Lucas' Folly?

Funny, Loco, I seem to recall you once said about how disappointed you were that Lucas didn't do anything of real interest to shake up our perceptions; now you appear to be claiming that Lucas actually did do this. I noticed a very positive post from you in a recent thread about Anakin's tears. Have your views changed in the last year? I agree with your reasoning here, however. But maybe it's the nature of those changes that jedi_Ford_Prefect takes exception to? I've never bought a "Spider-Man" comic so I'll leave it up to more knowledgeable people to expound further.

 

Indeed, what I said was that Straczynski set out to do what Lucas did as well with the Star Wars universe. I don't dispute that Lucas tried to change our views on the established trilogy. The matter I was approaching was how one can be chastized for doing the same another did.

They could have been really moving, but again, ultimately I wasn't. I was talking about the approach, not the impression left on me or what I percieve as one left on the fanbase. Merely questioning.

Oh, I've given Lucas the credit he's due. I've always been fond of the design of the Naboo starfighters, I liked the idea of Anakin being a slave, and so on. There are elements that I feel had potential, and some that he did well in delivering, but as a whole, like I said, I was disappointed. My views have pretty much stayed the same, I just needed to find the right thread to express them in.

 

Agreed, TOTALLY. JMS has proven himself more than capable of doing complex and mature Sci-Fi stories with Bab 5. But despite whatever mistakes he might have made with other people's franchises, Lucas is still head honcho of Star Wars, and it is he who'd have the last say with any scripting that JMS might do. So what I'm talking about here is a partnership between the two, with each one brainstorming for each other for the greater good of the Star Wars story.

 

My apologies for my poorly chosen words. What I really meant to say was "less demanding amongst us". And yes, I am a very demanding viewer, one who wants complex and mature stories and characters, rather than a simple video game for a movie.

 

It's different because Lucas himself, not another writer, made those "revitalizing" changes, which all in all aren't quite as drastic as what JMS did with Spider-Man. Sure, Lucas changed a lot of what we assumed to know about characters like Anakin, Obi-Wan, the Emperor and Yoda based on the information we had in the OT, but there weren't any major changes in character dynamics. Lucas filled in a whole lot of blank space, while still mostly keeping within the lines of his own continuity. The farthest he might have stretched with this was the inclusion of Qui-Gon Jinn, which contradicted with Obi-Wan's discovery of Anakin and his claim that Yoda had been his previous master, but it all worked out with a bit of common sense, and again it was nothing comared to how JMS revised Gwen Stacy.

Generally, when an artist hands off their work to somebody else, the results are bad. Sometimes in the comics world, however, the results can be pretty good, as is the case with Marvel properties, immediately following the departure of their creators. Stan Lee handed off X-Men to Chris Claremont, who produced a long run of what is generally precieved to be the best stories the comic-book ever printed. When Stan Lee left The Incredible Hulk, Peter David eventually signed on and redefined Bruce Banner's story, turning it into a complex psychological adventure featuring multiple Hulks for Banner's multiple personalities. Finally, even when Stan Lee left his flaship The Amazing Spider-Man, Gerry Conway took over and wrote the death of Gwen Stacy-- so, you see it is possible for a new writer to come up with great material after the departure of a creator. It's just that after a long time you start seeing diminishing returns-- stuff like the Clone Saga, Sins Past or Joss Whedon. When writers who haven't created characters decide they can make major alterations to those characters, likely because they don't feel a proper emotional connection to entities they weren't responsible for in the long run, you get artificial, shallow stories.

Lucas hasn't changed his story so drastically to the point that characters become unrecognizable. JMS has, with a story that wasn't his own and that he's disrespected in the process. In my mind, Lucas is an artist, a visionary and a great storyteller, while JMS is just a schmuck with a pen.

 

You really haven't watched B5 properly then, have you? Maybe JMS hasn't done much else good other than his own creation (a.k.a. B5), but by saying this then B5 is crap too?

 

Sigh. I'm sorry. I haven't watched much B5, frankly, though I know I should give it a fair chance. I'm just very upset by what he did with my favorite superhero. Therefore, I can't really respect him as a writer.

Anyway. If I were to watch B5, should I start with the seasons, or didn't he also do prequel mini-series?

