You might think that if a film makes a reported $5.8 billion in box-office and merchandising revenue that it probably has something going for it. Yet still Star Wars apparently needed fixing. And so, in fact, have a suspicious number of otherwise successful films: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blade Runner, Aliens, The Abyss, and even Who Framed Roger Rabbit. There was a report recently of a planned special edition of Jaws. Why do they do it? And are we being ripped off?

The legitimacy of these new versions varies widely. Some, like Close Encounters (the originator of the trend) and Blade Runner, seem to spring from genuine artistic concerns. Hollywood executives, keen to get a nice safe product into the market by a particular date, have a habit of interfering with films that - for whatever reason - make them nervous. When a film that has suffered this fate scores at the box-office it's hard to begrudge the filmmakers their attempts to try to fix the problems.

But what about George Lucas? Surprisingly, considering the strange nature of his project, Lucas seems to have received little interference while making Star Wars. Lucas' problems with the film seem to be purely technical. The special effects were completed a long time ago (1976 - 1977) in a galaxy far, far, away (California) and it is true that some didn't look too good. He claims, too, that he ran out of money to complete the effects on Jabba the Hutt, and therefore discarded that entire scene. Apparently he has never been satisfied with all the scenes in the film and thus wanted to polish it up. If that gave him yet another chance to make money out of the films, all the better. After all, Lucas is the master of the art of making us pay for things twice: hence he preceded his Star Wars "Special Edition" with a digitally remastered video release of the old version.

If the result is a good one, and the problems with the film are fixed, the motive doesn't matter. For much of the film this is the case. Most of the new edition is fairly familiar, and Lucas' technical people have obviously taken a cautious approach. Many of the old effects shots (I'd guess more than half) remain untouched, and many of the charmingly clunky details have been left in. There are still brief shots where the light-sabers are not coloured in, revealing the thin sticks the actors are carrying; Luke still mistakenly calls Leia "Carrie" in a moment of excitement; and, best of all, one of the stormtroopers still cracks his head marching under a Death Star door. For most of the film the changes are minimal, and the overall experience is still enjoyable.

The dissatisfaction mostly stems from changes made early in the film. Lucas worries about the compromises forced on him the first time around, but forgets that such compromises will still face him this time. Thus, while Lucas complains that his original budget left him with stuffed, inanimate creatures for the stormtroopers to ride, he overlooks the fact that his new computer-generated replacements still look fake. Compare the 1977 equivalent, the sandpeoples' Banthas (achieved by draping a furry costume over elephants) and tell me which is more effective. I'll vote the Bantha. The sad fact is, that even with the best computer nerds in the business, Lucas is still left with dodgy shots.

Another of these poor effects is Jabba the Hutt. Even if we can forgive the fact that the computer-generated product doesn't look as real as a big rubber puppet, the old, cut scene was not framed for a large creature. The result is that Jabba looks small and misshapen. And because Han walked as he talked to the original Jabba, the new version has to be mobile, which goes against what Return of the Jedi showed us. Adding to the problems is a change in characterisation: the Jedi Jabba was mean, nasty, and a tough negotiator. Our new Jabba comes across as soft, friendly, and a complete sucker, barely more scary than the rotund English halfwit who appeared in the original, cut footage.

Lucas claims that this actor was merely there to give Harrison Ford somebody to play against before a stop-motion creature was put in his place. This is hard to believe. If Lucas wanted to insert a stop-motion effect, why did he allow Ford to walk behind Jabba, and wave his hand in front of him? Both actions would considerably complicate the optical process of inserting the animation. If Lucas is telling the truth, he intended the Jabba scene (filmed, remember, on a very limited budget) to be a more ambitious special effect than anything attempted in either of his much higher budgeted sequels. Could it be that the scene was really cut simply because it was redundant and poorly written?

If so, there is only one reason to reinsert the scene: Lucas needed a marketing hook to justify his changes, just as Spielberg did for Close Encounters. In that case the hook was to see the inside of the mothership, a move even Spielberg agreed was counter-productive. In this case, we have been promised a "few new surprises," and Jabba fits the bill, regardless of whether the scene has any merit. Thus Star Wars hits the classic problem that has plagued many "special editions" and which makes many movie fans cautious of them: adding footage usually creates as many problems as it fixes. The Special Edition of Close Encounters contains a number of continuity errors and narrative gaps; Star Wars, with its weird looking out-of-character Jabba, now has some similar problems.

The final (and perhaps most critical) problem is a deeper one, and one that Lucas - of all people - should have foreseen. After all, Star Wars is one of the classic special effects extravaganzas. In such a film, our excitement is not only drawn from giving ourselves over to the plot and becoming involved in the adventure (the "sucker response," if you like), but also from a more sophisticated appreciation of the amazing technology on show. Hence we get, as academic Brooks Landon has pointed out, the "showstopper:" the moment in a science fiction film where the plot essentially freezes for a display of great effects (the climax of Close Encounters is one of the most extreme examples). These displays can be counter productive, as each such scene creates a rupture in which narrative is put on hold. This leads to a danger that the audience may lose the narrative involvement that ultimately binds the film together, and indeed Lucas and Spielberg often stress in interviews the importance of maintaining a strong (they seem to mean archetypal) story.

This is why Lucas was careful, at the climax of Star Wars, to keep us focussed on the impending threat to the rebel base, rather than lingering completely on his effects. It is also why the Special Edition hits trouble. For we now have a whole second level of distraction, a kind of double rupture that causes the film not only to freeze for the old special effects sequences, but also the new alterations to those old sequences. We know how Star Wars used to be, and alterations to the familiar melody are jarring. We can never watch the stormtroopers' beasts, or Jabba, or the rest without being aware that they weren't there before. Minor scenes of only passing importance are now major effects sequences. For me, it's one too many things in the back of my mind, preventing full enjoyment of Star Wars simply as a story.

What we have then, is a strange kind of artistic self mutilation: sort of like colorisation, only this time it's Orson Welles himself taking the crayons to Citizen Kane. Are we allowed to care? Lucas, Spielberg, Cameron, Scott, and all the rest, did make the films, after all. Even if the copyright doesn't technically reside with them, they must be granted some kind of moral ownership of their work. I just wonder whether the public gets a share. We didn't make Star Wars, but we grew up with it, and have now seen it a frightening number of times. Isn't such a cultural landmark partly our property too? As Pauline Kael wrote when reviewing the Close Encounters re-release: "It may not seem like a big loss, but when you remember something in a movie with pleasure and it's gone, you feel your memories had been mugged."

I know the feeling.

Related Items

For my Phantom Menace review click here,

For my Attack of the Clones review click here.

For my Revenge of the Sith review click here.

For my essay on the politics of Star Wars, Only a Conservative Deals in Absolutes, click here.

For my views on the specific special editions click here and here.