The Madness of King George

George Lucas is, officially, insane. Or, just an asshole. Possibly both. He's certainly one of the biggest trolls on the planet, a fact confirmed by recent comments he made while promoting the new 3D release of "Star Wars--Episode I: The Phantom Menace".

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Lucas talks about the new 3D version of "The Phantom Menace", while also making some interesting, if infuriating, comments about the changes he's made to the films since their original theatrical release, while also weighing in on SOPA and the possibility of another Indiana Jones movie.

But of particular note is Lucas' insight into what is quite possibly the most infamous change to the "Original Trilogy" of all:

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 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.

To be clear, what Lucas is saying isn't total bullshit (except, actually, it is).

Over the years Lucas has edited the scene differently. In the 1997 Special Edition re-release Greedo shoots and Han "jumps" out of the way in a horrible and obvious digital manipulation of Harrison Ford's body, and then Han shoots. In the 2004 DVD version, Han and Greedo shoot closer together. On the 2011 blu-ray, they shoot at the same time and Han's jump is absent.

Here's a look at the original scene as it appeared on screen in 1977 and all of the VHS copies pre-1997, persevered for eternity thanks to the 1993 LaserDisc released just before Lucas started Lucasing up his films with CG and crap.

So, yes, the question of who shot first is obscured by blaster smoke. The fact is, we cant see Han, or Greedo for that matter, shoot at all.

But, we can hear it. And there's only one blaster firing in the soundtrack of that scene. If Lucas always intended for there to be two shots, doesn't it seem likely he would have added the sound of another shot into the mix way back in the seventies? Instead, there's Han reaching for his blaster, some smoke and one shot, and a dead Greedo.

The way the original scene plays out, it's clear. Han shot. THE END. Greedo never had a chance, because he was caught completely off guard by a scruffy-looking nerf herder who is the embodiment of badass-ness and very much a cold-blooded killer.

And if the visual evidence doesn't convince you that Lucas has lost it, look no further than this excerpt from the script:

Right there, from the typewriter of Mr. George Lucas himself, circa 1975.

Oh, and, George...

Lucas on the set of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" (2008)

In the same article, Lucas also makes a few other derogatory comments about the fanbase that made him a billionaire ($20 billion in merchandising alone, people) and tries to pass of his alterations as nothing out side of the norm for Hollywood. There's some wonderfully circular logic at work in his words, first claiming that a change is only bad when execs are behind it, and then backing of his tweaks with the many different cuts of Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner", a film famously chopped to pieces by the studio.

"Blade Runner" has had five different versions: a workprint, a studio-edited theatrical version based on feedback from the test-screened workprint, a studio-edited international version, the re-issued 1992 version, which Scott called rushed (it's a director's cut in name only and was actually assembled by a Warner Brothers archivist working off of Scott's notes), and was only finally restored to Scott's original vision in 2007 with the remastered "Final Cut", a project Scott funded himself, for the blu-ray release. Lucas, on the other hand, has had complete control over his films since at least 1977. Every change he's made has been his decision, and his decision alone. And every change has been unnecessary because he was allowed to make the film the way he wanted to in the first place. 

Troll?

I honestly can't tell: insanity or trolling?

Probably a little bit of both. George Lucas either hasn't actually watched the unaltered versions of the original trilogy since the early 90s and honestly can't remember how some of these scenes played out (thus leading to these easily and obviously disproven comments like Greedo always shooting first, as above). Or he screens glorious Technicolor prints of the OT sans-changes in his own theater at Skywalker Ranch every night, while laughing at the fury of franchise fanboys published on the Internet.