Lucas Returning to Digital Animation

deadwood writes "It seems Lucas is creating a Digital Animation studio as a subsidiary of ILM, according to this Yahoo! article.
Lucasfilm Animation is created roughly 17 years after George Lucas sold Pixar to Steve Jobs. I wonder if Episode VII-IX would be a good choice as first projects?"

Comments

All the CG in the world...

[Guano_Jim]

...won't help a bit if your script sucks. Films like Monsters, Inc. succeeded not because they show off the latest and greatest in rendering power, but because they have an engaging story and interesting characters.

You could have done Monsters, Inc with sock puppets and it still would have been entertaining.

Lucas hasn't recently shown that he can deliver the plots and characters that are necessary to make an animated film work.

Re:Dear God No!

[Tarindel]

It wasn't the technology that was the problem with I, II (and, no-doubt, III), but piss-poor stories

It's not even that the concepts behind the stories were so bad. It's that the screenplay adaptions of the stories were absolutely horrid and the casting was worse (with a couple notable exceptions). Then, to make matters worse, Lucas decided to aim Episode I at youngsters in an attempt to capture the imagination of a new generation (via devices such as Jar Jar and the overly-long video-game-influenced pod racing scenes). However, in reality he not only failed at this, he also managed to upset a fairly large portion of his ever-aging fanbase.

The reason Pixar succeeds so well is simple. It's not because the stories are all that fabulous - because in reality they're pretty simple. It's because they're well written, have a great mix of humor/action/etc, and most of all, they have an awful lot of heart.

The best thing that could happen to this unit is for Lucas not to have any control over it. At this point in his career, he should stick to what he's good at, which is the technical side of film-making.

Re:Star Wars = 6

[Thud457]

" Han shot first "

Is that available on a XXXL Hanes T at thinkgeek?
That statement says worlds about Lucas, Hollywood, and America today.

Pixar does exactly what Lucas can't, right?

[ianscot]

The biggest strength Pixar has is that it really hones the personality of a character with tiny little well-considered style points. The writing's okay, it's not completely rote Disney crap, but it's the little stuff in a character like Woody that makes it work.

Think of that first short with the lamp, way back -- who'd have thought they could make it so expressive? Or all those birds on the line; they all look alike, but the little character touches set each one apart.

George Lucas, on the other hand, can have someone like Samuel L. Jackson in a movie and make him deeply boring -- even as a Jedi Freakin' Knight! Does anyone think Lucas improves his actors? Anyone? Does he direct for nice little character touches??

What George wants this splinter company to do is make huge, distractingly detailed landscapes and gratuitously gigantic battle scenes. Take a look at the battle at the end of Episode II; that's what he thinks computer animation is about. He's as bad with character touches as any director out there.