George Lucas, the man who screamed like a wounded wookie when the Phantom Edit first introduced JarJar-free prequelosity to millions of online nerds, has come around, kind of.
Lucasfilm, which is in the middle of a hype cycle centered around the original film's thirtieth birthday extravaganza, has announced that this time around, fans are being invited to mash-up, remix, and even eff with the official storyline and timeline, using 250 officially sanctioned video clips from all six feature-length films. They're partnering with online video editing site Eyespot.com to do it, which should provide Web 2.0 legitimacy to the plan, plus a huge boost in subscriber numbers for the video site.
Of course, Lucas isn't exactly uploading the master keys to the Death Star; for one thing, Eyespot will use some kind of pattern recognition software to censor out any user-generated clips that contain "nudity, pornography, and the like" (seems like a pretty conveniently broad stricture). Also, remixers will have zero stake in their work; Eyespot and Lucasfilm will divvy up the proceeds from streaming advertisements served to viewers. And don't even think about the possibility of either the source materials or the products being released under a Creative Commons license...
...But all in all, we like this. We are happy. We might even make an all-Jar-Jar-all-the-time edit, if it's not deemed obscene.
