Correct. He did a lot of research clearly which is really awesome. And it proves that RocketJump wasn’t exactly being genuine in his portrayal of Lucas and the making of the movie.
I’ve discussed this video with people here before, and people got upset about it. And yeah, the guy can be passive aggressive and somewhat mean, which is a problem, but a lot of the points are still valid. I can understand being mad about slander and misinformation about something you love at the same time though. People getting upset at the video was also probably partially due to the way I talked about it, due to my explosive nature. I think you’ll get a lot better reception as you’re way cooler and more level-headed and this post is much more objective.
Ultimately I think the original RocketJump video gained a lot of traction because people really want an answer to, “What happened to the Lucas that directed the original trilogy?/WTF happened with the prequels?” question. Which is understandable and very relatable. I felt that during my latest rewatch. But to take on a mindset that it must’ve been because George Lucas was just never good is not the answer. The real answer is definitely way more complex.
I remember shitting on you really hard about this video. I’m a lot more suspicious of this anti-George Lucas narrative that became so popular in the fandom than I was when you made that post. It feels really shitty to change my mind about something I was so opinionated on before, but I really feel like I watched Nerdonymous’s video with a hostile mindset and could only find errors in his refusal to treat RocketJump in good faith. But does RocketJump deserve good faith? Treating people with good people is a virtue, so maybe, but RocketJump’s video makes so many factual errors that he kind of has no credibility. The argument between Nerdonymous and RocketJump should be framed as someone who did their research vs someone who, at best, has no idea what they’re talking about, not as two equals both presenting valid viewpoints.
I originally disliked how Nerdonymous’s video didn’t make a strong, central argument to refute RocketJump, instead just being two hours of pointing out dumb shit RocketJump said, but the point here is to undermine RocketJump’s credibility: Here he is making pretty lofty claims discrediting George Lucas of Star Wars’s success, and he can’t even get basic facts right. Nerdonymous implies that RocketJump is a Disney shill or that the fans of this video are Disney shills, which I didn’t like at the time, and I still don’t see how you could ever prove that RocketJump had any connection to Disney or Disney promoted it. But it’s kind of obvious to me now how much RocketJump’s video was muddying the waters, and it’s extremely hard to believe someone who’s as clearly intelligent as RocketJump was just overzealous and ran a story based on mistaken and/or completely fabricated information. I don’t blame Nerdonymous for connecting the dots and blaming Disney, although there’s no evidence for that and literally all it takes to make a video like this is one guy still seething over the Special Editions.
Because some people did a video talking about the power of editing film and how it can have a big effect in general, this film especially?
Come on. Let’s be real, that’s not what this video was. It’s not the takeaway you were meant to get from this video. It’s not why it got popular either, and it’s not what people reference it for. Do you really think Nerdonymous just randomly attacked RocketJump’s innocent video about “the power of editing film”? Even if trying to discredit George Lucas is a total accidental message that RocketJump did not intend to put in his video, come on, we need to look a little more critically about the messages in the media we’re consuming. You’re being extremely forgiving. The message is definitely there, and considering how many people have picked up on this message and used this video to argue against George Lucas deserving credit for Star Wars’s success, it deserves to be taken seriously.
Like I said above, I think it was a brave thing to post that Nerdonymous video on here considering it shits on fan preservations and fan edits.
That pissed me off too. I’m a member of this community and I didn’t appreciate being shit on like that. But can you really blame an outsider for thinking these things about us? 99% of the early fanediting scene was driven by George Lucas seethe, and while we constantly talk about the preservation of Star Wars’s cultural legacy, something which is extremely important, you have to admit George Lucas seethe is embedded in these preservationist communities. Anti-Lucas revisionism is more of a problem here than Pro-Lucas revisionism is in the general population. If we want to be act like someone who has a deep admiration for Lucas shitting on us is an unfair thing to do, maybe we should stop shitting on George Lucas so much.
Especially because, if Star Wars’s cultural heritage is what we want to say we’re here for, and not just because we’re still seething about the Special Editions, we need to keep in mind that George Lucas has contributed far, far more to Star Wars’s cultural heritage than he’s destroyed. It’s a shame that he destroyed some of it. But he literally made Star Wars. Can we have some perspective?
We’re at a point in time where our fiction is as soulless and hollow as ever because we shit on visionary storytellers like George Lucas. The creativity and passion that went into the OT which is now rare if not absent from modern filmmaking is more important to Star Wars’s cultural legacy than whether or not Han shot first, and considering that Disney has done nothing but give us what we ask for, it was us who destroyed it.
Anyway, I apologize to you G&G Fan. I was wrong about what I said, and it’s embarrassing to look at the original thread and see myself defending a viewpoint which I really think should have been obvious how wrong it was. I’m feeling that way more and more about the shit I’ve said on the internet years past. Although Nerdonymous’s major chip on his shoulder really does make the video fucking suck.