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."

Comments

Re:So goes a once-talented filmmaker

[Pope]

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! :)