"“To me, it [the original Star Wars trilogy] doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I’m sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it.” - George Lucas, 2004
It is insane how much George Lucas has edited the original Star Wars trilogy. I think no movies have had more edits over time than Star Wars.
Another part of the story a lot of people don't know is apparently Lucas's cut of the original Star Wars was horrible, so his wife came in and redid everything and that's the version that went to theaters. And she was the editor on the remaining two of the original trilogy as well.
I think it's pretty clear to everyone now that when Lucas is flying solo his final output is... not great. He obviously imagined a universe a lot of people find compelling, but wasn't always the best person to realize the vision of that universe.
That version of events has been disputed: <a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=olqVGz6mOVE" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/watch?v=olqVGz6mOVE .
I know it's a meme at this point, but being an "idea person" is legitimately a thing. But there is also being self-aware enough to recognize what your strengths are and when you should call in reinforcements, as it were, to fill in where there's a need. Seems there's a spectrum where people fall in how readily they will recognize this and Lucas falls more towards the reluctant side perhaps.
On a similar vein, Gene Roddenberry was pretty similar with Star Trek. He had a pretty big universe imagined, got the scaffolding in for it, but all the best works under the name of Star Trek were made by other people. Anything Gene Roddenberry was directly involved in as a script writer (see: many episodes of the original and first two seasons of The Next Generation) are generally the weakest and worst parts of Star Trek.
Yeah, also I think part of that was Gene wanted to portray a more optimistic vision of the future as a principled thing, which I get, but that also made Classic and TNG feel a bit superficial and low stakes a lot of the time. DS9 is personally my favorite series, mostly because of the age I was when it came out, but also because I liked that they shifted it to be a bit less idealistic.
I watched it when it was originally on in the 90's. As the show got more serialized it was like a cliff hanger or huge event every few weeks. Then we got a great 10 episode arc to end the series.
Yeah it's aged phenomenally well, and makes more modern Star Treks so frustratingly awful. The Visitor is arguably one of the best episodes of any Star Trek ever, Past Tense was basically prophetic. And so many of the episodes are extremely insightful on human nature - For the Uniform where good can so easily become evil - In the Pale Moonlight being of a similar nature, and so many more.
One of the things I'm most looking forward to is watching the series with my kids when they're old enough.
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Unrelated but the TNG episode Tapestry also deserves a mention. [1] Wtf happened to media. Writers used to actually understand people, now everything is so trite.
I still think TNG was the best, but DS9 was good too. In hindsight though, it seems like it was good to have someone like Roddenberry doggedly insisting upon his positive vision for the future. The modern Star Trek series, where there's nobody pushing for the utopian vision any more, are kind of depressing and not really in line with the idea that humanity will eventually be able to improve itself and leave behind the pettiness that holds us back today.
Yeah, I think that's fair. IMO DS9 got the balance right because it's a bit more gritty than TNG, accepts more complexity and ambiguity, but still holds up those ideals as something worth striving for even against severe difficulties.
I'm sad to say the newest Trek shows have just missed me.
Yeah same, there was the one that was both "in the past" (taking place before TNG I believe) but thanks to mushroom magic they had instant teleportation and then timey-wimey stuff so it was also a hypermodern show. The melodrama was just grating on me after a while.
Then there was Picard which actually showed some promise but I couldn't find myself caring about the new characters they tried to introduce on top of the layers of nostalgia. I heard it got a soft reboot or new writers for season 3 but I have no idea, I haven't heard anything about it.
Voyager was still good but that was the last show I actually watched on the regular.
And yet that's what I like about original trek and dislike about many other newer Sci-Fi. Writers trying to one up each other with univers-shattering dangers gets old pretty quick.
Roddenberry specifically wasn't needed, Rick Berman was able to learn from his vision and maintain it. After Roddenberry died, Berman was able to maintain TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise all with the Star Trek ideals that Roddenberry always fought to maintain when he was alive. Even as Deep Space Nine and Enterprise had to seemingly throw the ideals out the window temporarily, with the Dominion and Xindi arcs, just to better demonstrate why they were so badly needed in the first place.
Unfortunately, we don't have a Rick Berman, or anyone else that maintains the same ideals, at the helm anymore.
