By now you’ve no doubt heard that the upcoming Blu-ray release of the Star Wars movies will feature a few alterations to the original trilogy, including blinking Ewoks, a new door to Jabba’s lair, and worst of all, Darth Vader shouting “NO!” as he throws Emperor Palpatine to his death in Return of the Jedi, instead of being all silent and Vader-like. (*takes deep breath, puffs inhaler*)

Now, the site SaveStarWars has dug up an old speech George Lucas made before congress in 1988 arguing for cinematic preservation. In it, the old George Lucas basically calls 2011 George Lucas a barbarian. It’s an impassioned speech, but sadly, 2011 George Lucas just laughed and stuffed handfuls of money into his slavering neck pouch, ordering his boy servants to bring him more cats for breakfast. “CHOMF CHOMF CHOMF!” he belched, poking at a bikini-clad boy with his slimy tentacle.

[Quoth the Lucas, circa 1988]
American works of art belong to the American public; they are part of our cultural history.
People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians, and if the laws of the United States continue to condone this behavior, history will surely classify us as a barbaric society.
These current defacements are just the beginning. Today, engineers with their computers can add color to black-and-white movies, change the soundtrack, speed up the pace, and add or subtract material to the philosophical tastes of the copyright holder. Tomorrow, more advanced technology will be able to replace actors with “fresher faces,” or alter dialogue and change the movement of the actor’s lips to match. It will soon be possible to create a new “original” negative with whatever changes or alterations the copyright holder of the moment desires. The copyright holders, so far, have not been completely diligent in preserving the original negatives of films they control. In order to reconstruct old negatives, many archivists have had to go to Eastern bloc countries where American films have been better preserved.
In the future it will become even easier for old negatives to become lost and be “replaced” by new altered negatives. This would be a great loss to our society. Our cultural history must not be allowed to be rewritten.
There is nothing to stop American films, records, books, and paintings from being sold to a foreign entity or egotistical gangsters and having them change our cultural heritage to suit their personal taste.
I accuse the companies and groups, who say that American law is sufficient, of misleading the Congress and the People for their own economic self-interest.
I accuse the corporations, who oppose the moral rights of the artist, of being dishonest and insensitive to American cultural heritage and of being interested only in their quarterly bottom line, and not in the long-term interest of the Nation.
The public’s interest is ultimately dominant over all other interests. And the proof of that is that even a copyright law only permits the creators and their estate a limited amount of time to enjoy the economic fruits of that work.
There are those who say American law is sufficient. That’s an outrage! It’s not sufficient! If it were sufficient, why would I be here? Why would John Houston have been so studiously ignored when he protested the colorization of “The Maltese Falcon?” Why are films cut up and butchered?
I hope you have the courage to lead America in acknowledging the importance of American art to the human race, and accord the proper protection for the creators of that art–as it is accorded them in much of the rest of the world communities.”

Well said. Unfortunately, Lucas owns the Star Wars copyright (even though, technically, he only directed the first film in the original trilogy) and can alter his films as he sees fit. Knowing what we know now, it seems like a lot of what people loved about the original Star Wars were created out of decisions made over Lucas’s head that he fought the whole way. It’d be like if a group of guys were trying to build a house, and one of them kept saying stuff like, “No, we should put the foundation on the roof!” And the other guys ignored him but still let him put his name on it. And then thirty years later the guy was like, “Well it’s my house now, and I’m going to put the foundation on the roof. And windows in the basement, and a big playhouse in the living room for my kitties… And rabbits, millions of ‘em! Purple ones, yellow ones, pink ones! And we’ll all live off the fatta the land…”

That's an actual toy that people wasted $175 on.

Yesterday, news hit that actress and filthy rich woman Gwyneth Paltrow had saved a woman’s life on 9/11 because she almost hit her with her Mercedes, causing the woman to miss her train that would have taken her to the World Trade Center, where she worked on the 77th floor. So because of a complete coincidence and terrible female stereotype reinforcement, Paltrow gets to pat herself on the back while idiots call her a hero. I bring this story up because now George Lucas can do the same.

Last weekend, Janice Harms of Clara City, Minnesota was answering nature’s call, when her house exploded, sending her flying from the bathroom to the kitchen. Surrounded by flames and imminent death, Harms crawled into her refrigerator and hid there until she was discovered by rescue workers.

