ST George Lucas and the Mystery of the Treatment

Revenge isn't factoring in here, c'mon. He sold his life's work to a studio because Lucasfilm *is* a studio. You got him on commentaries for the movies remarking upon the irony in his wanting to make weird avant garde silent films in his garage and essentially becoming the head of a technology conglomerate that happens to make movies every now and again. He was a CEO for far longer than he was ever a director, or even a storyteller.

It's not strange at all that a man who became the studio system would sell his studio to another studio.

 

Unless it involves developing Skywalker Ranch.

 

Ha, I admit that did make me laugh.

The only problem is - if George's revenge hinged around selling Disney a stinker of a story, they seem to have seen through it. Hence they ditched it!

So maybe it was a turd after all

 

Sure, George doesn't have a material stake in this aside from the significant amount of Disney stock he acquired when he sold his company, stock that will appreciate or depreciate depending on the success of future Star Wars offerings.

I also find it odd that one would still call Lucas an "independent filmmaker" as if the term means the same thing for him that it does for Paul Thomas Anderson. His company was just as much a corporate entity when he was in charge as it is now that KK is in charge. The only difference is that it seems to be running much better now.

 

George secured the Lucasfilm employees big time by selling to Disney. And he just collected a $ 2 billion profit from his Disney stocks. Everybody`s happy.....

EDIT: He also got a girlfriend and a new baby. And could do whatever he wants.

 

Not even Star Wars is enough to put a dent in Disney. His money is safe. At best there could be a small percentage drop and you already said he's rich enough to not give a damn about that. He was never a money man.

PTA is not an independent film maker. He still has to get funding. He may be de facto free to do what he wants, but that's only because he operates with relatively small budgets and has a proven track record. Lucas had his own studio and could splash over a hundred million on the significant risk that was TPM. He's pretty much the only one in the industry with that kind of freedom. He is perhaps the only true independent we've ever known. LF may have been a corporate entity, but the movies produced certainly were not. Lucas was always able to separate the business from the art, despite claims to the contrary.

Running much better? Based on what?

 

All independent filmmakers do. Independent doesn't mean they pay for the movie themselves. Independent means that the studio distributing the movie didn't either a) put many (or any) conditions on the storytelling or b) isn't considered one of the major studios in the film industry, and their money can't be traced back to any of the larger media corporations considered to be "major."

Your definition of "independent" as the rest of the industry actually sees it is busted.

 

It's running much better based on the fact that we are now seeing a steady stream of Lucasfilm/Star Wars products entering the marketplace. Basically, they're actually producing content now, they weren't before.

I applaud you on redefining "independent filmmaker" according to your own understanding of the term, but when people refer to "independent films" or "independent filmmakers" they're not talking about some rich individual who puts up their own fortune to make their own movies, they mean people who produce films outside of the studio system with money provided by private investors. So yes, PTA is an independent filmmaker.

Whether or not his money is in grave danger, he still, literally, has a stake in the fate of his former company.

 

It would be more accurate to call Lucas an independent corporatist. He didn't want other telling him what to do, but he has no problem telling others what to do. And he's the king of marketing and selling commodities. His films are not avant garde, but popular entertainment. He's known for profiting off of characters for their look, not their narrative function. That's why he sold generation after generation the action figures and ships that were marginal elements of the film narrative.

Some people act like Lucas isn't a capitalist when he's the essence of one. He's less of an artist in the avant garde sense and more of a commercial innovator.

True independent filmmakers don't profit off of popular ("archetypal") conceptions of heroism; they challenge them.

 

That depends on whether or not the stream of products end up being successful. I see plenty of pit falls in saturating a market with sub par efforts.

Well, I interpret the term literally and to me that means total control over your product. PTA may have that, but not on the scale Lucas did. In any case it makes no difference since we can all agree Lucas had creative freedom over SW, and that's the point here.

But enough of this talk about stocks. That is completely inconsequential to us fans. What I was getting at was if Lucas has a stake in future SW movies being artistically successful. Now that I'll argue is completely up in the air.

 

Many studios grant filmmakers "final cut" of their films, meaning that they have the final creative decision. And yes, Lucas did have total control, which some including myself would argue was a detriment to the quality of those films, not an asset.

But the term "independent filmmaker" as it is often used in film criticism and journalism, carries a certain implication of credibility, validity, and integrity that, imo, doesn't really apply to Lucas's work. He was independent in a technical sense, but his aesthetic did not match that of what we commonly refer to as "indie" or "independent cinema."

And of course there's potential that Lucasfilm releases some bad content, but The Clone Wars wasn't really that good, neither were the prequels...

 

Many is an exaggeration. Only a handful of proven, bankable directors like James Cameron is afforded that freedom. And they appear to be a dying breed.

