Operation Oscar Repo

This rant is brought to you by a fan. Take it with a grain of salt. I'm someone who grew up with the films and absorbed the Star Wars culture. I was a child of Lucas & Spielberg. I am not an industry insider.

So now I think it’s safe to say that George Lucas will be re-tooling his Star Wars films until the day he dies. Apparently nothing can stop him. He has gone from a visionary director with average directing skill into a Gollum-like state with CGI being his “Precious”. I’m also convinced he will place in his Will, something so profoundly insulting to his fans, that he’ll be laughing from beyond years after his demise.

What I’m trying to say is that I give up. You won Mr. Lucas. You have buried the memory of the original trilogy so deep into the digital swamp that it has almost become unrecognizable. We all know it’s not going to stop either. Ten years down the road all of Frank Oz and Stuart Freeborn's work in Empire and Jedi will be scrubbed out as well. Mark my words.

Mr. Lucas, all I ask in return for submission and acceptance of your changes is one thing:

You must return the Oscars that were won before the changes. Simple as that. And by citing Mr. Lucas I mean the whole creative team. (if they were also involved with the retooling)


It may seem a little extreme, but hear me out. Star Wars (1977) won six awards. One of them was for best visual effects. They win the highest achievement for their practical effects, just to go back 20 years later and ruin it with sub par CGI. Apparently Lucas feels that the work of Dykstra, Edlund and all of ILM wasn’t worthy of the Academy Award or else he wouldn’t had them cover over it. Same goes with Best Film Editing. You shouldn’t be able to win for editing then ad in new scenes that disrupt the flow.

Steven Spielberg almost fell into the same drug induced state with E.T. Fortunately he just recently learned the error of his ways and expressed stupidity for wanting to change the past. If only he could have convinced Lucas before the Blu-rays came out.

Film is our culture. It’s our history’s culture, good or bad. It is meant to reflect the time in which it was made. To repeatedly go back and alter and distort it is to ignore history. To ignore history that has won six Academy Awards and influenced countless other filmmakers is just simply deranged.