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

No offence taken, my friend. We're all entitled to see things our own way.

 

Seeing him post that officially makes him a huge hypocrite. I mean talk about double standards. I guess he's still traumatized about his ruined childhood

 

'scuse me? Are you talking about me? If so......why? Can you not correspond with me directly?

So, kindly tell me in what way my posting that makes me a hypocrite? Do you even understand the word?

 

This thread is salty.

Good times, good times.

 

if not listening to the angry fans gave us TCW then it was good that he did not listen.

 

Well, I am very happy that someone else also understood this.
I guess I got a wrong profession,as being an engineer,I should become also an English teacher in Romania,I am speaking this language quite decent .

 

Regarding Anakin's turn sequence ("what have I done") what do you tell to naysayers? I admit, at first it seemed odd for me too. I like it how it is, but it seemed a bit rushed back then when I first saw it.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I might point out that no one can accuse O'Hehir or Zacharek (who used to review movies for Salon.com) of being disgruntled prequel fans who are just dissing TFA because they're bitter. They both loathe the prequels. Zacharek is the one who sneered at the hairless Jar Jar's "dangling dreadlocks" in her review of AOTC, by way of "proving" what a racist caricature he is.

 

Indeed. And, for the record, Stephanie Zacharek wrote one of my favourite reviews for one of my favourite movies, "Lost In Translation":

http://www.salon.com/2003/09/12/translation/

I still remember that lush, captivating phrasing:

"The picture’s muted intensity isn’t just a vague mood — it’s a subtle but very specific type of narrative drive. Coppola (who also wrote the screenplay) is a stealth dramatist: Instead of unfolding in precise pleats, her movies unfurl like bolts of silk."

I'm placed in a bit of a quandary. But I can comfortably admit this much: whether she's extending kindness to a film or being cruel, that lady can really write.

 

I was reading an article in Sci Fi Now magazine about the upcoming Indy V , and it was basically a series of bullet points on what was wrong with IV and what would be better in V and almost every point was about how Lucas was to blame for all the problems in IV and his non-involvement in the next one would mean it'd be better .

it was just ridiculous , I mean by all means blame Lucas for what you think he did wrong , but this narrative that has developed where anything great he did is attributed to someone else and anything bad gets shifted onto him is just silly now .

 

To answer the title question, absolutely not. I might have some problems with the PT, particularly the characters, but admitly I do have a lot of respect for Lucas going in a different direction. One of the reasons I still enjoy the PT are the visuals which you can tell had a lot passion going into them, particularly to surprise people with what new things they would come up with.

 

Yeah, everything is certainly George Lucas' fault.... It's George Lucas' fault if you have become cynic and bitter when growing up... It's George Lucas' fault if you have some health problem... It's George Lucas' fault if you're poor... It's George Lucas' fault if you have constipation problems in your toilet... It's George Lucas' fault if our society has become poorer during the last 10 to 20 years... It's George Lucas' fault if there are offshore tax haven...

And while we are talking about tax haven, which are only contributing to make our societies poorer (you must certainly have heard stories about the Panama Papers), it is ironic to see that the Walt Disney company uses tax heaven to hide its money and its profits, while Lucas used the 4 billion $ he has earned when selling the franchise to make many donations. And further more, when Walt Disney was alive, he had very few considerations for his workers, and each time the labor union were asking for increasing their salaries or to improve the workers' working conditions, the only thing Disney was doing was to yell about some sort of communist revolt...

 

George Lucas acceptance speech at The People's Choice Awards in 2005 for ROTS winning best picture, "I want to thank the fans, as the only reason I make movies is for....the fans!"

 

Well, Lucas likes to switch it up.

"I was cleaning the fan switches."
-- Anakin Skywalker

 

She can write of course.

Though, it's interesting that when I saw those PT reviews of hers, I was surprised....I guess I expected to see a more open minded approach.

Then again, perhaps I am the close minded one....

Where's the gaddamn key??

 

Yes, she can definitely write. However, I think the "dreadlocks" remark was not a matter of "open-mindedness" -- it was a flat-out lie. Jar Jar doesn't have dreadlocks. Jar Jar doesn't even have hair. She pulled that straight out of her nether regions to have one more thing to (falsely) bash the movie for. And because of that, I lost some respect for her.

 

I agree, to me the best franchises are the one's that don't pander to any fan. They go their own way. Generally when the makers put something into the Franchise there is a reason for it, and even if it is not well received, they have a plan for it in the long term, that benefits the over all story. When they start putting what some fans (Of a very diverse fandom, in which it would be impossible to satisfy everyone) want into it, it starts feeling awkward, and disjointed. Some fans have a very clear idea of what they want, but when it is executed, it simply doesn't work. Some ideas might, but many fall flat. It is generally better for a franchise to ignore any outside input, and do what they want. I may not like everything in the franchise, but I respect even those elements I dislike, for being what Lucas initially intended them to be.

