Get ready for this sort of stuff at a cineplex near you. Beginning Jan. 31, “Star Wars” is returning to theaters, 20 years after its release. Its two sequels, “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi,” will open in February and March. All will have spruced-up prints and some new digital surprises. But it’s not that the movies ever really left. Videocassette versions, best-selling Bantam novels, fan clubs, collectibles, at least 963 sites on the World Wide Web, an incredible $4 billion in merchandising sales–they’re part of an industry and a cult. The appeal depends on the fan. It’s a classic fairy tale about good and evil, evoking old-time mythology with futuristic intergalactic cavalries. It has religious, paternal and political overtones. “Everyone has an opinion,” Lucas told NEWSWEEK. Maybe, he says, because it’s about “universal themes like friendship, loyalty, morality.” Or it’s an “adrenalin rush.” Or, most simply, because it’s a ton of campy, corny fun, which is more than can be said for the cynical drivel coming out of Hollywood these days.
The triumph of “Star Wars” isn’t bad for a movie that almost didn’t get made. (Or a story that a New York Times critic said “could be written on the head of a pin and still leave room for the Bible.”) Studios shunned it. Lucas himself, over the course of three years, couldn’t settle on a script; one version was only about robots (which is what critics said anyway of Mark Hamill’s performance as Luke when the film came out). Finally, Alan Ladd Jr. at Twentieth Century Fox paid Lucas $15,000 to do a screenplay and then committed $10 million to make it–more out of loyalty to a young Lucas than faith that the movie, without any big stars, would sell. Lucas and his close friend Steven Spielberg had a bet over how it would do. Lucas took the low number.
Now “Star Wars” is part of the culture. The Smithsonian next fall will open a big exhibition on the mythology and social themes of “Star Wars.” Bartlett’s credits the movie with adding “evil empire” to the lexicon; “Darth Vader” is the personification of evil, and journalists love him: in 20 years, he’s appeared in the lead paragraph of 1,239 articles (including 21 times in NEWSWEEK). An episode of “Friends” features David Schwimmer fantasizing about Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia; this season, Brooke Shields was called “tall as a Wookiee” on her TV show. (Same eyebrows, too.) James Earl Jones, who gave Vader his immortal voice, is now omnipresent as the bass embodiment of CNN. (Lucas considered Orson Welles but thought his voice too recognizable. Jones polished off the “Star Wars” voice-over in three hours. “I was offered a day’s work,” Jones says, “and I got paid a day’s wage.”)
When “Star Wars” opened, just before Memorial Day 1977, it obliterated box-office records. People waited in lines for up to six hours to watch Luke Skywalker fight Darth Vader in an epic comic-book adventure. By the end of the summer, “Star Wars” had raked in an unprecedented $134 million domestically; that’s now grown to $323 million, fourth on the all-time list, behind “E.T.” (1982), “Jurassic Park” (1993) and “Forrest Gump” (1994). Adding in worldwide ticket sales, the take for the entire trilogy grows to $1.3 billion.
The merchandising spoils total three times that. You’ve seen the movies? Read the books–20 million copies of 26 stories. From the Ewok Doggie Chew to Princess Leia kids’ underwear, “Star Wars” is the most lucrative franchise in Hollywood since Snow White moved in with the Dwarfs. May the sales Force be with you! And the merchandising windfall to Lucas was dumb luck, by his own account. He gave up a $500,000 “Star Wars” directing fee from Fox in return for sequel rights. (He worried the film would bomb and Fox wouldn’t bankroll him again.) Licensing was a throw-in. Owning the sequels and merchandising gave Lucas the financing for his billion-dollar empire, including the Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) special-effects house and a computer-games division.
“Star Wars” mutated movie-making and altered Hollywood’s fiscal expectations forever. Not that it was all bad. " “Star Wars’ was a seminal moment when the entire industry instantly changed,” Spielberg told NEWSWEEK. “For me, personally, it’s when the world recognized the value of childhood.” “Star Wars” gave us the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” trilogy and “E.T.” But its smashing success also corrupted the greedheads in Hollywood and ushered in the witless and soulless megabudget, special-effects, merchandise-hawking blockbuster. “Star Wars,” thy stepchildren are “The Last Action Hero” and “Judge Dredd,” too.
FOR THE NEW THEATRICAL VERSIONS OF the trilogy, the master prints have been restored. In addition, 4.5 minutes of new computer-generated footage have been added to “Star Wars.” (Given what these movies are about to bring in all over again, the cost of the restoration was cheap–about $15 million.) Want to follow along with the propeller heads who know every frame by heart? Look for new creatures when Luke’s entourage enters the city of Mos Eisley, snazzier rocket fire and the appearance of slimeball Jabba the Hutt. A stationary, animatronic Jabba is in the beginning of “Jedi” and Lucas had a place for him in “Star Wars,” actually shooting opposite a human stand-in; but since the Jabba costume looked terrible, Lucas had to cut the scene. In the new shot, the special-effects magicians have cleverly figured out how to get Harrison Ford to step over Jabba’s long, digitalized tail (which no one had originally told Ford to do).
