jtn90 Do you have a source for those remarks? I've decided to make a transcript, slightly cleaned up from the original posts:
Breaking this nonsense down a sentence (or one sentence-pair) at a time:
No, he didn't. He incepted it, he developed it, he guided it, he believed in it, and he pushed it through to maturity and apotheosis. Along the way, he separated from his first wife and lost a chunk of his personal fortune, fell out with his mentor (Francis Ford Coppola), took on the responsibility of raising kids, saw the world get more greedy and selfish under Ronald Reagan (
and even became a touch selfish himself),
fought for the artist's right to preserve their films from third-party meddling, built up his ancillary film companies, and began gearing up for the Prequel Trilogy when he assembled the team and the technology necessary to pull it off -- first testing the storytelling waters with "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles", and later releasing the Special Edition version of the Original Trilogy as an aperitif and proof-of-concept.
All the time, he stayed immersed in filmmaking and media construction, developing a successful relationship with Steven Spielberg, in particular. It was this relationship that catalysed the Prequel Trilogy (Lucas' deepest vision of Star Wars) when Lucas realised, while editing/overseeing the visual effects work by ILM on "Jurassic Park", that technology had matured to a point that his bold vision for the backstory of the Original Trilogy was now, for the first time in history, both technologically feasible and affordable. On the wave of a resurgence in interest in Star Wars -- thanks, in no small part, to the release of
Timothy Zahn's "Grand Admiral Thrawn" trilogy, the first book of which, "Heir To The Empire",
shot to Number One on the New York Times Best Seller list -- Lucas knew there was still an appetite for his creation, and that it was time to heed the Force and seize the moment.
All creative and financial endeavours are a mixture of perseverance, tenacity, insight, skill, and luck. Serendipity plays a huge part in human affairs. But people also need the willpower to see any major undertaking through. Even the smallest acts require a measure of focus and commitment. Should I quit smoking today? Do I help that child at the side of the road? Do I have the strength to leave my job for a better one? Should I approach that girl by the water cooler? Isn't it time I cleaned my room today? All human lives and destinies are the aggregate of choices made and left unmade. But if you're really trying to change something, or bring something new into the world, you must commit. One doesn't just "fall" into something (unless one is totally passive and indifferent and lets the chips fall where they may -- and that certainly doesn't describe any filmmaker, living or dead).
The standard roster call and the persistent myth: Star Wars is the work of other creatives. In fact, it's apparently (according to this myth) the result of every creative
but Lucas. Of course, Star Wars is a collaborative effort, and Lucas ensured, as much as humanly possible, that he hired the best to help him achieve his vision. But he still put in the man hours and decided the overall direction (look, tone, feel, and format) of the whole thing. Uncomfortably for this person, he's also the one that came up with the whole concept in the first place: a feverish beginning which led him to refine his ideas and write four drafts of the original movie before he was confident enough he had a compelling narrative that people could follow. Which shows immense commitment and intelligence on his part. Lucas had never done a high-concept, tent-pole movie before -- nor had he used soundstages or visual effects before. But he knew what to write toward and how to craft a cinematically-actionable screenplay.
Lucas clearly put the effort in to ensure that Star Wars started off on the right foot and got the best possible start. He could have farmed the writing duties out to others -- a process, in contrast to directing and editing,
which by his own admission, he has always struggled with (he would mentally chain himself to his desk to write a minimum of five pages per day, and even took to cutting his hair in frustration as he worked). Lucas thrives in the visual domain -- he can write, but he has to make himself do it. Once again, a measure of how seriously he took the creation of his epic franchise.
On the first film, despite his professed dislike of writing at the time, and even a contempt for linear narrative and soundstage-based filmmaking in general (Lucas is a documentary filmmaker at heart), he knuckled down and did the bulk of writing duties himself, looking to friends for guidance (he didn't let his ego close himself off to input and criticism), allowing the screenplay to be further revised quickly before (by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck) and during filming (he was open to cast members changing lines and making suggestions). This "friends helping out" philosophy also extended to the opening crawl (another thing it was critical to get right), which was rewritten and shrunk down to a more manageable/disgestible length by Brian De Palma. By following his own instincts and listening to peers, Lucas saw to it that his saga was given a strong foundation. This is far from anyone "falling" into anything. Star Wars is the result of deliberate, conscious striving.
