Elusive as that perfection might be, the artist’s right to tinker too can’t be denied.
How should one think about an artist altering an earlier work of art? Would such an attempt be “barbaric”, as filmmaker George Lucas once said or is it, as he asserted later, when he began tinkering with his original Star Wars trilogy, the artist’s right to keep making changes and bring a work as close to his “vision” as possible? The recent completion of a fan project that has tried to undo all of Lucas’s subsequent edits from the first three films of the franchise, restoring the theatrical versions that fans enjoyed in the late ’70s and early ’80s, has reignited a debate that has long split the Star Wars fandom.
It has also revived the question of who, ultimately, “owns” a work of art, especially one as passionately loved as Star Wars. Is it only the artist? Do fans, who imbue it with more meaning and emotional heft than originally intended, have no claim on it? The practice of returning to a work and making alterations is not one that began with Lucas. An infamous example is Arthur Conan Doyle bringing Sherlock Holmes back from the dead in the 1903 short story ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’. While Doyle had acted under fan pressure, many retcons (notably in horror films and superhero comics) are meant to align earlier works in a series with plot/character developments in subsequent works.
Mostly, though, it comes down to a creator’s view of all versions of a work as mere drafts, ever in need of improvements — consider, for example, the profusion of pentimenti (corrections) uncovered in works by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Jan van Eyck. The emotional investment of fans who decry post facto changes certainly can’t be overlooked, but the process of creation, ultimately, is a pursuit of perfection. Elusive as that perfection might be, the artist’s right to tinker too can’t be denied.
