Star Wars: The Complete Saga (1977-2005)

[Arawn]

Originally Posted by Ernest Rister

He named the villains in Willow after film critics who gave him negative reviews at some point.

I never made the connection between General Kael and Pauline Kael before!

Originally Posted by Thomas Guycott

Basically. They also wound up greatly compressing the overall timeline of the Clone Wars, Anakin's fall, establishment of the Empire & the Jedi Purge, and Anakin & Obi-Wan's duel. What originally spanned about 10-15 years (don't have my copy of the Guide to the Star Wars Universe on hand so I can't recall the details) was compressed to three, with the biggest plot elements seeming to occur in less than a week. In the old EU before 1999, the Clone Wars ended 35 years BBY, versus 19 years BBY today.

The old EU wasn't exactly fully internally consistent on a lot of issues. This was one of them. For example, if you look at the timeline references in Barbara Hambly's Children of the Jedi, they end up being something like one year off the prequel timeline at most. Kind of an outlier, but you can see that not every writer had the same ideas.

The problem with ending the Clone Wars in 35 BBY or whatever is that that clearly predates Luke's birth by a wide margin. This raises the specter of Luke being conceived during Imperial times. In Timothy Zahn's Dark Force Rising we are led to believe that "Darth Vader" showed up on Honoghr with stormtroopers during the Clone Wars well before Luke's birth. He's gone full Dark Lord by this point, it's implied to be the same Vader we know so well from the OT, so how and why is "Mrs. Skywalker" having kids with him years later?

[Arch Stanton]

Originally Posted by imsounoriginal

He offered TPM to Spielberg, Howard, and I think even Zemeckis IIRC, but they all convinced him that Star Wars was his baby and that he should do it.

Ah, I always thought it was Clones and he wanted to do Menace himself.

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by Arawn

I never made the connection between General Kael and Pauline Kael before!

The two-headed dragon is called Sisbert (named after Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, who famously championed Lucas' work, and Siskel when he knew he was dying and wouldn't live to see The Phantom Menace, asked Roger to take his son to see the movie).

[imsounoriginal]

Originally Posted by Arch Stanton

Ah, I always thought it was Clones and he wanted to do Menace himself.

Nope, for all the crap Lucas gets he's well aware of his own shortcomings and has tried to delegate things to better-suited people, but he's become SO associated with Star Wars that other directors probably don't wanna be micro-managed by him, even his buddy Spielberg (I also really don't think most people who aren't super-into Star Wars even realize that he didn't direct Empire or Jedi). As far the Prequels go, I figure once he got his feet wet with TPM, he decided to take it all the way. That, and he probably couldn't get anyone to take over after the reception TPM got.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Ernest Rister

The two-headed dragon is called Sisbert (named after Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, who famously championed Lucas' work, and Siskel when he knew he was dying and wouldn't live to see The Phantom Menace, asked Roger to take his son to see the movie).

Eborsisk.


Clint did it also with The Dead Pool where one killing was a movie critic based on Kael and the mayor of New York in Godzilla (1998) looked exactly like Ebert (and his top advisor looked like Siskel).


It's not about being thin skinned, it's about poking fun. Which he also did with his "Han Shot First" t-shirt on the set of Crystal Skull.

[Bobbyjoe766]

Lucas was arrogant enough to think he could helm a movie as complex as a STAR WARS film after years of producing and not directing.He found out the hard way that the STAR WARS movies are a collaborative effort,with imput from many talents-not one guy having final say on everything.The ILM toadies were to afraid to speak up when they could privately see he was destroying his own creation.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Bobbyjoe766

Lucas was arrogant enough to think he could helm a movie as complex as a STAR WARS film after years of producing and not directing.He found out the hard way that the STAR WARS movies are a collaborative effort,with imput from many talents-not one guy having final say on everything.The ILM toadies were to afraid to speak up when they could privately see he was destroying his own creation.

Oh gawd. He had final say on Empire & Jedi. Did you work for ILM? Rewriting history seems to be a hobby around here.

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Eborsisk.

JeffreyLyonsMedvedHead

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by Alan_Grant

TPM came out 17 years ago and people still piss and moan about it, AOTC 14 and ROTS 11, as if they cant just move on from a movie. There is a documentary about how "greedy and awful" of a person Lucas is, despite him giving that 4 billion dollars he got from Disney straight to a charity. People talk tons of shit about Lucas when...all he did was make 3 novies people didnt like. I'd quit too.

People definitely attacked him personally, which is horrible but welcome to the internet. However it's also true he made three kind of shite movies and then couldn't handle people telling him they were shite.

[Alan_Grant]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

People definitely attacked him personally, which is horrible but welcome to the internet. However it's also true he made three kind of shite movies and then couldn't handle people telling him they were shite.

George is thin skinned, but the death threats sent to him is unbelievable.

