Ever since taking control of Star Wars in a $4.05bn (£2.5bn) deal in October 2012, Disney has been careful to avoid criticising its creator, George Lucas, for almost bringing the space opera saga to its knees. Not so Oscar Isaac, star of JJ Abrams’ forthcoming Star Wars: Episode VII, who has said the digital tinkerings introduced on the 1997 “special editions” of 1977’s Star Wars, 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back and 1983’s Return of the Jedi made the classic original trilogy “less interesting”.
Speaking to the Huffington Post, Isaac echoed the views of fans and critics who have wondered why Star Wars required the addition of a squealing CGI Jabba, or whether the revised version of Return of the Jedi might have reasonably dispensed with irritating new digital members of the Max Rebo Band for scenes at the Hutt gangster’s palace. The actor defended Lucas’s right “as an artist” to make the alterations, but said the original movies were “awesome”.
“There’s a part of me that appreciates that he doesn’t really care if people are upset about it,” said the American actor, who will take an unspecified role in Episode VII. “He wants to go back and do stuff, whatever.
“But as a fan, I’d much rather go back and watch the old thing, because it’s a product of the time. It’s what did you do at the time with the things that you had. And that’s what made that movie so amazing. At that time with that technology he made this thing and it was fucking awesome. So, you know, to go back and kind of tweak it with new stuff, it doesn’t make it more interesting for me as a watcher. It makes it less interesting, but I can’t fault him for doing that.”
Lucas said in 1997 that he expected the “special release” versions to be the definitive editions of the original Star Wars films, much to the chagrin of fans.
“The other versions will disappear. Even the 35m tapes of Star Wars out there won’t last more than 30 or 40 years,” he said. “A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD version [of the “special edition”], and you’ll be able to project it on a 20ft-by-40ft screen with perfect quality. I think it’s the director’s prerogative, not the studio’s, to go back and reinvent a movie.”
The original versions, nevertheless, were released in 2007 on DVD. While Abrams and Disney have made no comment on Lucas’s reviled tinkerings, Star Wars’ new director has made it clear that Episode VII will feature little or no CGI. The film, which is currently shooting at London’s Pinewood Studios for a December 2015 release date, is also expected to eschew the green screen approach of Lucas’s much-derided prequel series in favour of real sets.
