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George Lucas Struggles to Reinvent Himself
GuyMannDude writes "Wired has a lengthy article about what lies ahead for George Lucas. Originally a member of a maverick group of young filmmakers who were at odds with the thinking and methods of the major studios, he has now become the most financially successful director in history by marketing the ultimate popcorn fodder. With the Star Wars saga ending, Lucas now struggles with how to reinvent himself." I imagine it will be hard to get away from Star Wars, given that he's producing television shows set in the fictional universe.
and He estimates that he gave two decades of solid work to Star Wars, not including a hiatus to raise three adopted kids as a single father.
Obviously the time has come for payback from his fans.
How many young Star Wars couples would be willing to raise their very own George Lucas Love Clone?
Come on, George. Donate some nuclei. Leave the midichlorian, er, mitochondrian DNA to the egg donor.
Face it -- its the right thing to do.
Bit serially, this guy has done a lot for digital cinema and his accumulated capital seems most appropriately put to use cultivating young talent. The academic cinema schools where he and his contemporaries got their start just aren't what they used to be but he could certainly help advance the state of the art in home "home schooled" digital movie production.
This would get kids in the hinterlands producing movies from their own myths, starting from the same age Spielberg was when he first got a hold of a movie camera.
Probably the best way to do it would be to get together with someone like John Carmack and define a series of prize awards for technologies that are critical to bringing the cost of movie production down.
Seastead this.
Now that his first group of fans has grown up, there is a whole new area of filmmaking that he hasn't explored yet: Star Wars porn. I mean who wouldn't pay good money to see a wookie getting it on with a bunch of ewoks?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Must ... Reinvent ... Self ... ;-)
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He could always reinvent his movies.
Personally, I'm waiting for a sequel, video games, and action figues for American Graffiti.
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Lucas should have stuck to what he was good at: having a fertile imagination, having the knack of transferring the detailed worlds he created to the big screen and being a very successfull business man in terms of negotiating with the big studios merchandising rights and so on.
Unfortunately he made the huge mistake of trying to be director again, instead of just a producer. IMHO, the best Star Wars movies where episodes V and VI, both of which he didn't direct.
Maybe he could come up with something totally new and awe inspiring with SOME story this time. Gone are the days where eye candy was enough to make a great hit.
Certainly in five or ten years we'll get new, blu-ray hi-def versions of I thru III, with Lucas saying in interviews "I added the new scenes to get the movie I really wanted, which I didn't get back then."
He isn't a great filmmaker. He isn't even a passable mass-market filmmaker. He's a guy who made a cult hit that happened to be a global hit.
And then he made a series with Spielberg.
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For starters, he could make the fourth Indiana Jones movie that the fans have been waiting for years. And he doesn't have much time left, given Harrison Ford's age...
George Lucas is backing the development of a 350 million dollar studio that will combine the functionality of movie special effects with the equipment for video game animation and design features. By combining these two very closely related fields into one mega-location, G.L. is going to ultimately have an impact on entertainment that goes well beyond the scope of "Star Wars" - but even with that titanian accomplishment, there is little chance he will be remembered as such. Ultimately, the innovation that gave him his status is the same innovation that will be tagged to his name inside every electronic wikipedia of the future, and he can't do anything to change that. While many of us rightfully bashed Lucas' work on the first and second (fourth and fifth) Star Wars movies, myself included, he deserves the credit he has earned as a producer and financeer of special effects. Jar Jar sucks, but G.L. will always be a hero in my book for the contributions he has made to computer animation and special effects over the course of his career.
I would just DIE to see a prequel of America Grafiti. Imagine a series about young Ron Howard and company.
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"I've earned the right to fail, which means making what I think are really great movies that no one wants to see."
This is in contrast to his previous strategy of making really bad movies that everyone wants to see.
> Trust me George... you can only go up from here if you follow
> these simple instructions.
This is getting annoying.
George Lucas doesn't read Slashdot, and he probably never will.
We're all sorry he did not use your saliva-encrusted fan fiction as the basis for his script for Episodes I-III, but millions of people enjoyed the movies anyway.
Comments such as yours and of the two dozen other minority ranters on Slashdot are getting irritating to no end. If you don't like the movies, fine -- click on Preferences, then click on Homepage, and de-select Star Wars. There! wasn't that easy?
I hope George Lucas makes Jar-Jar a freakin' Jedi Master in Episode III just to piss off the "George Lucas killed my childhood" crowd.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Everyone's so quick to bash Lucas, but seriously, have you people been paying any attention to his media campaign lately? He's really coming off like he's sorry for ep 1 & 2, and the whole special edition thing... I mean, ep is gonna be PG-13?!? He's said it'll be "Star Wars goes to Hell," for chissakes. That doesn't sound like the words of a man milking some cash-cow for all its worth... If it were, he'd be coming with more furry little ewaks.
Say what you want, but Lucas has always stuck to his guns over the years, creating HIS vision on the screen, not kowtowing what to a bunch of acned sci-fi dorks want to see. That takes integrity. Only time will tell if he can withstand the onslaught of attacks from lesser "fans" who probably never even filmed so much as a school play!
No, Lucas was a film-school hack who's never made a really imaginative movie. His one claim to serious filmmaking was American Grafitti, which has some technical highpoints, but made no real attempt to tell a story. Then Joseph Campbell taught him how mine the mythological tradition -- which in practice came down to finding cool movies and ripping off their better scenes. The result was Star Wars, which I've always seen as the cinematic equivalent of a theme park ride. Which a lot of people seem to like -- but it's not an achievement that qualifies you as a "Maverik Filmmaker".
