"Special" Editions?

To quote Monty Python: And now for something completely different…

I’m making the rounds over certain websites, sippin’ the coffee (not gin and juice), eatin’ the bagel. Typical pre-9 a.m. stuff. And I come across this article over on Ain’t It Cool News as part of their never-ending updates on the tweaking of the Original Star Wars Series. “Sacrilege!” they cry. “Down with Lucas!” “I’m gonna shove this 20-sided die where the sun don’t shine!” Etc. You get the gist.

Got me thinking, though. I mean, how many of us deep down have an impulse to go back and fix things we knew even at the time weren’t perfect, weren’t our best? Lucas just happens to have the GNP of the European Union, and can enact his desires as he sees fit. All while wearing a flannel shirt. (The latter part is something I can personally get behind.) Personally, I think he’s losing out on a series amount of dough here. I mean, most rabid fans will by both, and those who are offended by the updated versions will at least have an option to buy one instead of none. But that’s neither here nor there.

I used what few contacts I have in the “industry” to “figure out” the “changes” made in the “newest edition”, tentatively titled the “Super Awesome Ultimate Now That’s What I Call Star Wars!” edition. Under penalty of watching Jar Jar outtakes, my connection deep within Skywalker Ranch gave me an itemized list of some of the changes. Sadly, my fax machine ran out of paper after page 45 of the memo. But here are a few of the more shocking details:

• "The ice planet of Hoth” has been digitally altered to “the slightly warm, but cooler by the lake, planet of Lucasia”.


• Chewbacca’s lines have all been overdubbed by Avery Brooks.


• The long-lost “Lando and Vader drinkin’ Colt 45’s” scene is restored.


• Mark Hamill’s performance is now 10% whinier.


• Greedo not only shoots first, but second, third, forth, and fifth, followed by a bazooka shot that narrowly missed Han. Also, Natalie Portman is now in this scene with, surprisingly, a blank look on her face.


• The Imperial Guards now wear black instead of red, for “that slimming effect”.


• The music in the Cantina has been replace by Busta Rhymes' “Light Ya Ass On fire”.


• Grand Moff Tarkin now says, “Wokka wokka!” after every line.


• Darth Vader refers to Grand Moff Tarkin as “Lil’ Tark”.


• Lil’ Tark is really passive-aggressive towards “Big D” regarding his new moniker.


• Mind-control substance in “truth serum robot” secretly replaced by Folger’s Crystals. Let’s see if they can tell the difference!


• Ewoks? What Ewoks? (“Sorry about those,” says Lucas in the audio commentary. “I was having a long week. While we're on the topic of apologies, about that whole 'Howard the Duck' mess...”)


• Before Alderan is destroyed, all inhabitants turn to the camera, do “jazz hands”, and then the Macaulay Culkin face from “Home Alone”.


• Satisfying the curiosity of fan boys everywhere, Lucas finally restores the 18-minute “getting Leia into the gold bikini” sequence.


• The rebel base at the end of “A New Hope” is moved from Yavin to Bermuda due to the tax shelters the new location presents to the burgeoning movement.


• The Emperor uses both the Dark Side of the Force and Botox to combat wrinkles.

So, those are just a few of the new editions. Come to think of it, maybe I should do a “Special Edition” version of the website. You know, spruce up the graphics, forget about continuity, ignore everything you really cherished about it in the first place, digitally alter any pictures of myself to give me the Imperial Guard slimming effect. That would rule.

Not.

I’ll always be the “Brother McMullen” of the blog world, and I’m OK with that. The sort of indie-Irish sensibility without all the Ed Burns annoyance. Low-budget, kinda funny, sorta grainy, and I drink. All. The. Time. The works for me. (Can you even imagine a “Brothers McMullen: Special Edition”? Imagine if say they went back and used CGI to like, blwo up a house randomly? Has anyone even seen this movie besides me? Damn. This was much funnier in my head. But I can’t be buggered to go back and erase it. Oh well.)

I look back at old articles and usually cringe. Then again, I’ll look back at this article in a few weeks/months and cringe, but right now I think it’s OK to post. But I wouldn’t dream of going back and altering them. Just because I think I can do something “better” doesn’t mean I can actually improve upon the original product. They are of a time and a place, and to alter them is to do a disservice to who I was and what I felt at a particular moment. Maybe I’d like to hire a proofreader to catch some typos, but other than that, I like having them as is, warts and half-thoughts and silly ideas all.

The idea that technology can replace imagination is even scarier. The notion that the enhancement in technology can improve cinema has already been proven false. When technology is married to imagination, the results are staggering. I think the blogging revolution in general is a testament to that. Movies such as the original “Matrix” are a testament to that. But when technology supplants imagination, well, then you’ve got “The Phantom Menace” or a blog that uses a clever Flash animation instead of good content.

Technology is always going to be, in the best of all possible worlds, in service of imagination. In the Pangloss version of the best of all possible worlds, however, technology will dull our creativity to the point of making our imaginations obsolete. It doesn’t matter of Greedo or Han fires first, since in the end, the synapses in Lucas’ mind fired first.

As long as we remember that, I think we’ll be OK. Happy weekend to all.

Posted by Ryan McGee at October 31, 2003 09:49 AM