Here we have a doubling-down on the strawman notion that Star Wars isn't made by one person alone, and therefore, credit can't be given to George Lucas as "The Maker" of the franchise. I'm not sure why "making" (as so) is placed in quotation marks. Star Wars didn't just spontaneously form itself: it was made/assembled/constructed. Or if you want to interpret it metaphysically: it was revealed. But in no way did it just arrive without human agency and human effort.
Lucas deserves all the praise he has received -- and much, much more. The first film was a tremendously difficult undertaking to pull off, and no-one gave more of themselves or had more invested in the project than Lucas himself. Even though it required hundreds of dedicated technicians and artisans to realise, and a good marketing arm to ensure healthy return of investment, the genius of Star Wars belongs first and foremost to George Lucas. Every other creative is second. If there are near-geniuses, then those would probably be John Williams, Ben Burtt, Ralph McQuarrie, and Doug Chiang, in roughly that order. But even they could only express their talent in the way they have because Lucas gave them the perfect outlet to do so. The leitmotif scoring adopted by John Williams, for example, naturally suggested itself because of the way Lucas used archetypes in his story, and how he had constructed much of the film as a romantic throwback to an idealised, pre-television era (the so-called
Golden Age Of Hollywood).
This extremely desiccated rant also fails to give Lucas his due for his sheer tenacity against other creatives who worked on the film. He didn't just stick to his guns and push back against Fox, but also stood his ground against people that were helping him bring his vision to life -- but who, nevertheless, came onto the project with their own ideas and expectations. For instance, Lucas had a contentious working relationship with the Director Of Photography, Gilbert Taylor. Worlds apart in age and background, the pair repeatedly clashed over how the film should look. The Wikipedia page notes:
Another page fleshes out some of the tension that arose:
Clearly annoyed by the way he felt Lucas treated him, well into his old age, Taylor reflected on the film years later:
Perhaps there is a special alchemy to the original film. But hacks don't change the world, revolutionise the medium of cinema, or receive high accolades like the
Academy's Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1991 (awarded 1992) and the
American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in 2005. And these are hardly the only awards that
Lucas has received or been nominated for. On the other hand, anyone with basic keyboard skills and access to an Internet connection can spew ignorance and sophistry at the click of a button. The Internet has given millions of people a voice, but that doesn't mean every voice speaking has interesting or illuminating things to say. Indeed, the Internet plays host to a significant quotient of virtue-signalling and groupthink. In addition, some people only want attention.
Directing and editing are different things -- this person has confused them. It's like mistaking the gathering and preparation of ingredients for the actual cooking. Several of Lucas' contemporaries were, indeed, a touch mystified and bemused by the film, but Spielberg didn't let the cynicism of the others faze him and, hand-on-heart, reassured Lucas that Star Wars was going to be a big success.
Even Lucas doubted him. However, the first cut lacked a finished score and a good deal of the film's iconic sound design. It was further hindered by crude container/placeholder shots and an absence of visual clarity and excitement, as many of the visual effects sequences, especially for the big space battle at the end, were yet to be completed:
Star Wars relies for a good deal of its visceral and intellectual effect on well-managed spectacle. For example, the opening shot of the original film was well-received and instantly memorable when Star Wars debuted. A cut lacking such spectacle is therefore significantly impaired. But perhaps, having directed a blockbuster film himself, and having a similar affinity for child-like wonderment, Spielberg knew Star Wars was still in the process of being birthed and would come out just fine in the end. He could see what Lucas was on the cusp of achieving and bringing into the world. Births are often messy, and it may well be that Spielberg intrinsically felt he was in the presence of a cinematic Edison, and all would be changed in the wake of Star Wars, decades hence.
Tellingly, after the screening, Brian De Palma felt like chiding Lucas for, among other things, the appearance of Leia and her striking hair-buns:
Of course, De Palma's playful trashing of the film is only loosely recalled, but if he truly went after Leia's appearance, then that suggests he wasn't really in-sync with the picture, and perhaps insensitive to the underlying imperatives that compelled Lucas to make a fantasy world for young people. His taunting was perhaps calculated to deny Lucas' sources of inspiration. Much the same fuss can be made of Superman's spit-curl or Spock's pointy ears. There were obviously precedents for Lucas' perceived goofy choices in popular culture (which itself points to Star Wars having a successful outcome amongst an open-minded science-fiction/fantasy crowd), but Lucas' friends contrived to make themselves ignorant of these precedents -- if only, perhaps, to test Lucas' mettle. As mentioned earlier, De Palma would go on to assist Lucas following the test screening and re-write the opening crawl. His friends may have been cynical, but they weren't truly indifferent.
