I think it's both a good and a bad thing to have the power to re-edit something. For instance, if something needs restoration due to deterioration, or had an obvious technical flaw, such as the white colored blade Vader carried in the last scene while Luke and Company were escaping the Death Star, or the floating dark spot on the Emperor's hood in the Death Star throne room where they tried to paint over some flaw. Or cutting out 2 frames of film where you see the zipper on an EWOK suit.... LOL. I don't mind them fixing that stuff. I didn't even mind them adding some (repeat SOME) of the scene extensions in the films, such as a digital version of the Millenium Falcon launching from the docking bay 94. Jabba being added to Star Wars was both cool and stupid. Cool in concept, stupid in execution. He didn't look good. The later digital Jabba was much better. Fix that, okay, no big deal.
Making Greedo fire first, bad.
Changing Vader's dialogue, from "Bring my shuttle," all full of anger, to "Inform my Star Destroyer to prepare for my arrival" and making him all happy was so castrating to the character too.
Replacing Sebastian Shaw or Alec Guinness, horrible. On the other hand, adding them to it after Luke has seen them in their older forms, just so they can effectively say farewell and show him what they once looked like, might not be so awful. I could easily live without it. Prefer not to have it.
I do think that an artist should be able to revise their work up to the point they release it.
I have a film done in 1987 that I'm restoring, redoing FX and adding scenes to right now. But, I never released it to the public, so it's been in production for 17 years technically. By the time people are paying to see a film, it's really too late in my opinion to be redoing it.
Ken
"A director who knows what to edit, and what not to edit, will be successful." Tsun Tsu (paraphrased).
|