 

No... That's not what he says. Your quote... If it could be called that... Is wrong, removes much needed context, and adds the word "only" which alters the context of what Lucas was saying.

Here is the video of that speech that Lucas gave which was actually in 2006 for ROTS winning favorite movie of 2005:

http://cdn.peopleschoice.com/pca/videos/2006/PCA32_31.mp4

So for people that might not be able to see the video, Lucas speech is short and sweet:

So now with the full speech and correct quote we can add a little context to what Lucas is saying.

First of all, Lucas never uses the word "fans", a telling reminder of his relationship with the Star Wars fandom (at least to me).

Lucas starts out by talking about critics and studio executives, this adds context to his remark about "the most important people". Lucas isn't beholden to making sure the critics liked Star Wars or that a Studio Executive liked it. He was free from that system. So yes, the most important people, and why he makes movies were the audience, and not the studio machine that looks to maximize profits by forcing a filmmaker to placate to critics and studio execs (which in essence try to find the best way to placate to the audience, but, for different reasons)!

As a filmmaker, a story teller, Lucas realizes that in order for people to see, hear, understand the message(s) he's trying to tell in his story, there has to be an audience to tell it too, so he has to keep that in mind when he makes a movie. He doesn't have to keep in mind what critics or studio execs have to say!

However, It's still his story to tell, and not the fans story to tell! Making a movie and keeping in mind that there will be an audience watching it, is not the same as placating to a section of the fandom that already had a different movie play out in their heads in the years between ROTJ and TPM.

It was still his story to tell, not the fans. While the fans have every right to like or dislike his story, that doesn't mean he should or should have listened to disgruntled fans in order to appease anyone!

 

The Star Wars audience...Star Wars fans. Same thing. SW is a visual medium. The audience are the fans & the fans are the audience. Lucas clearly said he makes the movies for the audience/fans. Which is obvious. That's what popular entertainment is all about.

 

He doesn't say Star Wars audience, he just says audience. If he wanted to clearly say the fans, he would have said it!

What you said makes no logical sense in that when he made ANH there were no Star Wars fans, when he did Raiders Of The Lost Ark there weren't any Indiana Jones fans, when the siblings did the first matrix there weren't any fans, when Cameron did Terminator, there weren't any fans etc etc. I didn't go see The Revannent because I was a fan of that movie! So if we follow what Lucas is saying, and not your interpretation, they make movies for audiences. Not every movie made is part of a franchise these doesn't have a built in fandom. Lucas, in his comments, doesn't specify Star Wars, he just says it's why he (and other filmmakers) makes films!

If Lucas wanted to say he and the other filmmakers make movies for fans, in his case, specifically Star Wars fans, than he would have said it. He didn't specify and chose to say audiences.

It's my belief that he doesn't say fans because he knows better than anyone how fickle a fanbase is, and a filmmaker shouldn't try to appease fans, but, instead make the movie he wants to make, tell the story he wants to tell, keeping in mind an audience of all kinds of people are going to be watching, fans, casual movie goer, people who went to the theater because they heard from someone else the movie as good, children experiencing Star Wars for the first time etc etc! Furthermore, we have very recently seen a perfect example of Lucas referring to a studio making a movie for fans (not audiences) when he spoke lowly of Disney and what they did with TFA in the Charlie Rose interview.

There are many other times that Lucas speaks specifically of fans, when he talks about the fans expectations and how he's been criticized by fans. If Lucas wanted to say he did it for the fans, he would have. He doesn't say it because he doesn't make the movies just for the fans!

 

If you don't think that the audience is the same as the fans, then we should just stop debating now because that's EXACTLY who he is talking about!


And as for Lucas saying the SW movies never win awards? The Original SW was nominated for 10 Academy Awards in 1977, and won 6 awards! Now Sequels/Prequels for most franchises never win Awards (except The Godfather Part 2, and Lord of the Rings which they waited til the 3rd movie to give them all of the awards).

 

The full paragraph, in her unremittingly negative AOTC review, is even more snide and accusatory:


What’s more, Lucas has never met a stereotype he didn’t like. Jar Jar Binks, his dreads dangling and his patois pattering, makes a few brief appearances. (For what it’s worth, the preview audience I saw the movie with hissed when he came on-screen and cheered when he left.) We also get another chance to see the crooked moneylender we first met in “The Phantom Menace,” the guy with the insect wings and the big, hooked nose. This time, he has apparently sold Anakin’s mother down the river. But we know he’s not supposed to look Jewish or anything because, as everybody knows, Jews don’t have wings.