It is difficult to rule on subjective notions like "bad pacing", "no tension", and "no heart". Again, this was a rough cut that Lucas and his friends were viewing and assessing -- a cut obviously hampered by the lack of aforementioned elements crucial to the Star Wars experience like music, sound design, and visual effects. Case(s) in point: imagine the binary sunset without John Williams' score, or the moment Luke and Leia swing across the chasm on the Death Star, or Luke mourning Obi-Wan's death on the Millennium Falcon a few minutes later.
Editing a film shot on a shoe-string budget, under terrible circumstances (in addition to a cynical and hostile cast and crew,
union rules in England prohibited filming past 5:30 PM, subject to a vote that had to be made at the start of the day -- Lucas almost always lost the vote), requiring cutting-edge, never-before-seen visual effects crucial to the storytelling (i.e., Lucas wanted that "newsreel" feel and fast spaceship fly-bys -- even though, when he started, there was no convincing means to accomplish such shots), meant that a rough cut was inevitably going to be perceived as lacking. Lucas also struggled to give the film the right momentum in early editing, resulting in an editor being fired because the pacing was too stately and sedate. But it was Lucas who recognised these issues and strove hard to resolve them. Here is Lucas explaining the firing in his own words:
On the editing front, this page argues the following:
As Lucas has long affirmed, editing is his favourite part of the filmmaking process, for which he has the greatest aptitude:
Reflecting on his methodology while filming Episode III, Lucas stated:
Finally, it's very much the case that people like Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola make different films to one another, and all are quite different to Lucas himself. Lucas said a similar thing to Leslie Stahl in 1999. This clip was used at the start of the behind-the-scenes documentary for TPM, "The Beginning":
Every filmmaker approaches the medium of film in their own way with respect to their temperaments and life experiences. Of the bunch that Lucas associated with early in his career, only Lucas seemed to have serious documentary-cameraman inclinations, only Lucas was seriously interested in comic books and juvenile fantasy, and only Lucas was striving to push the technological envelope and make a crowd-pleasing film of a type and quality that had never been seen before (at least: not in that particular configuration/arrangement). Furthermore, after the near-bankruptcy of the original American Zoetrope (ironically: it was almost killed off by the box-office failure of "THX-1138" -- after being revived, it would later face bankruptcy several more times after fresh struggles in the 1980s), Lucas was the only one seriously striving to create his own filmmaking paradise, free from Hollywood interference. You might as well bash Charlie Chaplin for not being Picasso or Mozart.
Repeating the tired strawman for a second time. It is a gross fallacy to suggest that Lucas played only a minor role in the creative vivacity and success of Star Wars. He clearly played a monumental role in the unfolding of the franchise as we know it today.
Furthermore, Lucas did make more good movies. The remainder of the Original Trilogy is a tribute to his brilliance, as well as the Prequel Trilogy (which whoever wrote this boilerplate bashing fest only makes passing mention of). Lucas also deserves considerable credit for "The Clone Wars", as well as many aspects of the "Indiana Jones" movies and spinoff series, "Red Tails" (as mentioned above), "Strange Magic", and the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy and attendant spinoffs (controversial -- but they really belong to him). It doesn't stop there. A slew of other movie projects came to fruition which Lucas contributed his writing talents to, or more generally oversaw or secured funding for, in the 1980s and early 1990s (e.g., "Willow" -- story credit and funding; "Radioland Murders" -- story credit and funding; "Kagemusha" -- helped fund; "Koyaanisqatsi" -- helped fund/promote), when he enjoyed a brief movie-mogul phase after completing the Original Trilogy and finishing Skywalker Ranch.
Beyond movies and television shows, he also deserves credit for incepting a range of Star Wars literature, including a number of Star Wars and non-Star Wars video games under Lucasarts. Then there is his larger impact on the technical side of cinema and theatrical exhibition: THX, Skywalker Sound, ILM. Pixar also got its start under Lucas. Even a sizeable chunk of the Internet, showing enormous saturation of Star Wars content/discussion, is indebted to him. To talk of Lucas only as a filmmaker is misleading. He doesn't have a hefty back catalogue, but he doesn't need one. Lucas is more of a Renaissance man: a combiner of worlds. His real impact on popular culture and the world at large can only be assayed when multiple planes of media are acknowledged and subsumed into a broader analysis. To judge him by how many films he has officially "directed", or alleged low-points like "Howard The Duck", is like judging the power of the ocean by a single wave.
