Will George Lucas Ever Stop Effing Up Star Wars? Noooooo.

George Lucas just cannot help himself. We’ve had Jar-Jar, Greedo shooting first, David Beckham in the cantina and Hayden Christensen as an apparition. Now, there’s this. Just when it seemed like the original trilogy was safe from further money-grubbing meddling, George The Tinkerer delivers what amounts to a donkey punch to the head of Star Wars' Gen X fandom. Hey, we need a tweak to boost those Blu-ray sales, people. The Skywalker Fire Brigade doesn’t pay for itself, after all. 


This latest desecration further underscores a theory I’ve been had for a while, which is that Lucas has, for whatever reason, become so alienated from the original trilogy that he’s lost any and all understanding of what made it so popular and endearing in the first place. He’s basically forgotten what made Star Wars cool. It’s almost gotten to the point where you have to wonder whether he ever really understood it to begin with. His body of work seems to suggest that Boba Fett is the exception and Ewoks hang-gliding the rule. Still, if Lucas got incredibly lucky in stumbling upon sci-fi gold, could he at least have the decency to just let it be so future generations can perhaps enjoy the same myth? Doesn’t he find it odd that J.R.R. Tolkien never revisited The Return of the King to, say, delete the Scouring of the Shire chapter? Or that the ever-shameless Orson Wells never fleshed out that opening scene of Citizen Kane. That’s not to equate Star Wars with LOTR or Kane, but you get the point. Real artists don’t continuously muck around with their signature creations. And, maybe, that’s the point—Lucas was never really an artist, just a nerd who got lucky. 


As long as completionists and fan boys keep paying for this shlock, he’ll keep churning it out. The only thing that can stop him are Star Wars fans who refuse to buy (and become accessories to) these bastardized versions.

Oh, you thought this was the nadir?
No, it actually gets worse.