The Greedo line, of course, is in reference to the Special Edition of George Lucas's Star Wars, the one that was released theatrically in 1997. Back in 1977, the Mos Eisley cantina scene found unscrupulous anti-hero Han Solo (Harrison Ford) having no qualms against blowing away the mercenary Greedo with a sneaky, under-the-table draw. But in the '97 version, that scene was altered -- suddenly, Greedo can be seen firing first, meaning that Han Solo was merely acting in self-defense. In the name of PC-dom, Lucas rudely denigrated his own creation with this offensive tampering, momentarily forgetting that one of the main reasons many of us loved Han Solo in the first place was because he was an unrepentant bastard, not above playing every shady angle known across the galaxy. But with one slight change, Lucas had transformed Han Solo into a "nice guy" apparently incapable of killing anyone in cold blood -- a misguided move on Lucas' part that had true Star Wars fans seeing red.
Now it's Steven Spielberg's turn to muck around with a pop culture mainstay, which he does feverishly in the new cut of his beloved masterpiece. E.T. is back in theaters with enhanced special effects and several tweaked sequences, but truthfully, was anybody clamoring for these changes? That's not to say that viewers should skip this reissue: These alterations are minor in the grand scheme of things, and the movie is just as magical as when you first saw it (see "Film Clips" for a review). But with the recent proliferation, both in theaters and on DVD, of filmmakers monkeying around with their past projects, are we witnessing the further tarnishing of an artform that too often gets little respect in the first place?
Lately, it seems these "Director's Cuts/Special Editions/Anniversary Editions" have been all the rage. In addition to E.T. and the Star Wars trilogy, movie theaters have also recently hosted Apocalypse Now Redux, The Exorcist: The Version You Never Saw, Fantasia 2000 and, in limited release, even a new take of Amadeus. Meanwhile, on the DVD front, countless films have been released offering deleted scenes, alternate endings, and, in some disturbing cases, the removal of existing moments trimmed out to make the film (in the eyes of the director, anyway) more efficient in terms of narrative or emotional content.
I think it's safe to say that no other artform has been treated as such a pliable commodity as the motion picture. After all, it's not as if John Steinbeck ever released a novel called Of Mice and Men: The Author's Cut, in which the ending had been radically altered so that gentle giant Lenny suddenly went on a killing spree, hacking up scores of farm hands and bunny rabbits before being brought down himself. But the bastard treatment of movies is nothing new. How many times have the TV networks taken a motion picture and edited it for "objectionable" content, or so they can squeeze in an extra commercial break or two? How many times has a movie been sent back to the editing room (or even back to the shooting stage) after it fared miserably with test audiences? And how many times has a film been mercilessly chopped down for overseas distribution, either US films sent abroad or foreign titles brought stateside? (Even a genuine classic like the 1949 British thriller The Third Man was shorn of 11 minutes before it reached these shores.)
Like many people, I have mixed feelings regarding supposedly "new and improved" versions of old favorites. On one hand, I gotta admit that I'm a sucker for deleted scenes, sequences that were filmed way back when but not included in the finished product until now. To me, these don't necessarily spoil a movie's integrity because they're snatches of celluloid that were shot back in the day and therefore were at some point considered important to the artist's vision. And while I'm torn about the practice of integrating these sequences into the actual film (it worked beautifully for James Cameron's Special Edition Aliens DVD; it didn't wholly work for Francis Coppola's Apocalypse Now Redux), I have no qualms when they're included as a supplemental sideshow attraction on a DVD. In many cases, watching this extra footage after enjoying the feature presentation provides the viewer with added insight into the main movie; for example, the Erin Brockovich DVD contains a full half-hour of scenes not included in the theatrical print, and they're so good in fleshing out characters and filling in plot holes that they could have easily made the final cut. On the other end of the scale, watching deleted scenes often offers viewers the opportunity to see how their initial omission actually improved the picture. On the Young Frankenstein DVD, for instance, there's an interminable (and shockingly unfunny) scene featuring Dr. Frankenstein's relatives that was initially conceived to kick off the picture -- had Mel Brooks retained this footage, it would have been a deadly way to open what instead turned out to be an enduring comic masterpiece.
