Saga Point of view - George Lucas was right not to listen to the embittered fans

*Pokes head into the PT forum for the first time in months*

What did I miss, folks?

Oh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

"Same as always."
"That bad, huh?"

 

I can also justify calling this as an ad hominem argument if you like!

 

I like the cut of your jib, Darthman92.

 

jimkenobi

Whoops, looks like you actually had beaten me to the punch on this one with your post. I swear I wasn't just trying to make a name for myself by rehashing your idea! I mean come on, who would do such a thing and think they could so easily get away with it?




PS
Thanks for your other post complimenting mine!

 

What you did there. See it, I do.

 

Are you joking?? The new "spin" in RotJ was just that it had a shield generated from Endor, & that the Rebel ships needed to fly into the structure to destroy it. That's it. Otherwise to viewers it was the same thing. Starkiller was a planet that had been engineered as a base. It didn't need to somehow fly around at lightspeed to get to its targets. It drew energy from stars to power its weapon. The surface had weather & geological activity. But you're saying the RotJ version was more distinct from ANH than Starkiller?? Okay you must've been joking. You got me.

You should get it right. TFA follows RotJ, not ANH. Almost all of the mirroring applies to Jedi as outlined here.

It's a minor distinction. When a film series is a global phenomenon, as SW is now & was in 2006, the audience & the fandom are one & the same. The audience is almost entirely made up of fans who have bought a ticket & sat their ass down in the cinema. Fans vs audience is a pointless debate. The important takeaway is that Lucas said what is obvious with all big-budget commercial movies. That they're made with their target audience in mind. He literally said he makes those movies for the audience. As a distinction, he's said recently that he plans to make films "for himself". Just ones he'll enjoy & he doubts anyone else will be interested in.

There's a tonne of good evidence. From sidelining unpopular elements of TPM, to having OT characters all conveniently bump into each other in the PT, to deciding that Darth Maul's torso would make a realistic villain in TCW. Fan pandering & commercial decision making. If you want to spin it all as high art, knock yourself out Cryo. Just be careful guzzling that Lucas Kool-Aid

Yes I do. This is what he thought of those comments:

I want to clarify my interview on the Charlie Rose Show. It was for the Kennedy Center Honors and conducted prior to the premiere of the film. I misspoke and used a very inappropriate analogy and for that I apologize. I have been working with Disney for 40 years and chose them as the custodians of Star Wars because of my great respect for the company and Bob Iger’s leadership. Disney is doing an incredible job of taking care of and expanding the franchise. I rarely go out with statements to clarify my feelings, but I feel it is important to make it clear that I am thrilled that Disney has the franchise and is moving it in such exciting directions in film, television and the parks. Most of all I’m blown away with the record-breaking blockbuster success of the new movie and am very proud of JJ and Kathy.

Just another example of how inconsistent & contradictory he is. His interviews over the years read like a Smeagol/Gollum exchange.

No, that was his strategy for the Prequels. Sorry, I meant they're like poetry. They rhyme.

I thought you'd seen TFA? If so you would've noticed that it's titled EpVII. Oh, you mean that it wasn't referred to in the marketing? Of course not. They didn't want new young viewers to think they needed to go off & watch 6 movies to understand this one. They wanted them in the cinema watching TFA, getting hooked on SW & then going back & exploring the Saga. That's clever marketing & it worked. Ep I is a great marketing tool & Lucas rightly hammered it home. EpVII is not. It can be off-putting for first time viewers.
You should also note that ESB & RotJ didn't refer to episode numbers in their marketing. Guess it's "facetious" to call those by their ep numbers too. Understood.

From here you go to alot of trouble to point out that over recent months Lucas has made some comments about fan-focusing. Even though I said in my post that recent remarks by him have been along those lines. I'm saying there's plenty of evidence that over the years prior to that he's shown that he's quite responsive to fan tastes & reactions.

He's at an event where he's been given a popular award. Where fans of SW have voted RotS their favorite movie. As they're cheering & shouting he says to that crowd "the reason that I make films is for you!". I take that as meaning the fans of SW who have made up the audience for SW films. Who have voted him that award. If you want to label them just "the audience" bcs it suits your various arguments then fine. Point is he, like all commercial filmmakers who put hundreds of millions of dollars on the line when they make these things do so while considering what will appeal to the audience.

