I mean he created the concept for the movies, shouldn’t he be cut some slack?
He changed things, under the mistaken belief he was improving his own movies, when they didn’t need to be changed.
If he’d kept to a few effects shot improvements that didn’t affect plot or character, he’d still be loved.
Except for the prequels, which introduced new concepts into the Universe that also changed the way the original trilogy’s mythos had been viewed up until then. Arguably Lucas only clarified what was there all the time, but some people cling to their childhood rather too much and can’t separate themselves from it.
Oh, and Jar Jar Binks is a travesty.
I will never forgive him for giving The Force a biological explanation.
Basically, for not being as good as he used to be. He made some great movies, which made him beloved, but also raised expectations of him for future endeavors. Which he was unable to meet. Arguably, the expectations were so high no one could have met him, but by the same token, not many people could have failed to meet them by such an astronomical margin.
(I don’t hate George Lucas, btw. Can’t stand his recent movies, but the guy himself seems like a decent enough person, with a good sense of humor about himself and his work.)
He didn’t. He gave a person’s affinity with the Force a biological explanation. But he’d already done so in the original trilogy by saying it was strong through familial lines.
I think he should be given all the credit in the world for his work in video and audio effects. No doubt about it. He was also instrumental in making science fiction mainstream, so much so that it’s unremarked nowadays when young girls (like my daughter) eat the stuff up and are considered “cool” for doing so. Kudos to George!
I also think that Lucas was instrumental in changing the direction of popular American cinema, from the literate films of the 1970s to the flashy films of the 80s and beyond. Films look better because of him, but they (imho) aren’t smarter than films that came before him. This… has its good points, but the bad points probably outweigh it. But he showed that you could deliver bonanza box-office with simplistic tales that looked really great on the big screen, and Hollywood was changed forever.
I do think the prequels were so bad as to be considered a slap in the face by many die-hard Star Wars fans. They grew up, but the series (especially TPM) did not. They also had the burden of being fore-ordained as to the ending: Vader ascendant, Jedi’s broken and scattered, Emperor triumphant. Makes it hard for your audience to ask itself in true anticipation, “How is this all going to resolve itself?”
Lastly, his changes to the original three films were unnecessary and, like TPM, “kiddie-fied” the franchise.
I’m amazed so many people hate the prequels. They act like the first 3 movies were handed down by God or something. What did they expect for the 3 recent movies? They are just fun action movies, they are not religious experiences .
I think there’s a certain amount of unintended antagonism on Lucas’s part as well. The Star Wars fans imprinted on the movies they saw as children. Then after being safely ignorable for over ten years Lucas wanders back into Star Wars and says (in the view of the obsessive fans), “Those old things? They weren’t really that good. Here’s a better version!” His “better version” was a noticeably worse film and Lucas worked hard to bury the original versions. Most Star Wars fans seemed to take that as an attack on what they loved about Star Wars.
My personal view of Lucas is a not very good filmmaker who stumbled into one lucky hit and then needed other people to really bring things into focus. You’ll note that the film cited as the “best” of the Star Wars movies is the one that deconstructs the elements of the previous movie (the comic sidekick gets the girl, brief training by the hero didn’t work when he faced a master, the wise mentor figure was a manipulative bastard, the “victory” at the end of the movie was Pyrrhic at best, and so on) and that Lucas had little involvement with; once Lucas was back in control he tore down most of the new developments that gave the series some depth (the comic sidekick gets the girl because the hero was related!, the brief training was enough to take on the evil master!, the mentor was right “from a certain point of view”, blowing up one battlestation does end the war!) and remade his first film.
To expand on MOIDALIZE’s statement: in the originals, harnessing the Force was a metaphysical manifestation of your spiritual mastery. In the prequels, it was retroactively changed into a biological caste system, sapping the series of whatever inspirational or philosophical power it originally carried. It doesn’t technically explain the Force as being biological, but that’s not the point.
And he responded to criticisms of the prequels with the non-defense of Star Wars being a children’s show, as if stories targeted at kids can’t be expected to be meaningful and well-developed.
This pretty much summarizes the entire story, and absolutely perfectly at that.
