Question #2: from August 25, 2003:

I've read several rumors on the net that George Lucas plans on completely remaking Episodes IV - VI digitally with all new actors by the year 2017. Do you think that is why Hasbro signed a licensing agreement til the year 2018?
--Duane

My answer from 2003 With commentary from 2025:

Every now and again, a question comes through that's so farfetched I thought it should be shared with the rest of the class. Hasbro's agreement has to do with a variety of things, many of which are likely to be completely unrelated to new projects. Kenner's old license (which got cannibalized when Hasbro bought them) lasted roughly 20 years, so Hasbro's decision to get a lock on the license so Mattel, Play Along, or some other company couldn't get it is a smart move. After all, it was probably relatively cheap given that no new movies are in sight.

George's ideas of what makes Star Wars what it is are nebulous at best, and the movies are whatever he says they are. As such, constant tweaks to the films don't seem to be out of the question. While he said the Special Editions were the final cut, John Williams has been reported to say that he's composing new music for the original films. Obviously, new music means the movies would be changed.

For a quick aside, while I understand why Mr. Lucas wants to help his celluloid offspring grow-- they are his, after all-- I really do find it to be an immense shame that the original movies could be lost to the ages. Great lengths have been taken to make sure the likes of Citizen Kane and Casablanca were restored to their former glory, and the original cuts of Metropolis and an extended prerelease cut of Blues Brothers are likely gone forever. While I'm sure LucasFilm will always have a pristine cut of the original Star Wars flicks somewhere in their basement, I think he should take the initiative and sell them again to a very eager public with far too much disposable income.

While I have no doubt Lucas plans to tweak the originals some more, let's be honest here-- all new actors? Ridiculous. Plus Lucas is getting old... he's pushing 60 now. He'll be 73 in 2017. The thought of him making any plans that far out at this point in his life seems genuinely bizarre... not impossible, and not unprecedented, but certainly very odd.

As far as Unleashed goes, I didn't take a good look when I was at San Diego but I'm pretty sure it's either a sticker or an insert. If it is printing on the bubble, it seems the future is now.

While the rumor persists, there have been no remakes of the original trilogy. I always thought it would be cool to see an anime version using the original voices and music, but that hasn't happened either. We haven't gotten that many new tweaks lately but we would get another round in 2004, and more in 2010, and a few more when it hit streaming a few years ago. I assume what we have now may be the final cut.

Also now that I'm 22 years older than I was when I wrote this, 60 doesn't seem all that old. Granted I know a lot of people who didn't make it to 70, or 50, so maybe it is.

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FIN

It's not uncommon for fans to get together and petition for a remake when they're cranky - but it's sort of an empty gesture and generally a big waste of time. I assume Justice League and its remake for "The Snyder Cut" was probably a bit of astroturfing, and obviously grousing for The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker went nowhere. Now that DVD is more or less dead and "special editions" and "director's cuts" are increasingly rare, I assume we won't be seeing much of that kind of thing ever again. Which is kind of a shame, it feels like something that could make streaming a movie a little more enticing.

Remaking a good movie is something I think most people would prefer we stay away from, unless there's some dramatic leap in technology. George Lucas did a pretty good job updating some elements of his early films, and I don't know what you could do with Star Wars beyond making it a smidgen tighter or more energetic. And then it would be something else. I guess you could also make it Airplane! style (see: Zero Hour) but that's something Family Guy did in a much shorter format.

We're currently getting a lot of side stories from Disney that expands on the movie, with Rogue One and The Force Awakens both giving us glimpses into what a modern remake might have looked like, down to the casting. It's easy to imagine Felicity Jones or Daisy Ridley in the Leia role, and Oscar Isaac or Diego Luna as Han Solo. Both movies had their own riffs on sneaking around a Death Star, as well as a space battle.

It would be neat to see Lucasfilm give us some sort of post-Star Wars animated series, or perhaps movies with other skirmishes (and other perspectives) from these movies. Don't get me wrong, it'd get old eventually - but maybe it'd be fun to see a movie where we follow Wedge around up until the point of the Death Star battle, and see how cranky he was about not getting a medal. I don't think I'd want to see them actually go back and redo The Adventures of Luke Skywalker, but if they want to give us some more adventures with a new cast or animation? OK, go for it.

Wouldn't it be funny to find out that the Starfighter movie was exactly that - a secret 50th anniversary movie that followed around Rebel Pilot Red 10 or some such, rather than the log line of a post-The First Order thing? I'd laugh. Or I'd be under investigation for a lucky guess.

--Adam Pawlus

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