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George Lucas quips he sold 'Star Wars' to "white slavers," criticizes tone of TFA

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Soul_Pie

Member
While saying that he doesn't get an opinion at all is wrong, it's not unreasonable for people to not want to take much stock in what he has to say.

Really? The guy who created the series, had to basically beg the studio to get his movie to made, endured production hell for it to come about shouldn't have much stock placed on his opinion? Nobody is more invested or more authoritative on matters Star Wars than this guy, even if you disagree with a lot of what he has to say and his choices. I mean, I know the prequels were awful but sometimes I think people have gone nuts when it comes to opinions on Lucas.

In any case, people should stop just reading the little quotes taken from the interview and watch it in full, he actually has a lot of interesting things to say on the industry even if a lot of his criticisms of the industry could actually be directed at a lot of his recent works.
 

Dai Kaiju

Member
Was lucasarts in some sort of financial trouble where he had no choice but to sell the franchise? That's the only reason I could think of for him to take a jab at them.
 

hyp3rlink

Member
People who see George's point of TFA being rehash can't see why that was the only way to get people interested in Star Wars again?

Lucas got lucky with creating the universe the first time but failed miserably the second time.
 
Really? The guy who created the series, had to basically beg the studio to get his movie to made, endured production hell for it to come about shouldn't have much stock placed on his opinion? Nobody is more invested or more authoritative on matters Star Wars than this guy, even if you disagree with a lot of what he has to say and his choices. I mean, I know the prequels were awful but sometimes I think people have gone nuts when it comes to opinions on Lucas.

In any case, people should stop just reading the little quotes taken from the interview and watch it in full, he actually has a lot of interesting things to say on the industry even if a lot of his criticisms of the industry could actually be directed at a lot of his recent works.
Should we really be listening to his opinions on the industry either? George "This is the first film with an all-black cast" Lucas, who was convinced that the reason nobody wanted to fund his terrible movie was because the industry is racist?
 

munchie64

Member
Anyway, Lucas is kinda right but I do think he's being a bit hypocritical. Like how much of he prequels are set on Tatooine and Coruscant?
 

Dead

well not really...yet
People who see George's point of TFA being rehash can't see why that was the only way to get people interested in Star Wars again?

Lucas got lucky with creating the universe the first time but failed miserably the second time.
Yeah, no one would have paid to see another Star Wars movie otherwise


Bruh, the movie could have been set on the fucking Wookie planet, as long as they brought back Han, Leia and Luke, it would have made bank.
 
The movie will be GAF worst movie ever by next year. Count on it.

Which if going by "everything gaf hates...." means it will hit 3 billion.

Most seem to have taken the stance yeah it played too safe and a rehash but it's better than the prequels.

That isn't setting the bar very high

which for me is enough. now if 8 and 9 are the same, then yeah I will be like "cmon guys really?", but even if they were at least they will be fun to watch, which I don't think I've ever rewatched any PT movie beginning to end after the first time.
 

Rezbit

Member
White slavers? Wonder what exactly he meant by that.

I agree that TFA was definitely a safe movie, but was still enjoyable and better than any of the prequels.

Would be interested to know what direction he would have taken it though, wonder if it will ever come out?
 

aliengmr

Member
If only it wasn't the third episode out of the last 4 that featured a deathstar.

It was a convenient, quick way to set up the galaxy for the rest of the trilogy. In that context it doesn't bother me. Can't think of a better way for a Star Wars film to eliminate a couple planets that doesn't require explanation.
 

Nairume

Banned
Really? The guy who created the series, had to basically beg the studio to get his movie to made, endured production hell for it to come about shouldn't have much stock placed on his opinion? Nobody is more invested or more authoritative on matters Star Wars than this guy, even if you disagree with a lot of what he has to say and his choices. I mean, I know the prequels were awful but sometimes I think people have gone nuts when it comes to opinions on Lucas.

In any case, people should stop just reading the little quotes taken from the interview and watch it in full, he actually has a lot of interesting things to say on the industry even if a lot of his criticisms of the industry could actually be directed at a lot of his recent works.
People can change over time in ways that can make people not want to actually pay attention to them. It's not even much of a secret that the George Lucas of the 1970's and 1980's is a very clearly different person from the George Lucas of the 1990s and 2000s, especially when you consider the fact that he was previously somebody who argued against the editing of culturally important films versus.....well...now.

Even though he's absolutely done some really great things outside of his own more recent films (and it absolutely can not be understated that he's had a very very very positive effect on the movie industry) and once was involved in telling some really great stories, it's not unreasonable for people to not really take much stock in his current storytelling abilities based on his recent output.

