Questions about George Lucas & Star Wars

Is he now? That is VERY encouraging, to be sure.

As for Lucas, my pet theory is that Howard the Duck made him crack, and he’s just been super cray ever since.

Woolen Hordes’ comment about his ex-wife seems important to a bunch of stuff. Even as an original Star Wars fan i did not know she was an editor and might have had an influence on his work. Having a female touch would explain a lot, about the general juvenility and difficulty expressing proper male/female relationships as seen in the prequels. That makes a lot of sense. God, and he is sooo bitter about her that we don’t see the original versions anymore to stop her getting money. That is how screwed up a man he became, destroying that original art out of bitterness. He truly did fall to the dark side.

  1. Maybe it just came about as he evolved from the young idealist into the multi-million dollar man? So he personally lost touch with that ‘zen’ aspect in his life, and moved more towards a colder, harder reality? Money does change you (often not for the better).

Not that science => religion, or that religion =>science, but looking at the wider changes in the prequels, that Midichlorian thing fits with the man George Lucas was at that time.

  1. As RickH said, blame Spielberg for this (most likely), and that ‘rot’ had started with the Ewoks, a longtime ago in a galaxy far, far away (metaphorically speaking in relation to how far away the prequels are from the original trilogy).

  2. Those scenes had a human actor in them, but were not chosen (they are not great it is true), and later when they did Jedi they had the Hutts changed to be these huge puppet slug things, so completely different from the human versions from that early take. In the new versions they could just as well have left those scenes out as they had done, as they don’t add anything to the film, and actually detract from it due to how bad the digital effect Jabba looks in them.

  3. Just typical OTT digital effects issues i think. Keep in mind that was all green screen, so a bunch of actors wizzing broom-sticks around, trying to look like they are in all that action. It’s not easy to make it look authentic.

  4. episode IV? Star Wars? oh the digitally enhanced version? um…no my copy is ok sound wise, maybe some smears on your disk?

  5. I think the Empire was a coded warning about America, BUT he hid that by using a number of excellent british actors to play as key Empire bad guys. That history of Americans fighting for their freedom from under that British Imperialism is a strong thing. Let’s be real, Britain was a huge Imperialistic power that tightened it’s grip on much of our world, but many ‘systems’ did indeed slip between it’s fingers, look at us now. So i think the young George Lucas was worried about that happening to his own country, and set up that classic structure of power corrupting (even the good intentioned). So in that context i see it as a civil war within America, with the good America winning out against the bad America. True Democracy and freedom winning against the fake Democracy and tyranny of the real current world etc.

  6. A classic trap was fallen into. Watch J.J.Abrams do it in the Star Trek films also. ‘Fan service’, that sort of tipping the hat to highlight key aspects that fans loved about the originals, it is a curse that can easily ruin things, and it did to a large degree in the prequels.

Add in layers of how nowadays all big corporations think the average joe is just too dumb to manage on their own (their market research tells them this), and you have a perfect storm of film(anything, look at games, TV etc) wreaking proportions.

  1. As RickH said, not in any detail, just vague over-arching concepts etc. This was also a problem, especially in the context that as a not great screen writer, that really needed other people to make the original films such greats, he was out of his depth on the prequels.

  2. We shall see i guess? Looking at how controlling he has been over the original films (and our inability to buy those versions now), he might have some element of influence in place. Having said that, after the fairly terrible prequels (and the loud and wide criticism of them), he may just want to put Star Wars far behind him, these films did infact ruin him as a person and his personal and professional life, even if he can sleep in beds of gold. Sometimes wealth just is not worth it.

  3. If we can never, ever again get hold of the original trilogy versions, and if he has infact given complete control over to Disney, then i think we can say yes it had an effect on him, a bad effect. His fall to the dark side will be complete if that remains his lasting effect on Star Wars.

  4. Not everyone. There is a large slice of the fan base that get bonners (like real ones) for anything to do with a light saber, they also all mostly love the prequels. They are not real Star Wars fans.

