Steven Spielberg on the fundamental difference between him and George Lucas
At the head of the high table of blockbuster directors comfortably sit the pioneers of big-budget movies, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, two absolute masters of cinema of the most exciting and explosive kind. With a phenomenal total gross between the two legendary filmmakers, they’ve both respectively preserved their remarkable legacies.
Lucas will, of course, always be known for creating Star Wars, one of the most influential and significant science fiction movie franchises of all time, although he also penned the Indiana Jones series, a franchise his friend Spielberg knows only too well. Spielberg’s other achievements speak for themselves, with the likes of Jaws, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan all being true classics of modern film.
While the two share a similarity in their blockbuster impact on the world of cinema, there lies a striking difference between the two directors and it all comes down to how they treat their films that have already been released, with Lucas liking to go back and alter certain aspects of his movies digitally, while Spielberg prefers to leave them as they are.
“George goes by his playbook, and I go by mine,” Spielberg once told Entertainment Weekly. “I did alter E.T., and I do regret making those alterations. When the movie comes out on Blu-ray, either we will package both versions for the same price — nobody has to pay any more money for the rejiggered version — or we will just bite the bullet and come out with the 1982 version.”
“My philosophy now is that every single movie is a signpost of its time, and it should stand for that,” the director added. “We shouldn’t go back and change the parting of the Red Sea in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments just because with digital tools, we now can make that even more spectacular than it was.”
Lucas had decided to digitally update the original Star Wars films, and following the procedure, he suggested that Spielberg do the same with his E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. However, the results of Spielberg’s digital touch-up were not quite what he had expected, and the final product looked worse than it had originally. He chose never to take Lucas’ advice on the matter ever again, even if Star Wars digital looked fantastic.
In an interview with Collider, Spielberg explained, “So, there’s a really bad version of E.T., where I took my cue from Star Wars and all of the digital enhancements for A New Hope that George put in. I went ahead because the marketing at Universal thought we needed something to get an audience back in to see the movie, so I did a few touch-ups in the film.”
