Why do you think he does it? — Page 2

There are two reasons that I can see why Lucas is doing this:

1) He truely was never fully satisfied with the originals and enjoys tinkering around with them. He did this from the beginning--all the 1977 sound re-mixes, the 1981 crawl, he even tried to restore the ANH Jabba scene back then.

So this is nothing new.

But obviously, 1997/2004/2011 tinkering is much, much different than those. So what changed?

Lucas stopped making films and now this is all he has left. In 1981 he could care less about going to so far as to add dinosaurs to Mos Eisley because he was in the middle of shooting Raiders of the Lost Ark, he was about to make Return of the Jedi, and he had just finished producing Kagemusha and Empire Strikes Back. He was thinking about his retirement from the series and was planning on getting back to making experimental films and producing more interesting movies.

That's the biggest factor, IMO.

The 80s came. He got divorced, let go of Star Wars, took a few years to get his personal life back in order, sorted out his finances. Produced some interesting films like that weird John Korty animated film and Tucker and Captain Eo, made Willow, made two more Indiana Jones sequels, got into the business side of Lucasfilm and advanced the computer division and the video game division.

The 1990s then come. Finally he is financially powerful again, had his "rest", had his "family time" where he adopted two more kids, had his fun producing and being the business guy and now was finally going to be a director again, make those weird film that he always said he was going to make.

But instead he went back to Star Wars. And he would stay there. More books, more comics, more toys, more video releases--he realized there was a sleeping empire there. He starts planning on putting that Jabba scene back in ANH like he wanted to do in 1981, but now he starts getting swept away after Jurassic Park and the CG revolution and within a few years he is using the project as an excuse to dabble in computer technology. But he can't get away from Star Wars. An elaborate Special Edition. Another prequel. Another prequel. A TV cartoon. A DVD Special Edition. Another prequel. Another TV cartoon. A live-action series. More books and games. Another Blu Ray Special Edition.

Other than a mediocre Indiana Jones--and, maybe finally, Red Tails if it ever comes out--that's all Lucas has done for about twenty years. Longer than his "retirement." He started working on the SE in 1993 and TPM in 1994, and now it's going on 2012 and he's still stuck there.

So, he has nothing else. He has no other films to put his creative energy into. There's no experimental films, no original ideas, no non-Star Wars films where he is behind the camera, no nothing, just Star Wars. And now he is so old that he never will ever direct another film again. He'll just be stuck with Star Wars, so while in the past he could tinker here and there but otherwise let it be and move on to other things, he's stuck, and all he can do is obsess over them and tinker and tinker and tinker. And when dealing with the older films, he's not the same person who made them in 1976, 1979 and 1982, so it's like he is taking some stranger's film who shares some vague notions with himself and is trying to re-shape them to better reflect himself now. Old George Lucas is literally trying to out-muscle Young George Lucas.

This goes into reason number 2

2) He's creatively castrated himself in his old age and success. Puggo explained this rather eloquently. It's actually not that abnormal. He became so successful, so wealthy, and so isolated from the real world that he lost the ability to be in touch with other human beings through his art, lost the ability to write captivating or engaging scenes and characters. Sometimes, creativity needs to be exercised or else it withers away like an underused muscle. But more importantly, Lucas lost his collaborators. He was never quite as talented as everyone suspected but he knew how to smartly overcome his limitations by surrounding himself with collaborators and letting himself be challenged. That situation no longer exists, because he has willed it so.

So, you have a man with nothing creative or artistic in his life except this one franchise, which he can't get away from, he has to keep going back because he doesn't have anything else to go to. And then when he does, he has all these awful ideas, because he's not what he used to be, and no one says anything about them, because he's created his own world that he can live and work in.

And so Lucas is stuck in this endless cycle. Rick McCallum said it best, there will be no definitive Star Wars version until Lucas dies. And we'll have to see each painful permutation of it as this aging billionaire with a fading creative impulse and a plantation of lackeys keeps bringing his baby to the plastic surgeon to get her to look the way he thinks he wants.

Not that I agree with what I'm going to say, but I think Lucas continues to tinker with the OT simply because he feels it isn't perfect in his mind. 

Think about, other then CGI Yoda, what has he changed in the PT on the BluRay release?  Nothing, so he thinks the PT is exactly what he wants portrayed on screen.  He continues to tinker with the OT thinking this will jive perfectly when a moviegoer watches them 1-6. 

I actually find it more sad WHAT he changes, rather then the fact that he continues to change the movies every few years.  When I see Jedi Rocks, or Greedo shooting first, or Vaders NOOOO, it shows how bad a filmaker George has become.  It shows that he is well past his prime, because none of these changes are even remotely good. 

