George Lucas slams fans who dislike Star Wars changes

As the 3D-converted Star Wars: Episode One - The Phantom Menace hits cinemas (watch the trailer below), Star Wars creator George Lucas has addressed the fans' vocal complaints whenever he makes changes to the six-part legendary film series.

Which, to be frank, is pretty often. Remember last year's addition of Darth Vader screaming "Nooooo!" in the Star Wars Blu-Ray release?

When asked by The Hollywood Reporter if he'd made any changes to The Phantom Menace other than the 3D conversion, here's what Lucas had to say:

"Changes are not unusual — I mean, most movies when they release them they make changes. But somehow, when I make the slightest change, everybody thinks it's the end of the world."

"My job is to try to make the best possible movie it can be — and the current version is the Blu-ray version. That's the one that's been made into 3D. But it's just a conversion. We haven't made any changes other than the 3D."

That should keep the purists happy. Wait a second — Lucas has a few more jabs to make at fanatical fans:

"Well, it's not a religious event. I hate to tell people that. It's a movie, just a movie. The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn't."

"It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down."

He went on to say the same thing about the Yoda "CGI versus puppet" argument, claiming that he tried to make Yoda CGI in the first place but the technology just wasn't there, so it was worth redoing in CGI for the reissues.

Lucas added that he thinks Star Wars "keeps getting improved a little bit as we move forward" in technology.