George Lucas was interviewed by Heat Vision about today’s release of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace 3D and gave some controversial answers.
About the changes he’s made to the “Star Wars” movies over the years, he said: “Changes are not unusual – I mean, most movies when they release them they make changes. But somehow, when I make the slightest change, everybody thinks its the end of the world. That whole issue between filmmakers and the studios with the studios being able to change things without even letting the director of the movie know Im very much involved in that [so thats not happening here]. My job is to try to make the best possible movie it can be and the current version is the Blu-ray version. Thats the one thats been made into 3D. But its just a conversion. We havent made any changes other than the 3D.”
We’re sure fans will disagree with that, but then came the big one…
“Well, its not a religious event. I hate to tell people that. Its a movie, just a movie. The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isnt. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down.”
Here’s a video comparison of the above:
With that out of the way, he did mention Indiana Jones 5. The site told him that Steven Spielberg is waiting to hear from Lucas, to which he answered:
“I know, and Im supposed to be working on it right now, but Im talking to you instead (Laughs).”