George Lucas Confirms It: The Star Wars We Loved Never Existed
What? You think I owe you people anything?
Now everything is starting to come into clarity. Today is a bit like the day we learn that Santa Claus is your parents, socialism stops working when rich people’s money runs out, and a BA qualifies you for a $10 entry-level job that you could’ve gotten just out of high school.
As all the digital wounds should be healed by now from Kathy Shaidle’s venemous anti-Star Wars, anti-geek broadside, let us consider the newest affront to Nerd Dogma, this time courtesy of George Lucas himself. This new insult only confirms the necessity of publishing Shaidle’s column and moving on to greener pastures in the geek culture ecosystem. Via Hot Air and Ace, we learn today that we are all stupid for thinking that Han Solo would shoot Greedo rather than die in Jabba’s rancor pit. The truth for all of us morons in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter:
THR: People can get fanatical about the movies — how does that make you feel? The puppet vs. CGI Yoda ruckus, and the who-shot-first, Han Solo or Greedo furor come to mind.
Lucas: Well, it’s not a religious event. I hate to tell people that. It’s a movie, just a movie. The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.
It’s the same thing with Yoda. We tried to do Yoda in CGI in Episode I, but we just couldn’t get it done in time. We couldn’t get the technology to work, so we had to use the puppet, but the puppet really wasn’t as good as the CGI. So when we did the reissue, we had to put the CGI back in, which was what it was meant to be.
When you have a gun pointed in your face and you’re clever enough to quietly draw your own pistol and blast the evil person threatening you… you are not a “cold-blooded killer.”
Ace will have none of this:
My, you have to be sitz-tinkler to get all worried about the message you’re sending by having Han “gun Greedo down” like a “cold-blooded murderer.”
For one thing, you know, Greedo had a gun on him, and announced, clearly, that he intended to kill Han in the next few seconds.
This seems “bad ass” only because of silly movies in the fifties and stuff when singing cowboys always let the bad guy have the first shot. That continued for decades.
It became accepted that Good Guys Always Let the Bad Guys Shoot First. So that in a movie like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, it seemed cold-blooded that Clint Eastwood would whistle for some Bad Guy’s attention, then kill them before they had time to reach for their guns.
But it was never really “cold-blooded.” Given the context of the fictional scenarios this was occurring in — these guys were trying to kill the main characters. It wasn’t murder. It was just the good guys deciding they’re not going to be Total Saps and give away a crucial advantage in a gunfight.
Here’s the medicine we all need to swallow: as children we were more grown up than George Lucas is now as an adult. Han Solo’s entire character rested on what we saw in that early scene in the film. In shooting first Han Solo was a role model doing what any Real Man was supposed to do. Now we know that character only existed in our imaginations, not his creator’s. And that George Lucas regards most of his fans as amoral neanderthals.
Oh well.
What else is on?
Also read: “Five Reasons Star Wars Actually Sucks”
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David Swindle is the associate editor of PJ Media and writes a post each day on news and politics at PJ Tatler and culture and entertainment at PJ Lifestyle. He can be contacted with feedback and story tips at DaveSwindlePJM[@]gmail.com and on Twitter @DaveSwindle. He enforces commenting guidelines on his posts — rude, off topic and ad hominem comments will be deleted. (Unless they are particularly well-written and entertaining.)
Good, Bad, and Ugly? Certainly in High Plains Drifter, that opens with three quick shootings and a forceable rape, just to establish the good guy’s credentials.
Damn straight, Greedo had weapon on Han and (finger on the trigger) was about to shoot him– what more did you need? Made sense when I was seven. Lucas is a sissy.
^this
In a recent – and really awkward – interview w/Oprah Winfrey, Lucas insisted “he was the only person who never got to see ‘STAR WARS.’”
I questioned the logic of that statement, but now I’m starting to believe him.
I just watch the movies: I don’t write columns that display micromanagement of the “logic” of gunfight scenes that explain how it’s stupid and nerdy to display micromanagement of the “logic” of gunfight scenes in “Star Wars.”
Never forgive, never forget. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the nerdiest micromanager of all? This is not surrender but another shot across our bows.