  5. Did an SS trooper have dreams and aspirations? Did Franco’s soldiers carrying out the ‘white terror’? Did Mussolini’s Blackshirts? What about an American or British soldier killing women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan? (ok i’m pushing it…just a little). Probably? There have been some novels about serving as an Imperial solider iirc, and yes i’m sure they do have their own aims, but like when you serve under any fascist system, your day-to-day is usually about spreading that fear, terror and death thing, which takes up quite a lot of effort and time and ultimately mostly will consume you (just speak to some Iraqi veterans).

I’d also give Gary Kurtz credit, who quit working with Lucas during Return/Jedi’s pre-production once he got hands on the script and realized Lucas was regurgitating the Death Star and introducing the Ewoks. He wanted the movies to remain more serious and adult-oriented, and Lucas was obviously keeping his eye on another 1977-78 Christmas toy sales explosion and its cha-ching affect on his bank accounts.

Here’s a good article about Marcia Lucas:

http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/marcialucas.html

Lots of other interesting info on that site about a topic that has probably demanded far too much of our attention throughout the years.

Great article. It took me a few hours reading it on and off here at work, but that was fascinating.

Now I’m really curious about American Griffiti, which I’ve never seen. Especially after reading how it wasn’t working as originally edited, and then George took a crack at it, and it didn’t work for anyone, and then finally Marcia edited the film by herself, and everyone at the screening loved it, and that was the cut that was released in the theaters (minus a couple of minutes cut by the studio), and it ended up being the most successful film of all time when comparing how much it cost to make to how much it grossed.

The story is also really tragic. I feel for both people in the tragedy. I have a lot more empathy for George after reading that.

Regarding #5 (about sound quality changing mid-line in Star Wars), there was no peculiarity in the original cut. The special editions, however, have a different voice actor dubbed over just part of Aunt Beru’s lines. And it’s a piss poor ADR job.

I seem to recall it having been most egregious in the 1997 cut & only partially present in the 2004 cut, but it’s been so long since I’ve watched either of those that I don’t really remember.

Yeah i feel pretty bad for both George and Marcia, a classic tale of the other side of ‘the American Dream’ that they don’t tell you about. That was a great read Slumberland, thanks for posting it. I promise to be less harsh towards Mr. Lucas from now on, although i can never accept the prequels as true Star Wars films.

That was really good. If it is accurate, it explains a lot about why Starwars ended up the way it did.

As a lifelong movie fan it breaks my heart to read posts where people say things like “I’ve never seen Casablanca” or “…American Graffiti, which I’ve never seen”.

Personally, I think American Graffiti is a masterpiece and his best movie. Yes, better than Star Wars and ESB! IMO, American Graffiti falls into the same category as movies like Casablanca, or Wizard of Oz, or the original King Kong- movies that are perfect in every way and can not ever be improved upon by anyone trying anything similar. Some people think it’s sad how Lucas went from the OT to the prequels in his fall from grace. Even going from Star Wars to Return of the Jedi is a pretty huge fall. Well, all that’s nothing compared to seeing the director of American Graffiti make a movie like Phantom Menace.

The way people talked about her, I always figured Marcia Lucas had died. Apparently she just disappeared? So strange.

I take it as being so reclusive the media doesn’t know where she is or what she’s doing. The article linked by Slumberland indicates she wrote to the author a little bit:

Today she has disappeared, and routinely has refused to talk to press; my own efforts to contact her, through a family connection, were unsuccessful, though she wrote to me briefly to offer a small handful of corrections.

Edit: I can’t recall if this is my own idea or if I read/picked it up somewhere, perhaps even here. Nonetheless, here it is:

If you think about the OT as being about Lucas as Luke, and coming into his “power” in the Force (cinema) and fighting the good fight against the Empire (studios?), it becomes apparent that the Prequels, with all of their poor choices, are really about Lucas as Vader: The Chosen One, destined for great things, becomes corrupted and in the process loses the woman he loves, his best friend(s), betrays everything (artistic) he stood for, and in the end is more machine than man, powerful but locked in service to a greater evil.

Taking her hard-earned millions and enjoying an early retirement outside the spotlight of the public eye. Sounds like a smart person.

