“Grow up. These are my movies, not yours.”

So, George Lucas is a car guy. American Graffiti is the closest thing to an autobiography he ever made (though it's not that close), and Tatooine Luke before the sizzle-sizzle smoky barbecue scene is probably a close second. To that end, I've always thought that a car-guy metaphor is probably the best way to understand this disconnect George Lucas has with the fans.

Star Wars is his hot rod. It's the fast little thing he cobbled together in his garage from spare parts and his own sweat. Yes, the guts came off a factory line somewhere. Yes, he may have bought some parts at the store. Yes, he commissioned some bespoke upholstery. In the end, though, it's his vision, his baby. He merely rolls it out every once in a while for everyone else to see.

Then, he takes it back to the garage. You know, that paintjob wasn't so great after all. Maybe we could add a removable hardtop instead of it being an open roadster. A new crate engine would make it so much faster and cooler! Then, when it's ready, he rolls it back out...

...and he's completely befuddled when people get pissed off. He cannot understand for a single second why the version from the last autoshow, the one with the pinstripes with the wrong shade of red that he let somebody else apply because he was busy, meant something to these people. It's just his project to tinker with it, and now he has the money and time to do it right, but "right" will change when he feels like he's come up with something better. Isn't it cool that he took off those generic tires and added some sweet whitewhalls? And if it isn't, what does it matter? Go get your own car or ogle somebody else's. What right do people have to be upset that he made changes, and it's rude to tell him that they want him the old one back.

Eventually, there are so many people complaining about the new parts and the changes to old parts that he just can't enjoy taking it out for a spin anymore, so he sells it to the local car museum. It's sad in its way, but it ignores that fundamental disconnect:

Stories are not fuckin' cars.

He put art out into the world, art that connected with people at crucial moments in their lives, some of them in very specific and detailed ways. He never viewed himself as a custodian and a guiding hand for the benefit of the audience, but rather as its owner, the one person who had a right to make legitimate changes to the story, even if it already existed and had made a mark on the world. Gene Roddenberry would be an interesting comparison, because while he certainly had some rigid ideas too, they were higher level and not quite so deeply personal.

"I'm putting my vision out for the audience to accept or not," will result in more personal art, often therefore more interesting, and indeed I don't think anyone begrudges George the right to make his changes. It's just the mental disconnect that other people's experiences don't matter at all, that rankles. This is especially true when he could indulge those people's nostalgia passively, because it's not like the original versions affect the existence of the special editions. That might hurt his feelings though, because if you like the original version better, then you're implicitly criticizing his more "authentic" vision. It comes off as petty and out of touch.