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

There's another inescapable comparison to draw here. Lucas, by his own admission & by the assessment of those closest to him is a shy & reserved introvert. This seems to be at the heart of his problems with directing. He's not comfortable dealing with so many people, esp when he's supposed to be the guy in charge. Even moreso when they're outgoing extroverted types like actors often are. His famous lack of direction & interaction with the actors can probably be traced to these issues. Let's recall his quote when he said he'd rather be at home in bed watching tv than on a film set. Editing on the other hand allows him to do one his favorite things in the quiet peaceful environment of an editing room. With one or two other like-minded people. Car racing, another individual pursuit that he loves. He talks about how as a young guy he used to love driving around with his dog Indiana. Directing on a crowded film set, attending premiere's...this type of thing seems to be well out of his comfort zone. Why by his own words he "hates" script writing must come down to the work itself. McCallum describes how incredibly difficult he finds it.

Hmm I wonder if you really don't, bcs what I said was so clear & simple I'd find that hard to believe. What I said all along was that IMO if he'd liked rather than disliked/hated the roles of writer & director he would've spent more time on them & been better at them. That's true of most things that people do. Hardly a controversial theory. At the same time whether he liked, loved or hated those jobs back then is irrelevant to the product he has already produced. What we see on screen is what it is. We judge it on its merits. That he didn't have a swell time making it does not affect those merits - once the movies have already been produced. Understand now?

 

Yeah I think this basically nails the reason why he probably doesn't feel as "at home" on set as he would in the editing room. Speaking as an introvert myself, it's not really something that goes away as you get older. Even though you can train yourself to make little changes, you're still an introvert at heart; having to deal with large amounts of people for too long is draining, while doing a more solitary activity is energizing. And as we've seen with Lucas, it does look like his overall people skills have improved over the years. But at his core, he's still the guy who truly comes alive in the editing room whilst probably finding the on-set/location portion of it to be especially draining.

 

"The auteur theory of film actually is very true if you know directors, because they are very much like their movies. And in the case of somebody who writes and directs, you know, it is my life. I mean, everything I write is my life. I’m not writing some sort of hypothetical thesis on something. I’m writing a story that I have to get extremely emotionally involved in because it’s going to take two or three years of my life to do it. So I can’t just sort of say, ‘Oh this will be fun,’ and knock it off in a week. This is like a marriage. You have to be in love with this thing for at least four or five years, and probably for the rest of your life." - George Lucas

 

There's certainly truth in this. That said, introverts are not necessarily bad at leading large groups of people (indeed, many world leaders are introverts, such as President Obama). It's just that the experience of interacting with lots of people drains them rather quickly, while extroverts get progressively more energized in the same environment.

 

What do you know? Direct quote from GL. Yay!

MJ

 

Was already covered early in that discussion: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...mbittered-fans.50034387/page-85#post-53772566

 

Are you gonna read GL mind again ?

MN

 

Why would I when I can read his words

 

Give it up. I won. You said it yourself.

MJ

 

Darth Downunder

but you previously said it does affect those merits :

.

 

Consistency, consistency, consistency...

 

Oh God

Not after the fact. It doesn't affect what we now see on screen. Does it? The movie is the movie. Yet it could've affected the potential quality (of writing & direction) while it was being produced. Couldn't it?

A simpler example. You're looking at a painting. You like it. You're then told that the painter hated painting even though he was pretty good at it. Does that instantly change the quality of the painting in any way? Of course not. If the painter had loved painting & practiced it far more could that painting have been even better? Of course.

Are we good or should we get a whiteboard & go over it again?

 

you said it does , you said

and that's 'after the fact' as you put it .

but you said :

c'mon DD you've gotta make up your mind .

.

 

No it's not. Now I see where you're getting confused. The term "would have" which I used is a grammatical construction known as conditional perfect. Essentially it means you're using future tense but from the point of view of a time before the event you're talking about. So the comment "IMO the PT would've been better if he liked & embraced those two jobs more" is not after the fact, it refers to before or during the time Lucas made those movies. This difference in tense is the crucial thing you haven't grasped yet. Lucas' lack of enjoyment in making them is irrelevant now, since they've already been made. They are what they are. However it could've been very relevant at the time he was making them. If he'd liked directing & writing them more he may've done a better job.

 

The grammar argument appeared so it is time to change the topic or lock the thread. But I personally prefer to discuss if Lucas was/wasn‘t right to listen to the so called embittered fans. Well, embittered or no, I see that many fans here misunderstood what is Phantom Menace. No, it is not a prologue, it is Act I. we already discussed the operatical (althought I would call that theatrical) sense that can be seen in SW and especially in PT.
The scenes change by virtual courtains, the dialogue is operatic, the costumes, the Code, etc. But is also that because as Lucas pointed out, it is one big movie in 3 parts, or Acts and Menace is the first one. The story of Menace is coherent with the rest of the story (the Naboo crisis leads to Palpatine‘s election), it introduces the main characters, etc. In the same time I understand why many people missunderstood that. First, it is 10 years before AOTC, so large distance in time between it and the rest of the episodes. Second, Anakin is a child. This is important for his story and character arc: to show Anakin as regular, innocent child (he has a hard life but he is not mini Vader as maybe some fans thought and he shouldn‘t be.

 

I have another post planned.

 

With that new avatar you have, I'm more frightened by this statement


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Bit hard to take Funkhauser seriously

 

Oh man. I though "droid, please" was, well, I'll stop there.

 

It was only one funny line I remembers from TFA and that was Han Solo's "I used to have a bigger crew.".

 

I made a joke But if we speak seriously, I cannot remember quotable lines in this movie. 'Droid, please' is just short and absurd, that's why I remembered it.

 

Tell that to Kanjiklub.

 

Hah, OK, now that one was gold lol

 

I don't know who are they (?) but the absurdity of this sentence is double: first, as droids are instruments made to serve and obey. So begging them is just out of place in the SW universe. Even R2D2, a very peculiar droid never disobey to a direct order and that says a lot. Second, the most peculiar droids have their own 'names', i.e. some kind of pseudo-personality, and Finn even doesn't call it personally, but just droid... Anyway, this thread is not dedicated to TFA. I just used this as example that the most quotable lines are the most operatic ones and this one lacks of the operatic 'sense' of SW lines completely.