Stardust1138 said:
…in the case of an auteur like George…That’s being very generous. To me, Lucas is nearly the opposite. Star Wars is largely derivative. At times, some of the scenes are nothing more than direct recreations of other films, novels, and comic books. Here is one of the many examples. Plenty of other articles, sites, and video comparisons out there. https://youtu.be/WtGAQLxYZJ0
When I think of auteurs, the first ones who come to mind are Hitchcock, Kubrick, Spielberg, Coppola, Fellini, Orson Wells, Penny Marshall, Jordon Peele, Nora Ephron, and a few others.
Now that I’m guilty of further derailing the discussion, perhaps we can get back to it.
I’ll just add that it isn’t uncommon for auteurs or filmmakers to borrow from other works of art. It’s all about the context in how they use it to tell their story. Some equally use paintings like Stanley Kubrick did with Barry Lyndon when he based entire scenes on art from the 18th Century. It’s also like Quentin Tarantino did with using Lady Snowblood as the template for his Kill Bill series. He also used other films. I mean the title of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is a direct homage to Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time in the West. Just like The Phantom Menace is a homage title to Republic Serials that always had some kind of Phantom Something. It’s the most Star Wars-y a title you can get. There’s equally plenty of examples where Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky played off of each other. It’s all about adding different contexts and meaning to how the current artist interprets it within their own work. This only adds if anything to George Lucas being an auteur. Why is he singled out? The others you mentioned and that I mention do the same thing. If you want to go further Bob Dylan does the same thing with music.
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And Steven Spielberg used a factory in Minority Report just as George did in Attack of the Clones. Both in 2002. So it seems to me like they both drew from each other’s work. Just as George did originally with THX 1138 being based in part on Alphaville by Jean-Luc Godard (who taught George as a guest lecturer at USC) and Metropolis by Fritz Lang. As much as it is in a literature sense based off of George Orwell’s 1984. Just as Attack of the Clones is a play off of The Searchers by John Ford when Anakin searches for his mother. George Lucas also used THX 1138 and equally American Graffiti in Attack of the Clones as a template in more than just the Droid Factory. In Revenge of the Sith even Commander Cody is based off of Republic Serials too as there was a Commando Cody. I could go on and on. Star Wars is as much a direct homage to itself as it is other works. After all the Prequels are the other side to the story told in the Originals. They juxtaposition off of each other as visual and thematic poetry. Characters say the same things and go through similar situations but they must differ to create poetry and symmetry.
It doesn’t make any of these individuals I or you cite are less of an auteur. If anything it magnifies their knowledge of what can successfully convey emotions subconsciously as the same stories have been told for thousands of years. It’s about creating your own unique stamp and on a personal level to me it is really fun to discover the roots of what we love.