Fixing Things

Before you read my stuff, I want to direct you to Sheila's comments on the Star Wars thing, as hers are much more coherent, and in fairness, she spoke first. I repeat a couple of things she says, inadvertantly...one of them nearly down to the word--I chalk it up not so much to great minds thinking alike, but rather Sheila being very much in the right, and that even the stopped clock that is BSTommy is right twice a day.....

Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrong-doing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.

Art also has its morality, and many of the rules of this morality are the same as, or at least analogous to, the rules of ordinary ethics. Remorse, for example, is as undesirable in relation to our bad art as it is in relation to our bad behavior. The badness should be hunted out, acknowledged and, if possible, avoided in the future. To pore over the literary shortcomings of twenty years ago, to attempt to patch a faulty work into the perfection it missed as its first execution, to spend one's middle age in trying to mend the artistic sins committed and bequeathed by that different person who was oneself in youth--all this is surely vain and futile. And that is why this new Brave New World is the same as the old one. Its defects as a work of art are considerable; but in order to correct them, I should have to re-write the book--and in the process of rewriting, as an older, other person, I should probably get rid not only of some of the faults of the story, but also of such merits as it originally possessed. And so, resisting the temptation to wallow in artistic remorse, I prefer to leave both well and ill alone, and to think about something else..... --Aldous Huxley, in the foreword to the reissue of his Brave New World, on wanting to go back and correct the text of the original, before republishing it.

I've been thinking about this passage since the rumors about the DVD release of the original Star Wars trilogy started up a while back. I finally remembered where I'd read it, and that's relief in and of itself.

You know, as much as Billionaire George can rant and rave about the Special Editions now being the Definitive editions of his movies, there is absolutely no way that in 1997 he had the entire grasp of what it was he was trying to do twenty years prior to that--he is an older, other person.

These are the movies he always wanted to make.

Well, that's fine for you, George.

But the movies that you were able to put out in 1977, 1980 and 1983 were great, in spite (and maybe because) of what you were technically and technologically unable to do.

And when you put them out in 1977, 1980 and 1983, they were no longer yours. You put them out for everybody...and they became ours. And like few, if any, other movies, they were accepted completely and totally into this generation's cultural lexicon.

Aldous said it: in going back to fix the bad, you also damaged some of the good. It's kind of like that Jenga game. You can take out a block....but putting it back in will usually jostle some keystone piece out of position, making the whole shebang a little more tipsy.

I'm like just about everybody. I like Han Solo shooting first. Kind of shows him to be the guy who'll do what he has to to survive. Letting Greedo shoot first makes Han a victim. And he's not a victim. It weakens his character.

Also, I like the matte boxes around the Tie Fighters and X-Wings in the Death Star battles. I was never bothered by them. I kind of liked them, because it showed what George and company were able to do in spite of the limitations.

I hate in Empire, where they added a few seconds of Wampa footage....like where the big Wampa is crouching over his kill and munching on it, while Luke hangs upside-down from the ice. I always liked the way it was prior to the SE because it left the Wampa to the imagination, a little. And George insulted us a little by not trusting us to use our imaginations.

And I think that's the problem. My buddy Alex, who's a wise, wise man, except for that whole living in Wisconsin thing, said after The Phantom Menace came out that this prequel was cartoony...it was a movie for kids, whereas the original trilogy was made for the kid in everybody.

It's like where George tries to explain midichlorians in The Phantom Menace as part of an explanation on Jedis and the force....in doing so, he completely undermined the best part of the movies for me: Magic in the midst of all the science. Here you have space travel and laser blasters and droids and binary loadlifters....and also these guys in robes who can move things with their mind. It was a nice fantastic balance, which was completely undermined by the need to explain it. Leave it to the viewers to figure out, if they even need to.

But anyway.

I say all this, and I wish I could honestly say to you that I won't be buying George's trilogy when it comes out in the fall. But I probably will. My VHS copies aren't good for much anymore.

Who knows. Maybe George will come to his senses and let us choose. He likes money. Maybe down the road they'll package an original edition for us. They did it with the Alien movies....regular and special editions in the same package. I dunno.

There. I'm done ranting about Star Wars.