Had to repeat himself at the end, didn't he? But perhaps, given his name -- Guy Incognito -- he's talking about himself.
Briefly, let me pull apart the ranting of his partner-in-crime:
That's nice. People who defend the Prequel Trilogy and George Lucas are basically robots. But the people that bash those things relentlessly, endlessly regurgitating the same talking points and strawman statements, over and over, every day, for literally twenty years, patting each other on the back as they go? They're enlightened avatars of Krishna. Or something.
An incredibly shallow man doesn't create something known by millions or work his way to the wealth of a billionaire. An incredibly shallow man doesn't win significant filmmaking awards from significant film institutions. An incredibly shallow man doesn't make something like "THX-1138", with its satirical and whimsical reflections on the modern human experience -- ditto "American Graffiti" and "Star Wars". An incredibly shallow man would never make statements like the following:
The other bash:
Conservative camera work is actually the mark of good direction. It's the measure of a filmmaker deliberately trying to under-impose on the viewer's attention, and more or less the opposite of how other celebrated blockbuster auteurs like Peter Jackson and Christopher Nolan use a camera. Personally, I prefer the Lucas approach. It's classically old-school. People who complain about limited camera coverage, or "shot/reverse shot" (obviously pulled from RedLetterMedia -- but no, PT and George Lucas fans are "like NPC robots", not these people), should probably avoid any cinema prior to the late 1960s. Other, more showy approaches probably work well for attention-deficit, sub-literate viewers who complain that "The plot of Phantom Menace makes no sense", but that's not Lucas' fault. All he can do is adhere faithfully to a grammar that suits the material and his own aesthetic inclinations. That's all any legitimate filmmaker can do.
All of Star Wars -- certainly, in my opinion, all of Lucas-directed Star Wars -- has a stirring, clean beauty to it. Lucas was highly influenced by Akira Kurosawa and his concept of "immaculate reality". The camera strives to present a wide, unpretentious, uncluttered look at the world. Beyond that, I think the beauty of Lucas' camerawork in the prequels, and his overall compositional style, speak elegantly for themselves:
Ah, yes.
Tall poppy syndrome.
Alas, this non-NPC robot is again mistaken. Lucas developed the story and took on writing duties for both TESB and ROTJ. While Kershner was given relatively free rein on TESB, Lucas still had a strong hand in molding the picture to his satisfaction, and clashed with Kershner in the editing room. On ROTJ, Lucas part-directed the film himself, and was frequently on the set (and on location) to guide Richard Marquand. Once again, in post-production, he supervised the visual effects, sound design, music, and ultimate assembly of the film to his satisfaction. In pre-production, he was just as involved, overseeing concept art, creatures, storyboards, etc. Lucas' intimate involvement has seen to it that every film conforms to his wishes and fits his wider vision. In other words, Lucas is the main architect (the Grand Jedi Master) of Star Wars -- forever and always.
With the Prequel Trilogy, Lucas simply took on a more expansive version of his former roles, ditching the need for other directors, now he had full confidence in his creation and the newly-available digital tools that made directing easier. Some sharing of the writing duties still occurred (e.g., Jonathan Hales has a writing credit on AOTC), but Lucas largely plowed ahead on his own. He'd grown as a human being, in his sympathies and understanding. He'd also earned the right to have everything his way. Accordingly, the prequels could be considered the more personal of the two trilogies, and the Original Trilogy more of a "rough document" -- loosely analogous to the rough cut the other person harped on as being sub-standard and far from greatness.
While from another point of view, as Lucas himself has articulated, the two trilogies also combine to form a single artistic expression:
a twelve-hour movie, as Lucas has previously stated. If one disagrees with that vision, that's fine. But to insinuate that Lucas is a hack who had little to do with the general direction and underlying brilliance of the series is something else. It is profoundly untrue and constitutes one of the great denials of personal expression of our age. And at a time when culture appears to becoming more commodified and homogenised, the bright-shining locality and specificity of artistic genius should be defended and celebrated.
"Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced."
-- Tolstoy
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
-- Jonathan Swift
