The decision to convert
the six Star Wars movies
into 3D wasn’t an easy
one for producer, director,
writer and movie mogul
George Lucas.
For Lucas, it was never
just about finding
another way to exploit
the same pictures that
have already been in
theaters several times
(grossing more than
$4.4 billion in
worldwide box office
since 1977) and on home
video (where they have
raked in more than
$3.8 billion).
The biggest reason to do it, Lucas told The Hollywood Reporter recently,
was to give a new generation an opportunity to see the movies on the big
screen in a theater, the way he always intended.
“Star Wars is one of those films — old films — that was designed for the
big screen,” he said. “It makes a big difference to see it on the big screen
with the overwhelming sound, the picture and now 3D. We’ve had two
generations be able to see it on the big screen and it was great. Now kids
who have never seen it on the big screen, who have no idea how powerful it
was — because all they had was DVD — have that chance.”
Whether there is still a huge market for movies widely available on video,
cable and free TV for years will be clear when Star Wars: Episode 1 — The
Phantom Menace opens in more than 2,500 North American theaters in 3D and in
selected countries around the world.
To sweeten the appeal, Lucasfilm and Fox have worked to make the rerelease
an event. At all AMC theaters nationwide, fans who buy digital 3D tickets the
first weekend will get a Hasbro Star Wars Fighter Pod toy (one per ticket
while supplies last). At select AMC locations, there also will be special
events including a Lego feature area, Darth Maul face-painting, costumed
character appearances, pod-racer 3D glasses and demonstrations of an upcoming
Xbox Kinect Star Wars game.
The plan, said Lucas, is to release one Star Wars movie each year for the next
five years. While some believe Phantom Menace is one of the weaker movies in
the series and a poor choice to kick off the rerelease, Lucas believes they
should be seen in the order that he has assigned them (though they were made
and released in a different order).
The studio handling the release for Lucasfilm agrees with his plan. “Star Wars
has always been a communal experience, an experience that people want to share
— not just across generations, but with their friends,” said Jim Gianopulos,
co-chairman and co-CEO of 20th Century Fox. “There’s a whole generation that
wasn’t born the last time we released the film theatrically. Those were huge
successes at the time. Now we had the chance to do it again through the advent
of 3D technology, to add a dimension so to speak, literally and figuratively,
to that experience.”
Lucas said at first, he “wasn’t a giant fan of 3D. The process was very
difficult, and it wasn’t something that I felt that much affection for. I just
didn’t think the effect was worth it. It was all about the effects and putting
everything right out there. The idea of going to a movie and having people
stick things in your face just because of an effect or the trick of it wasn’t
really that interesting to me.”
Conversion
In 2005, Lucas joined fellow film directors including James Cameron and Robert
Zemeckis for a presentation at the ShoWest movie exhibitor’s convention in Las
Vegas to convince the people who own and run theaters to make the
multimillion-dollar conversion from analog film projection to digital
presentation.
To help make the point, Lucas oversaw the conversion of 10 minutes of one of
the Star Wars movies to digital 3D. His point to theater owners was that 3D,
which can bring in new audiences and justify higher ticket prices, is only
possible after they make the switch to digital projection.
To his surprise, when he saw the 10 minutes on a theater screen, he said to
himself, “ ‘Hey, this actually looks better. This is actually more interesting
to me. The three-dimension is actually the better way of looking at things,’”
he recalled. “So I got converted at that point.”
However, there was not yet an installed base of digital 3D in theaters and he
didn’t feel the technology was fully developed yet. “The company that did the
test for us wasn’t really up for primetime and doing the whole movie,” said
Lucas. "We worked with them for years, and we worked with WETA and Peter Jackson
to help do King Kong, but it wasn’t ready. We needed it to be really good.”
During the next couple of years, Lucasfilm’s special effects company Industrial
Light & Magic moved into digital animated 3D production, which added to Lucas’s
knowledge — yet he still wasn’t ready. Then he saw what Cameron had done with
Avatar in 3D and had a revelation. “I realized that movies that have a lot of CG
characters worked a lot better in 3D because the CG characters actually
became real.”
Lucas had been frustrated when he had to use puppet models, or even with CG in
live action movies, because it never seemed quite real. As a result of what he
saw with Avatar, Lucas went on to redo the character of Yoda for the Blu-ray
rerelease of Phantom Menace in December; and that is the version of the movie
that has been converted to 3D for theaters.
“We decided now is the time to do it,” said Lucas, “because we have lots and lots
of CG characters (in Star Wars). That prompted us to go forward.”
Lucas has no qualms about making changes in his movies if he thinks it will make
them better. Those changes have angered some fans of the films, who want them to
be exactly the same each time they watch.
Lucas could do as he wished because he is not only director, producer and writer
on most of the movies, but also wholly owns the company that holds the copyright
on the movies. So he is both the financier and the creative director.
“All art is technology and it improves every year,” said Lucas. “Whether it is on
stage or in music or in painting, there’s technological answers that happen. Just
because movies are so technological, the technological advances become
more obvious.”
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