Originally posted by: Gaffer Tape
But on the flip side of that coin, hardly anybody had anything good to say about Star Wars when Lucas was first coming up with it (other than Spielberg, supposedly). None of his friends understood, the studio criticized it, the cast and crew didn't believe in it. But Lucas pretty much said, "Screw all of you guys, I'm doing what I want," and we ended up with a great movie. So he did the same thing on the prequels... and it didn't quite work out. The question is: when do you accept other people's opinions and when do you simply charge ahead? It can be pretty difficult to figure out that line. At least, I think it is.
But on the flip side of that coin, hardly anybody had anything good to say about Star Wars when Lucas was first coming up with it (other than Spielberg, supposedly). None of his friends understood, the studio criticized it, the cast and crew didn't believe in it. But Lucas pretty much said, "Screw all of you guys, I'm doing what I want," and we ended up with a great movie. So he did the same thing on the prequels... and it didn't quite work out. The question is: when do you accept other people's opinions and when do you simply charge ahead? It can be pretty difficult to figure out that line. At least, I think it is.
I will agree with you guys that Lucas does not listen to people anymore, or he has become more autonomous since the success of SW.
I guess I am going to defend Ol'Georgie for a second, and TPM IS what he wanted, and that movie is pretty much crap to me. He wanted Jar Jar to be this clumsy sidekick cause he thought kids would gravitate to him. He wanted Anakin to be 10 years old, cause he wanted a character arc of Darth Vader to be from a good kid to a guy who is burned up, broken and dies in front of his son. He wanted a huge amount of CG that he couldn't use in the OT.
Then look at AOTC, he uses Boba Fett/Jango Fett to appease the crowd that has loved him since 1980. He toned down Jar Jar to next to nothing in that movie because he heard the cries that this guy is ANNNNOYYYYING!!!! Remember the first reviews of AOTC, "It not a great movie, but it is sure as hell better then TPM!"
Then look at ROTS, he heard cries from the fans that the romance is nauseating, so there are only a few scenes with Padme/Anakin that make you want to vomit. He throws Chewbacca in there to appease the OT crowd who wanted the Wookie planet in ROTJ. He makes it more adult and PG-13 for the first time by having Anakin slaughter children and burning up in front of ObiWan.
Lucas did listen to people and the fans during the PT, and it still went all wrong, as I think you can't expect him to listen to EVERY criticism, because he is an artist. The PT is average or bad simply because it is an exhausted movie series that doesn't have the great characters from the first trilogy, so right you dont' have that magic of Luke, Leia, and Han to grab the viewer in the movie. You then have a 50 year old guy with 3 kids from the age range of 5-14 who Lucas definitely wants to appeal to, compared to a renegade guy in the 70's who just wanted to make a cool frickin movie for himself.
Lucas changed and that is just a fact of life, as the PT was never going to be what fans like us wanted it to be, and I am guilty of thinking it could have been great too. Sure it could have been better, but the magic was slowly dying in ROTJ in 1983, and once a movie series loses that magic, all it becomes it just a retread of living off what made it great. You can say what you want about Lucas, but I think he did what he did, tried to appease this fanbase and that fanbase, and in the end, it was impossible and should have never been attempted. But hindsight is 20/20.