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Sauce

While attending a panel discussion at the Sundance Film Festival yesterday, George Lucas, the man who created the original Star Wars series—a phenomenon that launched an industry-wide push for increased spectacle and tie-in merchandising—and directed Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace—a slick effects reel that pushed film into the digital age, while also putting acting, pacing, and basic storytelling a distant second—has declared that movies today are “more and more circus without any substance behind it.”

Nearly in the same breath in which he attacked modern movies’ flash over substance, Lucas also defended that technological flash, saying, “All art is technology. That’s the one thing that separates us from animals.” (Well, that and opposable thumbs, the gift of speech, a broad emotional spectrum, and the ability to recognize that Revenge Of The Sith was much better than the two films that preceded it, but still pretty crummy.)

Lucas also took the time to take a shot at YouTube, saying he never could have predicted its success, and adding, “I would never guess people would watch cats do stupid things all day long.” Lucas does, however, believe that people would watch Hayden Christensen.

Go away George.

He isnt wrong...

There's a joke about pots and kettles going here, if anyone wants to do that...

On a more serious note, I think I disagree. There are many films that take style over substance,, but also plenty of films towards the more artistic/historical/deep end of the spectrum, and just as many that fill a middle ground between the two being both visually/technically impressive and also telling a good story.

It's really a bit of a non-issue.

I would have done the same thing. I was 5 when starwars 1 came out. Everybody was buying the chip bags to get the glow in the dark cards. Everybody was buying the toys. We all had books etc of the movies. I think he did something write. Of course I couldnt watch it today without being disappointed.

But something he learned when he made the deal for the first starwars movie, his money is made from the toys and merchandise sold after the film. Thats how he made his wealth as far as I know. And as a kid who grew up with his lame prequels, it worked.

The comments under the article were even funnier than the article itself.

 gorgon wrote:
Go away George.

I'm going to go see the new one simply to piss in his pot.I agree, he can go away any time now.

Meh TPM wasnt as bad as everyone made out. The opening sequence was well done, Neeson and MeGregor were watchable and it did have decent cgi.

Ok I forgot jarjar.

 Ratius wrote:
Meh TPM wasnt as bad as everyone made out. The opening sequence was well done, Neeson and MeGregor were watchable and it did have decent cgi.

Ok I forgot jarjar.

And Duel of the Fates. I can forgive that movie everything for bringing me that.

If he hadn't directed Phantom Menace, I'd probably listen. But He directed Phantom Menace, soooooooo....

>> Introduces Jar Jar Binks
>> complains about "lack of depth"

Go away. Nobody likes you.

The irony is his last 3 SW films lack of substance is exactly why I want to see the upcoming Disney/JJ film.

 motyak wrote:

And Duel of the Fates. I can forgive that movie everything for bringing me that.

Unless you mean the music, of course... Then you're forgiven. - The music was the only good part of the film, I found. Duel of the Fates was great. However, this was something that truly was incredibly clever.




Is actually...

 Compel wrote:

Unless you mean the music, of course... Then you're forgiven. - The music was the only good part of the film, I found. Duel of the Fates was great. However, this was something that truly was incredibly clever.

Pithy "duel" video aside... yeah, it really was the highlight of that film...


And also, George Lucas has little to nothing to do with the Music. That's all John Williams, who is a seriously awesome movie music composer (Jurassic Park, Jaws, Indiana Jones, E.T., and others).

 Ratius wrote:
Meh TPM wasnt as bad as everyone made out. The opening sequence was well done, Neeson and MeGregor were watchable and it did have decent cgi.

Ok I forgot jarjar.

The opening scene was a flat angle boring bit of overly wordy nonsense about space taxes with bland useless, incompetent villains. A





versus

 Bromsy wrote:

The difference there, for right or wrong, was that in A New Hope, they were introducing what ended up being a whole universe. They had to set the tone for something never seen before.... Episode 1 didn't have that "problem" as they were merely introducing Star Wars, a known entity to a new generation of people who'd heard about it, or reintroducing it to those old enough to have watched the older ones previously.

Not that I don't agree with you that Ep. 1 intro was flat, and boring, and you REALLY need to read the EU books, or other novels to get an idea of what's really going on. Just pointing out that there's a difference in where each film is "coming from"

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:


And also, George Lucas has little to nothing to do with the Music. That's all John Williams

Yes, that would be the logical conclusion of the point I was making...

I actually understood the plot of the Phantom Menace pretty well, so I don't understand complaints that it was too confusing, its just not the right film for the plot.

If depth and complexity is what you're seeking Star Wars is not it in any incarnation. The original 3 work so well because George Lucas was deliberately creating an archetypal myth in space. He took the oldest stories with the broadest proven appeal and married them to special effects which did not exist. These stories don't exist because they are deep- they exist because they are so hollow and shallow that we fill them with ourselves. They reflect our own nature back at us, and have done so for every culture across the globe, throughout history.

1 2 and 3 are a character biopic, where George Lucas tries to take us through how a good character falls to his tragic flaws. It's kind of a weird stab at space Shakespeare, and I think he went outside of his area of expertise. Lucas can do riveting adventure tales very well. What he can't do well is alter those tales to other formulas.


If anyone knows how to modernize archetypal stories, it is Disney. I have total faith that they will recapture the magic of the original Star Wars.

Oh I most certainly meant the piece of music. I didn't know that scene was called Duel of the Fates as well.

The Phantom Menace was not nearly as bad as people made it out to be, in fact, it wasn't really bad at all. The prequel trilogy gets a lot of hate for being a letdown relative to the original trilogy, but they are still decent films. Most of the hate directed their way is the result of 'well all the cool kids were doing it' type groupthink that makes people think Halo was a good video game or Nickelback is a terrible band.