Ugly stuff. I'm definitely not "for" these opinions. And the problem is, these are a priori assertions: she just assumes, for example, that Jar Jar's ear-fins equate to "dreadlocks" because... other people have said so?

I also love, how, further down, she cites the likes of "Buffy", "Harry Potter", and "The Lord Of The Rings" as superior modern fantasies -- LOTR, modern???


What no one wants to admit is that modern fantasies like TV’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books have rendered the ever-more-convoluted machinations of the “Star Wars” franchise irrelevant. (I’d also argue that the first installment of Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” series stole the thunder of “Attack of the Clones” months in advance.) Both “Buffy” and the Harry Potter books relate directly to real life, instead of taking place in a sterile, self-contained universe. Both have done a much better job than the “Star Wars” series of creating a rich and complex mythology and, most important of all, they’ve given us characters we genuinely want to care about.


...all, remarkably, without saying one word about the outmoded hankerings for monarchistic rule in LOTR, or the class overtones in LOTR and Harry Potter, generally. Or, for that matter, how LOTR (the filmed version, at least) glorifies war and savagery, rather than mocking, defrocking, and condemning them, as the prequels do; not to mention the sheer dramatic sludge-fest of those movies (lots of walking, a bit of sword-slashing, and more walking...). Then there are deeper problems with the source material: e.g., Tolkien's sexual squeamishness, his relentlessly rural mindset. Star Wars is modern, LOTR is medieval. Is it possible to cram more ignorance into one review?

Nonetheless, I kind of like her review, so help me. It's not that I agree with anything she says. I just find it a useful capsule, full of aphoristic hate and glib summaries of a cavalcade of complaints made about AOTC, and the PT, generally, in the long years since she wrote it. It's the sort of "PT Criticism For Dummies" guidebook, basically, and a bit amusing on that front. Though, unfortunately, in its own small way, it's sobering to think that it might have given rise to, or at least fuelled, some of those negative memes, too. Symbiont circles 'n' all.

As for open-mindedness, if I may just add:

Having an open-mind means allowing someone else the right to speak and present their views; and being receptive to having one's mind changed. It does not follow that one has to accept what the other person says, however.

No. Lucas makes a subtle distinction, which mikeximus just cogently pointed out.

It goes right back to a post I made three weeks ago:

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...-disappointment.50040234/page-5#post-53526577


By "fans", Lucas clearly has a specific type of individual, or collective of individuals, in mind. It's telling, in my opinion, that he was careful not to use the term during his acceptance speech in 2005.

Watch this beautifully short video to gain clarity on the matter:



As I typed it out in that other thread, I'll also type it out here:


(From the European Premiere in London, England)

("What do you hope the fans will take away from seeing The Force Awakens?")

Uh, I don't know, it's hard to say what fans take away, uh, y'know, from the films, and sometimes they see the films very differently than you do" (simpering smile) "So, it's, uh, y'know, I learned that when I added seven frames to show that Han didn't just shoot somebody in cold blood" (big simpering smile) "ha-ha-ha-ha" (George turns away)


Lucas clearly has a complicated relationship with "the fans". When he accepted the People's Choice Award, he was saying the people had chosen, not the fans.

I mean, that's the very name of the award! The People's Choice Award. It was confirmation that he had met or exceeded the tastes and curiosities of a general audience, not the captious -- and increasingly belligerent -- demands of dogmatic, narrow-minded fans.

Would such fans -- fans, let's remember, who routinely called Lucas a hack, a thief, a racist, and a liar -- ever vote in big numbers to let Lucas receive such an award? Must be a very peculiar case of tough love...

Here is some more evidence. In 2004 (and obviously before Lucas could have received an award for a film that hadn't even come out), he was actually asked, point-blank, the following question, along with his answer:


AP: Do you pay much attention to fan reactions to your choices?

Lucas: Not really. The movies are what the movies are. ... The thing about science-fiction fans and “Star Wars” fans is they’re very independent-thinking people. They all think outside the box, but they all have very strong ideas about what should happen, and they think it should be their way. Which is fine, except I’m making the movies, so I should have it my way.


