George Lucas - your opinions of him? a general discussion thread — Page 5

SilverWook said:

Did any of the educational stuff Lucas once talked about utilizing with Young Indy ever come to pass?

It didn’t. I remember Lucas talking up in interviews about using the show in schools and creating collected versions with more historical information but it never happened. A google search doesn’t even come up with a mention of it but it was definitely one of Lucas’ big talking points about the show.

He also talked about either the six DVD set of the the Star Wars saga or the Blu Ray set as being this film school in a box experience. As nice as some of Blu Ray or dvd extras are, they fall short of that of course.

SilverWook said:

Did any of the educational stuff Lucas once talked about utilizing with Young Indy ever come to pass?

Are you talking about the historical documentaries he mentioned they were working on for the dvd during that Charlie Rose interview circa RotS or is this something he mentioned way back in the early 90’s when the show was airing?

On a related note, I’m only just now getting around to watching Twin Peaks (I tried a couple years ago but only got several episodes in before getting sidetracked). I would’ve been almost five when that show started airing and I do seem to vaguely recall being aware of its existence. By contrast, imdb tells me that The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles aired from March of '92 to August of '93 and yet I don’t recall even being aware of its existence during that time at all despite being several years older.

Maybe I was too distracted by TNG and DS9 to notice, maybe I just hadn’t quite seen the Indiana Jones movies, but it’s still shockingly weird to me now that this show wasn’t even on my radar. Was it on during a bad timeslot? Is it even any good? Imdb also tells me there were several made for tv movies (or were they just direct to video?) done afterwards.

I would hear/read this show being brought up every once in a while, and remember seeing the ad at the front of the Raiders vhs (I’d seen it before and so I knew how the ad ended, but I remember this one time we were watching Raiders and my parents and their friends burst out laughing when you hear old Indy say “all before the age of 21”).

Other than that, the only things I knew about Young Indy were that some of the eventual PT crew worked on it, like McCallum and Tattersall, and I seem to recall hearing somewhere that George got back in the director’s chair for some of it and also experimented with certain digital techniques. I also see some big names were responsible for the writing and directing, like Mike Newell who went on to direct the fourth Harry Potter movie.

Anyway, I still haven’t seen it after all these years but might be interested at some point if it’s at all worth it. In retrospect, the 90’s might have been the Star Wars renaissance but it feels like the dark times for Lucasfilm since I can’t think of anything else they made during that stretch other than Radioland Murders (which I caught the end of on tv once) and TPM.

To my knowledge it’s not up on any streaming services, which is a mitigating factor since I’m not going through the trouble of getting the dvd just to see it. Maybe the show is still stuck in standard def or it’s a rights issue, or both.

ratpack1961 said:

Haarspalter said:

I wonder if Lucas created the PT primarily to keep LucasFilm alive? Its artistic outcome would not have been important as long as it generates money. Back in the 80s he also saw ESB & ROTJ as mere vehicles to fund his elaborate Skywalker Ranch. Somewhere between ANH & ESB the filmmaker disappeared and the businessman took over. Didn’t he say during infamous “White Slavers” interview with Charlie Rose that he wanted to do the ST himself and that he had to care about his employees? Maybe it was easier to sell LucasFilm than to stem another trilogy himself…

Late reply to this one but this is actually true. Young Indiana Jones in the early 90s was a huge money loss for Lucasfilm. He had to come up with something that was going to generate income. This was partially why he went forward with the prequels.

I think Lucas has a love/hate relationship with Star Wars. With Empire he really did want to farm out the star wars movies to other people and he would build his dream Skywalker Ranch studio. However he had a very hard time letting go of wanting to control Empire and the quality of that film. When he did Jedi he was onset every day I believe as opposed to the hands off approach he had with Empire. After Jedi he was finished with the whole thing until he decided to finish the saga with the prequels which would make him a ton of money and he would have absolute control over the output of the film.

It’s worth noting that Disney spent roughly 50% more on TFA than George did on TPM, and that’s after adjusting for inflation. To George’s credit, he spent twice Jedi’s budget on TPM. As many were saying at the time, the prequels would have cost way more if George hadn’t owned ILM. It’s ironic that seeing their work on Jurassic Park is what convinced him he could finally make the PT, because a certain Ian Malcolm quote fits rather perfectly with what he decided to do next.