You don’t just watch the movies. You also leave comments on the internet about them. Appreciate your thoughts.
Oh my stars you got me; never saw that one coming. I feel like I’ve been tear gassed.
I didn’t realize we were at war.
I’m just amused that you see people who leave comments and like “Star Wars” as do-nothing nerds. Today I went to Tahrir Square and photographed the 1st anniversary of Hosni Mubarak stepping down from office. No body shot my eyes out, thanks. Do I have street cred? There were a lot of nerds there waving flags and giving speeches and naturally recording everything on their stupid smart phones.
I’ve read virtually everything Jack Vance has written and seen “Star Wars” probably 30 times. That screwed my future. Especially walking in the deep jungle in Guatemala visiting El Tintal, El Mirador and Nakbe and waling an ancient arrow-straight road found by satellite and hiking the Inca Trail twice.
Then there was riding a motorcycle completely around the outside of the island of Bali. I’ll never live that down. Sleeping on top of Agung Volcano with a full moon all alone as thunderheads the same height as I was swept in from the sea I could see far below is a shame I’ll never get over.
I’m glad you’re able to amuse yourself so much by imagining positions for me.
I don’t have to imagine positions for you unless you consider your own writings science fiction.
My own writings don’t express the caricature of my position that you ascribe to me.
Mr. Dave, I don’t think you see you’re heading down the same river that started this whole dust-up in the first place: deNile.
Write what you will but own what you write. The premise is that people who love science fiction and “Star Wars” are intractable nerds doomed to a life of failure when in fact you seem to be describing pro bloggers.
It is they who are locked in a room full of peacefully sleeping “tear gassed” dogs and an Islamic Caliphate that is marching unchecked across the middle east. A quick visit outside would confirm the average blogger’s view of reality has little more traction than a non-existent traction beam.
“The premise is that people who love science fiction and “Star Wars” are intractable nerds doomed to a life of failure when in fact you seem to be describing pro bloggers.”
Yes, I’ll deny that I ever wrote this premise. Quote my actual words instead of making up strawman arguments.
And there’s no such thing as “the average blogger” Or an “average commenter.” Or an “average” anything. Learned that from my favorite science fiction author: http://www.rawilson.com/csicon.html
That explains your crying.
What kind of nimrod comes to a site that comments on pop culture and derides it for, well, commenting on pop culture?
And as long as I’m asking rhetorical questions, what kind of moron leaves a comment making himself out to be the reincarnation of Hemingway while actually expecting anyone to believe his steamy pile of BS, much less be impressed by it?
Thanks for taking a break from your larger-than-life life to let us know how lame we are. You can go back to charging up San Juan Hill now.
Well here’s No.1 pal: I am not nudging anyone for making comments on pop culture but for the nature of those comments. In the real world this is called disagreement. I myself love pop culture and reading about it. I have a 3-sheet of “The Queen of Outer Space” starring Zsa Zsa Gabor mounted on linen that I am inordinately proud of. I have an insert of “Project Moonbase” that is beautiful.
No.2, thanks for the back-handed compliment that portrays my real and actual life as so fantastically cool you can’t even believe it. Unfortunately for your easily threatened ego, there is much, much more I’ve done. After Egypt I’m spending the Spring in Paris, not to irritate you but to have fun and be a nerd.
My advice: go outside, make your own mark. I suspect it won’t seem so steamy then.
I heard from a guy who heard from a guy on good authority that George Lucas never came up with the original story for Star Wars on his own.
See, what happened is that ol’ George met up with a wayward Jedi back in the 60′s in a bar in Petaluma…or was it Sausalito? Maybe even Modesto. Anyway, this Jedi was pretty deep into his cups and didn’t notice young George taking notes while he told him the whole story of Luke, Han, etc. George then sat on the story for a few years before deciding it was screenplay gold, and that’s how Episodes IV through VI were conceived.
But the problem is that the Jedi passed out after one too many Anchor Steams, and left off the story right around the time our heroes escape from Jaba’s lair, so George had to wing it for the rest of the story. This explains why everything in the story after the escape from Tatooine has pretty much sucked since.