[CinemaBlu]

Lucas didn't quit because of the haters. He was originally planning to direct the new trilogy himself until he realized he'd be 80 by the time he was finished with it, so he handed it over to a new generation of filmmakers. And yet he still gets gratuitous hate from a bunch of sad trolls.

I don't mind intelligent negative criticism of his films, but most Star Wars fanboys and fangirls just make loud hyperbolic noise. The Star War films aren't, and never were, as technically perfect as some people think they are. Nor are they as irredeemably horrible as some people think they are. That includes the UOT, the PT, TFA and the Special Editions. When you take on a project as big as Star Wars, mistakes are inevitable.

I really hope Lucas goes back to directing again now that he's unloaded the Lucasfilm machine. THX-1138 and American Graffiti are brilliant films and it'd be really interesting to see what he can do without the burden of running Lucasfilm or Star Wars fandom bogging him down.

[motorheadache95]

Originally Posted by CinemaBlu

I really hope Lucas goes back to directing again now that he's unloaded the Lucasfilm machine. THX-1138 and American Graffiti are brilliant films and it'd be really interesting to see what he can do without the burden of running Lucasfilm or Star Wars fandom bogging him down.

I've always wanted to see him do those independent little films he kept talking about. Just out of sheer curiosity if nothing else. I admittedly don't have a high opinion of his Star Wars prequels or even his Red Tails passion project, but both of those he was still obsessed with channeling a old B-movie serial vibe that I don't think worked. It would be really interesting to see him do something entirely different on a small scale.

[LeeFanatic007]

Really did not like the Red Tails movie, it just didn't work for me.

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by motorheadache95

I've always wanted to see him do those independent little films he kept talking about. Just out of sheer curiosity if nothing else. I admittedly don't have a high opinion of his Star Wars prequels or even his Red Tails passion project, but both of those he was still obsessed with channeling a old B-movie serial vibe that I don't think worked. It would be really interesting to see him do something entirely different on a small scale.

He says he still plans on doing those, but won't screen them for anyone other than his friends.

[Arch Stanton]

Originally Posted by CinemaBlu

I really hope Lucas goes back to directing again now that he's unloaded the Lucasfilm machine. THX-1138 and American Graffiti are brilliant films and it'd be really interesting to see what he can do without the burden of running Lucasfilm or Star Wars fandom bogging him down.

Me too actually, although I'm pretty sure he's said how he's officially retired from all things movies now.

I thought he was joking when he first said it, but he made comments about he and his friends (I imagine Coppola, Spielberg) were making movies and just showing them among each other. Not for public release or anything. Experimental digital things.

[MacEachaidh]

Originally Posted by Arch Stanton

I'm pretty sure he's said how he's officially retired from all things movies now.

They're still trying to crank out Indy V, aren't they?

I think films like THX-1138 are probably beyond anyone of Lucas' age. (No disrespect or criticism.) It's a young man's film, questioning what the world is about. Even his sense of risk dissipated a fair while back, which (for me) is largely what was missing from the PT films, amidst their plodding, dutiful exposition.

[rikraq]

I was in Kohls shopping near their electronics section. They always have A New Hope playing on their tv. I usually ignore it, but I heard this godawful cry from the screen and I was like wtf? It was the Sandpeople scene and I remembered how Ben's cry got changed in the new version. Awful.

One of the reasons why I have a hard time wanting to buy these.

[Bickle76]

Originally Posted by MacEachaidh

They're still trying to crank out Indy V, aren't they?

I think films like THX-1138 are probably beyond anyone of Lucas' age. (No disrespect or criticism.) It's a young man's film, questioning what the world is about. Even his sense of risk dissipated a fair while back, which (for me) is largely what was missing from the PT films, amidst their plodding, dutiful exposition.

I don't see Lucas having significant involvement in Indy V. I thinks Steven is just reminding everyone that Lucas is the creator of Indy. He will remain loyal to his friend for it, hopefully not to a fault this time around. With the amount of success that TFA has gotten, Lucas has got to be feeling somewhat down, like seeing your ex spouse move on and is doing better without you.

I suppose one could argue that the last time Lucas was wittingly risky was the creation of Binks.

[happydood]

I don't know, everyone's mileage will vary in terms of being able to appreciate it, but I think the prequels were one big risk. Tonally different and talky and political/philosophical/operatic (in the most stylized sense of the word) rather than fast-paced and fun. Unfortunately he just didn't succeed for half of his fanbase.

I'm sure the success of Force Awakens stings some, but it succeeds for an entirely different reason. They gave the people what they wanted and there was absolutely nothing risky about it. It's good at what it's trying to do, but I don't think anybody could argue that it broke new ground.

[stvn1974]

All this talk of THX-1138 has made me want to watch the film again. Oh wait, I can't because he ruined that film too with CGI and the theatrical isn't available.