But, yes, people should absolutely watch the interview. It'd actually gives a lot of context to the clickbait title that renders much of the thread moot :p
 

Soul_Pie

Member
Should we really be listening to his opinions on the industry either? George "This is the first film with an all-black cast" Lucas, who was convinced that the reason nobody wanted to fund his terrible movie was because the industry is racist?

I don't agree with a lot of his opinions and I find them to be hypocritical in places but if people actually listened to the interview, which they clearly haven't you can clearly get a better sense of where the guy is coming from. I mean, the way he talks about technology has an element of truthfulness to it, even if he lost sight of it in making the prequels. He also arose during a great, interesting time in film making and worked with some great people back in the day. Once again, I can't believe I'm defending the guy, because I don't hold him in such high esteem compared to other directors but people just seem to have lost any perspective on the guy and what he actually achieved.
 

Fj0823

Member
how are the prequels any different from each other? they all feel the same

Pretty sure he means each era should feel different

Clean and Prosper Era->Dirty and Opresed Era-> Same shit as 30 years ago despite significant political changes??
 
TFA "played it safe" because:

1. They can get away with telling an old story again for a new audience that hasn't seen the original
2. If they didn't, they risk re-alienating an already frustrated fanbase. Lucas, if you're mad about it being "retro", just remember that you forced it to be by fucking up the prequels.
WB rebooted Batman just fine without having to remake Batman 89 after a truly shit tier film.
 

Dude. Okay.

You are allowed to not like things. You are allowed to have your own opinion.

Justifying why you don't like something in your fandom by creating a bullshit reason and willfully (and entirely unhealthily) becoming cynical just because something exists is super fucking stupid.
 

Hinchy

Member
Completely different studio and different director/writer than ST:ID. All JJ Abrams can do is copy. I don't see the point in Disney/Lucasfilm hiring and pretty much handing the rest of the trilogy to someone like Rian Johnson if they're not trying to bring in some new ideas to the franchise.

This this this this this this this this!

Well, mostly. I'd personally give JJ a little more credit than that as a director. But he definitely specializes in safe and solid reworkings of existing ideas. He also is known as a master of the pilot episode - an enticing opening chapter of a series. So he's a no-brainer for this.

But Rian Johnson is inventive and innovative in a way that makes me not be able to imagine that VIII will just be more of the same. He's writing the story as well as directing, too. That's HUGE.

It's a scheme that makes so much sense: VII is "the apology". It goes out of its way, maybe too far, to say "this is Star Wars again". And now the next two episodes will take this new foundation and hopefully bring it to new and exciting places.

I normally wouldn't be such an apologist about future media, but man, if there's a director I have faith in to bring us something both awesome and novel, it's the person who brought us both the greatest (Ozymandias) and most unorthodox (Fly) episodes of Breaking Bad.
 

Speevy

Banned
Pretty sure he means each era should feel different

Clean and Prosper Era->Dirty and Opresed Era-> Same shit as 30 years ago despite significant political changes??

Well the war and turmoil that are happening in the prequels aren't really felt inside the "clean" indoor environments. Life just goes on as normal.
 
Pretty sure he means each era should feel different

Clean and Prosper Era->Dirty and Opresed Era-> Same shit as 30 years ago despite significant political changes??
Things do look a lot nicer in TFA though don't they? They even had time to color stuff in red everywhere. Only really shitty looking places are Jakku (which everyone says is a dump), Han's weird freighter thing which shouldn't look nice anyway, and the Falcon. Maz's place looks like it's been there forever, Starkiller all looks pretty new and shiny, the series takes place on all new planets. I guess you could say it's derivative that they're still using TIE fighters/Star Destroyers/X wings but like these are the same people so I thought that makes sense. It makes more sense for a bunch of people from Yavin IV to use different spaceships than the Naboo than for Princess Leia to employ her soldiers with different ships than the ones that worked last time you know?
 

Regulus Tera

Romanes Eunt Domus
Execution > Originality
Execution > Originality
Execution > Originality
Execution > Originality
Execution > Originality
Execution > Originality
Execution > Originality

(as for the white slavers comment, what)
 
Well except those thesis would be wrong, since those students do not have any right on "how" Star Wars is.

How Star Wars is was up to Lucas, and now up to Disney. It's not in any fan's right to declare which movie "is Star Wars".

The originals are Star Wars. The prequels are Star Wars and the sequels will be Star Wars.

I kind of feel like you're getting bogged down in some needless argument about how people need to respect the rightsholders to decide what is and isn't canon. And I don't think it's fair to dismiss criticisms of the story choices made as people trying to substitute their own head-canon for the choices Lucas had every right to make. Someone acknowledging that their own interpretation of the Force (or whatever) not jiving with Lucas' vision and considering the latter a utilization of poor story-telling doesn't necessarily mean that they're just salty because their fanfiction was contradicted. It may just mean that they think Lucas made poor decisions that hindered the narrative.

