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Lucas Loses Star Wars Stormtrooper Copyright Case
An anonymous reader writes "A prop designer who made the original Stormtrooper helmets for Star Wars has won his copyright battle with director George Lucas over his right to sell replicas. The five-year saga, which ended in the highest court in the land, has stakes of galactic proportions."
Not a failure in a business sense but a failure in a creative sense.
He surrounds himself with 'yes' people. Once he lost Kurtz, he never had that struggle to give his creative properties that extra push that made them great.
Even Phillip Kaufmann is credited with Indiana Jones.
Rick Mcallum is a total YES man and could have saved Prequel Star Wars if he would have had balls.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
I have one of the Darth Vader light sabers. In the sense that it is one of the flashlight holders that was rented to the movie by the props agency. I bought it when the props agency closed. At the time of the movie, no-one knew it would be a success. A lot of stuff was rented from the various agencies in LA. My version of the saber can be seen hanging from DV's belt. Once the movies became successful, the franchise has rewritten the history of its props and has mislead people in the various exhibitions it has staged. In the first movie, no-one was designing kit for posterity, they were renting junk for a single movie.
I would tend to agree: Lucas is a great technologist (THX sound, ILM effects, starting Pixar), a man who had a great imagination and desire for story telling, but an absolutely lousy director. You need to connect with your actors to get great performances from them, and Lucas wasn't interested enough in that. There's a behind the scenes clip from "Star Wars" that takes place on the Death Star. The good guys finish the scene, Lucas yells "Cut!" and the actors ask how it was. Lucas says nothing for a while, then finally says it was OK. The actors sarcastically say "Finally! Thanks, George!" or similar.
Then look at the making of Episode 1 and some of the clips on Red Letter Media, especially about the casting of Anakin. George chooses a worse actor and everyone just agrees with him so they don't rock the boat. Then during filming, he provides barely any direction to the actors at all, which is why everyone except for Obi-Wan comes off so damn stiff. I think Ewan realized early on he wasn't going to get any feedback and just had fun with it.
I'm certainly willing to cut Lucas some slack on "Star Wars" due to studio pressure and his own relative inexperience, but he was never and actor's director and I doubt ever wanted to be.
Now back to the topic: Hooray for the little guy! :)
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I do see the stormtrooper costume as art or at the very least, a critical component of art creations such as video and images. How is a prop not art?
But you know? Still glad Lucas lost in this case.
But one argument I didn't read and kind of expected to read at some level is that these costumes are COSTUMES. They are CLOTHES. And guess what? Clothes are not eligible for protection under copyright or trademark. Logos and branding on clothes are eligible, but for hundreds of years, this has been the case and courts have held this up for nearly as many years.
I would have argued that the helmet and armor are clothes and are simply not eligible for that kind of intellectual property protection. I wonder how that argument, if made, would have fared through the courts?