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The Atlantic on Star Wars: Despecialised Edition

The Atlantic wrote about the “despecialsed” version of Star Wars, and in particular, Lucas’s refusal to release the 1977 original version in any format (he won’t even give a copy to the National Film Registry, who want to preserve it as a film with significant cultural impact.)

Then they dug up some truly excellent quotes from Lucas from 1988, well before the re-release of the edited versions of the original Star Wars trilogy. “People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians, and if the laws of the United States continue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society,” he said. But perhaps he was only talking about third parties changing stuff? Maybe he things directors should be given carte blanch to fiddle with their own work. Who really owns a film after release, anyway? Oh, wait, he talked about that too: “American works of art belong to the American public; they are part of our cultural history.”