current loss of the Star Wars That Once Was is equally sad as loss of the George Lucas That Never Was.

skyjedi2005 said:

...crystal numbskull.

Ah, the post I was waiting for...

Not only is ESB a contender for greatest film of all time, ROTJ is not beyond redemption.  Gamorrean Guards alone make it worth it, and it's got some peerless action scenes: Rancor Pit battle; Sand Barge battle; Speederbike battle; Final Luke-Vader showdown.

I even love the Ewoks.  The only really offensive bits are the burp jokes and Death Star 2.

And The Last Crusade was pretty great too, so maybe Lucas should have quit after '89?

IIRC, no one has mentioned another problem with Lucas stopping in 1977...

...no OT.com.