This article in Daily Variety today pretty much establishes my feelings about George Lucas.
Let's face it: George Lucas has lost it. Not his mind, necessarily, but his creative EDGE. And I'm not the only one who has written about this but the variety article has emphasized just out of touch he is with the rest of us here on planet Earth.
I don't dispute that George Lucas is a great storyteller but he doesn't seem as creative anymore.
There is a reason why people now walk around with shirts that say "Joss Whedon is my master now." Like George Lucas, Whedon has created a massive fantasy/sci-fi universe with "Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and to a lesser degree "Firefly."
But unlike Lucas, I don't think Whedon has let the quality slip as much. Both tell exceptional, well-done stories but when it comes to dialogue and characterization, Whedon blows Lucas away. Part of this may also have to do with the fact that Joss Whedon wrote scripts for "Roseanne" and knows something about how real people talk. George Lucas probably still tells himself "Mesa hadda good idea about Jar Jar."
It pains me to write this since the original "Star Wars" trilogy is still the greatest film accomplishment in the history of cinema, other than the "Police Academy" series. I rank "The Empire Strikes Back" as my favorite film of all time.
I am not turning my back on George Lucas. I will go see "Indiana Jones 4" when it comes out next year. And if he eventually produces a live action "Star Wars" series, I will watch that, as well. But he has to just do the storytelling on these films; no more dialogue or direction from him!
But George Lucas is seemingly getting to be more and more of an old crank; you just know that when he watches movies and television shows, he is saying to himself, "That's not how we used to do it. In our day, we used...."
And while George Lucas has embraced CGI for his three most recent films, he still seems old fashioned and out of step. He is stubborn. He should have had others direct the "Clone Wars" and "Revenge of the Sith" movies. I liked the stories in both of those films but I think the dialogue and direction left a lot to be desired.
I remember that when "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" came out in 1999, it was well hyped and everyone talked about it. But the film that more people talked about and was better received was "The Matrix." And "The Matrix" was cool, well-done, and really blew a lot of people away.
That was what George Lucas used to do.
2 comments:
I think that Lucas is a victim of his own success. It's not like he ha anyone telling him "no". Additionally no matter how poor his movie are people like you and me are going to go see them regardless. He has no reason to stretch creatively, also he realy does not have any peers to tell him that having Darth Vader played by an annoying little kid is a bad idea. Or maybe someone saying that his dialog reads like a five year old wrote it.
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