George Lucas: a Modern Day P. T. Barnum

Life magazine dubbed him “the patron saint of promoters”.
He was erroneously credited with the saying “There’s a sucker born every minute.” (which has actually been attributed to several people)

Whether hawking lottery tickets or promoting a world-class opera singer, P. T. Barnum knew how to promote. He was always looking for something that would “put money in his own coffers”, and started early in life with his entrepreneurial endeavors.

Barnum was a showman, author, businessman, entertainer, promoter, and politician.

And George Lucas is his successor.

I make that statement because Lucas has demonstrated that fans of Star Wars will continue to flock to his product, which has (for some) now gone from opera singer to fake Feejee Mermaid.

With the announcement that the trilogies will be released on Blu-Ray, Lucas has again shown that he can market himself and his product throughout the world, even after so many fans have expressed frustration and disgust at the utterly shamelessness of it all. Consider how many times he’s altered the original trilogy, and how many of us have shelled out our dollars to collect them.

(For the record, I saw Star Wars when I was 7. In 1977, when it was only Star Wars, not Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope “Special Edition”…)

I have the original trilogy, letterboxed, on VHS tape, and I’m perfectly content with those. As long as I have a player that works.

I also have the “Special Edition” trilogy, letterboxed, on VHS tape. And despite cringing every time Greedo shoots first, I’m content watching these as alternate versions – not replacement versions – of the movies I watched in my youth.

This is the old “Classic Coke” vs. “New Coke” method of marketing. I’m convinced that Lucas is allowing the hue & cry over “Han shot first” purists vs. the “get over it” crowd to build and linger, because it keeps the Star Wars name front and center. It’s what we in the media call “top of mind awareness”. Barnum understood this, and Lucas does, too. And when all is said and done, I’m sure Lucas will allow the release of the original trilogy – unaltered – for those die-hard purists who just cannot accept Hayden Christensen standing next to Sir Alec Guiness in the final scenes of Return of the Jedi.

But in the end, it is Lucas who has the last laugh. Because with “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” he has access to the next generation of SW fans, who can accept Jar Jar Binks as part of the same universe as Yoda (the first one, the Muppet). And those kids will grow up with a fondness for all of the Star Wars stories, and they will spend their dollars on even more versions of the movies and television shows: the 3-D conversions, the holographic editions, the mind-chip downloads, the immersive interactive game-play version…

And we have no one to blame but ourselves.