For all that everyone hates the prequels, the series had two good movies in it and fell apart in “Return of the Jedi,” which is every bit as bad as the prequels and they are very bad indeed. And the thing that’s worst about “Return of the Jedi” isn’t the Ewoks; it’s that they blow up the Death Star again, in more or less precisely the same fashion as the first time. Lucas couldn’t even be bothered to come up with a new climax - or, more likely, he didn’t know how to come up with one. Three movies, and they only had two endings.
It’s just a situation where a lot of expectations weren’t met. For example, I didn’t expect them, especially the first, to be written for seven year-olds.
But, that’s not fair. The “state of the art” in science-fiction script writing blew past anything he was capable of doing, and he was just out of his league in a genre he helped revitalize.
Please, watch “American Graffiti” and “THX1138”. Lucas is a talented filmmaker who made an homage to the cheesy Saturday morning serials that he loved when he was a kid…and it got out of hand. Along the way, he revolutionized the technology of filmmaking in ways that his friend Francis Ford Coppola tried and failed to do.
Now that the “Star Wars” saga is over, I fully expect Lucas to return to the intensely personal films that he made before “Star Wars” happened.
That’s the thing, though. They aren’t fun action movies. They’re plodding, antiseptic, and unengaging. Have you watched The Phantom Menace lately? It’s painfully dull. The original movies were not high art, by any means, and few people would legitimatly defend them as such. But they were zippy, had memorable characters, and did a good job at drawing the audience into the world it was creating. The prequel trilogy is literally at the Ed Wood level of film making, except with a gigantic budget.
Also, I think a lot of what made the original Star Wars movies fun was Harrison Ford’s character. The other actors may have been pretty lame, but Ford really put on a great show. The prequels lacked any sort of “bad boy” figure to liven things up.
There was something at once both childishly immature, and overly-serious, about the prequels. There was really nothing cool about them.
But this was a very silly expectation. Why would a childhood fan of the first 3 movies expect the prequels to be grown-up movies just because he’s now a grown-up?
I agree that the prequels were inferior to the originals, but the fanboy expectations were ludicrous.
The prequels had dull moments but so did the first 3. BTW, I watched the first 3 movies in high school and college and when I go back and see them now I say “what is so great about these 3?” They are just good action movies.
The problem is so many people expected the prequels to be a 15 on a 1-10 scale. When they were not they got all pissed off.
BTW, before Star Wars the summer was viewed as a bad time for movies - there were no “Summer blockbusters” like we have now. That’s another thing Lucas changed.
I think the casual Star Wars fan probably just feels like it’s a shame that the prequels weren’t better. It’s the fervent nerd fan base that feel personal resentment towards Lucas. If you’re going to be mocked by mainstream society for wearing your Stormtrooper outfit to conventions and collecting children’s action figures, it might as well be for something you believe in. And the first two Star Wars movies were legitimately well-made films. For some reason or another, there were huge numbers of people who were proud to be part of the “Star Wars community.” But after the prequels, I think that this very vocal fan base, for whom Star Wars was a large part of their lives, felt too embarrassed to continue their devotion to the series. And when you have to abandon a part of your life like that, I think that’s where the hate towards George Lucas comes in. By making three ultra-shitty movies, he essentially forced a generation to grow up.
And yes, I do own a couple of plastic Millennium Falcons…But I was 10, dammit.
The problem is, The Phantom Menace is dull during the action scenes. Jesus, how long does that pod race sequence take? It makes Solaris look fast-paced and breezy.
That was when I got bored and turned TPM off last time I bothered to watch it. That was, oh…when did the DVD originally come out? Five years ago or more?
The prequels got better each time. Phantom Menace was bad, I agree. It made me disappointed, though, not angry. I liked Clones much better, as did a much higher % of the population. Some people honestly hated it for their own legitimate reasons , and that’s fine, but most of the people that hated Clones were going to hate it no matter what, after being so pissed at Phantom Menace. Those are the ones who seem to revel in hating the prequels. Clones wasn’t a great movie, but it had a lot of really cool scenes and moments that it feel more old school Star Wars to me. I don’t get the hate. People don’t hate their beloved bands when the get back together years later and make crappy new music.