Adding deleted scenes is one thing; altering existing footage, though, is quite another. What Lucas did with the Greedo scene in Star Wars is inexcusable, but as more and more directors become giddy with the thought of playing God once again with their own creations, that example may prove to be the mere tip of a sullied iceberg. The base of that iceberg, though, would probably have to be Ridley Scott's 1982 Blade Runner. This sci-fi staple has been presented in various forms -- its original take, the more explicit European version, the much-ballyhooed 1992 "Director's Cut," plus a different "Director's Cut" possibly due on DVD later this year -- but despite all the hype surrounding Scott's "improvements" with the '92 model, there are still a few folks (I'm one; Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman is another) who believe the original version is still the best. I actually prefer the voice-over narration by Harrison Ford that was removed for the subsequent "Director's Cut," since it lent the piece more of the film noir flavor that Scott was obviously going for. (Of course, the irony here is that the voice-over was specifically added as a result of test audience screenings, although this was clearly an exception to the rule.)
Finally, what happened with the 30th Anniversary Night of the Living Dead on DVD goes beyond all known measures of depravity. One of the great modern horror films, George Romero's 1968 zombie epic was perfect just the way it was, thank you. But in 1998, some of the players involved with the original production (Romero was not among them) shot 15 minutes of new footage and clumsily inserted them into the existing film, thereby adding new characters (played by the worst actors this side of Reefer Madness) and altering both the film's classic beginning and equally classic ending. Not surprisingly, this cut is universally despised by film fans, but the fact that someone thought this was a good idea in the first place catapults the word "cluelessness" into an entirely new realm.
By comparison, Spielberg's modifications on E.T. are rather slight, but the fact that they were made in the first place is troubling to those who believe in preserving the integrity of cinema. For starters, Spielberg has decided to update the effects in numerous scenes, touching up matte background shots and using computer technology to, for instance, widen E.T.'s grin. But why? The film's Oscar-winning effects were perfectly OK for 1982 (they're still quite good), and using 2002 technology doesn't improve the quality of the picture in any way. In fact, part of the appeal of older fantasy flicks rests in the way their outdated effects bring a warm rush of nostalgia, as well as our admiration for the sweat that the artists put into their original conceptions. Following this new line of thinking implemented by Spielberg and Lucas, what's next? Updating the still-impressive effects in the 1933 King Kong so that the stop-motion animation is less jerky? Replacing the obviously fake vampire bats in Universal's Dracula flicks from the 30s and 40s with CGI-generated ones? Or how about going the whole nine yards by completely overhauling Ed Wood's 1959 mess-terpiece Plan 9 From Outer Space so that the spaceships look as convincing as those in Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Independence Day?
Of course, Spielberg didn't stop with the effects. Suddenly deciding that guns are bad and apparently should never, ever be shown again on the big screen, the man who gave us Raiders of the Lost Ark and Saving Private Ryan has digitally altered the few moments in the film where the government agents are seen holding revolvers. Look at this new version and presto! the guns have magically turned into walkie-talkies -- a harmless and even well-meaning change on the surface, but, coupled with the post-9/11 craze of removing shots of the World Trade Center from movies on the verge of being released, a chilling sign that even those out in supposedly liberal-to-the-core Hollywood aren't above engaging in Orwellian practices that ultimately serve no purpose but to subconsciously subvert our own expressions of free will.
Still, the change in E.T. that left me shaking my head and chuckling the most involved a snatch of dialogue spoken by mom Mary (Dee Wallace) in reference to son Michael's (Robert MacNaughton) Halloween costume. Reportedly, in the original cut, Mary forbids Michael from walking through the neighborhood dressed as a "terrorist." But in this new version, she now forbids him from walking through the neighborhood dressed as a "hippie."
Only in George W. Bush's America would a "hippie" be construed as the benign alternative to a "terrorist." *
