I'm sorry but Shia LaBeouf DOES not belong in an Indiana Jones film.

Second off, "Hollywood" is an ambiguous term at best. Hollywood can mean the place, the studios there, or just a particular mindset when it comes to filmmaking. No matter who picked up the check, Lucas IS a Hollywood filmmaker. He helped define what "Hollywood" means. ILM is a Hollywood FX house. Skywalker Sound is a Hollywood sound company. The Fox Studios in Australia are outsourced Hollywood studios.

 

Most ludicrous statement ever. Lucas is as far from a Hollywood filmmaker as can be. He's spent his whole life trying to distance himself from Hollywood, the Hollywood mindset, and the Hollywood studios. All his companies are based right here in the Bay Area, pretty far from Hollywood. Whether he rents studio facilities from Fox or anyone else is entirely irrelevant. It's Lucasfilm renting studio space - for a production over which Hollywood studios have absolutely no say. You can't be a part of Hollywood if you're completely based somewhere else altogether, whether it's San Francisco, Marin County, or New York.

Coppola, Lucas and Marty Scorsese are definitely not Hollywood filmmakers, even when as American filmmakers, they've obviously had to do business with Hollywood.

 

As $100 million+ films filled with action, special effects, hot young movie stars, questionable writing and acting, excessive merchandising and bastardisation, and virtually every other quality held by the term "Hollywood filmmaking", and distributed and marketed by a Hollywood studio itself, the prequels are Hollywood films in every way except a few semantic details (namely being that they were financed privately). "Hollywood" movies and "blockbuster" movies are practically synonymous. Lucas likes to differentiate himself in an attempt to prop up the artistic merit of his films, but any artistic merit is really unrelated from the qualities of the film--they are Hollywood films in everything but name (and not entirely either since they are tied to and distributed by a major Hollywood studio anyway).

 

Thats the ironic part.

 

There is a world of difference when the studio chiefs simply don't have any say over a production, over the final cut of the movie, etc. The distribution arrangement is simply a business deal - Fox got to distribute the SW movies in exchange for a small slice of the pie.

The Hollywood studios learned from Spielberg and Lucas how to make summer blockbusters, not the other way around.

 

Lucas. Is. A. Studio. Chief.

Spielberg is THE Hollywood filmmaker, and HE doesn't have to listen to studio chiefs either. Why? Because HE IS ONE. Jerry Bruckheimer is so powerful that he pretty much runs his own shows; does that make him any less 'Hollywood'?

 

Sorry, but Lucas is *not* a studio chief. He owns his companies, which are involved in the film-making process -- but Lucasfilm simply isn't a studio. Even if it were, it would obviously not be a Hollywood studio.

You are right that there are a handful of directors in Hollywood with a lot of clout.

 

The "Hollywood" conspiracy theories on this thread are hysterical. For my two cents worth, I can't STAND Shia Le Bouf, but I will give credit where its due - he's GREAT as Mutt Williams and Mutt Williams is GREAT in an Indiana Jones movie.

And as much as I still don't like Shia Le Bouf, I will gladly pay money to see him as Mutt Williams, picking up where his dad left off.


A great performance doesn't neccesarily make a great actor, but a great performance should not be ignored, period. Especially when it comes from someone who has not yet established themselves as a "great actor".