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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

It truly is a one of a kind museum. You'll see some of the most famous art in the world from people like Norman Rockwell and Frida Kahlo on the same walls as a random strip from Doonesbury or The Far Side. You'll walk through a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel shortly before walking through a reproduction of the podrace from Phantom Menace. You'll go to the theater and see a 60+ year old experimental short film made without a camera by pressing moth wings into film and then a few minutes later they'll show an episode of Cowboy Bebop.

It's such a bizarre and idiosyncratic collection that the museum itself inspires as much thought as the art in it.

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Nothing makes me more excited about this museum than the turnover in curatorial leadership throughout the project, capped off by Lucas assuming the title himself.

Give me his unrestrained vision. Put it in my veins.

CGI already did that. It turned out… ok

It's reminiscent of the difference between the Star Wars prequel and sequel trilogies. Regardless of your opinions on the quality of those movies, the biggest differentiator is that the prequels were the singular vision of a self-funded artist while the sequels are a corporate product of a global media empire. Even if the latter produces a better movie, it ends up sanding off many of the edges and those edges are where a lot of us found the magic of Star Wars. The Lucas Museum is similar in that it very clearly is the product of an excentric billionaire rather than the same type of curatorial thinking you will find in other art museums.

Let’s not forget though, the prequel trilogies were—not good. Lucas is at his best when he has collaborators who can help take the half-baked ideas and fully bake them.

Yes, but while I may prefer "good" when it comes to the multiplex, I much prefer "interesting" when it comes to my art museums and Lucas's prequels and museum are both very interesting.

They were better than good. I wouldn't call them masterpieces (my biggest critique is that they tried to do too much in II which messed up the pacing of Anakin's arc) but they're great films.

Meesa no take midichlorians, meesa go crazy.

There are us who believe in Darth Jar Jar!

Jar Jar is for kids; if you watch with an eight-year-old and hear her laugh at his antics it makes watching Phantom Menace all the better.

IMHO, the best one is the one directed by Irvin Kershner: The Empire Strikes Back.

This is no longer the nerd or even normie consensus (if it ever was)

Obligatory link to Red Letter Media’s critique of Phantom Menace

https://youtu.be/FxKtZmQgxrI

These are two crappy choices, and it's not a coincidence that a resource strapped filmmaker having to engage with many skilled artisans to sharpen their "singular vision" resulted in much better films (the original trilogy) than either of those two.

If you think he was significantly resourceful strapped making Empire and Jedi you are mistaken. At the time they were some of the most expensive films ever made.

Mostly self-funded too (a higher percentage for Jedi than Empire) so even in the original trilogy it was still Lucas signing the checks and making the ultimate decisions. Him being willing to delegate more in those days was personality driven rather than financially driven.

> Give me his unrestrained vision. Put it in my veins.

His unrestrained vision is The Phantom Menace. It’s the sand dialogue. It’s JarJar.

Phantom Menace is a super fun movie. Pure Star Wars. I've used it as an entry to the series for all of my kids (then I skip ahead to the OT to not ruin the twist).

I've generally found that most people who didn't like are people who were already adults when it came out, and had a different vision of what they wanted it to be.

For me personally, the prequels were very much an "emperor has no clothes" moment. There's a lot of "meh" in the prequels--in the writing, in the story, and in the direction. Some of the scenes between Anakin and Padme are just downright painful. But I could also see someone being able to overlook at least some of that, especially if they first saw the films when they were young. So I'm not here to complain about any of that.

I can sum up my biggest problem with the prequels (well, with Lucas really) in one word: midichlorians.

When he decided to explain how the force works, he took something that had been so eloquently portrayed in the OT*, and reduced it to something banal and mechanical. And there was no reason to do that. It's not like Darth Vader needed a blood sample to know that Obi-Wan was on the Death Star. And yet Lucas chose to do it anyway.

That choice showed such a baffling level of cluelessness. Like here's this guy, this supposed visionary, who has carte blanche to do whatever he wants (with what is supposedly his own story, no less) and he just.. doesn't really seem to get it?

It really made me question whether the OT were as a good as they were because of him or in spite of him. Apparently I got something out of the story that he did not.

