zombie84 said:
There are two reasons that I can see why Lucas is doing this:
1) He truely was never fully satisfied with the originals and enjoys tinkering around with them. He did this from the beginning--all the 1977 sound re-mixes, the 1981 crawl, he even tried to restore the ANH Jabba scene back then.
So this is nothing new.
But obviously, 1997/2004/2011 tinkering is much, much different than those. So what changed?
Lucas stopped making films and now this is all he has left. In 1981 he could care less about going to so far as to add dinosaurs to Mos Eisley because he was in the middle of shooting Raiders of the Lost Ark, he was about to make Return of the Jedi, and he had just finished producing Kagemusha and Empire Strikes Back. He was thinking about his retirement from the series and was planning on getting back to making experimental films and producing more interesting movies.
That's the biggest factor, IMO.
The 80s came. He got divorced, let go of Star Wars, took a few years to get his personal life back in order, sorted out his finances. Produced some interesting films like that weird John Korty animated film and Tucker and Captain Eo, made Willow, made two more Indiana Jones sequels, got into the business side of Lucasfilm and advanced the computer division and the video game division.
The 1990s then come. Finally he is financially powerful again, had his "rest", had his "family time" where he adopted two more kids, had his fun producing and being the business guy and now was finally going to be a director again, make those weird film that he always said he was going to make.
But instead he went back to Star Wars. And he would stay there. More books, more comics, more toys, more video releases--he realized there was a sleeping empire there. He starts planning on putting that Jabba scene back in ANH like he wanted to do in 1981, but now he starts getting swept away after Jurassic Park and the CG revolution and within a few years he is using the project as an excuse to dabble in computer technology. But he can't get away from Star Wars. An elaborate Special Edition. Another prequel. Another prequel. A TV cartoon. A DVD Special Edition. Another prequel. Another TV cartoon. A live-action series. More books and games. Another Blu Ray Special Edition.
Other than a mediocre Indiana Jones--and, maybe finally, Red Tails if it ever comes out--that's all Lucas has done for about twenty years. Longer than his "retirement." He started working on the SE in 1993 and TPM in 1994, and now it's going on 2012 and he's still stuck there.
So, he has nothing else. He has no other films to put his creative energy into. There's no experimental films, no original ideas, no non-Star Wars films where he is behind the camera, no nothing, just Star Wars. And now he is so old that he never will ever direct another film again. He'll just be stuck with Star Wars, so while in the past he could tinker here and there but otherwise let it be and move on to other things, he's stuck, and all he can do is obsess over them and tinker and tinker and tinker. And when dealing with the older films, he's not the same person who made them in 1976, 1979 and 1982, so it's like he is taking some stranger's film who shares some vague notions with himself and is trying to re-shape them to better reflect himself now. Old George Lucas is literally trying to out-muscle Young George Lucas.
This goes into reason number 2
2) He's creatively castrated himself in his old age and success. Puggo explained this rather eloquently. It's actually not that abnormal. He became so successful, so wealthy, and so isolated from the real world that he lost the ability to be in touch with other human beings through his art, lost the ability to write captivating or engaging scenes and characters. Sometimes, creativity needs to be exercised or else it withers away like an underused muscle. But more importantly, Lucas lost his collaborators. He was never quite as talented as everyone suspected but he knew how to smartly overcome his limitations by surrounding himself with collaborators and letting himself be challenged. That situation no longer exists, because he has willed it so.
So, you have a man with nothing creative or artistic in his life except this one franchise, which he can't get away from, he has to keep going back because he doesn't have anything else to go to. And then when he does, he has all these awful ideas, because he's not what he used to be, and no one says anything about them, because he's created his own world that he can live and work in.
And so Lucas is stuck in this endless cycle. Rick McCallum said it best, there will be no definitive Star Wars version until Lucas dies. And we'll have to see each painful permutation of it as this aging billionaire with a fading creative impulse and a plantation of lackeys keeps bringing his baby to the plastic surgeon to get her to look the way he thinks he wants.
Hey guys, long time lurker here. This is my first post and I just had to say how well articulated and amazing zombie84's take on this issue is. I also never knew about the back history with Marcia and how the copyrights figure in untill I came across this thread as well. Thanks for the insight guys. Hope to see you around the boards more.