Madison Avenue and Hollywood can hardly wait for the rerelease. New tchotchkes due out this year include the “Star Wars” Monopoly game (five Yoda huts equal a Death Star!), the R2-D2 phone and the light-saber TV remote control. Despite the fact that 30 million videocassettes of all the “Star Wars” movies sold in 1995 alone, and despite its virtual ubiquity on cable, Fox is banking that there’s nothing like seeing the saga on the big screen. For grown-ups, says Fox vice president Tom Sherak, it will be “reliving the experience” of 20 years ago; for their children, it will be a chance to hook “a whole new generation.” For the really young kids, it’s a chance to see where all their action figures came from–the “Star Wars” franchise is so blessed that now the merchandising may drive the box office, not the other way around. “I remember this as a seminal moment in all of our lives,” Spielberg says. “Kids should experience it the same way–communally, in a theater.” He’s interested, too, because his “E.T.” is $76 million ahead of “Star Wars” in the box-office pantheon. If “Star Wars” bolts by “E.T.,” Spielberg might send his film out for a spin at the multiplex next year. He and Lucas are playfully competitive that way.
The additions and tuneups notwithstanding, the movies are the same as always. But best not to use the term “re- release” around the Lucasfilm guardians of the grail. This is the “Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition,” and don’t forget it. It’s all a prelude to Lucas’s plan for three brand-new movies, beginning in 1999, the first of which he’ll direct–the first time he’s directed since “Star Wars.” They’ll be “prequels” and tell the story of what happened 40 years before “Star Wars,” including how Vader came to be a no-goodnik. Remember, Vader is Luke’s father and used to be named Anakin Skywalker. Lucas told NEWSWEEK the prequels will be “darker” and “more tragic” than the trilogy. “I spent a great deal of time looking at history, philosophy, mythology,” Lucas says, “about how those relate to the breakdown of a democracy and rise of a dictator.” But on a cheerier note, Pepsi has committed $2 billion in advertising to promote the first prequel, as well as the Special Edition. Hey, Vader’s formative years can’t be all grim if he’s a member of the Pepsi generation.
FORGET FOR A MOMENT THE TRILOGY’S trinity: Obi-Wan, Luke and Yoda. To meet the deity himself, first you have to make the pilgrimage to Skywalker Ranch, George Lucas’s hideaway headquarters 30 minutes north of San Francisco. The Force isn’t much use on the serpentine back roads of Marin County. Gated, unmarked and set back into the undulating brown hills, the 2,541-acre ranch is as much mythology as the movies whose millions in profits built it. The magnificent centerpiece of the ranch is a modern Victorian mansion, but the conceit is that it belonged to a 19th-century sea captain. Lucas thought up a story about the place, which then served as a blueprint for the architects and craftsmen. He may only be the 56th-richest person in America, according to the Forbes list, but he’s got the best workplace around.
The 52-year-old Lucas himself is every bit the wizard behind the curtain, cloaked in mystery but utterly ordinary in person. The mystery is part accident, part design, part invention on the part of a public that expects the creator and keeper of the “Star Wars” universe to be at least a little strange. The part that is accident stems from Lucas’s pathological shyness–especially with the press–combined with a streak of stubbornness. The design part is the shrewd recognition of his handlers that the more the public’s assumptions about Lucas are reinforced, the better the asset they have when, at rare intervals, he appears to market his products. And yet, when you meet him, Lucas himself doesn’t seem to be an artful part of the game. His innocence is part of his charm as a moviemaker.
It also explains why he’s believable when he says his decision to touch up the trilogy had nothing to do with making money. Lucas acknowledges that the movies were and are about to be an Event. But to him, it’s beside the point. “It’s like that old screen door in back that never fits right,” Lucas says. “I wanted to fix little things that have bugged me for 20 years. I was furious at the time “Star Wars’ came out because it was a half-finished movie that just got thrown into the marketplace. And one day you have the energy and the stuff you need to fix it, and you do and it feels so good.” Similarly, he insists he’s doing the prequels because he has stories he wants to tell and now the high-tech tools to tell them. Computer-generated sets, digital storyboards, virtual actors, shooting scenes simultaneously for different films–Lucas intends each movie to be made for under $70 million; indeed, half of the new prequels may emanate from a Silicon Graphics workstation. Characters and plot, though, remain the thing for Lucas; the special effects are simply a means toward that end. “Just as “Star Wars’ gave you something you knew you’d never seen before, that’s what I’m hoping for in the new movies . . . Maybe I won’t succeed.”
And, then, he asks: “Would you like me to make a movie that’ll fail?” It’s a dig at all the suggestions made over the years that it’s the trilogy that’s caused Hollywood’s ruination. “The studio executives are their own worst enemy and are the ones making $100 million movies,” he says. “If it were left to filmmakers, they’d be doing it for much less. It was more James Bond than “Star Wars’ that brought in the “adrenalin’ movies. They’ve been trying to do blockbusters since “Gone With the Wind.’ Bad movies have been around since the beginning of time. The notion that I’m responsible for them is totally unfair.”
He’s right. Hollywood’s destroyed itself. Lucas made a sweet, earnest movie that had a real story and even the ability to chuckle at itself once in a while. If Hollywood successfully imitated those qualities, we wouldn’t get the junk that now passes for entertainment. Maybe the nostalgic return of “Star Wars” will remind folks of the wonder and innocence that once was possible; maybe the prequels will do that in the millennium. But don’t count on it. The world of 20 years back, when George Lucas stirred the imagination, was “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.”
