Jon Favreau Disses Star Wars Fans Who Want One Long-Awaited Thing From The Franchise
Jon Favreau says he doubts anyone but older fans is interested in a release of the unaltered original Star Wars trilogy.
The original, unaltered Star Wars trilogy hasn’t been available in any legal format since 2006. According to a new interview with Moovy TV, Jon Favreau doesn’t see why that should change. When asked if he had “the clout” to get the original version of the sci-fi trilogy released, The Mandalorian director responded, “Do you think anybody but us, like, the people who grew up with it, like anybody would care?”
Favreau said that for Millennials and Zoomers, the original Star Wars trilogy isn’t that big of a deal. In Jon Favreau’s opinion, Millennials consider the prequels their Star Wars trilogy. For Gen Z the director says it’s The Clone Wars cartoon, which they can stream on Disney+, that got them into the franchise.
However, Jon Favreau may have a skewed understanding of Millennials’ involvement with Star Wars. The original Star Wars films were released in the ’70s and ’80s at a time when Generation X was just wrapping up, and so-called “Elder Millennials” were being born. Most Millennials discovered A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi on VHS.
That means a majority of the Star Wars fans that fit into the Millennial bracket grew up without the Special Editions.
The Star Wars Special Editions were released theatrically in 1997. This new version of the trilogy featured added CGI clutter and, in some cases, changed the meaning of whole scenes. Anyone old enough to remember the whole “Han shot first!” debate understands how unpopular these changes were.
Unfortunately, George Lucas made the altered Star Wars trilogy the only Star Wars trilogy available on home media. Lucas considered the new cuts of the films his true vision and the only legitimate version of Star Wars. A vision that he continued to tinker with up until he sold the franchise to Disney.
Fans — contrary to what Jon Favreau thinks –have been begging for a high-definition version of the pre-Special Edition Star Wars trilogy for years. In 2010 The People VS. George Lucas was released. The movie is a documentary about angry fan reactions to a number of things, including the prequel trilogy and Lucasfilm’s refusal to release the original versions of the trilogy, and the debate over whether the creator or the fans own a piece of art after it’s released.
There’s been a lot of speculation as to why Disney is sitting on a potential cash cow by releasing the original, unaltered trilogy on 4K. One rumor is that George Lucas made Disney sign an agreement never to release the unaltered Star Wars movies before he sold the franchise. It could also be that Disney agrees with Jon Favreau that there isn’t enough interest for an unaltered STAR Wars trilogy release.
Some fans have even speculated that Jon Favreau answered the way that he did so Disney could gauge Star Wars fans’ reactions. Maybe if enough fans express outrage at the director’s claim that nobody cares, Disney will change course and release the original trilogy in an unaltered state.
Fans can only hope that this is the case. Perhaps a hashtag similar to #releasethesnydercut will start trending on Twitter, forcing Disney to do something similar to Warner Bros. when they released Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Until then, fans will just have to keep watching their decades-old VHS copies and Laserdiscs.
