I’m rather resigned to the fact that George can’t stop fiddling with the Original Trilogy, but in the light of that, isn’t this quote just a tad bit hypocritical?
“Would color distract from their comedy and make it not as funny anymore?” Lucas said. “Maybe just the fact that they’re in black and white makes it funny, because their humor is dated. But by putting it in black and white, it puts it in a context where you can appreciate it for what it was.
“But you try to make it in full living color and try to compare it to a Jim Carrey movie, then it’s hard for young people to understand. Because you’re then thinking you’re comparing apples to apples, when you’re not. You’re comparing apples to oranges. I’m saying it’s not fair to the artist.”
From The Three Stooges — in color?
Replace ‘color’ with ‘CGI’ and ‘black & white’ with ‘guys in rubber masks and ships on strings,’ and… well.
Well, I’ve always argued that the film maker making changes to his/her own work is one thing, and someone else (i.e., Ted Turner) making changes to classics is another.
It’s not so much that he’s doing the changes as that he won’t make the originals (or the pre-SE laserdisc versions, at least) avaliable on DVD. They were classics as they were, and an important milestone in filmmaking. Does it really matter if the effects can stand up to LOTR or the Matrix? It’s still taking it them out of context.
But hell, at least the Stooges fans get to choose.