Fascinating Mike. The audience isn't entirely made up of people you personally classify as fans. Got it.

Anyway, Forbes seems to agree with you that Disney/LFL have a more commercial focus while Lucas made the films he wanted to make: http://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2015/12/31/sorry-george-lucas-but-star-wars-proves-the-profit-motive-can-be-good-for-art/

I think he did too, but always with one eye on what he thought the fans would respond to & pay to go & see.

 

Honestly, this whole subject of whether he is making the movies for the fans, or for himself, makes my head spin. I honestly don't care what type of movie George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, or any director makes, I just want something I like and enjoy. It's really as simple as that, as there is no list of demands a director has to make in a movie to please the fans. Here is my demand: Make a great movie, and I'll like it!

 

I'm a Lucas fan but I also see him as a shrewd commercial filmmaker. What's funny is how Lucas zealots around here put him up on a pedestal as an artist with the purest integrity. How it's only about the story & his vision. They just eat up all of the Lucas PR, much of which he himself has built over the years. Delve a bit deeper & you see that he's a great guy but he can be as crassly commercial & cynical as anyone in the film business. For example, one of his great friends is John Milius. They went to film school together & Milius wrote Apocalypse Now, which Lucas was heavily involved in & was going to direct. Lucas even gave him a % of the profits of ANH due to JM's friendship & support. Here Milius describes one of the motivations for Lucas making SW. Making money by selling toys. Lucas would say that if SW wasn't successful he was going to become a porn director! See at 1.43:

 

Well, in what ways does ROTJ actually repeat the Death Star, besides it's basic design (Even that was changed to a more skeketal frame).

There's no trench run, no real countdown motivation, no planetary destruction. Additionally, you have the new of a massive space battle, flying into the interior, the simulatneous duel and battle.

With TFA, Starkiller looks just like the Death Star (and, no the trench isn't really that big a deal to differentiate it).

Starkiller blows up a peaceful planet, just like Alderaan. It's taken down by a trench run. It reuses every single plot beat of ANH's Death Star, and most of the ROTJ plot beats aswell.

The fact that it doesn't move makes no difference. If it could move, the story would be identical.

The fact that it's a planet makes almost no difference to the plot. Set it indoors, and it's the same film. The star sucking is also very lacking, considering how a) it was sunny the first time they fired it, b) everyone moves indoors on Starkiller, so it's impossible to even gauge the light level, and c) it's a completely arbitrary countdown.

 

Oh I don't know...because it's a Death Star. Bcs it looks exactly the same apart from it's incompleteness. Visually it fires the same kind of weapon we'd already seen. Palpatine dies on it in the end, like Tarkin before him. But mostly bcs...it's a Death Star.

They fly through an internal trench rather than one on the surface. Same purpose, same objective.

Are you kidding? Starkiller looks just like the DS?? Have you seen TFA? It's a snow covered planet with a giant trench/ring around it. You see clouds & a visible atmosphere. The one that looks just like the DS is the 2nd one in RotJ.

RotJ reuses alot of the ANH climax too. They have to destroy another DS just in a nick of time before it's too late. Like I said, the last act of TFA borrows heavily from RotJ. This makes sense since another DS is going to do similar things & be attacked in a similar way.

The fact is for years before TFA was even made the second Death Star from RotJ was famous as an example of a repeated plot device. I've often heard or read people describing a rehashed weapon or plot element as "a bit too Death Star 2.0".

 

The fact that people refer to the RotJ death star as "Death Star 2.0" maybe should have clued in Abrams/Disney that throwing in yet another one that lazily reuses the exact same story beats as ANH was a bad idea.

I don't think anybody here is putting Lucas on a pedestal. Ultimately I judge him and Disney by the work they put out. When I'm talking about the integrity of the world and story, I'm talking about the craftsmanship and care that goes into creating those things in a way that makes them hold together and come alive, that makes them more than the sum of their parts. That didn't happen in TFA. In fact, it's astonishing to me how disjointed and slapped together the story in TFA is - Star Wars has always had such tightly constructed stories. Perhaps it's a result of the rushed production timeline - Abrams asked for an extension he didn't get - or perhaps that's just how Abrams does things (his previous movie had much the same problems).

