They are the same story, by the same writer, with the same intention. And, when they are not arguing otherwise for the sake of argument, most people admit that they think of all six films as the “Star Wars” saga. Again, look at how utterly different his other two films were from his space opera.
Lucas is a talented director, and I fully expect him to create films in the future that are as different again from the Star Wars saga as American Graffiti was from THX1138.
I think the simplest thing I can think of is that Star Wars was 35 years ago. 35. People change a lot over 35 years. it’s quite possible that as he’s aged, he’s looked back and decided he didn’t like some of the decisions he made. E.g. the moronic “Han shot first” dust-up.
The intention to make bad movies?
What on earth does this artificial grouping have anything to do with whether or not George Lucas is a talented director? He didn’t even direct all of the movies in the saga. From the perspective of comparing directorial talent, all six are separate movies. Or are you arguing that because all six are the same movie, George Lucas and Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand are one and the same and therefore equally talented?
Because George Lucas directed two other radically different films before Star Wars. Have you seen them? Again, if you haven’t seen either of his non-Star Wars films you simply **do not **have the basis for an opinion about Lucas’ talent or lack of same. The Star Wars films, no matter how enjoyable, are not - and more important, never were intended to be - Great Art. They are an homage to the terrible, but enjoyable, Republic serials.
And having seen Lucas’ other films (before Star Wars was released) I know what he is capable of making.
If things hadn’t aligned just so in 1977 and Star Wars turned out to be the flop its studio was expecting, we’d still be referring to George Lucas as “oh yeah, the director of American Graffiti. Whatever happened to him?”
OTOH it’s not hard to picture what George Lucas would look like if he were injected with 1000% more talent–his name is James Cameron.
The part that gets me is picturing how it would look if George Lucas had keeled over from a heart attack in 1981 – right after RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, on the heels of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK following the blockbuster that was STAR WARS from the guy who made AMERICAN GRAFFITI and THX 1138 – and someone else (a) then inherited the rights to the franchise and (b) started throwing in Ewoks and Jar-Jar Binks and et cetera, all while re-editing the originals so Han doesn’t shoot first.
Oh, my. Torches and pitchforks.
I’m assuming you’re excluding writing from that injection, because they’re both equally abysmal in that department.
I have seen them. I think both movies are overrated. American Graffiti is a good. Lucas lucked out tremendously with the cast (just like he did with Star Wars). Without that luck I don’t think the movie would be well-remembered today. Additionally, the low budget and lack of complete authority over the project played to his strengths ;). Similarly to with Star Wars, various constraints guided him and prevented him from unilaterally achieving his personal vision. It is not uncommon, btw, for a mediocre director to direct something good. Consider Randal Kleiser, John Badham, M. Night Shyamalan, Renny Harlin, Bryan Singer… film making involves some luck. And it goes both ways. Even Francis Ford Coppola made Jack. In the case of Lucas, all of the evidence points to bad. Everything he touches now, when he has absolute control, is bad. He made three Star Wars movies that left the fans feeling insulted because as far as they could tell they understood the universe he created far better than he himself did. Each movie was its own project, separated by years, with ample time to recognize and course-correct. The most damning evidence against him is that he didn’t appear able to recognize that the films he made were bad. If he is happy with those films, then by definition he is a bad director.
It is that standard in particular against which I judge them. The original Star Wars trilogy was also not intended to be great art, and yet, accidental or otherwise, it managed to achieved it. At the very least it enjoyed the rudiments of competency in writing, story telling, and character development.
Which was why he was nominated for both Best Director AND Best Original Screenplay Oscars. And is #62 on the AFI Greatest Films list.
He chose the cast. The Producers were his film school friend Francis Ford Coppola and Gary Kurtz who would go on to produce the first two Star Wars films.
Which is true of every single film ever made.
Everything I have read about the film suggests that Lucas and Coppola were allowed to make the film they wished to make as long as they made it cheap. It was on time and on budget, and there wasn’t any studio interference until after the first screening when they had three cuts, which Lucas later restored. The interference, minimal by studio standards, prompted Coppola to try to buy the picture from them.
Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit, for which you have no support. American Graffiti was Lucas’ deeply personal project, was his vision and is recognized as a classic. You are unable to credit him with doing anything right for some reason.
I’m out of here.
IMDB community, for one, doesn’t really agree. It’s nowhere near the top 250. And incidentally the vote distribution is fairly gaussian. Oh, and you are hopelessly out of touch if you think a picture being nominated for an academy award is a case to rest its merits on. In this case I think it is more indicative of nostalgia; the movie was made for and about its own demographic.
He may have had ultimate say in most cases, but no, he did not “do the casting.” In any case with so many unknown actors a lot of luck was involved. (Oh and thanks for bringing up the fact that Coppola was involved in this film; it didn’t hurt).
Yep, that’s the point i made.
