Origin of ""George Lucas raped my childhood"?
 

Saw this in the local paper today... DVDtalk Bolded...

Star Wars: Return of the Nine-Year-Old Boy
By Mike Jenkinson

It was a glorious experience sitting down last week to watch the Star Wars trilogy on DVD because for six hours or so, I was nine years old again.

OK. I was only nine when the first movie came out, as opposed to all three - and, come to think about it, I was really only eight and a half.

But there's something about George Lucas's swashbuckling space fantasy that always makes me become that nearly nine-year-old boy again, sitting in a movie theatre with my jaw dropped in awe at the marvel that was unfolding on the silver screen

I think I saw the first movie something like nine times in the theatre. This was back in the Dark Ages when really successful movies stayed in theatres for longer than three weeks, VCRs were just an emerging technology and the home-video market basically didn't exist. I recall being somewhat jealous that one of my younger brothers saw it 12 times - being that Star Wars was the big thing for little boys to do for their birthday parties. Guess he had more friends than I did.

I remember standing in line for five hours with my father and brothers on opening day for The Empire Strikes Back to get in for the 7 p.m. showing when some loser walked out of the earlier show and blurted out, "Darth Vader is Luke's father!" (I knew that, of course, having read the novelization of the film before going to see the movie.)

Not surprisingly, I was in line again for the first day of Return of the Jedi.

And tucked away in a box somewhere is an old stop-motion animation, homemade Star Wars movie my brothers and I made on an old video camera, using our large collection of Star Wars action figures.

Which is why I'm one of those rare birds who isn't completely critical of the two (and soon to be three) prequels. Sure, the kid who played Anakin Skywalker in The Phantom Menace was cringe-inducing. As was Jar-Jar Binks. And, sure, the first 90 minutes of Attack of the Clones was completely cringe-inducing.

Then Yoda went nuts with his lightsabre, and everything was right with the world again.

There's no doubt that The Lord of the Rings trilogy was in every aspect a completely superior set of films, compared with even the original Star Wars threesome.

But I'll still get my advance tickets to see Revenge of the Sith on opening day, just so I can be nine years old one more time.

I think that's one of the reasons why, unlike a lot of the Star Wars-obsessed fanboys who populate the Internet using phrases like "George Lucas raped my childhood," I'm not nearly as bothered by the changes the Star Wars creator has made to the original three movies.

As a journalist (no, really! I have the degree to prove it!), I've always thought that if I ever decided to put together an anthology of my columns into a book, I'd want to go through them and edit the odd one here or there - to take out typos, fix the occasional incorrect fact, and spruce up a couple of punchlines.

So I don't really care if Lucas replaced the guy who played the emperor in Empire with Ian McDiarmid, who played the emperor in Jedi and has been in the two prequels. It doesn't bother me greatly that Hayden Christensen is playing the ghost of Anakin Skywalker at the end of Jedi rather than the older dude who appeared in the original theatrical film.

And I'm not happy with the fact that Greedo and Han Solo now shoot at each other simultaneously, but at least it's better than the previous change from the mid-1990s "special editions" of the film, where Greedo shot first and Solo shot him in self-defence. Neither one, however, is as good as the original movie version, in which Solo shoots first.

Besides, for all the complaining the uber-geeks do about Lucas changing the original three movies, no one seems to have noticed or cared that he actually managed to sneak a few editorial changes into the DVD releases of Phantom Menace and Clones.

It's Lucas's creation and he can do with it what he wants. I'll just keep paying money to see it, just so that I can escape the pressures of the world and be a nine-year-old boy again for a couple of hours.

But Han Solo still shot first.

http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Column...pf-644994.html

This is the only place I have heard that phrase... just wondering if this is in fact the origin of the phrase...

I like to believe that I didn't come up with it, but I did abuse the fuck out of it and beat it to the ground. :)

AICN Talkback May of 1999 I believe . . .

But has it ever been used seriously? It seemed to me that everytime I saw it here, it was a joke. A running joke, like "Luca$" or "Di$ney" or "Good Burger: Criterion Collection."

