George Lucas thoughts on Force Awakens. Upset and Betrayed.

[WebLurker]

I think what Lucas argument is that he still put his art and effort to star wars and the fans acknowledged that despite their views on the 6 films.

Wow, not my experience with prequel hate (and ROTJ hate before it). I do think Internet fans are better about the prequels (you're more likely to find people willing to discuss what they did right and "ruined my childhood" isn't flung around as much) and I have always believed that the prequels were a good showcase of Lucas's skills with visual storytelling (whatever flaws the script and acting/actor's direction they may have). But still, Lucas was one of the most hated people in Star Wars by the fans and it wasn't because he was a nasty guy. (Am I the only one who remembers the adage that the people who hated Star Wars the most were Star Wars fans?)

Lucas does not see disney star wars as having any king of art or real film making effort. he thinks of it as just a mass product for making money, hence the white slavers comments.

Then what do we make of his saying that TLJ was "beautifully made"?

That funny because Gary Kurtz left Star Wars after Empire because he said that George was more focused on selling toys than making quality movies.

He said that pretty much Jedi was rewrote for a more mass commercial appeal. Oddly enough some of the Force Awakens takes off of the original ideas of what Jedi was going to be.

I think he did both, if that makes any sense.

[Beaddle]

Wow, not my experience with prequel hate (and ROTJ hate before it). I do think Internet fans are better about the prequels (you're more likely to find people willing to discuss what they did right and "ruined my childhood" isn't flung around as much) and I have always believed that the prequels were a good showcase of Lucas's skills with visual storytelling (whatever flaws the script and acting/actor's direction they may have). But still, Lucas was one of the most hated people in Star Wars by the fans and it wasn't because he was a nasty guy. (Am I the only one who remembers the adage that the people who hated Star Wars the most were Star Wars fans?)



Then what do we make of his saying that TLJ was "beautifully made"?



I think he did both, if that makes any sense.

a)out of these 4 people, who do fans now hate the most. George Lucas, JJ Abrams, Kathleen Kennedy or Ryan Johnson? believe me it is not Lucas.

b) the last jedi is beautifully made, its the story, writing and characters that are bad.

[WebLurker]

a)out of these 4 people, who do fans now hate the most. George Lucas, JJ Abrams, Kathleen Kennedy or Ryan Johnson? believe me it is not Lucas.

Which is neither here nor there to the point of the abuse people who worked on the franchise have suffered from "fans" over incredibly petty and/or bigoted things.

b) the last jedi is beautifully made, its the story, writing and characters that are bad.

Which has nothing to do with Lucas being far less critical of the sequel trilogy as a whole then certain people are trying to paint him in an effort to "prove" that the series as a whole is bad.

[ChrisIII]

That funny because Gary Kurtz left Star Wars after Empire because he said that George was more focused on selling toys than making quality movies.



He said that pretty much Jedi was rewrote for a more mass commercial appeal. Oddly enough some of the Force Awakens takes off of the original ideas of what Jedi was going to be.

I thought Kurtz in part left mainly because EMPIRE's production was somewhat troubled, including going over-budget, and not really because of any major disagreements with George.

[SuperiorIronman]

a)out of these 4 people, who do fans now hate the most. George Lucas, JJ Abrams, Kathleen Kennedy or Ryan Johnson? believe me it is not Lucas.

b) the last jedi is beautifully made, its the story, writing and characters that are bad.

Point A is an objectively false statement.

[Xero Kaiser]

At one time, Lucas stated that there would never be another Star Wars movie after Episode 3 and the specific reason he stated was because he didn't financially have any need to do Episodes 1, 2 and 3 but he did them because of fan demand and then got nothing but whining and anger and he had no need to do anymore. He said that even if someone came along and offered to do another trilogy and he didn't have to do the work, he still wouldn't do it because, while some fans were still cool, the guff he took just wasn't worth it. But then Disney bought the ship and now he's doing the same thing fans did to him although he didn't keep harping on it.

Yes, Episode 7 was highly derivative. He's not wrong. But I've never heard that there was any contract on what Disney could do with future stories. If anything, Lucas seemed happy to walk away from Star Wars. He did give them outlines of what his plans had been for the last trilogy but I never heard they were obligated to use his outlines.

Basically. Ever since these news came out, you have all these YouTube videos coming out and crapping on Disney for moving away from GL's vision but none of them acknowledge why Disney might have wanted to distance themselves from his concepts.

Or why GL wanted to wash his hands of the Star Wars franchise in the first place.

[KurtW95]

George Lucas speaks for a lot of us.

[jetengine]

Basically. Ever since these news came out, you have all these YouTube videos coming out and crapping on Disney for moving away from GL's vision but none of them acknowledge why Disney might have wanted to distance themselves from his concepts.

Or why GL wanted to wash his hands of the Star Wars franchise in the first place.

Because some of Lucas ideas frankly wouldn't havevworked.

[WebLurker]

George Lucas speaks for a lot of us.

But not all of us.

[Beaddle]

But not all of us.

The people Lucas does not speak for are the people that so badly want rotten tomatoes to matter in a serious conversation about the quality of a movie or thinks box office success automatically means a movie qualifies as good art.

George Lucas speaks for a lot of us.