While I think the biggest and most important constraint was budget, there was also the helpful influence of Coppola. He was also surrounded by considerably more helpful studio people who reported upward, and had a moderating influence. The studio, for example, picked and insisted on an editor (Lucas wanted his wife to edit). Despite his ostensible placard of control, there were powerful studio constraints all over the place. I personally think the process of having to cut the film from 3.5 hours was probably in itself a moderating influence that forced Lucas to “compromise” toward better film making. It forced him to totally change his intended structure of the film. I also think his allowing improvisation moderated his writing weaknesses (again aided by his luck with the cast and eventual documentary feel of movie he ended up with, which, as I understand it, was not his intention). There were all sorts of things that, when you look at them up close, reveal a fumbling luck.
I’m sure it getting butchered and transformed into Happy Days by others didn’t help. I saw it, before EP IV came out, when I was in grad school. We all liked it quite a lot, and it had tremendous influence.
Do you have any evidence that it was case differently from any other movie? Sure, Lucas probably wasn’t at every audition, but he certainly described what he was looking for to the casting directors. Howard and Dreyfus were known qualities, but the very high success rate of the supporting characters is more than luck. I think Dreyfus, who was clearly too old, was the only bad bit of casting in the movie.
I think it has been badly overshadowed by Star Wars. In the Times article I get the impression that some people think he went right from THX-1138 to Ep. IV. He actually made quite a bit of money for the studios on American Graffiti.
Those who would like for a theoretically competent Lucas to make Eps VII - IX, what would you want them to be about? Would they be just one more of the umpteen after the Empire novels out there?
The problem with Eps 1 - 3 is that there was no point to them. We knew how it would end. Heinlein was smart enough to not write prequels, Lucas should have been also. Maybe something set way back in the early days of the Republic would have worked better.
I’m not sure how Lucas could be considered a great director when his body of work is so absolutely tiny. Outside of his Star Wars films he directecd what? THX1138 and American Graffiti? That’s it?!?
Ever since he finished ROTJ he’d always mumble about how he can now make films he really wants to make… and nothing. So he went back and made a few more Star Wars films, finished them, and said now he can make films he really wants to make… when? 2025?
Characters and other “universe” elements are protected under both trademark and copyright law, whether or not they are necessarily registered as such.
Just FYI, trademark law (which, in the United States operates at both federal and state levels) protects both registered and unregistered trademarks.
I think it’s funny that, at least according to wikipedia, the Dreyfus choice seems to have been in particular Lucas’ preference, while others were simply “cast by Roos”. I don’t really know much about the casting. In this case I can only read into certain wording choices. My assumption in this case is that a lot of damage control can be accomplished in a casting director’s vetting process before the hand-off to Lucas for final approval. There were talented people working with Lucas, probably feeling comfortable and accepted as studio-backed voices of authority and reason, experts compelled by their position to strongly voice opinions and concerns that rival or go against those of Lucas, who hadn’t yet proven himself to them as a figure of absolute authority. Lucas may have had the final say, but that doesn’t mean he was always listened to… those working with him may have been constantly scrambling and going behind his back to try to guide him and moderate the damage he was capable of causing. But that’s my admittedly uncharitable imagination :). But despite the theoretical similarity in title regarding Lucas’ role in the two movies, there is little doubt that the general atmosphere of authority and the amount of creative control in practice between Graffiti and the Star Wars prequels were worlds apart.
He’s directed 6 films, which is the same amount as Terrence Malick and Sergio Leone, so more than enough to be considered great, if the films are good enough.
Out of which, I’d say two were good (THX and AG), one was brilliant, and the other three, separated by 20 years of forming a Hollywood production empire (Skywalker Ranch / ILM) and producing mostly successful films, were absolute dreck.
So, I agree that 6 films is enough to get a good bead on the strength of his direction. Perhaps his midichlorian count is low.
But none of this to bash Lucas. I look at the prequels as a huge misstep for him, and a disappointment in how shocking the difference is between the two trilogies. Downright embarrassing to watch the prequels.
His strong suits are what I mentioned before, but directing with actors, editing his own decisions, and writing a screenplay on his own are at the bottom, as the prequels have demonstrated.
I think, in the hands of a really good director(s), with the screenplays written by a competent pro who understood what made the originals great, and under the guidance of Lucas’ vision (and assuming he’d truly collaborate and listen), it could’ve at least been a worthy installment.
**George Lucas is taking his ball and going home **
Oh, did the string break? 
More important, it was thirty five years during which he didn’t direct anything. I strongly suspect that if he’d worked regularly during those years as a director, when he finally went back to Star Wars, he’d have turned in significantly better films. But three decades away from the director’s chair atrophied his talents.
That’s also six times as many movies by George Lucas as their are books by Harper Lee, Margaret Mitchell, or John Kennedy Toole.