Marcia Lucas along with two other editors won the Film Editing Oscar for Star Wars/ANH/Ep. 4 ( <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1dW6bNBzN8&t=52s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1dW6bNBzN8&t=52s ): she was no doubt a very good editor. Neither she nor the other two "saved Star Wars in the edit" in the manner often claimed. For example, Marcia Lucas fought to keep the teen-movie version of the opening with Luke meeting Biggs and others at Tosche Station in Tatooine, while George Lucas had always preferred to begin the Tatooine segment with the droids <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olqVGz6mOVE&t=1407s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olqVGz6mOVE&t=1407s .
There’s no way to know one way or another whether her editing “saved” it. There’s no other original edit without her, so it’s an unfalsifiable claim.
I was just responding to the poster claiming it was some sort of feminist conspiracy theory to claim that she was an editor on the film and did a good job. She did edit the film, and a plurality of her peers thought the editing was a good enough job to award the most prestigious award in the industry for the work.
It's reasonably clear that Star Wars would have been in some trouble if it had come out with anything like the original John Jympson edit, and in that sense it's fairly safe to say that Star Wars truly was saved in the edit. (Though that's also not very surprising, as by all accounts it's not particularly unusual for a good completed film to have had a shaky first edit.) But it seems that all the evidence suggests that George Lucas was always unhappy with Jympson's editing and understood its problems, and that it was he who selected three professional editors including Marcia Lucas to work on a re-edit which achieved his high-level creative intentions and was closely and actively supervised by him, and in which he did some of the hands-on editing to boot. There doesn't seem to be much to support the idea that the (other) editors took Star Wars out of the hands of a hapless George Lucas and bestowed on him a film which had been reworked beyond his own capabilities or vision, which is the usual "saved in the edit" claim, let alone that Marcia Lucas alone was largely responsible for that supposed feat, which is what was claimed at <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49883758">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49883758 .
Again, I never claimed she wasn’t good at her job or didn’t earn some credit for her work on New Hope. I guess I wrongly expected HN users to have better reading comprehension and nuance than redditors. My point was entirely that in this specific instance, her contribution was overemphasized by a brigade of redditors spreading misinformation.
It’s well known that a group of fans who follow a certain youtube channel well known among star wars enthusiasts share the channel’s opinions on sites like reddit, and these became an oft-repeated myth spread there to discredit Lucas because they (like the channel admins) despise the sequel trilogy. They also don’t limit themselves to praising her editing work, but often claim that she was the _real_ creator of star wars and Lucas wouldn’t have been anywhere near as big without her. I don’t have any side on this, I am not particularly fond of the sequel trilogy nor a big fan of Lucas, but what I do dislike is the myth-making constantly pushed about various things on reddit.
If you had reading comprehension, you’d understand that my comment was about the excess claims, not real ones. Marie Curie has long been known for her achievements, nobody in recent history claimed otherwise. I guess reading comprehension is too much to assume nowadays.
I think it's justifiable to call out her contribution. She was an excellent editor without Star Wars, her work includes American Graffiti and Taxi Driver.
I consider her a part of what makes the original trilogy great but I don't think it diminishes Lucas' contribution. No one person is "what makes it great". Plus the internet loves the underdog or a a "TIL"
> I think it's pretty clear to everyone now that when Lucas is flying solo his final output is... not great.
The evidence is pretty compelling that George had a lot of great ideas as well as some not-so-great ideas and his own ability to distinguish between the two was... less than ideal. Thus his best work was from those times he collaborated closely with talented people who had significant input and there was a strong, empowered curator. Positive examples include the great results on Star Wars, the fact that Empire is so good and his work on Raiders with Spielberg. A clear negative example is Phantom Menace where George was in absolute control.
A lot of fantastically talented creators simply shouldn't have unchecked 'final cut' over their own output. It's really nothing to be ashamed of, and frankly, is more common than not.