I liked the original 3, but the style was very different to the prequels. The originals were about a band of random heroes who randomly come together and get stuff done. The prequels felt too forced, everyone had to know each other and the random was taken away. R2D2s origin seemed fine, but then darth vader built 3p0 (and forgot apparently), yoda played bingo with chewbacca, etc etc.

Oh, and jar-jar. I mean really, stereotypes aside what exactly was the character supposed to add to the movies other than generating hate from the viewers? I agree with what lucas said (it was a problem back in the days of highlander 2 even), but he can't put out the prequels like he did and then talk about the problem with the industry.

I think George Lucas is right on his opinions here, though it is a generalisation and therefore doesn't fit universally. However it is easy to see the faults in others work but not ones own.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:
The Phantom Menace was not nearly as bad as people made it out to be, in fact, it wasn't really bad at all. The prequel trilogy gets a lot of hate for being a letdown relative to the original trilogy, but they are still decent films. Most of the hate directed their way is the result of 'well all the cool kids were doing it' type groupthink that makes people think Halo was a good video game or Nickelback is a terrible band.

The prequel trilogy are watchable and therefore passable but not good films. These review tell you what you need to know, and are very watchable if a little heavy handed:

The best thing about TPM by far was Darth Maul and they killed him off and didn't use him enough.

The main issue with the phantom menace was all the cutesy stuff and cheap gags aimed at selling toys to 5 year olds. The Gungans where all annoying and the Trade Federation was the least threatening enemy imaginable. The Droid army was utterly incompetent.

There is always room for a bit of comic relief in a film, but TMP overdid it massively.

chaos0xomega wrote:
He isnt wrong...

Totally agree. They pretty much don't make movies anymore like Star Wars 1, Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark, etc.


What George doesn't understand is he's not capable of making movies with substance either anymore.

chaos0xomega wrote:
The Phantom Menace was not nearly as bad as people made it out to be, in fact, it wasn't really bad at all. The prequel trilogy gets a lot of hate for being a letdown relative to the original trilogy, but they are still decent films. Most of the hate directed their way is the result of 'well all the cool kids were doing it' type groupthink that makes people think Halo was a good video game or Nickelback is a terrible band.

But Halo was a good game once, and Nickelback has been a terrible band for many years. But I personally liked the majority of Phantom Menace. My only complaints are few. The force being microbes, that terrible child actor because he sucked at acting and jarjar of course. Otherwise I like it

 LuciusAR wrote:
The best thing about TPM by far was Darth Maul and they killed him off and didn't use him enough.

The main issue with the phantom menace was all the cutesy stuff and cheap gags aimed at selling toys to 5 year olds. The Gungans where all annoying and the Trade Federation was the least threatening enemy imaginable. The Droid army was utterly incompetent.

There is always room for a bit of comic relief in a film, but TMP overdid it massively.

Agreed. The absolute best characters are Qui-Gon-Jinn and Darth Maul. Jar-Jar could be written out of the movies completely, as could all the other cutesy stupid gak, and the next 3 would have been decent.

Qui Gon gets a nod at the end of Revenge of the Sith, but killing Darth Maul was stupid.

I read an article that purported (full disclosure: very little back up behind it) that George Lucas got annoyed at how much Boba Fett love there was. He hated that one of his bad guys was a better merchandising entity than some of the core good guys. In the original movies he has only a few minutes of actual screetime, and just a handful more in the expanded ones. So when he made the Phantom Menace, and realized that Darth Maul was exactly the kind of villain likely to generate Boba Fett syndrome all over again, the decision was to kill him off. They worked the screenplay so that Obi-Wan would get the kill after witnessing his master be killed by same, and giving some explanation as to why Obi Wan feels responsible for Anakin.


Now i dont know if its true, because Maul was a merchandising machine, so its a little doubtful. And they brought him back in the Clone Wars (which btw... Spark of Rebellion is okay, but its no friggin' clone wars. They need to bring that gak back. ). So not sure if its true or not, but its exactly the kind of spiteful thing i'd expect out of him.

 Orlanth wrote:

The prequel trilogy are watchable and therefore passable but not good films.

What bugs me so much is that they had potential to be great films.

There was a think on Youtube a while backm not sure if it's still there, called the Phantom Edit, and it's episodes 1-3 cut down into a single 2-hour film. And you know what? Cutting all but Qui-Gonn's death from TPM, condensing AotC down to 50 minutes and having RotS run for an hour actually worked, there was enough good material there to make it realy rather watchable.

Where it fell down for me was focusing on Anakin where I would have placed more focus on Obi-Wan (a lot of the latter's scenes were cut, so Jango only shows up to be killed by Mace and Grevious doesn't even get a look in. Dooku's death is reduced to a flashback and the battle over Coruscant gets cut completely), but it proved there is potential in the material. Things like making the two 'final battles' of RotS run through separately, rather than jumping between the two every 30 seconds, did wonders for those scenes.

If you're a SW fan with a couple of hours to spare, I suggest taking a look if it's still there, it does cut a lot of the crap.

If people think that what Lucas is saying is true they are unfamiliar with the past; if anything MST3K should have revealed that there have always been 'shallow' movies. A movie doesn't have to be Plan 9 levels of bad to still be a bad movie, and the prequels are still pretty bad movies and I would argue about their watch-ability as is. I've seen the cut Paradigm is referring to and it is better but it is also still rather painful.

The saddest thing about Phantom Menance as a prequel is you could completely cut it from the Star Wars series of films, and you'd literally be missing nothing. Nothing of import happens in PM. You could entirely skip it and start right at Attack of the Clones and you'd be completely up to speed.

There's a fan cut of the films that boils the Prequel Trilogy down into 2 hours, and only about 2 minutes of PM is present at all XD That's how irrelevant it is.