 

Fair enough. No movie can please everyone but TFA got the thumbs up from as many judges as you can realistically expect. Abrams & LFL would have to be ecstatic at the response & the success.

 

Everyone is a judge. And even if that were true, it's still ad populum.

Sure. Nothing like pandering the crowd to get a sure "win". It may not be memorable in the long run, but it's candy. Nostalgic candy.

 

Ya, I'm sure they are (ecstatic), especially considering how troubled the project seems to have been when Abrams came on - for that reason I hesitate to blame solely him for its shortcomings, especially considering the time pressure he was under. And to be fair, if you asked me to judge the movie compared to the current morass of Marvel and other modern blockbusters, I would give it a pretty good rating. But when you put the Star Wars name on it, that creates certain expectations - in terms of ambition, in terms of storytelling- that simply weren't filled for me, and the entire experience left me with a bad taste in my mouth. At the end of the day, I'm not a Disney stockholder - the commercial success means very little to me.

 

The response and success of all 7 movies should make anyone ecstatic.

So that isn't the question then.

For some it comes down to how "many" ie a certain fraction of the audience that are "upset". There was upset for everything single movie since ANH and that includes TFA.

It simply depends on if one decides to notice that upset or not or place importance on it.

 

Typical BS nostalgia argument that doesn't hold any weight.

-Luke is in the movie for 30 seconds, how is that pandering? Fans like me were expecting him to be a big part of Episode 7, and when I read a possible spoiler that he was only in it for one shot and didn't have dialogue I was furious. But after seeing the movie, I actually think it was a great move.

-How is Han & Leia being split up playing to the crowd? Ask any OT fan and they probably expected Han to be the General of the Republic's Army, and Leia to be a High ranking Senator or maybe even Chancellor. Maybe even Leia a full Jedi and kicking butt with a lightsaber, but it sounds like they are not even going down that road in this trilogy. Han & Leia are a shell of what they were after ROTJ, and at first when I read the spoiler I wasn't too thrilled. But it worked for me in the movie, because they way they played in Kylo Ren and how he eventually kills his father.

The funny thing is the OT crowd like me isn't really defending StarKiller Base and other little 'call backs' in TFA, but the characters are great, and it setup Kylo/Snoke vs Rey/Luke for Episode 8, so I'm juiced for it. With the exception of ESB, EVERY SW movie had some call back in it and it can either bother you or not, but I think if we enjoy the movie, we let them slide.

If you wanted TFA to pander to OT fans like me then JJ would have had Luke & Leia kicking *** for 2 hours, and Han & Leia happily married and pretty much ruling the galaxy. It was gutsy for JJ to make our heroes kinda of down and out after 30 years and THAT could have been a huge backlash (although there are a few fans that weren't happy, but the majority fans seemed to be fine with it.)

 

Luke has been crowbarred into having the same role as Obi-Wan or Yoda in the OT. His jedi order, that we never saw, was wiped out, just like the last time, so he's gone into hiding, while an evil empire builds a superweapon. (That's another thing with TFA, it never shows us anything, the wiping out of the Jedi, the setting up of the First Order, Han and Kylo's relationship, a reason to care about the Republic)

Leia is exactly who she was in the OT, or more correctly ANH, an austere general who's only role in the film is to recreate her role in the battle of Yavin. Han is back as a smuggler, ignoring any character growth he had in the OT.

They've all been put back to ANH, except Luke, who's been turned into someone else with the same name.

The movie is almost exactly the same as ANH. There's nothing new in this movie. If that's not fan pandering, then I don't know what is.

 

Since when is Luke the fan favourite? That's Han Solo, even if that's not my case.

By making Han Solo the rogue smuggler again, completely ignoring his character arc.

 

I would call this stuff "casual fan pandering" in that it's designed to appeal to people's hazy memories of the original characters, rather than being a genuine continuation of their development through RotJ. That said, this element of the movie didn't bother me as much as it did some people, as I thought Abrams mostly succeeded in making their introductions feel meaningful and in tying their struggles in with the general sense of nostalgia for the good old idealistic days of the rebellion - a mood that pervades the film.