Yeah, but what a shame he didn’t have the right people around to help him tell it so it matters. There is whole other context to Star Wars now, a deeply personal and tragic one.

I must be a weird person, because more than the prequels’ storyline, the piece reminded me of the plot of Breaking Bad, terminal illness and thus ending aside.

Anyway, great article, thanks for linking to it Slumberland.


rezaf

And the whole webiste that Slumberland posted that article about, is a pretty damn good and exhaustive examination into most of the stuff around Star Wars, very interesting (and now bookmarked for all time). Thanks again for bringing it to our attention.

Edit: And i think i finally worked out how to get hold of the original, none digitally enhanced/changed versions of the original trilogy. You need the 2-disc Special Edition DVD releases, the second DVD has a version copied from the Laser Disk version that is the original 1977 release. They look like this:

Empires ASIN number is: B000FMH8US

Return of the Jedi’s ASIN number is: B000FMRYNE

I don’t think there was a box set release for these (other than the original Laser Disk versions)? The Box Set i had been told contained those Laser Disk original versions seems to report as just having 3 DVD’s, which can’t be correct.

I know the quality of image and sound is not great on those, BUT i really can not watch the tampered with films anymore, they are that poor imho, and break an important part of my childhood history. I think if watching them on PC, you can adjust your software to make the picture quality better.

I think there were a couple of reasons why the Force changed between movies. They aren’t necessarily good reasons, and my explanation isn’t necessarily correct. In Episode 4, Obi-Wan tells Luke that the Force is an energy field created by all living things. In Episode 5, Yoda teaches that life creates it, makes it grow, and its energy surrounds and binds them. In Episode 1, Qui-Gon says that midichlorians are found in living cells, and it’s their biology and interaction that creates the Force. This retroactive continuity change doesn’t exactly negate what Obi-Wan and Yoda were saying, and I think it has several narrative advantages when watching the movies in chronological order.

First, Qui-Gon, like most Jedi Knights, is an arrogant, sometimes duplicitous character, secure in the knowledge that the Force is his ally and whatever the Jedi want is the best for everyone else. He’s confident that whatever doctrine he learned is Truth, that the Force can be quantified with devices, and the higher a midichoridian count, the better. He is posthumously proved wrong on all three points as the Jedi fall from power. The Jedi weren’t infallible, their devices didn’t pick up the Sith in their midst, and the Force doesn’t help the Jedi if someone is using it for the Dark Side.

Secondly, in an interview, Lucas said he wanted Episode I to reflect themes of symbiosis. Most of these themes were presented in a manner that was…what’s the opposite of subtle? The Gungans and human Naboo people shared a planet, the pod racers raced their pods, the Trade Federation relied on their robots. So…there’s that.

Thirdly, as Anakin’s character arc parabolas to tragedy, the concept of midichlorians shows his potential that by the end of Episode 3 will be forever unrealized. When Obi-Wan chopped off his arms and legs, and they stuck him in a walking iron lung, Anakin literally has fewer midichlorians than he used to. (“Quick, I need to drop twenty pounds fast. What do I do?” “Cut off your leg.”) He won’t be the most powerful Jedi EVAR that he wanted to be, so he might as well remain dominated by the Emperor.

Fourthly, Obi-Wan and Yoda take a more natural look at the Force in later episodes because they have had humility forced upon them by their earlier defeats. They might be strong with the Force but they don’t take it for granted. When Anakin’s son comes along, Yoda doesn’t fill his head with talk about how high his midichlorian count is, because they went down that road before and it didn’t turn out great.

That’s how I see it, anyway.

I think it was a proof of concept more than anything else. The Special Editions were in many ways practice for ILM to gear up for the prequels. Lucas had the deleted scene he really wanted to use back in the day but didn’t have the time or money, they wanted to test how well they could rotoscope over existing footage of someone else (of someone that looked wildly different), to try to create a Hutt in CGI instead of the army of puppeteers they used in Episode 6. It wasn’t terribly successfully realized and it was narratively redundant, but I think they got something out of it.

