The Fundamental Weakness Of Director George Lucas
Since the NFL season is low key right now & entrenched in rookie player minicamps around the league, I figured why not write a non-related football blog just for pure entertainment value alone.
Recently, I just watched a film called "The People Vs. George Lucas" released in 2010 by Exhibit A Pictures.
The central thesis of the film is this: Billionaire George Lucas who vehemently fought motion picture studios to get Star Wars made according to his initial vision in the late 1970's has now become the very corporate and merchandising overlord he railed against in his young directing career. Fans who fell in love with this trilogy in their early adolescence are furious over the inability to gain access to the original film debuts they saw in the theater as a youth, the annoying introduction of Jar Jar Binks & the cry baby persona of Anakin Skywalker who evolves into a non menacing galactic villain Dark Vader in the prequels, and who has the real ownership of the Star Wars film saga and international cultural phenomenon? Director George Lucas alone or the National Film Archives and society at large.
George Lucas soon after from graduating from film school in CA wanted the freedom & independence to make the films he saw fit without corporate studio control & restrictions. Fox 20th Century Pictures gave Lucas that opportunity after the box office success of "American Graffiti." In 1977, Star Wars was a profitable smash worldwide. As part of the initial deal with Fox, Lucas retained all commercial merchandising rights for less directorial money outright. Those merchandising rights built Skywalker Ranch where all Lucas's films are now produced, made, and distributed. Lucas first preserved the original negative master reels and transferred them over digitally via his company Industrial Light and Magic [iLM]. To pay for the preservation process, Lucas re-released the original trilogy in theaters with updated scenes not seen before. Most fans who grew up watching the original films as a kid despised them with a passion. To them, the films were now ruined and forever tarnished. Most of the upgrades failed to move the story forward or significantly diluted or watered down a character's clever wit, charm, or menacing capabilities overall. Lucas felt the upgrades were his landmark vision alone and he refused to release any DVD set with the original film sequence debut. The irony here is that George Lucas joined a campaign to stop the colorization of classic black and white academy award winning films & yet he refuses to release the original trilogy as most fans fell in love with the story as they first saw it.
When I was a kid C3PO & R2D2 were the comedy relief of the original trilogy, they were designed to appeal to little kids. Jar Jar Binks, the giraffe like creature with Dumbo ears & a speech impediment, was created for the same purpose. Since when is clumsiness, incompetence, & a speaking disability funny? Lucas undoubtedly took screen writing classes & story boarding classes in film school why is he so horrible at it? Lucas cannot write dialog, create suspension & pacing, or effectively transition into foreshadowing. He is exceptional at special effects though.
Darth Vader as youth comes across as a naive, control freak, and colossal wuss. Yes, "absolute power corrupts absolutely" I know, but come on. Any control freak drunk with power is going to embrace his gifts & the dark side & not run away from it. The best villains are always psychotic, demented, & see the world slightly askew & off center. They don't scream "NO!!!" when they hear that their girlfriend dies IMO. So pathetic & childish... They go on a murderous binge of mayhem & destruction.
Since Star Wars is so engrained in our contemporary culture with phrases like "May The Force Be With You" "Luke I'm Your Father" or "It is Your Destiny," wouldn't you think that George Lucas would abide by the wishes of the fanbase that made him a wealthy man & release the original, unaltered trilogy? The 1977 release won academy awards for special effects do you want to dishonor the memory of the men & women who won that trophy too & made Star Wars a household name around the globe? Lucas claims to have cut the original negative & destroyed it once the digital restoration was completed. Are you bleeping kidding me George?!!! As an archivist myself, you preserve the original medium & format at all costs. You never discard it ever. For a man who spoke eloquently about preserving black & white films in their original format, I find it disturbing that Lucas would joke about the destruction of any film, especially one placed in the National Film Archives. It makes me sick to my stomach...What do you think?
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