If these changes were loved (not even universally loved, just the majority) or he didn't tinker with them every other year to 'up' the income, I may be persuaded to think along those lines. The closest I can come to it is that he really wants to be a film director, but feels messing with the behemoth he created is the only way he can do it now, as he hasn't got the balls to direct something new.
I don't know. To me, in our current day and age, I feel there might be some logic to what I was saying about Lucas spending more time trying to perfect
Star Wars for future generations. For one...
Star Wars is just too huge and too epic and too universally loved. It's his masterpiece. It's his baby. It's his thing - his reason for being alive. He might not have another great story/great movie in him. Even if he did, would it be accepted the way
Star Wars is accepted? Probably not. People - at least in our day and age - just aren't very accepting of new things. At least that's how it seems to me. People fall in love with one great thing a person does and they seem to get stuck. Artists have a hard time topping something -- and with something like
Star Wars -- that's a very, very, very, very, very BIG thing to top.
Imagine that you created
Star Wars. Holy ****, right? How would that affect you as a person? Really think about it. Imagine that you took the putty and came up with that. We really can't see it from his perspective. George Lucas is a God in his own way. He is the God of
Star Wars. And one day soon, he's gonna die and he's gonna disappear and he's gonna be quiet forever. But that whole universe -- that whole
Star Wars thing he created -- is gonna stick around. Thousands of years might go by and
Star Wars could still be around and still be cherished. Thousands of years. Think about that. Let's pretend it's the year 6711. And
Star Wars is still known by everybody.
Why care about trying to create something new? Could he care? Certainly. But at the stage he's at now, is it really important? Not really. It's like winning the lottery -- yeah, there's a lot of great movies out there -- but
Star Wars? That's winning the lottery. That's a saga. That's a beloved saga. Everybody sees it. He has won a lottery among filmmakers. He gets to be the God of this thing.
Knowing all that -- and thinking about the future -- wouldn't you at least pause and think,
what if it's not done? What if I don't have it right? What if it could be improved? Do I really want to leave it untouched when I've still got time to make it better? I know everybody's telling me to leave it alone and that they hate the changes and it sucks, but I feel I could improve upon it. I should make it better. That thing is gonna be around for eternity... I can't keep it the way it is. I know I could make it a lot more interesting. They may not realize it now, but someday they will. I know it works - it has a power to transform people's lives - I don't have to do too much, but I know I could do some things to make it even more impressive.
Maybe he's just really nervous or something. Maybe he's self conscious or worried about it looking too old and dated sometime in the future. But I bet if you sat down with Lucas, one on one, and had a really deep talk with him, you would probably come to understand why he's doing this and that it's not just because of money. Now, yes, I could be wrong - but what if I'm not? What if this is something he strongly feels the need to do?
He is an artist. He might be getting called to do this somehow. The same mind that's making these changes is the same mind that created it in the first place. We should honor and respect that, even if just a little.