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Comment by samhuk | Hacker News Reader

I didn't follow the Lucasfilm acquisition too closely when it was all going down, but something that has confused me is that Lucas seems like a fairly talented guy with a passion for what he does, so how does it make sense that he actively wants to destroy his legacy?

I'm really doubtful that it's as simple as Lucas one day having a left-wing/progressivism epiphany or some other grand artistic change, sell Lucasfilm to Disney, then participate in the destruction of their IP.

Wasn't he promised "treatments" and general involvement in the latest trilogy, then Disney back-stabbed him last-minute? I vaguely remember some drama about that.

Anyway, long story short, I think that there is more to the story, such as him being promised one thing and another thing happening, etc.

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Lucas hasn't shown any real passion or talent since Star Wars IV. Except perhaps for pitching ideas for the Indy films. He thankfully relegated the V and VI to other directors and screenwriters (even for IV, a lot of his contributions were cringe, and rightfully resisted by the rest of the crew). And let's not talk about the prequels (Jar Jar and midichlorians anyone? Not to mention his choice of protagonist).

My take is that he became complacent with the big money rolling in after the first Star Wars, and never had much to show for afterwards or subsequently cared for movies that much. Contrast this with his pal Spielberg who churned out great film after great film, and continued mastering his craft. Lucas is a "director" who made four movies and stooped for two decades when he made it big. That says it all about his "passion" or lack thereof.

Ah, wait. He did found a great passion in the early 80s: merchandise.

Watching the ILM documentary (Light & Magic) the thing that stood out about Lucas is that he hated having his moviemaking decisions set in stone, and it being expensive and hard to change stuff. He pushed to adopt digital compositing technology, digital audio, then digital cameras, and digital sets, because he was so frustrated by the slowness and friction of optical and location work.

I think what comes across in the prequels as this sort of ‘first take’ feel to the performances is a manifestation of his impatience - he wants to get the footage, edit it, get the effects, and see the thing in his head. And the ‘remastering’ he has done is similarly a bit of psychological desire to always feel like he can fix it later.

Waiting five days for Phil Tippett to stop motion ten seconds of tauntaun walking must have driven him crazy.

Underneath, it’s an engineer’s kind of laziness - the sort that drives innovation. I honestly felt after watching that documentary that I am slightly less annoyed by the clunkiness of Attack of the Clones because I actually now can see underneath it the excitement of Lucas to use all the toys he has spent a fortune investing in ILM to build and just make the damn movie.

>He pushed to adopt digital compositing technology, digital audio, then digital cameras, and digital sets, because he was so frustrated by the slowness and friction of optical and location work.

Yes, but he overemphasized those technical aspects (where his care went) over the movie aspects.

It's like the guy who builds an expensive studio, with a huge mixer console, high end microphones, state of the art Pro Tools rig, and then proceeds to record his farts.

I'm not a Star Wars fan, but that's pretty unfair to liken someone recording their farts to a whole movie with a huge crew and cast that each added their own speciality skills to the movie.

As much as you and I might knock Star Wars, it's wildly successful and is still seeing plenty of success in other mediums, so obviously it appeals to someone.

Right, but Lucas didn’t buy that stuff off the shelf. He poured money into ILM and made them invent all that stuff so he could record his farts.

And we all get to benefit from the innovation he drove.

I'll defend Lucas til I die. His expanded universe is why I read so many books as a kid, and the huge number of star wars videogames in the 90s/2000s allowed game designers to tinker with different gameplay ideas with the star wars fans as a safety net. The phantom menace movie had a lot of flaws, yes, but without it we wouldnt have the podracing videogames. disney, comparitively, has released... what, two star wars videogames in 7 years?

And Disney proceeded to nuke said expanded universe canon upon acquiring Lucasfilm

What's your point? It still exists. It's only "not canon" if you view it through the angle of the sequel trilogy being canon. People are still free to enjoy the EU within the context of what came before the sequel trilogy, and it still tells the same story it did on release.

That's the neat thing about art, I can choose not to think the post-Disney acquisition cash-cow milking is canon, especially when none of the original storytellers are involved, and it is thus not their vision.

Call it what it is: they retconned to milk the cash cow they bought dry.

I think the argument is that the universe he created is amazing and rightly beloved, but his movie-making skills were troublesome. I also love the SW universe, but mostly for things that did not come directly from Lucas...

>The phantom menace movie had a lot of flaws, yes, but without it we wouldnt have the podracing videogames. disney, comparitively, has released... what, two star wars videogames in 7 years?