Of course, that doesn't make the critic automatically right and Lucas wrong, as everything is subjective. But there's just a weird tone to your posts that reads as "you can't criticize the canon!" that I don't fully understand.
 
how are the prequels any different from each other? they all feel the same

For me its because I don't like the characters at all.

In the OT we actually like Luke, and Han, Leia is ok too I guess.

In ANH we get introduced to everyone, luke gets on his journey, han saves the day, and vader flies away to come back another day. ESB has its reveal, hans situation, and one hell of a WTF happens now, and ROTJ they rescure han and then he kind of...does nothing, but we get luke v vader and that finale which imo saves the movie which already started down a PT-like path (Han was going to die in ROTJ but was changed for Toys sales, and also Wookies became Ewoks).

In the PT everyone is boring, the dialogue is bad but even worse on characters we don't care about. Really the PT needed a Han like person to bring it together. Again my favorite character from the PT was Palpatine. Because it was the OT actor, hamming it up and being a dick like he was in the OT. Beyond that Mace Windu, Obi Wan, Anakin, Qui Gon, and Padme (oh god sleep inducing Padme) were such snoozefests. It was BREAKING my heart!.

so with that I dont actually give a shit about anyone in the PT or what happens to them.
 

Fj0823

Member
Well the war and turmoil that are happening in the prequels aren't really felt inside the "clean" indoor environments. Life just goes on as normal.

The prequel characters are High society man. It's the poor people who suffer.

This is greatly expanded upon in The Clone Wars. Coruscant residents rioted everytime money went into more Clone units instead of welfare

let208915letta1.jpg
 

btrboyev

Member
and why he was keen to have everyone walk around new and exciting cg hallways big enough where they couldn't interact with anything... but it doesn't matter, because it's new!

temple_hallway01.jpg

I wish Disney would either special edition these with updated CG or film actual set pieces and apply them over the green screen.
 

hyp3rlink

Member
Yeah, no one would have paid to see another Star Wars movie otherwise


Bruh, the movie could have been set on the fucking Wookie planet, as long as they brought back Han, Leia and Luke, it would have made bank.


Yeah, sure, people would have still paid to see GL's next star wars, but I wouldn't have!

Point being, Lucas killed the vibe of the franchise and only way to bring it back to life and maximize profit with renewed interest was to inject a dose of the OT.

I bet if Lucas had gone ahead with his vision Episode VII would have been half as successful.
 

Jigorath

Banned
Dude. Okay.

You are allowed to not like things. You are allowed to have your own opinion.

Apparently not according to you.

Justifying why you don't like something in your fandom by creating a bullshit reason and willfully (and entirely unhealthily) becoming cynical just because something exists is super fucking stupid.

There are people who refuse to accept Midichlorians as canon. It's not exactly an "unhealthy" phenomenon.
 
They had to make a retro movie because you tarnished the reputation of the franchise so they had to make call backs to the originals to clear the public's palette from the prequel mess


I will say that the prequels brought a lot more new ideas to the table. But the problem was they were all executed terribly
 

Nairume

Banned
I really don't understand why a lot of people in this thread believe that Lucas really gives a fuck
Probably because they didn't actually watch the interview and get the context of the quip.

It's something charlie rose says as a joke because Lucas compared the movies to his children, and Lucas subsequently agrees in jest
 
I guess he wishes he could have kept Star Wars and kept making them.

It's sad that he couldn't end up doing that. The guy who created Star Wars should have been able to see it through.

It sucks that creative and artistic talent can be fleeting. I mean, Lucas created Star Wars and Indiana Jones. He is a legend. That's why as much as I dislike the prequels, I never got angry at him. The whole thing was just unfortunate.
 
I'm glad he's getting out seeing this thread and other stuff on the Internet.
The things he wants to do don't match up at all with the fanbase. Which kinda sucks.
 
I guess he wishes he could have kept Star Wars and kept making them.

It's sad that he couldn't end up doing that. The guy who created Star Wars should have been able to see it through.

It sucks that creative and artistic talent can be fleeting. I mean, Lucas created Star Wars and Indiana Jones. He is a legend. That's why as much as I dislike the prequels, I never got angry at him. The whole thing was just unfortunate.

If he did a basic treatment but then let others fine tune it, and DIRECT IT, it could have worked, that's what ESB was.
 
How is The Force Awakens retro?

The prequel trilogy feels more retro to me because it was the early 2000s when many companies had no fucking idea how to believably implement CG in their films.

I haven't seen The Force Awakens but isn't it one big callback to the first film, down to people calling it a remake rather than something entirely new?
 
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