Lucas seized control of his movies from the studios only to discover that the fanboys could still give him script notes. “Why would I make any more,” Lucas says of the “Star Wars” movies, “when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?”Proof that Internet whining can have a positive effect on the universe.
"…when Return of the Jedi was nearing completion, Lucas remarked how he would like to return to making the abstract “art house” type films he had dreamed of in his youth when he first moved to San Francisco with Marcia, as Dale Pollock reports in 1983:—The Secret History of Star Wars, p. 281“Lucas wants to rediscover the virtues of being an amateur. He has wanted to make esoteric movies like THX since he left USC; now he has the time and money to do it…He’s determined to make films that are abstract and emotional, without plot or characters. He won’t talk about specific ideas—he seems unsure exactly what he wants to do—but it’s clear that these impressionistic works are the complete opposite of his professional films…Whatever Lucas find with his experimental films he’ll probably keep to himself: ‘If they don’t work, I’m certainly not going to show them to anybody. If they do work, they’ll probably get a very limited release.’ ”Lucas had been talking about making these “experimental” personal films since the 1970’s, as far back as a 1974 interview with Film Quarterly magazine following the release of the commercial American Graffiti, and well after the millennium he would still be talking about “one day soon” making these films. […] Lucas would be quick to remind listeners that he was really an experimental art-house type and that the whole mainstream thing was accidental. As if uncomfortable with being such a mainstream blockbuster-maker, declaring that he will be making experimental personal films that are destined to fail is his way of coping with such fame. In 1974, he vowed to make such films after
Star Wars; in 1978 he vowed to make such films after the Star Wars trilogy; in 1983 he vowed to make such things inthe near future; in 2005 he vowed to make such things now that he was done with Star Wars (again); now in 2008 he has vowed to make such things after the Star Wars television series is complete (sometime close to 2010). Perhaps we will never see these films of his, which at present seem to be only by-products of his insecurity with his Hollywood-association."
But the snub implied that Lucas’s pop-culture collateral — six “Star Wars” movies, four “Indiana Jones” movies, the effects shop Industrial Light and Magic and toy licenses that were selling (at least) four different light sabers this Christmas — was basically worthless.There's no "imply" here; there's only fact. At this point, the only thing of worth he brings to the table are franchises from decades ago, and nostalgia for those franchises. Lucas' name no longer commands any sort of premium with movie-going audiences. Almost nobody alive today is going to come out to see a film because Lucas was at the helm (and, in fact, many would only come out to see such a film in spite of Lucas, not because of him).
You can only truly hate George Lucas by having worked for him, and witnessing the utter tripe and nonsense that went on inside of those hallowed walls of The Ranch and ILM.There was an uncomfortable scene in one of the documentaries that came with the original release of The Phantom Menace DVD where Lucas, McCallum, and some other folks have just finished watching an early screening. You can see the dawning realization on everyone's faces (except George's) that they have all participated in the making of a steaming pile of multi-million dollar crap.
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Too soon
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 10:59 AM on January 17 [4 favorites]