One huge addition that she created entirely in the edit is the "ticking clock" during the final battle. Originally there was no count down to the Death Star destroying the base. Imagine how much tension would be lost without that.
thewizzardofnl · · focus · HN ↗
It is insane how much George Lucas has edited the original Star Wars trilogy. I think no movies have had more edits over time than Star Wars.
jasonwatkinspdx · · focus · HN ↗
I think it's pretty clear to everyone now that when Lucas is flying solo his final output is... not great. He obviously imagined a universe a lot of people find compelling, but wasn't always the best person to realize the vision of that universe.
leoc · · focus · HN ↗
settsu · · focus · HN ↗
throwup238 · · focus · HN ↗
Cthulhu_ · · focus · HN ↗
chungy · · focus · HN ↗
QuercusMax · · focus · HN ↗
jasonwatkinspdx · · focus · HN ↗
actionfromafar · · focus · HN ↗
lizknope · · focus · HN ↗
lbeckman314 · · focus · HN ↗
- Commander Worf, Take Me Out to the Holosuite (7x4)
somenameforme · · focus · HN ↗
One of the things I'm most looking forward to is watching the series with my kids when they're old enough.
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Unrelated but the TNG episode Tapestry also deserves a mention. [1] Wtf happened to media. Writers used to actually understand people, now everything is so trite.
[1] - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGvUDvZ7KyU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGvUDvZ7KyU
bigstrat2003 · · focus · HN ↗
jasonwatkinspdx · · focus · HN ↗
I'm sad to say the newest Trek shows have just missed me.
Cthulhu_ · · focus · HN ↗
Then there was Picard which actually showed some promise but I couldn't find myself caring about the new characters they tried to introduce on top of the layers of nostalgia. I heard it got a soft reboot or new writers for season 3 but I have no idea, I haven't heard anything about it.
Voyager was still good but that was the last show I actually watched on the regular.
account42 · · focus · HN ↗
karel-3d · · focus · HN ↗
chungy · · focus · HN ↗
Unfortunately, we don't have a Rick Berman, or anyone else that maintains the same ideals, at the helm anymore.
account42 · · focus · HN ↗
Revanche1367 · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
dghlsakjg · · focus · HN ↗
I don't think its mythology to claim that Marcia Lucas edited the films. It's pretty well accepted reality.
If the remasters and the episodes I-III are anything to judge by, George really does better when there is an editor that will check him.
leoc · · focus · HN ↗
dghlsakjg · · focus · HN ↗
I was just responding to the poster claiming it was some sort of feminist conspiracy theory to claim that she was an editor on the film and did a good job. She did edit the film, and a plurality of her peers thought the editing was a good enough job to award the most prestigious award in the industry for the work.
Revanche1367 · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
krige · · focus · HN ↗
leoc · · focus · HN ↗
Revanche1367 · · focus · HN ↗
It’s well known that a group of fans who follow a certain youtube channel well known among star wars enthusiasts share the channel’s opinions on sites like reddit, and these became an oft-repeated myth spread there to discredit Lucas because they (like the channel admins) despise the sequel trilogy. They also don’t limit themselves to praising her editing work, but often claim that she was the _real_ creator of star wars and Lucas wouldn’t have been anywhere near as big without her. I don’t have any side on this, I am not particularly fond of the sequel trilogy nor a big fan of Lucas, but what I do dislike is the myth-making constantly pushed about various things on reddit.
leoc · · focus · HN ↗
Revanche1367 · · focus · HN ↗
segsgsgsgs · · focus · HN ↗
Revanche1367 · · focus · HN ↗
HaloZero · · focus · HN ↗
I consider her a part of what makes the original trilogy great but I don't think it diminishes Lucas' contribution. No one person is "what makes it great". Plus the internet loves the underdog or a a "TIL"
jasonwatkinspdx · · focus · HN ↗
Revanche1367 · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
mrandish · · focus · HN ↗
The evidence is pretty compelling that George had a lot of great ideas as well as some not-so-great ideas and his own ability to distinguish between the two was... less than ideal. Thus his best work was from those times he collaborated closely with talented people who had significant input and there was a strong, empowered curator. Positive examples include the great results on Star Wars, the fact that Empire is so good and his work on Raiders with Spielberg. A clear negative example is Phantom Menace where George was in absolute control.
A lot of fantastically talented creators simply shouldn't have unchecked 'final cut' over their own output. It's really nothing to be ashamed of, and frankly, is more common than not.
magarnicle · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/tributes/the-woman-who-saved-star-wars-marcia-lucas-1945-2026" rel="nofollow">https://www.rogerebert.com/tributes/the-woman-who-saved-star...