Is there a series that has fallen from grace farther than “Star Wars”? A story once sacrosanct and beloved and now just a leftover relic from our childhood?
George Lucas really screwed the pooch with the “Star Wars” prequels and in some cases with the revisionist “Star Wars” re-releases (see the Han Solo/Greedo shoot first fiasco). Now he’s announced that the entire six-film franchise will hit Blu-Ray in the fall of 2011 and we can’t help but shrug (this writer is not lining Lucas sapphire-encrusted pockets with more diamonds).
What’s in store on that massive six-set? Eh, a bunch of extras we suppose including this deleted scene below (of which you can see a still of above). It’s a pretty dull sequence that was supposed to kick-off Luke Skywalker’s entrance in “Return of the Jedi” showing him making a lightsaber and being telekinetically contacted by his father Darth Vader. At this point, we’d kind of like to pretend the series ended with “The Empire Strikes Back” and leave it at that.
This is all interestingly timed. Lucas talked to the New York Times and said that the original post-theater releases were slow in sales, “We came out with ‘Star Wars’ right at the beginning of VHS, and we sold 300,000 copies.” Within a few years, he added, “they were selling 1 million, 2 million, 10 million.”
And while this should kick-off another “Star Wars” nostalgia love-in, not everyone is having it, including producer Gary Kurtz who was instrumental in getting the “Star Wars” movies made, but who left after “The Empire Strikes Back” because he felt the series’ tone was shifting and Lucas’ heart wasn’t in the right place.
In a very recent and fairly damning L.A. Times interview, Kurtz said his exit, in part, was due to the influence the toys started having on the narrative. “I could see where things were headed,” Kurtz said. “The toy business began to drive the [Lucasfilm] empire. It’s a shame. They make three times as much on toys as they do on films. It’s natural to make decisions that protect the toy business, but that’s not the best thing for making quality films. The first film and ‘Empire’ were about story and character, but I could see that George’s priorities were changing”
It’s definitely an interview worth reading. Kurtz says what we all have thought, saying he didn’t buy Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker aka Darth Vader, nor did he like the idea of the prequels, period. “I have to admit I never liked Hayden Christensen in the role of Anakin Skywalker. I just wished the stories had been stronger and that the dialogue had been stronger. It gets meek,” he said.
You’ve probably heard over the years the idea of a darker “Return of the Jedi” and one where Han Solo dies in the picture. Kurtz confirms this is true and admits that part of the reason he left the series is that he and Lucas couldn’t see eye to eye on the final film’s direction and story. “We had an outline and George changed everything in it,” Kurtz said. “Instead of bittersweet and poignant he wanted a euphoric ending with everybody happy. The original idea was that they would recover [the kidnapped] Han Solo in the early part of the story and that he would then die in the middle part of the film in a raid on an Imperial base. George then decided he didn’t want any of the principals killed. By that time there were really big toy sales and that was a reason.”
Figures. Watch the deleted scene below, but maybe turn down the sound cause the noise of geeks freaking out over this relatively uninspired sequence is sort of obnoxious.