This sums up just how I feel, I do not love all the changes, but I still love the movies.

The Greedo shoots first change just LOOKS stupid. I can't believe he would let it out with it looking so bad.

More importantly where does the word "fanboy" come from? If that ridiculous word ever gets into Webster's I'm throwing away my computer.

The internet raped my adulthood.

It is just a movie. I would hope a persons childhood would include a lot more great memories than just this one trilogy.

I was wondering the same thing. The first time that I'd ever heard that term was in "Mallrats."

It's hard to contain more memories when so many bad ones have been repressed all these years after Lucas raped them.

Personally, all of the idiotic "rape" talk needs to be put to bed, forever. It's just a ridiculous analogy.

Agreed! If someone's childhood was so pathetic that it could be raped by decisions concerning a movie, then they never really had a childhood worth spitting on anyway.

I told someone recently that if someone says changing Star Wars ruins thier memories of thier childhood, it's time to dig a little deeper.

It's never been used seriously. It's always just been a epithet by Lucas supporters against those of us who want the original trilogy.

I hate to let you in on our little secret, but us Lucas supporters want the original trilogy too. We just don't think it's such a crime to go apesh*t over as many of you do. We also realize that Lucas doesn't even have to release Star Wars on DVD at all, in any version.

And yes we should bow down to him for releasing it! And not be able to express our displeasure!

After all, it only made him 1,000,000,000 bucks the last week.

Who said bow down to him? I and other support his right to do anything he wants, because he's the artist. Doesn't mean like every change. I don't like the Hayden change. But it's his vision and film.

All I hear from the bashers is bitching and whining. Yet I bet you 99% of them went out and bought the DVDs, which pretty much means all of their indignation was for nothing. If you want to slam the SEs and complain about the changes, at least have the guts not to go out and buy the very thing you don't like. I know, some will say they didn't buy it. Some will even lie and claim they didn't buy it, even when they did, because they know nobody here can prove they didn't. But those who didn't were a drop in the bucket of all the SE and Lucas bashers.

[quote]And not be able to express our displeasure![quote]

Sure you have the right. But here comes the typical reply. How often do you have to fricking whine about the same thing over and over, bringing ever thread to a half. For Christ's sake, move the ***** on!

You know what, if the bashers actually spent half of their effort writing letters and sending emails to Lucasfilm and Fox, they might actually get something done. Whining about it on here sure as hell won't get anything done.

If you want to sit around and babble how great Star Wars is all the time, that would get boring too..its the flip side of the same coin you are arguing against!

Fanboy? Hmm, that one's been around for ages. At least before 95, when I first started using Usenet. I was a Star Trek fanboy :)

I much prefer "George Lucas raped my inner child"

Basically, a lot of people whine that these movies where hugely important to them when they were kids, and that buy making these changes Lucas has ruined the magic for them blah, blah, blah.

Others bashed these people's whining comments by equating them with them saying that "lucas raped my childhood" as a way to taunt them.

At least that's how I recall it developing.

Re: Origin of ""George Lucas raped my childhood"?
 

I'm sure people noticed, it's just that no one cares. Those movies are not the beloved classic that the first Star Wars is.

Neil

"Lucas raped my mid-20's" isn't as catchy

I'm sure Lucas will rape our adult hood if he make more changes?

Since he didn't direct Empire and Jedi, there are quite a few people who wouldn't consider him the author/artist of those films. At the very least, it's a shared vision with someone else (one now dead) who, as far as I know, isn't now getting to share in the current artistic changes made to those films.

If the director of the film isn't the artist, then we probably shouldn't complain in other situations where producers make changes.

The original versions of any film should ALWAYS be available.

The director's were nothing more than contracted laborers. Lucas still pulled all the strings and made all the creative decisions.

And Kershner said he was fine with the changes to ESB and Marquand didn't seem to care one way or the other from interviews I saw, so it's a moot point anyway.

hmmm zig hmmm zig