Well, if you read the original novelization of Episode IV, and you’re familiar with Alan Dean Foster’s SF, you get the irresistible impression that Lucas lifted most of the background, tech, etc., from Foster’s Humanx Commonwealth novels. For instance, the half-page datadump about how starship contragrav lift, sublight drives, and hyperdrive all work together (or more often refuse to do so), came pretty much straight out of “The Tar-Aiym Krang”.
Either that, or ADF ghosted the novelization. I call the odds six-five and pick ‘em.
cheers
eon
It’s interesting that despite selling Star Wars to the public – and making millions – Lucas is still feels very possessive toward his magnum opus. I’m not sure what that’s called. The fact is, Lucas doesn’t really “own” Star Wars as a concept anymore. Marketers and fans do. He sold it to them. They took it and ran. That’s another way in which Lucas changed moviemaking and another reason it’s hard to describe what Lucas as a moviemaker “is.”
I wonder why it’s harder for a moviemaker to go back and make changes than it is for an author to revise the text of a novel and release a new edition? Is it because movies are more “real” than books? We feel like we’ve witnessed something, and changing it would be like changing history?
‘cept for one thing.
Lucas said Star Wars (the full, original name of the movie) was a “space western”. So he followed Western movie traditions.
See, no politics!
If only he’d kept his trap shut for two more movies. But no, we get Lucas spouting off about how Return of the Jedi is an allegory of the Viet Nam War, with the plucky North Vietnamese as Ewoks, and the U.S. as the evil Empire. Boy, we needed that.
If only George Lucas had a creative mind, he could come up with new ideas and not have to spend his time tinkering and re-tinkering with his old ones.
True. Which is better, though: having a new idea every year for thirty years, or having one big idea that keeps people interested for thirty-five years? I don’t know. Like I said in a previous comment, Lucas had one big idea back in 1977, but since then it’s been other people who have kept the idea alive (and profitable).
“What? You think I owe you people anything?”
ermn…… that’s the face and the line I’d expect to get from the guy when something, say…… the lil’ dot turns blue, er sumpthin’………;P…………
Lucas peaked with American Graffiti.
My awe for Star Wars ended with …
“… what have I done ? … My Master !”
After investing countless hours wondering just how the transition to the “dark side” would happen, we were given the worst pablum possible.
As a projectionist,I screened “Star Wars” over 300 times in 1977. It loses what shallow charm it possesses very quickly.
Nah, not really. We sci-fi nerds and geeks have had decades of practice in being insulted, is all. We move on because arranging for your appropriately unpleasant demise wouldn’t leave time for creating a future where those who don’t know anything about tech are left writing angry and impotent blog posts about how we should “get over it.”
As one of our heroes, Robert Heinlein, put it, “Do not use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his (or her — ed) throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.”
The real horror has not even been addressed in George Lucas’ corrected update of that scene. While Han clearly shot second, the dastardly truth is apparent: Greedo was blind. I mean, he’s sitting down, aiming a gun at point-blank range, shoots first and … misses? Blind, obviously. We now know that Han Solo sat with smirking contempt for his disabled assailant, knowing that he was in no real danger, and shot poor, blind Greedo simply to amuse himself. What a loathsome lowlife, blasting a disabled man who was just trying to make a decent living among his sighted bounty-hunter competitors, proving in a touching, movie-of-the-week way that he is just as (differently-)abled as anyone, and … zap, all done, just to give Han’s debtor ass a rude chuckle.
In a way, I wish Han HAD shot pre-emptively, the way my defective memory tells me he did back in ’77. At least he wasn’t petty.
“What else is on?”
Firefly. Mal would never let the other guy get a shot in. He said that if he killed Simon then Simon would be awake, facing him and with a gun in his hand. He never said that Simon would have the opportunity to fire that gun.
Obviously — this is the evil George Lucas from the “Mirror, Mirror” galaxy. You can’t see his goatee because of the beard.
And a little Star Trek:DS9 love for real men who shoot first:
O’Brien: “You’d shoot a man in the back?”
Garrack: “It’s the safest way, isn’t it?”