 

I should think -- having not seen it myself (for televised Sci-Fi: I'm a Trekkie and a Scaper) -- that "Babylon 5" must surely deserve the endless acclaim that is heaped upon it. Intriguing stories, involving characters, complex themes... the works. I can't see any reason why this wouldn't impress me when I finally watch it.

 

We can debate why Lucas didn't have [inster writer name] pen the PT until the cows come home. Why didn't he have Peter Jackson do it? Why didn't he have Lawrence Kasdan do it? Why didn't he have JMS do it? Well, all these writers have good qualities and bad qualities, they've all had pretty impressive praise in one form or another and they all have their fans that think they should have written the films. And I'm sure they would have improved things in one way or another. But i think its just going to be this circular type arguing because this is such subjective hypothetical debate. Pretty much anyone is a better screenwriter than Lucas, so with Lucas watching over them and steering the plot I'm sure any professional writer could have improved upon Lucas' drafts.

 

Then just imagine how I feel about what Lucas made Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith into in the Star Wars PT?! After growing up with bad a$$ Darth Vader, the No. 1 villain of the galaxy, only to find that he's really only little dweeb whinging Orphan "Are you an Angel?" Ani, I felt and still feel really peeved! And this character is written by the creator too, not just some secondary hack writer! The all time classic villain turned into a schmuck....

As for Spiderman, I can see your point, but I'd try to look at the original Stan Lee stuff as canon, rather than some reworks. There's so much original stuff out there spanning decades, that what JMS did can't possibly make any difference, can it? When I suggested that JMS should've joined Lucas in writing the PT, I didn't mean that he should've taken over. Lucas should always have the last say. But, after seeing what JMS did with his own space epic, then I really do believe that he would've had some really dynamite stuff to offer the project! Maybe if he were there to put his views across, then we might not have had things like Jar-Jar Binks, R2-D2 flying through the factory, C-3P0 becoming a battle droid, General Grievous doing Peter Sellers impressions, R2 having slapstick fights with battle droids, little spider droids taking apart star fighters during battle, Obi-Wan riding comical lizards etc. etc. etc. Granted, Lucas came up with all the Star Wars stuff in the first place, but I think he just slips into his "Disney phase" or "Three Stooges phase" way too often, and he really needs someone with a mature drama mind around in order to keep him from going overboard and to write some dynamic dialogue. I think JMS and Lucas could have really worked well together as brainstormers on the PT; much better than Kurtz and Lucas, or Kasdan and Lucas ever did, because JMS proved that he could do exhilirating and complex drama with B5.

Now, I have to remind you that these remarks are all coming from someone who also found B5 bloody boring when he first saw it on TV, but that's only because I saw bits and pieces. Now, when the show came out on DVD I gave it another chance. Yes, it does seem slow to begin with. Season 1, for example, has virtually no action in it at all! But, JMS antis up with every successive season. Remember, unlike Trek, this is one massive story like LOTR, with each and every episode being a piece in the massive jigsaw. What you might think to be a throw away plot or piece of info in, say, Season 1, more often than not has a much larger significance in the larger story later on. These mini plots are all going on simultaniously around each other and have effects on each other later on. An example can be made of the Shadows and President Clarke back on Earth. Although at first President Clarke and the Shadows seem to have nothing to do with one another, it transpires later on that President Clarke has been under the control of the Shadows all the time, hence his fascist nature!

Needless to say JMS turns the screw with every season as each plot thread comes together into one big story. So in Season 2 there's bit more action, then Season 3 there's a lot more (you'll love the end to Season 3! }, with most of the action culminating in Season 4 (enough action to make your eyes pop! ), and all with Season's 1, 2 and 3 plot threads to add tons of emotion to all the MASSIVE battles! I thought after that Season 5 had nowhere to go, but that was pretty darned good too! After this, I bet you you'll be wanting to get your hands on the B5 movies as well as I did (yep, he did write B5 movies! )!

 

Again. JMS wrote the whole Sins Past storyline of The Amazing Spider-Man. I wouldn't trust him to co-write another Holiday Special after that travesty.

LOL! Well, I agree it was a bad direction for the Spider-Man comic, but honestly, after Maximum Clonage, does it really matter? I mean, you trash JMS for this, but how is this worse than nullifying 200 issues worth of (much of it excellent) Spider-Man story-lines?