* I'm referring particularly to Yoda's speech to Luke about the force in ESB. "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter!". Beautiful writing, still gives me goosebumps. No wonder ESB is often considered the best one.

> That choice showed such a baffling level of cluelessness. Like here's this guy, this supposed visionary, who has carte blanche to do whatever he wants (with what is supposedly his own story, no less) and he just.. doesn't really seem to get it?

> It really made me question whether the OT were as a good as they were because of him or in spite of him.

He didn’t get it with the original trilogy either, but had Marsha Lucas to tell him no and patiently explain how normal people work. For the prequels he was surrounded by yes-men.

> Some of the scenes between Anakin and Padme are just downright painful.

The worse part of that is seeing clips from between takes: they actually have chemistry! They were actually directed to be unrealistic and unbelievable.

> It really made me question whether the OT were as a good as they were because of him or in spite of him.

Harrison Ford is why Han Solo says "I know" in response to Leia's "I love you". Contrasts directly with Anakin/Padme. "in spite of him" is at least a big chunk of it.

>because of him or in spite of him

It can be both. Good art tends to allow a measure of interpretation outside of what the artists originally intended.

Dunno how in tune you are with random factoids but Lucas is on the record saying that his favorite episode in "The Clone Wars" is "A Sunny Day in the Void", where a bunch of droids are stuck in the desert. So...yeah, there's definitely _something_ he gets out of this series that might not line up with the fanbase at large.

He also wanted to double down on the midichlorians and the Whills for the sequels, so it definitely wasn't a one-off for him.

As for me, I don't hate the idea that a spiritual quality can have a physical component to it. (Makes you think about if a parting of the Red Sea or an ax head floating are "truly supernatural" events or more "natural, with mechanisms we can't understand".) I suppose it's a bit coarse that it's used to boil mysticism down to a number for comparison, and it certainly wasn't _necessary_ to move the plot along, though.

I loved Phantom Menace as a kid - watched it like 3 times in the movies, had a bootlegged VHS that I watched multiple times too.

And after some deep-dive videos I learned that I've missed so much in those prequels. So for lore-heads and theorists there is a lot to chew on.

They are enjoyable movies for everyone!

Yeah, I think that's one of the keys: the lore in the prequels is so rich (and was so thoroughly fleshed out in stuff like the Clone Wars series) that if you're just directionally on board with the plot, the worldbuilding, the characters, you can read between the lines and just see the whole thing in a better light than the actual film on screen provides for itself.

Spoiler warning.

EDIT: Get it? For the Museum of Narrative Art?

In all seriousness, I think I would have preferred the [Renaissance masterpiece] -> [Pop culture artifact] progression to have been a surprise. People seem to be more and more focused on expressing their own exuberance and less on preserving for everyone else the experience they put so much stock into. It's a bit selfish and hypocritical.

I knew who Luke's father was years before I saw Empire, and I can only imagine what a shock that must have been to people who didn't. I can only imagine. It would have been nice to have known, though.

It hardly makes sense to conceive of a museum as having spoilers, since you go there to see the things that you know are there.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. No one has ever gone to a museum hoping to discover something that they weren't expecting?

Brother it's a museum, not the newest Marvel movie. There aren't "spoilers".

I can't believe they spoiled the ending for me.

Now anybody who reads these comments won't get the full effect of the Far Side plot twist

Okay, since I'm presumably dealing with unimaginative programmer brain, how's this: I'm parameterizing "spoiler".

> I think I would have preferred the [Renaissance masterpiece] -> [Pop culture artifact] progression to have been a surprise.

I never imagined I would be accused of posting spoilers for a museum, but even if we accept the idea that a museum can have spoilers, I think you're reading too much into what I said. There's no overt progression in the curation. I was simply detailing what I was thinking as I browsed the museum. In fact, the museum seems to be specifically designed to let the visitors experience the museum however they want. It was just my personal experience that this attempt to background the curation paradoxically had me thinking more about that curation than if they took a more traditional approach.

>In fact, the museum seems to be specifically designed to let the visitors experience the museum however they want.

You don't think that telling people what's there might get in the way of an unadulterated experience? Some people want to go in blind.

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