If the best you can say about a director is that "without him we wouldn't have as many franchize videogames" then I can rest my case :)

If youre going to twist my words and ignore my point, why are you on hackernews? This isnt reddit, mate.

Sorry, you don't get to invoke the "reddit, mate" as if your point was twisted. These are your literal quoted words, in their entirety:

"I'll defend Lucas til I die. His expanded universe is why I read so many books as a kid, and the huge number of star wars videogames in the 90s/2000s allowed game designers to tinker with different gameplay ideas with the star wars fans as a safety net. The phantom menace movie had a lot of flaws, yes, but without it we wouldnt have the podracing videogames. disney, comparitively, has released... what, two star wars videogames in 7 years?"

Want me to highlight your argument? Here it is...

"The phantom menace movie had a lot of flaws, yes, but without it we wouldnt have the podracing videogames. disney, comparitively, has released... what, two star wars videogames in 7 years?"

Lucas was an EP and writer for all three Indiana Jones films. I think these films hold up better than Star Wars, so I wouldn't say he has any passion or talent since Star Wars. With respect to the three Star Wars films though (and all the garbage that came later), I agree.

They do hold up better, but it's because of Spielberg who did the directing (I can't even imagine the cringe mess Lucas would have made - I'd rather we had a Tom Shelleck Indiana Jones movie, as was considered at one time, than a Lucas-directed one), Phillip Kaufman (who fleshed the story plot) and Lawrence Kasdan (who wrote the screenplay) rather than Lucas.

Lucas contributions were iconic, but not enough to get the movie to the level it is. From some dialogues I've seen between the whole team about the films [1], Lucas was more into throwing high level ideas, not about any core script work. So, the main concept, parts of the character design, and a high level plot summary. The rest had to make a full story, screenplay, and movie out of it.

[1] http://maddogmovies.com/almost/scripts/raidersstoryconferenc...

My understanding is that most of what made Episode 4 work were the results of his then-wife editing the script. She did not get a credit in the movie.

This explains things!

This has nothing to do with "wokeism" or Disney.

George Lucas just saw making sci-fi movies as an effort to get reality as close as possible as the images he had in his mind. That meant seeing FX as an approximation, a constant compromise to reach the limits of what is possible to film. Lucasfilm were pioneers in digital FX and 3D for that very reason.

However, that also meant that each new work looked different from the previous, as real and digital FX diverged more and more with each passing year. He tried to rectify this by updating old works with new scenes and new effects. Had he stopped there, I reckon most people would have just plauded the novelty and moved on.

Unfortunately, while doing that, he also took the chance to modify what he saw as plot problems in the original movies - particularly the first, which was shot in isolation as a one-off, since there was no indication it would be as successful as it did (most actors thought it would be a one-and-done piece of trash, just to make a quick buck, particularly Sir Alex McGuinness). He made some dubious choices and the fandom never forgave him for that.

> particularly Sir Alex McGuinness

s/McGuinness/Guinness/

Thank you, what a brainfart I had :(

s/Alex/Alec/

  var objRef=document.querySelector("#\\33 5725793 > td > table > tbody > tr > td.default > div.comment > span > p:nth-child(3)");
 
 objRef.textContent=objRef.textContent.replace('Alex','Alec').replace('McGuinn','Guinn');

I think they’re referring to the remastering of the original trilogy, long before Disney got involved.

He knew his style of films were over, so he sold the franchise and let Disney take the burn for it.

It's difficult to see this as a political event, where he was outplayed.

He's worked with and against the big cats in Hollywood his whole career, he specifically made career decisions to 'get away' from Hollywood meddling in his work.

He knew what he was doing and this mythical George Lucas character, who is victim and hero in one man, is getting a bit long in the tooth.

I, for one, would love to see another George Lucas movie.

When I consider this, I don't think there's any legacy there to ruin. The only thing that made the first movies watchable was gone long before Disney bought it up.

https://collider.com/star-wars-george-lucas-wife-marcia

Lucas is a phenomenal story-spinner.

But like many story-spinners, he needs an equally phenomenal editor to sit on him. And it happens time and time again that a story-spinner gets so famous/rich/whatever that they can sit on the editor instead, and then the quality drops.

It's a very rare breed of story-spinner who can sit on themselves, offhand I can think of Tolkien perhaps.

He can spin stories and build worlds very well indeed, but he can't write dialog or direct actors worth a damn. He needs someone else to handle this stuff. His best work was when he came up with the grand vision for something, but someone else handled dialog, scriptwriting, and directing. Basically, the guy was a technical genius but had no eye for the human element.

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