Lucas reflected on his life in work in a wide-ranging chat in Cannes, where he received and honorary Palm d’Or.
As a non Star Wars fan who just re-watched Phantom Menance, what the fuck are you talking about Georgie? I like the original trilogy well enough, but to say Star Wars has cohesive ideas and themes is ludicrous. You jumped the shark when the 7th word on screen was “taxation” in Episode 1. Not to mention when a 7 year old Anakin Skywalker raced a hover jet to buy his freedom from a thinly veiled Jewish epitaph
Everyone who comes to Star Wars does their own thing with it and most of it is goofy as shit. Hell, even the original Yoda was an actual Muppet. Star Wars at best was a metaphor against the Vietnam War, but even that was pretty loose. I think George has an over-inflated sense of ego about what Star Wars actually is
My wife and I recently rewatched every star wars movie, show and short made. My takeaway was the only good live action movie was Rogue One and that the Cartoons continue to be the high point of the whole thing. Maybe it’s a bit of a crazy take, but I agree with the cohesiveness not being consistent. Not to mention that the scripts on the originals are just awful.
I think you might have meant “epithet,” but since that is specifically about a word or phrase, “caricature” is probably the closest match.
The original, unmodified trilogy was a pretty archetypal hero’s journey for Luke (or rather, a series of journeys within the larger character journey). It was well done, reasonably cohesive, and had strong themes, owing in no small part to Gary Kurtz (producer for the first two movies), Marcia Lucas (editor on the first and third movies and uncredited contributing editor on the second), and Irvin Kershner (director for the second movie).
It began to fall off the rails a bit in the final movie when Lucas asserted more control, resulting in Kurtz’s departure, but ultimately in my judgment it stuck the thematic landing.
The rest were… ehhh…
We saw what happened with the prequel trilogy without those collaborators to rein him in and add actual human emotion. It’s not good, but it’s uncharitable to lump the original (again, unmodified) trilogy in with them.
The sequels were just completely incoherent.
Part of the problem is the unmodified originals have been effectively disappeared for an entire generation, so people who watch the “original trilogy” on disc or Disney+ are actually watching the atrocious CGI versions. It really does make a difference, in my opinion.
There’s never a wrong time to share the Mr. Plinkett Prequel Reviews
First off, George Lucas should shut the hell up. Second, he’s not entirely wrong.
Yeah no shit
This is the best summary I could come up with:
‘I’m a stubborn guy and I didn’t want people to tell me how to make my movies,” is how Star Wars creator George Lucas summed up the secret to his success, speaking to a crowd of fans at a packed Debussy theater in Cannes Friday afternoon.
The 80-year-old filmmaker was being honored at the 77th Cannes festival with a Palme d’Or for his contribution to cinema, and the crowd, a much younger cohort than usually seen at these events, whooped and hollered as Lucas walked on the stage.
His THX-1138 co-writer and sound designer Walter Murch was in the audience as Lucas recalled how Warner Bros didn’t want to send the duo to France for the premiere, forcing them to scrape together the money themselves.
The film also caught the eye of Allan Ladd Jr., then head of production at Fox, who approached Lucas after a screening and said, the director recalled: “You got any other movies?
“The studios didn’t have licensing departments…it took longer to design a toy than it did to make a movie,” he recalled, and how he got control of the sequel rights, in part because Fox at the time was teetering on bankruptcy.
The negative response to his Star Wars prequels, Lucas argued, came from “critics and fans who had been 10 years old when they saw the first one” and didn’t want to watch a children’s film.
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