Seriously, why take Lucas at face value? Compare some of the statements he made in 1977 & 1978 with those he makes now. You can find them in dead trees coffee table books published at the time.
The statements don’t match up. George Lucas revises his history as freely as he revises his movies.
It just always tickles me the way these moviemakers railed against ‘colorization’ of classics as vandalism and that the shared experience of films shouldn’t be tinkered with… but when it comes to their own movies they can’t be dissuaded from re-editing them… changing their meanings. I guess it shows, in a way, Lucas political deterioration: in the Soviet Union they used to say that the future is known, but the past that is changing. So, we should believe in George Lucas and not our lying eyes.
Actually, it’s the George Lucas we thought existed that never was.
Back when gunfights took place using powder-and-ball revolvers, there was and advantage to the experienced gunfighter in allowing his opponent to shoot first. Firstly, most of these guys knew the effective range of their weapons and less practiced opponents did not. The range at which these fights took place diminished as they went on. Also, having knowledge of the terrain and sunlight direction could afford advantage. The best gunfighters also discharged their weapons on a daily basis for two reasons: one was that they got practice, but the most important reason was that their powder tended to be drier than their opponents as a result. If you were taking on a less-experienced opponent, the way to go about dispatching him was to make yourself available to him at a distance beyond the effective range of his weapon. Most of the time his revolver would fail to discharge, and you could simply rush in and dispatch him without difficulty.
Colonel Mortimer’s first encounter in “For a Few Dollars More” is a cinematic case in point. His opponent (after Mortimer shoots his horse out from under him with a carbine at about 70 yards) returns fire with his revolver, from the forehand/hip stance, not using the sights, and consistently shooting low. (The slugs keep hitting the ground in front of Mortimer,which should have told the fool to elevate his muzzle.)
Mortimer calmly attaches a shoulder stock to his long-barreled .44 Colt Frontier Model, assumes the correct stance, uses the sights, and drills said fool in the forehead with one shot.
As Elmer Keith put it in his Three Laws of Gunfighting;
1. Have a gun.
2. Never bring a knife to a gunfight.
3. Never bring a pistol to a rifle fight.
cheers
eon
I have to say; I don’t watch Star Wars (nor listen to its creator) to inform my morality, and neither should you, Dave.
All this time I thought the scene in question was an homage to Jennifer O’Neill self-defensively shooting Robert Donner with an under-the-table derringer in Rio Lobo (1970), although in Lucas’s version the shooter and the weapon were more guy-like. Gee, the things you learn when storytellers desperately cling to retconning….
Read it somewhere on the Internet, don’t remember where, that great artists rarely understand their own work. Clearly, it applies to whatever vision Lucas had early in his career.
Great artists do in fact know exactly what they put into their work. The comments here about “Star Wars,” which depict it as the story being paramount where editing, casting, art direction, design, screen play, script, set dressing and all the rest are mere afterthoughts show it is frequently the consumer who fails to understand the language of film and art.
Whatever the opposite of a nerdgasm is, from now on can we just call it getting “Lucased?”
If I were Lucas and really felt the way Lucas claims to have felt about Solo’s pre-emptive violence, then I guess I would be proud of how I wrote a character so far outside of my own voice and world view, and leave it at that. The gunslinger redeemed by the upright spirited woman is one of the oldest tropes around and he wrote right into it. Very nicely. Now we learn Solo wasn’t a gunslinger. Just a nice guy with a pistol on his hip.
I’m guessing Joss Whedon isn’t as conservative or libertarian as he has occasionally written. It’s just good writing. I hope he’s proud of it.
If as Lucas says, “it’s a movie, just a movie”, then why get all defensive about it in the first place? If it’s not a religious event, why all the trouble to correct the dogma?
He’s got too much time on his hands. He needs to go do a Bill Gates and get outside of himself.
So we have two scenarios here. In one, we have Han Solo, knowing that Guido is about to kill him (Guido was kind enough expend several lines of dialog to that effect), shooting first from under the table in self defense. In the other, we have Guido, a paid enforcer for Jabba the Hut, shooting first and missing at point blank range. The former has the advantage of saying something interesting about Han Solo. The latter is more in keeping with the hackery that Lucas has demonstrated in the prequels.