Its obvious George Lucas speaks for the people that care about what's in the movie, the content and film making. people who did not grow up and are into the shallow culture of rotten tomatoes and box office dollars.

Again look at what lucas said in a nutshell. the film making choices is poor. which is what most of us have been saying about not just star wars but most disney movies that is subjected to this bizarre manufactured formula, Lucas is a film maker at heart. its no surprise he ended up disliking Disney. Disney does not firstly make films, they make products and films later.

[David Walton]

Abrams is a good film-maker. The problem with the Star Wars movies is in the creative decisions (which might have been made by people above Abrams)--but that has nothing to do with the actual craft of making movies. Someone should have figured out that putting all three of the original actors in a scene together in FORCE AWAKENS would have satisfied everyone. They had no way of knowing for sure if they could get those actors back for the next movie--and they clearly knew they weren't going to have Harrison Ford. So why not film one scene with Luke, Leia and Han? It's sheer stupidity that they didn't do that when they had the chance.

It is a really odd creative choice and kind of heartbreaking considering there's not any other live action franchise with the forty years of history attached.

I don't know, I feel like they were going out of their way to not fully utilize the original cast because they were worried the new cast would suffer by comparison, when I don't think that would have been the case.

[Beaddle]

It is a really odd creative choice and kind of heartbreaking considering there's not any other live action franchise with the forty years of history attached.

I don't know, I feel like they were going out of their way to not fully utilize the original cast because they were worried the new cast would suffer by comparison, when I don't think that would have been the case.

Its more heartbreaking when you realize JJ Abrams had no creative choice. there is a big huge difference between force awakens and star trek 2009, I saw JJ the film maker in star trek 2009 regardless of if you like the movie or his style or not. in force awakens I saw a man hired to be a yes man to anything disney wanted and we knew nothing about his actual input in the movie.

[Punisher007]

It's always been odd to me that they use the "we needed to make a film that felt like classic SW to get people back," but then constantly make decisions that seem almost designed to alienate those same fans? It's bizarre.

[Moon Ronin]

I thought Kurtz in part left mainly because EMPIRE's production was somewhat troubled, including going over-budget, and not really because of any major disagreements with George.

I going off the LA Time Interview that he did the quote was his own words

a)out of these 4 people, who do fans now hate the most. George Lucas, JJ Abrams, Kathleen Kennedy or Ryan Johnson? believe me it is not Lucas.

b) the last jedi is beautifully made, its the story, writing and characters that are bad.

a)And in George's own words fans would have hated him for his plans on the Star Wars sequels. The idea that Saint George never did any thing wrong is funny. Because midichlorians and Jar Jar Binks went over so well the fans or the "I hate sand" with it's more than lack luster writing and direction was far from cinematic gold. People seem to be forgetting how much hate Lucas got during the prequels that he "ruined" people childhood and destroyed Star Wars with a big Vader "Noooooooooooo". And that is not even going into Indian Jones and the Crystal Skull.

b) George Lucas has had his fair share of writing and characters that were bad too.

Again look at what lucas said in a nutshell. the film making choices is poor. which is what most of us have been saying about not just star wars but most disney movies that is subjected to this bizarre manufactured formula, Lucas is a film maker at heart. its no surprise he ended up disliking Disney. Disney does not firstly make films, they make products and films later.

Yet he seemed to have no issue cashing the 4 billion dollar check that Disney wrote to him to have all creative rights over the franchise.

[ROM Spaceknight]

If Lucas has a problem with the new films, tough. He made the decision to sell Lflm. to Disney, and was well compensated for the sale. I'm sure he was crying all the way to the bank - LOL.

I'm a huge SW fan & have been ever since first seeing SW: ANH in theaters at the young age of 6, way back in May 1977.

And, though I liked most of the films, I didn't like several elements in some of them. And, I feel that if GL had less creative control over some of the movies, they would have turned out better. Some specific examples:

-The Ewoks in ROTJ. Wow - these stupid creatures really marred the entire film for me. They could have come up with a much better idea than having little teddy bears fight the Empire - ridiculous. This was obviously done to appeal to little kids, and was a massive fail.

-Some (though not all) of the changes in the ANH & ROTJ Special edition. Making Greedo shoot first was incredibly stupid & pointless. I also didn't like the minor changes in the cantina scene. Lastly, most of the ROTJ Jabba's Palace changes were ridiculous. Though some of these SE changes enhanced/improved the film, these really made the films worse.

-Jar Jar Binks & the Battle Droids in TPM. Though I didn't hate these characters as much as many fans, I don't feel Jar Jar should have been focused on as much as he was in the film. Also, the design of the Battle Droids could have been somewhat more threatening.

Going along with SW-related decisions I didn't like by Lucas, I still don't understand why he didn't clean up/remaster the original SW trilogy (1977,1980,1983) and release these to DVD/Blu-ray - when he had plenty of opportunity to do so. We may never get these original films (on modern home video) at this point.

Re: the new films (TFA-on), I have liked them - for the most part. Though I'm not as enamored of TFA & TLJ as some others, a lot of this is because I'm not a huge fan of the Sequel Trilogy era. However, I am still looking forward to The Mandalorian in November, and TROS in December.

Also, I really enjoyed Rogue One & Solo: A Star Wars Story. These are actually two of my top five favorite movies in the franchise (along with ESB, AOTC, and ROTS).