Maybe Lucas could refocus his energies on becoming a universal first poster to Slashdot forums.
M
Recursive pot, meet recursive kettle!
Well, he's been doing mostly Star Wars for the last decade or so. But before that he helped write Indiana Jones, and a lot of people thought that was pretty good. He also did the story for Willow, which a lot of people liked.
And as another poster mentioned American Graffiti was quite good, with the very, very young Harrison Ford. Maybe what he needs to do is rewatch American Graffiti, which is a very different movie from everything else he's done. That's a whole non-scifi/fantasy career track he abanandoned 30+ years ago he could revisit. Perhaps he should stop trying to tell big stories and tell little ones instead.
You know, before I answer any more questions there's something I wanted to say. Having read all your posts over the years, and... I've spoken to many of you, and some of you have traveled... y'know... hundreds of miles to be here, I'd just like to say... GET A LIFE, will you people? I mean, for crying out loud, it's just a movie!
I mean, look at you, look at the way you're dressed! You've turned an enjoyable little job, that Lucas did as a lark for a few years, into a COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME! I mean, how old are you people? What have you done with yourselves?
You, you must be almost 30... have you ever kissed a girl? I didn't think so! There's a whole world out there! When I was your age, I didn't watch movies! I LIVED! So... move out of your parent's basements! And get your own apartments and GROW THE HELL UP! I mean, it's just a movie dammit, IT'S JUST A MOVIE!
I think that sums it up.
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What does that leave? Producing. You give the cash and some ideas, let others do the work.
Actually, you've missed what he's really good at and what the article hints at - editing the film into something that is very watchable.
Lucas has an amazing ability as a visual and audible story teller. He has the ability to place the viewer in the middle of the scene and make them feel as if they are a part of it. It is important to note that he worries about the sound just as much as the picture and they do merge seamlessly together.
He's the anti-Kevin Smith. Lucas has saddled himself with a story that everybody knows how it is going to play itself out, but he has managed to create some visually entertaining pieces of film along the way. Smith is the opposite, when he's at the top of his game you don't know what to expect at the end, but you know you'll be entertained by the dialog and bored by static cameras four to six feet from the talent.
The idea of Lucas being the anti-Kevin Smith got me to wondering what you would get if they were to collaborate. Smith would provide the story, dialog and characters while Lucas would make the movie visually and aurally interesting.
Hmmm... Kevin, if you're reading this, have your people talk to my people and we'll talk.
myke
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I disagree. I know the standard Slashdot claim is that Lucas is only in it for the money. Squeezing the last dollars out of your childhood memories, etc.
But I don't believe it.
Look at the way he lives. Watch any of the biographies on him. He has never been someone in it for the money. See Donald Trump for an example of how someone in it for the money lives. George could afford a wildly lavish lifestyle. But he doesn't live it.
All the money goes back into the process. ILM. THX. Skywalker Sound. LucasArts. Etc. He likes the job. He likes creating stuff. He likes being a part of new filmmaking technology. That's what he is in it for.
I'll readily agree that he isn't necessarily very good at making movies. At least, not at making good movies. But he hit it big with Star Wars (ANH), and has leveraged it to continute doing what he likes. Fox studios would do anything to get 7-9 made, but it isn't their decision. They gave that right to Lucas back in the 70s.
The details? I am SO not an expert, but from what I've gleaned from friends that are:
The *details* are the zillion budget items for a movie: sets, lighting, sound, special effects, costumes, makeup, etc etc etc. They're manpower-intensive, use specialized gear, and perfection in these crafts only comes with experience. Otherwise, the audience will notice.
Every one of the 200 names that go zinging past at a movie's end represents a category of details important enough that the show hired a specialist. Small, indy films cut corners on these, but that just means people try to do several jobs at once, and at some point the audience will start to notice.
So, if you wanna do things right, you hire some help. Once you grow beyond a team of a few people, start planning a la Brooks' mythical man-month, where each sixth person needs a manager. That gets fun, because the boss role is split between some guy too distracted to care about half of the details (the director) and people hired to handle these details as transparently as possible. Add in accountants and schedulers and people to round up the crafts needed or get bids for the work being done, etc. Even on a good day, it really starts to look like a wierdass engineering project by the time you're done. Once costs stretch the budget (and they will, whether you're doing Titanic or a documentary) throw in someone obsessed with budget (producer). If you're sadistic, imagine the worst-case of the conflict between director and producer.
Then, do everything on insane interdependent timelines: sets can take weeks to assemble, and hours to touch up before filming. Makeup often starts at 4am, there's a continual flow of 'plan shot, make adjustments to fit plan, shoot, repeat', so that actors are sometimes only onstage for a few hours total spaced over as much as a 16-hour day, and in addition to the crafts, security, catering, medics, etc. are all needed to help all these people throughout that long day. Add external factors (weather, lost gear, changes in story, disappearing cast members).
The end result is fairly inefficient, with dozens of people waiting for their next task, but billing for the whole day. Spending rates soar, but each person you remove causes tiny gaps and mistakes or slows things down immensely. A director pausing to review a shot also means everyone else is pausing to wait for him. But not pausing could mean rebuilding the set, flying actors back in, etc. when a shot is deemed unworkable...
I don't see gadgets *solving* a lot of this. And as they do, new complications are introduced. For example, DV allows better immediate-review capability than film. That saves $$$loads$$$ on film, but increases the chance for delays. Sound gear gets better, but audience expectations increase. Special effects are a never-ending race with audience expectations, too.