You have a complicated setting, with so many factions and concepts, and the only frame of reference is the original movies. A lot of the dialogue (which, in every Star Wars movie, is unique but not great) had to set up the setting, and some bald exposition was the way they chose to set that up.

That said, I think there’s a ton of ambiguity in the prequel movies! Most of them are wrapped up in the character of Palpatine. Palpatine is one of my favorite cinematic villains, because by the time of the prequels, he has engineered every possible conflict so that either result would be a win for him. Does Padme get captured by the Trade Federation or manage to get the aid of the Jedi in Episode 1? Doesn’t matter, he’ll profit from it. Does the Separatist movement beat the Jedi and the Clone Army in Episode 2? Doesn’t matter, he’ll profit from it. Did he engineer his kidnapping at the start of Episode 3 and did he want Count Dooku to get killed by Anakin or vice versa? Doesn’t matter, any way will benefit him.

Additionally, many explanations that are delivered by characters in the prequels are later found out to be wrong. Were their explanations wrong all along? Was the Dark Side clouding their judgement? Their blindness is thematic of the hidden decay and decline that the Republic experiences at this time of fake history.

Depends on what you mean by all details, but I really don’t think so. The closest he had to be mapped out was the prologue of the novelization that was ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster. Many of the details were unused characters or scenes of previous drafts. The plotting in Episodes 2 and 3 was mostly connecting the dots between 1 and 4. Some sequences (like that droid factory in episode 2) were added at pretty much the last minute because Lucas thought the pacing needed another action sequence. Additionally, the special effects teams made up several vignettes that were approved or denied as production went on.

Probably, yeah, but there are still several LucasFilm people in key positions, including Lucas and producer Kathleen Kennedy, that would prevent anything too drastic to be changed. Probably. A reboot of the whole series in a generation or two might be great, might suck, and would definitely be possible from the rights holders.

Yeah, I think that’s why he’s taking a more hands-off approach to the new sequels. He’s had critical and financial setbacks before: More American Graffiti, Willow, Howard The Duck. I would think that the thing that really hurt him was that Red Tails flopped (I haven’t seen it yet but never heard great things); he had been trying to get that running for decades. Now he’s in his 70s, he has a family, including a newish wife. He probably has retreated from the day-to-day Star Wars running, even though that’s what made him his fortune.

I think if anything, Episodes 2 and 3 were made more closely together than Episodes 1 and 2. Episode 2 cut way back on Jar-Jar, at least.

I thought it was pretty cool. The Jedi aren’t quite as good against an army as they thought they were; their battle plan was flashy and ineffective, much like the Jedi. Count Dooku exercises an old-school courtliness when he calls for a pause in the fighting for a brief parley. That’s something out of a medieval story, and I liked it. Then the flying cavalry shows up, and the battle develops into a front pressing on the Separatist ships, cutting off their retreat as best they can.

Don’t quote me, I think the clones don’t—or if they do, they’re easily editable by the cloners. The stormtroopers are more like farmboy Luke Skywalker, regular joes drafted from the backwaters of the Empire, who think that they’re fighting for a good cause and don’t mind a little collateral damage.

Yeah, it’s more “retired from the public eye” than “police have been searching for her body”.

Djscman, I enjoyed reading your views on the prequels, they almost don’t seem as bad now.

I say almost because there are still two issues no one can ever fix, imo. The conception of Vader’s character as a child is one. I don’t blame the kid actor since it was proven by later prequels that Lucas was not helping his actors. Did he really have to be a blond stereotypical all American kid? I’m not saying Anakin should have been evil, or even slightly disturbed, as a kid but come on! He was a slave too and left his mom in slavery, it’d make sense there’d be some angst I would think.

The other thing is showing Darth Vader stumbling around when he first wears his suit, no just no. He’s one of the greatest characters ever seen in the movies and Lucas takes the piss out of him, as they say across the pond. Putting that suit on should have been the equivalent of him finally coming home, to where he really belongs. Instead it’s a total joke.

It’s a straight visual homage to the original Frankenstein. Not saying that it was a good idea in any way, but at least it’s something Lucas screwed up thoughtfully instead of thoughtlessly.