So that's why George Lucas botched the prequels

Cafe Society
1

Somehow, a man with billions of dollars and de facto limitless resources forgot to hire the scriptwriterhe used for his best films, Raiders and Empire Strikes Back. Found out in wiredtoday.

How did he make this error? The script is the most important part of any film. While certain movies do have improved dialogue, the basic structure such as the sequence of scenes and the intelligence of the plot make the difference as to whether a film is watchable or not…

I mean, the special effects of the prequels were fine, the vague story arc was mostly fine, lightsabers are cool, the music was good…but the nails on chalkboard dialogue, the overuse of CGI, the forgetting that the original movies, everything looked dirty and worn which in turn made it look more real, retarded robot enemies, retarded motivation for Anakin to turn evil…

2

Forget it Habeed, it’s Hollywood. You can’t ask why anyone did anything and expect an answer that makes sense (nor is it ever as straightforward as anyone thinks).

3

My theory, supported by a lot of folks, is that when it was all said and done, George Lucas was a billionaire, as a result of some of his own personal decisions. (getting the merchandising rights to the first film, funding the second with his own money so he got all the profits, etc). I think this made him overconfident and gave him the false belief that he didn’t need someone else to make the key decisions to make a movie that didn’t suck.

4

I think it’s more like no one was in a position to tell George what was obvious to everyone but him. When you’re a smaller player, you have to satisfy your backers, the studios, the distributors, etc. When you can do it all on your own, you don’t have to listen to anyone but yourself.

The bottom line: Lucas is a hindrance to his own films. He’s a hack and always has been. Star Wars worked in spite of George Lucas being involved, not because of him.

5

I loved the early Star Wars. I love sci fi in general. It doesn’t take much to make me happy.

I had to force myself to watch his latter dreck. Talk about crap on a stick.

6

I agree. Lucas has always had a lot of bad ideas (have you read the original Star Wars script?) but it used to be he was forced to run them past other people who threw out the bad stuff and kept the good stuff. But he became so successful nobody would tell him no and we got the unfiltered Lucas.

7

It’s a combination of issues:

  1. Art from adversity helped the first Star Wars, which Lucas did write and direct. Prequel-time, he had a way easier time.

  2. He hired competent directors for V and VI instead of directing himself. He’s a very poor director of live action movies.

  3. Yes, he used other writers instead of handling all writing himself. He did hire a guy for Episode II, but it appears Jonathan Hales did not help much.

  4. Lucas had zero contradictory people, which you need. Rick whatever-his-face was a Yes-man, which kills your movie.

  5. Ability-decay. I think Lucas deteriorated in his ability over the 20+ years since he had directed.

Unlike some, I do think Lucas cared, though. I know he wanted to create new merchandise, but I do think he attempted to write good scripts and make good movies. Sadly, he just didn’t have his old ability to make good movies. There are some neat things in the prequels, but characters are dull and the plots are horrible.

8

I … just don’t get the OP. Empire was really the work of Leigh Brackett. Her early death was a major reason for the story problems in Jedi.

She couldn’t be hired for the prequels. Kasdan might have made them a little better, but not great.

9

What surprises me with Lucas is just how good he can be.

Take American Graffiti. That is just a perfectly done film.

The prequels were just utter trash. He took what should have been such a huge universe and made it small.

What really bugs me with Lucas is what he did to episodes IV, V and VI. Those films are not watchable now due to all his tinkering. And, they did not translate well at all to digital, resulting in a bit of a dirty picture and muddy sound quality.

10

I wasn’t going to see them anyway but: The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith???

If you can’t write a title how you going to make a movie worth the time it takes to watch it?

11

I suspect that if he had not created Jar Jar Binks, everyone would have thought the movies were fine.

Realistically, the script was better in the Star Wars prequels than Titanic. X-Men: First Class, the Avengers 2, Avatar, Star Trek (2009), etc. And the acting was pretty on par with Titanic (though worse than all the other movies mentioned). And yet those movies are all either beloved or reasonably accepted by the greater audience of movie goers.

Most movie goers are pretty willing to accept a poor script and poor acting so long as the visuals and special effects are good, the characters have some good banter, and the overall tone is reasonably upbeat.

The first movie didn’t have much banter, and the latter movies were more realistic in presenting the politics and scheming behind everything, rather than being simple adventure flicks, so certainly they wouldn’t have been unending favorites among the masses, like the originals, but in a sense that’s because the presentation was “better” (e.g. more nuanced and world-building) than the original movies had been. Granted, Vader’s conversion was presented crappily, but that’s one small subplot of the trilogy and (as pointed out previously), was pretty on par with the relationship and acting that we see in Titanic.

So overall, I think that the films were still in the realm of popularity, except for Jar Jar. I think that one element was sufficiently annoying that it pushed people into asking themselves honestly whether the writing and direction were any good. And the answer is, indeed no. But, that would be the same answer given for many popular films if people cared to ask the same question. But they don’t, because so long as a film is “enjoyable”, quality doesn’t really matter. And people are pretty willing to let their brain turn off as much as needs be to allow a movie that they want to be enjoyable, be enjoyable.

The Prequels just pushed it every slightly too far and broke the camel’s back.

But by no means is a good script particularly necessary for a film to succeed. That’s been disproven time and time again.

12

I love, love, love that movie! It’s one of my top all-time favorites. :o

13

He was surrounded by Yes Men and no one willing or able to push back or tweak his ideas to improve them. There’s a good story at the core of the prequels. An interesting one. A little work and they could have been all great instead of one good one (episode Three) and two also rans.

14

I’ve always also suspected that a number of people who fell in love with the original movies when they were kids were for some reason surprised that the new movies were also targeted towards kids.

15

It was? It was pretty different when she was done with it. I think Lawrence Kasdan wrote the movie we saw.

16

Lucas approached Kasdan to help him write the prequels; Kasdan, who was a successful filmmaker in his own right by that point, declined.

17

Also, Brackett wrote a very different Empire Strikes Back to the one we got. Lucas wrote a couple of subsequent drafts before handing it over to Kasdan.

That film is elevated by both Kasdan and director Irvin Kershner’s story instincts. Brackett really had very little to do with it.

18

That’s what those zany feckless two young filmmakers Matt Damon and Ben Affleck did when they paid William Goldman a fortune to write “Good Will Hunting”.

I own the book referenced in post # 11. Indeed, he waited before talking publicly about it. Hollywood knew. What’s sad is that the Writer’s Guild knew and did nothing. Since Goldman is one of the most revered living screenwriters and he violated a few WGA by-laws in selling the script without getting proper screen credit, I am guessing they never pursued it out of respect for him.

The Oscar belongs to him.

Point being yes, Lucas screwed the pooch by not hiring top-drawer writing talent.

ETA: Sparky!, watch “American Graffitti” again. It’s built in the editing room more than some other films are. The dialogue is atrocious. Verna Fields, infamous film editor, left the job at some point. But the lions share of GOOD editing there is hers, not his.

Lucas’s then wife Marcia co-won Editing Oscars for “Star Wars”. He did not cut it.

19

Your thread doesn’t confirm that Goldman wrote good will hunting. Sounds like it was a joke.

20

William Goldman is aware of the rumor he wrote Good Will Hunting. He said the following in 2003: