Can you envision a future in which a filmmaker who didn't get the actor he wanted the first time can drop in a new performance to ''perfect'' the movie?
It has to do with the creative predilections of the director -- what he wants and how strongly he feels about it. But you could do that. The real issue is, who has the right to do that? I fall 100 percent on the side of the right of the artist to alter it.
You've said that in Star Wars, you were trying to capture something for young viewers that would connect with the fun that you had at Saturday-afternoon serials. But the saga is actually pretty sad. If you take it as the story of the guy who became Darth Vader, isn't it a six-movie series about someone losing his humanity?
But being resurrected by his children. We all have to make up for our fathers, you know. Believe me, our kids are really going to have a job making up for the sins that are going on right now. That's a classic theme, you know -- if one generation succumbs, it's up to the next generation to redeem that generation.
Say that it's 2010, and I'm a 10-year-old coming to Star Wars movies for the first time. Should I start with Episode IV (Star Wars) or Episode I (Phantom Menace)?
[Your order should be] I, II, III, IV, V, VI. Part of the fun for me is that one generation will have seen it backwards. For the next generation that sees it from I to VI, there are a lot of things in IV [Star Wars] that were just fantastic [in 1977] -- you know, the cantina -- which aren't going to work. In those days, you didn't put monsters in a bar. A monster was a thing that came from a spaceship and ate everybody. Now every [sci-fi] bar you walk into has got aliens.
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