Source: http://www.today.com/id/6011380/ns/...talks-star-wars-trilogy-returns/#.Vz3JHpErKUk



There are also his remarks from Cannes in May 2005:


"I see it all as one movie, so I don't pay much attention to people who prefer one chapter or another chapter. But we've discovered that we have two fan bases. One is over 25 and one is under 25. The over 25 fan base is loyal to the first three films and they are actually in their 30's and 40's now, so that they're in control of the media, they're in control of the web, they're in control of everything basically. The films, which those people don't like, which are the first two, actually are fanatically bored by the other two. And if you get on the web and you listen to these conversations, they are always at each other's throats and the devotion for each group is pretty equal."

Source: http://www.festival-cannes.fr/fr/theDailyArticle/43120.html



Do these sound like the outpourings of a man reconciled to the idea of a unified, adoring fan base?

At best, in Lucas' mind, there are two sets of diametrically-opposed fans -- making fans, in and of themselves, an unreliable barometer of your movie's intrinsic appeal to a wider audience.


P.S. Thanks to Mike for going back and revisiting Lucas' acceptance speech. I had forgotten his exact response. Good work.

 

To suit your position you're assuming he made a calculated distinction & chose his words carefully. What's more likely is that Lucas isn't so pedantic about such things. In 2006 he was smart enough to realise the obvious: that the SW audience & SW fans are one & the same. Words are often interchangeable. He said audience, he could've just as easily said fans. What does it matter? He's telling us he makes SW movies for the SW audience. He said it, it's fact.

You're over-analysing. Lucas' comment wasn't in 1977. He was addressing a crowd of people in 2006, many of whom were cheering him & Star Wars as the phenomenon that it is. He was addressing his audience - aka the fans.

In any case this is hardly news. There's a litany of examples of his story decisions that were clearly designed to appeal to the fanbase. We've gone through them all so let's not rehash that particular debate. Suffice to say that many of the most blatant examples of fan-pandering in the Saga including EpVII have been those that GL has come up with.

As is his MO, he changed his tune about the importance of the audience/fans when it suited him, as in the recent interviews RE TFA. Add that to the long list of GL inconsistencies that is decades old. He always tends to say whatever suits him in the moment.

 

Frankly, I think Zacharek's AOTC review makes her sound like the bigot she is accusing Lucas of being, and her talk of various other franchises "rendering SW irrelevant" is wishful thinking.

 

There is a clear distinction between the two -- reasons for which, per the evidence I presented above, are manifest to any objective reader.

What's pedantic is your self-serving conflation of the constructs "audience" and "fans" -- as if there is no distinction between the two in Lucas' mind, when evidence exists to show that there most certainly is.

Ah! The old Mark Antony technique of mentioning something that will not be mentioned:

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/apophasis

I think you know full well that there is no good evidence, whatsoever, that Lucas has ever made story decisions based on desiring to win favour with a subset of his audience.

In fact, that notion rather goes against the grain of the man, on multiple levels.

LOL!

Lucas extensively called Disney out with a beautiful broadside on the Charlie Rose show (which he never fully recanted; despite retracting his "white slavers" comment). Retro film, fear of creativity, remember?

It clearly wasn't his choice to flood TFA with nostalgic callbacks (e.g., X-wings, TIE Fighters), or to construct a narrative, even a whole filmmaking style, based largely around pandering and recapturing old glories; and the less said about that marketing campaign of last year, the better.

The most facetious thing is you designating the movie "EpVII"; that's a more generous ascription than the intellectual copyright holders are prepared to make! Disney went to some lengths to give people the impression that TFA is actually more of a sequel to the original trilogy than an "episode" in a larger saga. Vanity Fair was forced to remove the episode moniker from a puff piece on the movie and print a correction; and the "episode" numbering (unlike with the prequels) doesn't appear in any of the trailers, posters, home video box art, or the tsunami of merchandise put out for the film.

That's a flat-out lie. He didn't change one note.

Lucas is far, far more consistent than you seem dog-determined to make him out to be.

At the TFA European premiere, he could only offer a rather tepid, "I think it's a movie that the fans will really love", and when pushed to put a gold sparkle on that remark -- "And that's the most important thing, after all, isn't it?" (one stupid question that annihilates years of Lucas asserting quite the contrary) -- Lucas could only half-heartedly remark, with obvious reluctance, "Ya":





And then, as I just cited in my last post, there is that other interview from the very same event:





("What do you hope the fans will take away from seeing The Force Awakens?")

Uh, I don't know, it's hard to say what fans take away, uh, y'know, from the films, and sometimes they see the films very differently than you do" (simpering smile) "So, it's, uh, y'know, I learned that when I added seven frames to show that Han didn't just shoot somebody in cold blood" (big simpering smile) "ha-ha-ha-ha" (George turns away)


But keep repeating your silly distortions, okay?