One thing I can say about the "Sins Past" is, even if I didn't like what it did to old characters, it was very well written. I found it intense and emotionally gripping (baring in mind I was disattached to its impact on the Spidey-verse since I hold to the view Spider-Man comics ended in 1995 and everything else is just a bad dream ).

 

As silly as it was, Maximum Clonage was the storyline that got me interested in Spiderman comics! I still think its a interesting if absurd storyline.

 

?All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows, that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one?s personality.? George Orwell

 

Amen to that, brother. I can attest to that personally.

 

Lucas has always sought help polishing his scripts. He wanted Lawrence Kasdan to do it, but he publicly said he didn't want to dilute Lucas' vision. He thought Lucas should do it himself because it's really his story. Frank Darabont was excited about the idea of helping out, but the prequels were a non-writer's guild production, and Frank had promised the writer's guild not to work on non-guild films. The rumor is that Carrie Fisher was an un-credited script doctor, but the point remains that Lucas openly admits that writing is not his strongest skill, and he has always tried to and gotten help with it.

That said, I think the prequels are as incredibly well put together as the classic trilogy (which weren't perfect either). I don't see the Star Wars Saga as "Lucas' folly", it's one of the finest accomplishments in the history of film.

 

Simply because the creator makes changes to a property, doesn't make them good by default. Lucas made some changes that alter not only the characters, but the very environment they live in. The Jedi's connection to the Force isn't one based on the quieting of the mind and accepting a form of discipline to achieve true potential, it was "sci-fi-ed" up and made into what amounts to a blood condition. One could rationalize that it "adds a new dynamic to how the Jedi tap into the Force," but one could say the birthing of Norman Osborn's twins adds a new dynamic to his killing Gwen Stacy. That was a "blank" that was "filled in," so to speak. "It doesn't change what we already know, but adds a new light to it." The Goblin still killed Gwen, Spider-Man still cared for her, but a new angle was taken to where Norman had extra reason for killing her other than just to torment Peter Parker. It's a double standard to say Lucas' revisions and "filling-in-of-blanks" can be explained with "common sense," but Spider-Man was ruined. And throwing in the notion of Lucas being the creator is simply a rationalization. A work's creator is just as capable of ruining it as anyone else, if not more so.

Generally, when an artist hands off their work to somebody else, the results are bad. Sometimes in the comics world, however, the results can be pretty good, as is the case with Marvel properties, immediately following the departure of their creators. Stan Lee handed off X-Men to Chris Claremont, who produced a long run of what is generally precieved to be the best stories the comic-book ever printed. When Stan Lee left The Incredible Hulk, Peter David eventually signed on and redefined Bruce Banner's story, turning it into a complex psychological adventure featuring multiple Hulks for Banner's multiple personalities. Finally, even when Stan Lee left his flaship The Amazing Spider-Man, Gerry Conway took over and wrote the death of Gwen Stacy-- so, you see it is possible for a new writer to come up with great material after the departure of a creator. It's just that after a long time you start seeing diminishing returns-- stuff like the Clone Saga, Sins Past or Joss Whedon. When writers who haven't created characters decide they can make major alterations to those characters, likely because they don't feel a proper emotional connection to entities they weren't responsible for in the long run, you get artificial, shallow stories.

Again, this is what I mean. You have Leia saying she has memories of her mother, from when she was "very young" and how they are "images, really," but we're "shown" that she died at childbirth. Now all of a sudden, "very young" can mean "childbirth," effectively changing Leia's childhood, which is an element that creates a character into who they are. It's a direct contradiction that isn't remedied with "commo

 

Simply because the creator makes changes to a property, doesn't make them good by default. Lucas made some changes that alter not only the characters, but the very environment they live in. The Jedi's connection to the Force isn't one based on the quieting of the mind and accepting a form of discipline to achieve true potential, it was "sci-fi-ed" up and made into what amounts to a blood condition. One could rationalize that it "adds a new dynamic to how the Jedi tap into the Force," but one could say the birthing of Norman Osborn's twins adds a new dynamic to his killing Gwen Stacy. That was a "blank" that was "filled in," so to speak. "It doesn't change what we already know, but adds a new light to it." The Goblin still killed Gwen, Spider-Man still cared for her, but a new angle was taken to where Norman had extra reason for killing her other than just to torment Peter Parker. It's a double standard to say Lucas' revisions and "filling-in-of-blanks" can be explained with "common sense," but Spider-Man was ruined. And throwing in the notion of Lucas being the creator is simply a rationalization. A work's creator is just as capable of ruining it as anyone else, if not more so.