 

I wouldn't say that JJ/Disney were pandering to fans , I think it was more a case of pandering to the general audience and exploiting the media narrative that the prequels were disappointing etc.
So it looks to me like they just analysed the OT and listed what they'd use , so the plot is very much the same , the landscapes , hardware etc.
Luke was a problem , they've said they didn't know how to use him .

they promoted and sold this movie on the basis that it was more like the originals and not the prequels . There's a cynicism about the way this was put together .

ok there's some new characters , but even they get lost in the second half which is virtually a parody of the OT , and Ren is a Vader-wannabe .

I think Lucas would've had a new story to tell with new characters , concepts and designs etc. the guy had an incredible imagination and a great sense of story , the filmmaker should have a story he wants to tell .

.

 

Yoda says, "Pass on what you have learned...." in ROTJ, what did you expect Luke to be?

The ST is not about Luke, Leia and Han, it is about Rey, Finn and Poe, along with Kylo Ren. If Abrams fleshed out all of these plot points you wanted, then the TFA would have been about Luke, Leia and Han. He glossed over that stuff by design because the real story is the character arcs of Rey, Finn and Poe along with Kylo Ren.

Disney made a calculated move that the new characters were going to be front and center, and the OT characters were essentially passing the torch. I'm sure in Episode 8 we will hear more about Luke & Jedi Order, along with more about Leia and the Republic, that's why its a 3 movie trilogy. You sound like the PT bashers who were complaining after Episode 1 why this didn't happen and that didn't happen, and why didn't QuiGon disappear like Obiwan in the OT....

How about waiting for the trilogy to play out before you judge certain plot points. The last time I checked in the OT, the Emperor was only mentioned in ANH, was seen in one scene in ESB, and then becomes a major character in ROTJ. You probably would have said in 1977, "Who is the Emperor guy and how come we know so little about him?"

 

Well, the Emperor hasn't got any mystery around him in ANH. He's just the offscreen leader of the Empire. In ESB, he was more of a mystery, as Vader's master, but it wasn't a mystery of his identity. With Snoke, we know nothing, only that he's some kind of mystery box. The only problem is that their are not hints whatsoever to who he is, making trying to guess pointless. (Even if the correct answer is Palpatine 2)

Kylo Ren is also a remake of an old character, Vader. They have the same backstory and visual design, making it hard to understand why he's so insecure, when he basically is Vader.

And what in Episode I is really a mystery? Sidious' identity? There are dozens of hints that he's Palpatine in just TPM (ignoring the OT). Who are Rey's parents? Impossible the guess. Who is Snoke? Impossible to guess. Why did Luke run away? Impossible to guess. None of JJ's mystery boxes have any solutions. There are no clues to unravel them, nothing.

 

I have many criticisms of TFA (mostly regarding the plot structure and pacing) but being exactly the same as ANH is not one of them. The similarities are merely superficial. And if you look deeper, you'll see that the two films are very different in terms of the characters and tone. But hey, TFA is a very complex film and I don't expect everybody to quite grasp its complexity and I forgive them for not being able to see the key differences; maybe people were looking for a rehash of the prequels and were mad when they didn't get it (I'm kidding of course). But here's why the two films are different:

1.) Villains: Kylo and Vader are as different as they come. ANH Vader was just the generic bad guy who follows orders; there was no real complexity to him or internal struggle. With Kylo, we see that he struggles quite a bit with what to do. We see him with his mask off. We see that he's actively trying to resist the pull of the light side. We see that he's the son of one of the main characters and we then see him murder his own father. Now whether or not you liked the Han death scene, it was an important moment and one that Kylo clearly struggled with ("I know what I have to do but I don't know if I have the strength to do it"). When Vader kills Obi-Wan, there is no internal struggle. There's no emotional moment between the two characters; Obi-Wan just kind of smirks and allows Vader to strike him down. With the Han death, there's also a sense of finality to it whereas with the Obi-Wan death, we hear his voice guiding Luke seconds after he dies. The situations and tones are completely different.

