ST George Lucas: on 'Force Awakens': It's like a "break up" ; Disney "not keen" on George involvement

Ha. If the franchise was in bad hands in the trilogy era or even during the Prequel era, all the movies would have been a lot different. Opening credits, bad visual effects, tonally different, quickly produced just to put something out there. Content decided by focus groups and test audiences and studio executives. That kind of thing may seem more likely now than "it ever was."

 

http://variety.com/2015/film/news/g...slavers-1201670406/?google_editors_picks=true

Cue the folks saying the Disney bruiser squad "got to him". In any event, it's good that he recognizes the poor choice of words.

 

Well I agree about the OT era. But the prequels might have had great acting and dialogue.

 

The Rathtars were the weakest (though still fine to me), but I absolutely disagree on Snoke and Maz, both of whom were very convincing to me. Keeping in mind as well that Snoke is a giant hologram.

So glad George said that. Enjoy your retirement, George! Enjoy your role as the continuing spiritual leader of this great enterprise!

 

DP

 

In case anyone doubts George has some pride about this film:



(The guy he's talking to is Frank Marshall, producer of JW)

And at then London premiere:



George is fine, he's over it. The Charlie Rose thing was recorded at the worst possible time.

 

I'm glad he issued that statement. It needed to be done.

All good George.

Stoneymonster, I loled at that clip. Marshall walks up and George is looking over him like Snoke's hologram.

"Hey George you're not going to break Jurassic's opening record right?"

We're going to squash you like a bug."

 

Not going to bother reading all the thread, would probably raise my blood pressure a few points and its not worth the effort. However from the 2 pages I did read I see a lot of weird GL defending. All have to say is what in the past 31 years makes you think had GL been in charge of EP 7 it would have turned out better than TFA? Seriously what.

I know some people might actually like the prequels better than TFA that's fine. Every has their own taste. It just so happens your taste do not align with a vast majority of consumers. There were also that small vocal minority that hated Star Trek JJ did because they wanted it to be more like the old ones. What those people did not understand is that their taste did not align and that a vast majority of consumers preferred a change in direction.

Not going to Bash GL, I glad he created SW, and thankful for that. I am also glad he is out of the picture.

 

Of course, the media took GL's "white slavers" comment, ran away with it and spun it in a direction they knew would get readers' attention, all the while offering no context whatsoever, only telling readers to "skip to the 50 minute mark" to hear it, knowing full well that that would result in a complete misinterpretation. Of course, what they didn't tell readers is that he laughed as soon as he said it, as did the interviewer, because they both knew it was a joke and was not meant to be taken seriously in the slightest.

 

Actually, in context, one of the goofiest things George said was how they don't give Best Picture Oscars to popular films.

Whaa? Has he watched the Oscars in the last twenty years? Cameron won and so did PJ. These kind of films can win and have. However, I am not convinced TFA even gets a nomination let alone wins BP. It's the seventh film in a series. I can't see AMPAS nominating that.

 

Popular films are mostly snubbed tho for Best Picture. Even if you don't like Nolan, almost all of his movies should have been nominated for Best Picture in their years, there were significantly worst films nominated. But Nolan's movies get snubbed in a lot of areas so he mighta really pissed off the Oscar committee at some point idk. Also they rarely ever give respect to performances in popular movies. Ledgers was one of the extremely few to ever even get a nom let alone win.

It's kind of absurd that Johnny Depp never got a win for Jack Sparrow, there are few performances in all of movies that are as memorable and stick with people as Jack Sparrow, regardless if you like the pirates movies or not.

 

George may be fine and over it, but he clearly has a tough time talking about the film in a positive way. He says things like "the fans are going to love it". And when asked if he gives it a thumbs up, he changes the topic and starts talking about something completely different. And then later, when pressed again about it, says "I can't review the film". But I guess that's to be expected. He was so deeply involved with the franchise until this movie and didn't agree with the direction they wanted to take it. It must be difficult separating his strong feelings on that matter from the actual experience of simply watching it as a movie. But despite that, he hasn't said anything negative about the film after seeing it so that's a plus.

And one day, maybe years after this new trilogy is completed, he will give his honest opinion about the new movies. Maybe by then he'll no longer have any hard feelings about them not using his stories and also won't feel any sort of pressure to be a PR-bot. Hopefully he ends up liking them.

 

Part of the problem with those films is they were snubbed in years before the Academy expanded the nomination slots.

 

But they also likely would have lacked the imagination and visual originality that Lucas' prequels had. Also would Disney have tossed out the political drama of the Republic crumbling from within? Disney likely would have made a more "cut to the chase" action trilogy where the Empire comes in and takes over the Republic...rather than a brilliant drama that shows that Republic actually IS the Empire the whole time. It's things like this that the Lucas haters clearly do not understand. It's what makes Lucas' story special, and something Disney would not have done better had they done the prequels.

They would have hired a director that got good performances, but made a movie that looked like the OT, and had a less than steller story. They likely would have stayed away from the political stuff that Lucas dared to do in his version.

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I would have settled for a blend. Probably unlikely to have been possible with George and Disney together.

But yes, the politics of the PT, or at least Palpatine's rise story, was unlikely to be given as much attention as George gave it. I just think George needed screenplay help for Episode One.

 

Which he tried like hell to get. (He asked both Frank Darabont and Larry Kasdan to write TPM). Can't fault him. He tried.

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Yes, he apparently tried. But the main issue was because they were guild. They weren't willing to take non-guild work. They should have made any arrangement to make it happen.

You know a reboot of that trilogy is coming. The best thing Disney could do is get George involved again at some point.

 

It won't be for a LONG time. They still have to know there are still plenty of fans and people who would be pissed if they tried to wipe the prequels from existence and make anreboot PT that becomes the new canon. Lucas would be super pissed, fans would be super pissed...there would be an uproar.

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Not all fans would be pissed. They would almost assuredly make the original versions available as they're not going to ignore that segment of the market. But, we will just have to see what they do after the ST. Personally, I hope they do a old times or ancient times trilogy.

They're already slowly deemphasizing the episodic numbers. I think that might be to make way for a new Episodes I-II-III with the existing PT becoming IV V VI. Then they just do away with the numbers.

 

I think a PT reboot could happen, but it's a big IF. It would be determined on how the ST does, really does, long term, how the other movies do. IF there's some fan want/need for it.

You'd be thinking 10 years down the road at least.

 

It looks like finally he finally wised up and hired a better writer than himself to pen his official statement.

 

Uh... because I don't think he's a horrible person, nor a horrible artist? He holds an opinion that makes me shake my head, re the USSR, but in my world, there's this thing called nuance. Lucas is not evil incarnate, but he is fallible. Get a grip.

 

Not really. Some fans would be mad, sure, but probably 90% of us would rejoice. ...and the 10% would still go see it too. *the only reason I don't care for them to redo the PT is because I'd rather them just tell a new, non-Skywalker, story after the ST is over.

If they did remake the PT, they could call the original PT "Star Wars: Detours".

 

Well Eisenstein worked with Stalin's approval at one point so obviously him and all of his work are now purely evil.

 

What really gets to me is that I think I've made reasonable statements about the oppression found in the Soviet Union, based on my own personal connection to that time period. It's not so removed for me--my aunty lived under the Stalin regime. And yet Winshen Cloudleaper wants to get into a pissing match with me because of some "Lucas or bust!" fan loyalty? I'm talking about real people with real lives, and yet the battle lines are being drawn over The Force Awakens? WTF? Seriously?