Only because the vast majority of what we call indie films are made on low budgets by directors who have very niche styles. Lucas' indies just happen to also be blockbusters. I'd say his aesthetic is exactly what you would call independent. I would compare it to the works of Kubrick and Antonini, not Spielberg or Nolan. His themes are far and beyond anything else that draws the same kind of audiences he does. Him and James Cameron for example are both hugely successful, but worlds apart when it comes to world building and drama.

Some say you can't be artistic and massively successful, I say Lucas proves you can be.

 

He is my favorite film maker of all time.

 

That's your opinion. I say they are archetypal because they work. That doesn't mean he isn't original. His problem is more that he is too original. If he just wanted to rehash archetypes he would have remade the OT. Instead he built a new story around those archetypes and got an incredible amount of heat for it. Yet he didn't stray and continued his own vision.

There are loads of fans who consider the Lucas Saga the highest form of art. For me he is up there with our very greatest, and his two first films prove that he doesn't need big budgets and effects to make excellent films. Lucas was always art first, everything else second.

 

Final cut is common among "A-List" directors, but it is a commodity they lose if they turn in a bad feature. For example - Nolan probably had final cut after The Dark Knight, and lost it after Interstellar. But in the general sense, sure, it's rare.


Comparing Lucas to Kubrick is like comparing my six year old nephew's basketball skills to Michael Jordan's. To even suggest Lucas has a strongly defined "aesthetic" is a case of being convinced that the emperor's wearing clothes. His themes are blisteringly simplistic and only appear to have more depth than other films because you and others have elected to study and analyze them more than other films.

Look, I love Star Wars. I love it just as much as all of the folks on this board. But that doesn't mean I'm going to blind myself to its flaws or convince myself that it's something it's not. I don't need to validate my love for star wars by insisting that it's better than other things. On the flip side, just because I think that AotC is a singularly bad film doesn't mean I can't like it either.

 

He did leave his employees in good hands and he also cashed in. KK might very well be the right person to keep the franchise afloat.

But I find the notion that someone like JJ will do SW justice when it comes to the artistic merits highly dubious. In fact I consider it impossible. And Lucas must have suspected a safe choice like him was exactly what Disney would end up doing with so much money involved. Either he is completely oblivious to his own worth as a filmmaker (possible) or it is simply not a big deal to him that SW from now on will be more run of the mill fare than the unique vision he had for it.

 

Lucas encouraged JJ to take the job.

Even conceding that he's basically the diet coke version of Spielberg, JJ Abrams is a much more assertive, stylistic, and effective director than Lucas could ever dream of being.

 

George cares about the legacy of Lucasfilm. And he cares that the films are reasonably successful (he has said he hopes they do well). He picked Kennedy. She did not seek the job.... he sought her. He wouldn't have even bothered to hand-pick a successor if he didn't care. He would have just sold the company, cashed the humongous check and let Iger worry about it.

 

I'd say you are massively overrating Kubrick. He was a brilliant visualist and a great craftsman, but he doesn't even come close to Lucas in emotional depth and characters. There's a reason all his work are genre films based on other peoples work. The man didn't have much of personal vision. His main goal appears to have been to show the world how great he was.

Not as much as me I suppose. And there's no need to suggest my opinion doesn't come from a rational space just because it disagrees with you.

 

The plot thickens.

JJ is at least two divisions below Lucas in anything that matters. Are you even a Lucas fan? The diet coke version of Spielberg is better than Lucas? Man, Spielbergs best films were written by Lucas.

 

This is almost as misguided as your definition of what "independent filmmaker" means.

Emotional depth and characters can be important to storytelling. It isn't always. And even if I agreed with your notion that the hallmark of a great filmmaker is that they get actors to turn in great perormances that plumb serious emotional depth and bring to life compelling character arcs, I'm not going to agree that Stanley Kubrick didn't know how to do that, and doesn't have a filmography filled with examples of just that within it.

The most thematically complicated film of Lucas' career is his first, and even then, it's not all that complicated. It's a straightforward sci-fi satire of consumer culture. But it's also really exciting visually, the character work is subdued but still worthwhile, and it's often very funny, and intelligently so, too.

If anything, it's the closest Lucas ever got to Kubrick.

While I'm at it:

1) THX 1138
2) Star Wars
3) American Graffiti
<large-ish gap>
4) Revenge of the Sith
<gap>
5) The Phantom Menace
<big gap>
6) Attack of the Clones.

Schindler's List, Jaws, Close Encounters, Empire of the Sun...

Hell, he didn't even write the screenplay for Raiders, which is what you were probably referring to. He helped come up with the story, yeah. But he didn't write that movie. Kasdan did.

 

Lucas is an innovative film maker overall, but he is a terrible director. He is legendary for giving his actors almost no direction, other than, "faster, more intense." He also writes godawful dialogue.

But he changed the way movies are made. He had a revolutionary sense of how to make movies technically, and drive for VFX innovations really did shape genre movies in the late 20th Century. But like any human, he has his flaws.

I personally think Abrams' strengths are directing actors, and he has (in my opinion) a great visual sense.... though in Star Wars, he will obviously be working with the legacy that George set visually.