2.) Heroes: Rey may seem like a Luke clone at first glance, but she's not. On a superficial level, they both start out on a desert planet so this must mean they're the same, right? Wrong. Luke's internal problem at the start of ANH is that he longs for a better future; he dreams of excitement and adventure (even though a Jedi craves not these things!). But he remains on Tatooine out of duty and loyalty to his uncle. Rey, on the other hand, has abandonment issues; she was abandoned by her family when she was just a child on Jakku. Her main issue is that she remains foolishly hopeful that they'll return for her one day. And once she actually does leave Jakku, she still has these abandonment issues, as seen by her reaction when she learns that Finn is leaving. But once Luke is on the adventure, he's all in and there's no residual internal struggle. So the internal conflicts between these two characters are completely different. Regarding the comparisons of Obi-Wan in ANH to Luke in TFA, it's again not the same thing. In ANH, Obi-Wan is the older mentor figure throughout a lot of the movie whereas Luke is missing throughout 99% of TFA. There's just no similarity between the two roles. And we have no idea what the Luke role will be like in the next movie. Maybe he wants nothing to do with training Rey. I dunno. I haven't seen Episode 8. So that's a discussion for the future. But in terms of TFA, another difference is that Luke never interacts with Kylo, whereas Obi-Wan dies at the hands of Vader...yet another difference. I could talk about Finn as well, but there's not really a Finn equivalent in ANH is there? Didn't think so.

3.) Plot: The Starkiller Base thing seems just like the Death Star again, doesn't it? Well, take a closer look because it's really not. The key differences involve the tone and characters. In ANH, the trench run and blowing up the Death Star is intertwined with Luke's personal story. When the Death Star explodes, it's not only a victory for the Rebels, but also a personal victory for Luke because he managed to "let go" and "use the Force". The movie ends on a joyous and triumphant note because of this victory. In TFA, it's not like this at all. Even though there is a trench run, our main character is not involved with that at all. Instead, the climax of the movie involves more personal moments between the principle characters. Rey's personal triumph is not blowing up Starkiller Base; it's tapping into her (dormant/hidden?) Force powers against the main villain and beating him. Remember when Luke beats Vader in ANH? Yeah, me neither. And then when Starkiller Base finally blows up, it's not this joyous triumphant moment. It's instead more of a somber moment because it came at the expense of a beloved hero. There's no throne room music. There's no medal ceremony. There is a lot of grieving though. And there's somewhat of a cliffhanger ending with finally discovering Luke's whereabouts.

So although the two films may seem similar at the surface level, they feel totally different because of the characters and tone.

 

Obviously "fan pandering" is doing things "they" don't like while doing things "they" do like is not "fan pandering"



So therefore TPM is the height of "fan pandering" because of the fans that don't like it while TFA is the height of not "fan pandering" because of those fans that do like it.

And here we all thought it was the other way around!

That is kind of the point though. It is really about the underlying characters and tone which is very much a sequel to the prequels.

Rey and Kylo Ren are not ANH's Luke and Vader. What they are is SW's and the PT's Anakin and Darth Vader.

So while for myself I don't care for the almost total lack of originality in TFA at least it's drawing that from the entire saga and so much material from the PT itself as well as the OT material which has also been so changed from what was first represented in the OT in the first place. That being pretty much everything but in particular Anakin's Lightsaber which has a completely different meaning after the prequels than it did in the originals.

Certainly they exploited those people in the media who don't like the prequels. These people are easily lead as the whole practical effects malarky proved. The general audience doesn't care at all about any of this. They simply want to see entertaining movies as their reaction to I-VI and now VII has shown.

 

In all honesty, how original can you get with the 7th movie of a franchise? Heck, Lucas started to run out of ideas with ROTJ as the series started to get tired in 1983. That's why people who were expecting this original story with all new plot points were setting themselves up for a big fall. Just look at any great movie franchise or TV show, by the 7th installment or 7th season, most of them are starting to replicate previous plot point either with different characters or different situations.

I enjoyed TFA for what it was. I don't think its as great as the OT, nor did I ever expect it, its a fun movie that keeps SW alive for another few years, so I'm cool with it because it's my favorite franchise.

I disagree. He's a wannabe Vader, but will never be as powerful as him and that's is the point of the movie. Yes, he is trying to emulate his look, but that's because he is his grandson, so I don't see why you would have a problem with that.

Kylo Ren is the first villain we see in a movie that isn't all mighty and powerful like Darth Vader. Anakin Skywalker turned to darkside out of fear of losing his loved ones, so he got greedy because he already was powerful. My theory on Ren turning is that he knows he isn't that powerful (he knows Rey from his past cause they mention 'that girl' to him), and she was probably more powerful then him at that time. His frustration with himself probably leads to his turn to the darkside, as he is like that guy who has a relative who is a great athlete, and he is nothing like him.