The guy checking me out at Best Buy asked me to pick a number between 1 and 100. I thought, for a second, if I picked the right number I'd get something for free. This is kind of like hoping for cheaper gas these days. I picked 57.

Nope, you're close, he said. The number was 65. And it was the number of Star Wars DVD sets he'd sold in the last two plus hours. As an afterthought, he picked up the new Green Day CD, and said he should have been counting how many of those he'd sold, too. Both were going out like hot cakes.

I'd decided a week or so before that I would buy this DVD set, even though I have philosophical misgiving about the "improvements" George Lucas has inflicted on these films of my childhood. The Star Wars DVDs are only available in the "special edition" of the films, which includes the changes made in 1997 for their 20th anniversary release (plus some new ones just to twist the dagger).

Lucas has said, many times, that if he had more money or better technology, the films would have been different, and that's why he had to add lots of little squiggles on the screen. Make it busier and have more unruly monsters as stand-ins for horses.

The overall theme of these films is that the children will atone for the sins of the father. The children, twins Luke and Leia, eventually do this by the end of Return of the Jedi. Darth Vader, the father, also does this, by killing the Emperor (his adoptive father, so to speak) as that nasty little man tries to fry Luke. So everything finally comes back into balance, even though Vader (formerly Anakin Skywalker) dies in the end--causing another power gap in the force since it ends with one Jedi and no Sith foil.

Lucas is the father of these babies, and he seems bent on "correcting" his own mistakes. Interestingly, he fixes some things and doesn't fix other things. I thought the most egregious error, which was totally the fault of the technology of the 1970s, is the quick flashing black matte effects that happen when models are flying past each other in space. For much of the original Star Wars, these mattes have been digitally erased, but the Millennium Falcon flight away from the Death Star (before going back to the Rebel Base for the final stand off) is not fixed.

Apparently digitally rendering Jabba The Hut to scoot alongside Han Solo in a totally redundant conversation (it is almost the same talk Solo has with Greedo, who, by now shooting first, is shown to be the worst Bounty Hunter in the history of the field--he can't hit a guy two feet in front of him!) was much more important than to erase some technical ghosts.

But this isn't the biggest problem I'm having with father Lucas these days. I wonder why this man, who has claimed to always be working independently of the huge movie studios who traditionally bankroll movies, has not set up his own production studio for fledgling filmmakers. Sure, he has his own studio to make his very expensive films, but who else is making Lucasfilm movies these days? No one.

Lucas is rather well off. He certainly has the money to help out other like-minded independent filmmakers. The problem is, he doesn't seem to care about them. Just like the major studios. So how is it that this rebel, who worked so hard to separate himself from the big money politics of Hollywood, has yet to produce these small "independent" movies he claims was his aim when he was younger?

Why is it that he wanted to leave the studio system in the first place, when he doesn't make gritty, hard-hitting dramas or strange off-beat comedies? He makes big splash technological wonder mass-market films. He always has since THX-1138 died an ugly death in the late 60s. The answer is pretty simple, but a two-parter: 1) He doesn't like people telling him what to do (hence the pompous reactions to the notion that Greedo shooting first is completely antithetical to Han Solo's character). 2) He wants all the money.

It's this last point that bothers me a bit more than the first. I can understand not wanting people to control your art. I've had similar notions. I ran my own magazine for three and a half years. But when you're rich and can bankroll your own $125 million movie, then you probably have enough money to live in extreme comfort until you're 150 or longer. The money is there, and it ain't going anywhere unless having money suddenly becomes illegal.

So help people out, Lucas. When you get done denigrating the original Star Wars trilogy with Episode III next May, how about you let someone else use their vision for a while? Maybe there's a guy or girl a lot like you were in the late 60s and early 70s. Maybe there are good ideas that could use some bucks to get to fruition.

Maybe it's not all about you, aging baby boomer.

Maybe it's really about the children of Star Wars.

Maybe we have to redeem the father of our childhood fantasies.

When it comes down to it, Matt Worley still loves the Star Wars universe.