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This trailer for Red Tails is very important as it was produced by the famous cat thief George Lucas. However, it doesn’t seem to have any reaction shots from families of squirrels or characters swinging through the trees with monkeys, so it’s possible George just cut a check and went back to playing Hot Wheels on his racecar bed and shoving fistfuls of money into his stretchy neck pouch. Instead, Red Tails, directed by Anthony Hemingway, tells the story of the Tuskeegee Airmen, a squadron of negro pilots during WWII whose rambunctious jungle planing at first terrified the white establishment, until it eventually captivated the youth and swept the country, going on to “influence” white pilots from Elvis to John Travolta. Some people say black guys make better pilots because of the extra muscle in their throttle arm, but science has already disproven this theory.

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Back in March, Vince popped a blood vessel when a video circulated depicting Michael Bay’s movie version of Angry Birds. Vinnie also pointed out that Roxio executives had already been in discussions last year to bring a popular iPhone app about catapulting birds to the big screen. And now it’s all come full circle because former Marvel Studios Chairman David Maisel says that these birds are going to fly.

“There has been so much chatter about an Angry Birds movie, but it’s now real, the process is starting now.”

The Iron Man producer has teamed up with games company Rovio in order to bring this slightly odd project to life.

“People are interacting with these characters six inches from them each time they play, and that creates an emotional connection…It’s a global thing that’s something I’ve never seen before. It will be exciting to expand [Angry Birds] within Hollywood.” (Via Total Film)

Maisel was picked, no joke, because Roxio CEO Mikael Hed originally wanted George Lucas to produce. But when it became certain that Lucas was unavailable, Hed settled for Maisel since “George Lucas was unavailable – David was really the best person we could have hoped to work with.” Also, if Lucas had signed on, every time a bird would go missing, he would say he had no clue where it went and then he’d hiccup a feather.

Look, I’ve played my fair share of Angry Birds and there hasn’t been a single time that I’ve pulled back the catapult band with one of the yellow birds and thought, “My God, this bird is about to give his life for me and I never even asked his name.” If someone has an emotional attachment to a little cartoon bird that doesn’t speak and kills itself within seconds, that person needs to see a therapist immediately. Otherwise, one of these freaks is going to start attacking aviaries and then – bird rape.

"Look at the kitty over there, George, do you see the kitty? If you're a good boy you can go pet the kitty, George."

The ancient Mayans believed the world would end in 2012, as evidenced by the fact that the calendars they made 2000 years ago mysteriously stopped at 2012 (scientist call this “the mystery of holy crap my arm is tired”).  Adding credence to these apocalyptic rumors of late are mysterious bird mass bird deaths and Willow Smith’s burgeoning music career.  Still, only a child-like jackass would believe apocalypse rumors, which brings us to George Lucas.

Said Seth Rogen about a meeting he had with Spielberg and Lucas, according to WENN:

“George Lucas sits down and seriously proceeds to talk for around 25 minutes about how he thinks the world is gonna end in the year 2012, like, for real. He thinks it.
“He’s going on about the tectonic plates and all the time Spielberg is, like, rolling his eyes, like, ’My nerdy friend won’t shut up, I’m sorry…’”

Weird, that’s exactly how I always imagined their relationship.

“I first thought he (Lucas) was joking… and then I totally realized he was serious and then I started thinking, ’If you’re George Lucas and you actually think the world is gonna end in a year, there’s no way you haven’t built a spaceship for yourself… So I asked him… ’Can I have a seat on it?’
“He claimed he didn’t have a spaceship, but there’s no doubt there’s a Millennium Falcon in a garage somewhere with a pilot just waiting to go… It’s gonna be him and Steven Spielberg and I’ll be blown up like the rest of us.”

WENN is the most consistently and egregiously inaccurate news source on the internet second only to ContactMusic, but since this was only a means to make fun of George Lucas anyway, I’ll play along.  I think it says something about George Lucas that people imagine that the only person he’d allow in his apocalypse space pod is not a wife, not a concubine, not his children, but Steven Spielberg.  “I brought only my most important possessions — my best friend, a racecar bed, my erector set, and 27 cats, which, if we breed ‘em right, should feed us until we can reach Alpha Centauri.”