I was looking for more evidence of George Lucas' talent to combat those who think he is a "talentless hack" and I found this:
I wish that I could just wish my feelings away...but I can't. Wishful wishing can only lead to wishes wished for in futile wishfulness, which is not what I wish to wish for.
^ Great! When do we get the special edition?
“Grow up. These are my Disney's movies, not yours.”
I think the argument is that he is a hack now, but wasn't before. I mean he made American Graffiti and Star Wars! What person would say he never had any talent?
^^People who say that the less Lucas was involved, the better the movies were. The idea that Gary Kurtz was this genius and he and Marcia Lucas saved SW from being a flop, and Irvin Kirshner and Kurtz were the only reason ESB was good.
I wish that I could just wish my feelings away...but I can't. Wishful wishing can only lead to wishes wished for in futile wishfulness, which is not what I wish to wish for.
1990osu said:
I was looking for more evidence of George Lucas' talent to combat those who think he is a "talentless hack" and I found this:
That's from George Lucas: Maker of Films, available on MySpleen.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Post 102 is worth more.
I’m late to the party, but I think this is the best song. Enjoy!
—Teams Jetrell Fo 1, Jetrell Fo 2, and Jetrell Fo 3
1990osu said:
^^People who say that the less Lucas was involved, the better the movies were. The idea that Gary Kurtz was this genius and he and Marcia Lucas saved SW from being a flop, and Irvin Kirshner and Kurtz were the only reason ESB was good.
Part of that is true, but Lucas was also part of the team and that's where he worked best. When he went off on his own, the supports he relied upon weren't there and the films sucked. Plus, I think Lucas' skills diminished naturally with old age. But I don't think people argued that he was always talentless, just that his collaborations hid or offset the flaws he had. The only reason he collaborated was because he set that environment up in the first place, so it was a deliberate part of his method.
The original trilogy (or, at the very least, Star Wars and Empire) works so well because the first film, written and directed by Lucas, had the challenge of a limited budget and a controlling hollywood studio. Empire was controlled by Lucas, but he kept himself resigned to simply writing the story and executive producing. Finally there's Jedi, where Lucas controlled things a little more, but you've still got Marquand and Kasdan.
In all three cases, Lucas' influence is offset by other factors. Those other factors were pretty much absent in the prequels.
At the very least, we should've had a Jedi scenario where maybe Lucas co-wrote the script and even directed a few scenes himself, but we still had another director to give input Lucas wouldn't have considered on his own. Ideally, we should've gotten an Empire scenario.
zombie84 said:
1990osu said:
^^People who say that the less Lucas was involved, the better the movies were. The idea that Gary Kurtz was this genius and he and Marcia Lucas saved SW from being a flop, and Irvin Kirshner and Kurtz were the only reason ESB was good.
Part of that is true, but Lucas was also part of the team and that's where he worked best. When he went off on his own, the supports he relied upon weren't there and the films sucked. Plus, I think Lucas' skills diminished naturally with old age. But I don't think people argued that he was always talentless, just that his collaborations hid or offset the flaws he had. The only reason he collaborated was because he set that environment up in the first place, so it was a deliberate part of his method.
This is about how I feel on the issue.
Personally, I respect Lucas as a filmmaker a lot, but I do feel that a lot of the charm of Star Wars and Empire was due to the collaboration of a bunch of different minds (checks and balances, not just for Lucas, but for anyone involved with a bad idea), and the "MacGuyvered" nature they had, out of necessity due to the time and budget constraints on those first two films.
Once Jedi, and certainly the prequels, rolled around, Lucas had infinitely more monetary resources, more technology to call on, fewer people to answer to, and more final say, and because of that, he was able to make the films he, and he alone, wanted to make without other people meddling in your domain and without regard to compromises you made out of necessity before (which is entirely understandable as an artist), but, unfortunately, in the process he lost a lot of what had unintentionally made those movies feel so "real" and what made them have such an impact on cinematic and cultural history.
I feel that, if Lucas had started the Star Wars saga in 1999 with the same budget and freedom of control he had with the prequels, the series would not have been as highly regarded as it is, even if it was the pioneering film for the effects used.
I believe that Lucas has an incredible amount of talent and skill as a filmmaker and storyteller, but I think that he works better with a collaborative team behind him, and the same is really true for anyone in any line of work; being able to pull such a huge project off perfectly, alone, with no input or help from anybody else is an exceedingly rare gift, I certainly don't possess it, and I don't know anybody else who does, so it's not like it's a Lucas-specific thing; very few great films were the work of a single person.
Keep Circulating the Tapes.
END OF LINE
(It hasn’t happened yet)
I have seen most of his early short films and I loved them all
It's a weird thing to get hung-up on, I'll admit, but one thing I really don't like about Lucas having directed the prequels forming the six-film saga is that you've now got the first four movies irising out to "directed by George Lucas" and the last two movies irising out to other guys' names. Episode IV should've remained the only Lucas-directed Star Wars movie.