Nonsensor.

A few days before the recent Blogsmith/WIN trip to New York, Netflix delivered us a bundle of THX1138. I remember watching this dystopian future (think Brave New World) once because of the George Lucas name, once in art school, and another couple times since. It's visually very interesting, and it's easy to see how the grimy futuristic textural realism evolved into the beaten up space ships of Star Wars. Maybe even more interesting is the audio, more an interesting collage of weird sound effects and quotable snippets than a normal movie. But something didn't quite seem right. The impact wasn't there. Then it hit me. George Lucas did a Star Wars-style special edition "enhancement" on THX, adding between-scene establishing shots that came right out of a computer. No, they don't kill the movie, but they are grossly out of place and have nothing to do with the oppressive and stark white of the sets you're looking at for the rest of the film.

More importantly, this is George Lucas going back to try and tweak an existing artistic triumph into perfection. Ironically, the point of the movie is that slick, machinelike, homogenous perfection is boring, lifeless, soul-sucking, and against human nature. So I can't say as I agree with his decision to once again foist cartoony slickness onto his movies. I hope American Graffiti isn't next, otherwise we may see Harrison Ford outrunning Tie Fighters in his muscle car. Blessings of the state, blessings of the masses and all that.