Generally, when an artist hands off their work to somebody else, the results are bad. Sometimes in the comics world, however, the results can be pretty good, as is the case with Marvel properties, immediately following the departure of their creators. Stan Lee handed off X-Men to Chris Claremont, who produced a long run of what is generally precieved to be the best stories the comic-book ever printed. When Stan Lee left The Incredible Hulk, Peter David eventually signed on and redefined Bruce Banner's story, turning it into a complex psychological adventure featuring multiple Hulks for Banner's multiple personalities. Finally, even when Stan Lee left his flaship The Amazing Spider-Man, Gerry Conway took over and wrote the death of Gwen Stacy-- so, you see it is possible for a new writer to come up with great material after the departure of a creator. It's just that after a long time you start seeing diminishing returns-- stuff like the Clone Saga, Sins Past or Joss Whedon. When writers who haven't created characters decide they can make major alterations to those characters, likely because they don't feel a proper emotional connection to entities they weren't responsible for in the long run, you get artificial, shallow stories.

Again, this is what I mean. You have Leia saying she has memories of her mother, from when she was "very young" and how they are "images, really," but we're "shown" that she died at childbirth. Now all of a sudden, "very young" can mean "childbirth," effectively changing Leia's childhood, which is an element that creates a character into who they are. It's a direct contradiction that isn't remedied with "commo

 

Sigh. If you're going to quote my posts, please remember to actually quote me on all accounts, and not just dump a paragraph of mine into yours.

Anyway, as long as a story's original creator is behind its changes and redefinitions, bizzare and flabergasting as they may be, I can accept them, and get behind them. Even when it amounts to retconning-- Was Vader originally Luke's father? Was the Cigarette Smoking Man originally Mulder's biological father? Was Solid Snake originally a clone of Big Boss? Was Nina Meyers originally a traitor to CTU? Was BOB originally an evil entity which inhabited Leland Palmer? Did the Dharma Initiative and those funky numbers originally have anything to do with the crash of Oceanic flight 815? Was Gollum's ring of invisibility originally the One Ring?-- I'll respect it even when it doesn't quite make sense. As long as I'm still enjoying and appreciating a story as entertainment and a work of art (I'll admit that the X-Files might be stretching it on both counts) it doesn't matter.

Oh, and by the way, the introduction of midichlorians as a biological foundation of the Jedi's connection to the Force does not, in any way, compare with turning Gwen Stacy into a slut. Plain and ever lovin' simple.

 

Force potential has always been biological. Luke was strong in the Force because he was Anakin's son. It's always been genetic, Lucas just never hit you over the head with that until the prequels.

 

Why didn't he simply call it DNA then, rather than going to all the trouble of thinking up stupid names?

 

Midichlorians are derived from mitochondria and chloroplast, thereby giving it a similar scientific basis.

 

The first hint of this was ROTJ, Go-Mer-Tonic. "The Force runs STRONG in your family." --- Yoda to Luke, ROTJ

 

Hmm, just been reading about them. My answer to all of that? ZZZZ ZZZZ Never went in for all that deeeep bio stuff, you know.

 

Because Midichlorians aren't based on DNA, it's loosely based on Mitochondria. Mitochondria are something scientists have discovered in the real world that exists within all living cells. Unlike the rest of the cell, it has it's own separate DNA which means it's a microscopic life form that without which, life could not exist, and we would have no knowledge of the Star Wars saga.

Some scientists theorize that Mitochondria holds the secret to life itself. But others insist that their study isn't something we should be pursuing, because it could stand to explain "GOD" (sound familiar? Replace the word GOD with the Force, and now we have one of the prevailing arguments against the inclusion of Midichlorians in Star Wars).

In either case, Midichlorians do not explain the Force, just as Mitochondria do not explain God. It's just one more piece of the puzzle that ends up creating more questions than it answers.

 

Actually the first hint was in the concept that the Jedi could be made "all but exctinct" In ANH. If it wasn't biological, and instead was only a matter of training, that would just not be possible.