Maybe he really did mean for Guido to shoot first, but the way it looked in the first movie is much cooler. This might be a case where the art exceeded the artist and the artist is just too anal to know when to shut up. Or maybe Lucas just plain hates his fans and wants to mess with their heads. In either case, we are free to ignore the rants of the man who gave us Jar Jar Binks.
I am now picturing Greedo with orange spray-tan and a popped collar
The best thing about the star wars saga is that the Empire was a totalitarian regime, and the rebels won.
Hollywood is notorious about portraying combat in a nonsensical fashion even in a ‘real’ war movie. The combat scenes in Star Wars are the most cringe-worthy I’ve ever scene. So effing up the Greedo/Solo fight is trivial in comparision.
I disagree. Han definitely killed Greedo in cold blood. It was a justified killing as if Han had not killed, he would have been killed, but he was not killing out of emotion, but in rational self defense.
The mistake being made here is an unstated assumption that cold blooded killing is bad. In fact, hot blooded killing is more likely to be bad as it is done in the heat of the moment, without thought.
We’re talking about a guy who didn’t even understand what the concept of The Force meant in national culture and went on to utterly destroy all he had achieved in the minds of so many inspired millions with “midichlorians”.
I realized George Lucas was a moron the instant I watched him wreck my childhood fantasies with a wholly unnecessary plot device.
Han is the ONLY one that shot if you watch the first version as I did about 6 times in one day back in 70′s Seattle. I have no intention to see any new PC version that this twit puts out to salve his bad feelings about the first one made to the standards of the day. Very much like to live in that world than the one the dictatorship in the WH and his PC jackles are forcing down our throats.
A: of course Lucas would say that he meant it all along. “Greedo Shoots First” was the moment where he lost the love of the audience that had made him a multibillionaire. The only thing you can do with an epic screwup like that is double down, act like it wasn’t “by accident” but “on purpose”. If you did it on purpose then you’re a misunderstood genius who will be vindicated by history. If you did it by accident, well, you’re just a doofus. And nobody wants to give artistic respect to a doofus.
B: and this is assuming that the whole thing isn’t just Lucas burning down the house he built just to show his ex-wife how much he hates her. If you think the Greedo thing aaa bad, wait until Han/Leia becomes “I love you”/”and *I* love *you*” (carbonite)
I wish Lucas simply had the stones to say he’d rather make the change because he no longer believes in the original vision. Saying it was meant to be that way all along is complete BS and the only person fooled by it is Lucas himself. Grow a pair, dude.
Better still, man up and own that your character showed a little initiative in a life-or-death situation. Everybody–EVERYBODY–hates the change. It’s stupid, and pointless, and it’s pandering to the kind of brainless PC crap that ruins all other movies. Why should it ruin this one too?
I have a copy of the Laserdisc version, before Lucas “fixed” the movie. As Sulaco says, in that version Greedo never even fired his weapon.
The only question is, which is worse: the retconn of this scene, or the end of Return of the Jedi, when he CGI’d Hayden Cristensen into the finale?
I’ve never been impressed with Lucas’ intelligence after I found out the Ewok battle on Endor was his version of the Vietnam War.
The only problem with George’s comments is, of course, that they’re 100% wrong. Both the original screenplay and the novelization (“authored” by George Lucas) make it clear that Greedo not only doesn’t shoot first – he doesn’t shoot at all. Han smokes him before he gets a chance.
George may have convinced himself that he really meant Greedo to shoot first, but that wasn’t the case then and it shouldn’t be now.
Ah, George did once create a man,
Self-seeking—and yet noble, Han.
Now trembling to a later ban,
This craven seeks redemption.
His stellar trader, sharp of eye
To any threat or danger nigh,
Is balked by Marin’s PCd guy
And barred from shrewd preemption.
I always liked what Paul Newman (Judge Roy Bean) said in that movie after he sniper-shot some outlaw (Bad Bob I think). “If he wanted a fair fight he should have gone to some other town.”