It's like watching the fatter Elvis in 1977 when he was a shell of himself, or Brett Favre last year after retired and unretired 3 times and getting knocked around at 41 years old.  Its like looking at Joan Rivers with all that plastic surgery, and you know that the younger, funnier Joan Rivers is somewhere in that face. 

I'm sure there is a part of Lucas that is getting off about pissing the old fans off, but I firmly believe that he is just doing what he feels makes the movies better.   Just look at the PT, that is HIS 100% vision.  And how did that turn out? 

CO said:

Think about, other then CGI Yoda, what has he changed in the PT on the BluRay release? ...

Yes, apart from CGI Yoda and Skywalker's Mommy's voice added to the AOTS dream sequence it appears not much has been changed.

But as we all know, PT versions on DVD are not the theatrical cuts so LFL has already tinkered with them.

My point isn't an indictment of Lucas but it just shows that the man is never happy.

Even my 5-year-old knows that when the painting is done, you move on to another one.  You don't go back and modify or add things - you just move on.

To pay for the prostitutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cph-lckkLs8

Are you saying you have to pay to be a prostitute?

My 2 cents...I firmly believe George Lucas is suffering a form of neurosis. Suffer the facts...

Is seemingly a prolific, if unusual student at USC.

Wins favour and is applauded by both his peers and industry alike (THX 1138)

Destroys his and his friends' aspirations with the failure of THX and the death of Zoetrope (v.1)...

Returns to glory with the huge success of American Graffiti and the formation of Lucasfilm.

Makes Star Wars. After much studio bullshit, creates the most popular film of all time.

Yadda yadda yadda...

It's troughs and highs, isn't it? Regardless of his marriage (which, let's face it, can happen to anyone) Lucas has been up and down like a bride's nightie...it's no wonder the enormous pressure took it's toll somewhere on the man. The sudden, overwhelming wealth and power (within a certain field) must have been an extraordinary set of circumstances to find oneself in...Yet, therein lies the rub...He can do virtually what he likes, and what does he do? Tinkers and fiddles with his masterpiece , oblivious and uncaring to the rest of the world, trying to perfect the unperfectable. Destroying with every seemingly ingenious stroke.

The man needs to be distanced from these films. I will paraphrase the director William Friedkin regarding the French painter Pierre Bonnard...

'The security guy is in the Louvre and suddenly notices some old guy fooling around with one of the paintings...He accosts the old guy and notices he has a brush and paint in hand and is tampering with the work of art on display...'C'mon, buddy', says the guard, and drags the guy away from the exhibit. 'but...but, I'm Bonnard!!' cries the guy... ''It's in the fucking Louvre, pal!!' says the guard.

He does it to offer something new. I think he thinks that if he just sold the OOT, nobody would buy it because it's something they already had.

I really don't know. His logic perplexes me.

zombie84 said:

There are two reasons that I can see why Lucas is doing this:

1) He truely was never fully satisfied with the originals and enjoys tinkering around with them. He did this from the beginning--all the 1977 sound re-mixes, the 1981 crawl, he even tried to restore the ANH Jabba scene back then.

So this is nothing new.

But obviously, 1997/2004/2011 tinkering is much, much different than those. So what changed?

Lucas stopped making films and now this is all he has left. In 1981 he could care less about going to so far as to add dinosaurs to Mos Eisley because he was in the middle of shooting Raiders of the Lost Ark, he was about to make Return of the Jedi, and he had just finished producing Kagemusha and Empire Strikes Back. He was thinking about his retirement from the series and was planning on getting back to making experimental films and producing more interesting movies.

That's the biggest factor, IMO.

The 80s came. He got divorced, let go of Star Wars, took a few years to get his personal life back in order, sorted out his finances. Produced some interesting films like that weird John Korty animated film and Tucker and Captain Eo, made Willow, made two more Indiana Jones sequels, got into the business side of Lucasfilm and advanced the computer division and the video game division.

The 1990s then come. Finally he is financially powerful again, had his "rest", had his "family time" where he adopted two more kids, had his fun producing and being the business guy and now was finally going to be a director again, make those weird film that he always said he was going to make.

But instead he went back to Star Wars. And he would stay there. More books, more comics, more toys, more video releases--he realized there was a sleeping empire there. He starts planning on putting that Jabba scene back in ANH like he wanted to do in 1981, but now he starts getting swept away after Jurassic Park and the CG revolution and within a few years he is using the project as an excuse to dabble in computer technology. But he can't get away from Star Wars. An elaborate Special Edition. Another prequel. Another prequel. A TV cartoon. A DVD Special Edition. Another prequel. Another TV cartoon. A live-action series. More books and games. Another Blu Ray Special Edition.

Other than a mediocre Indiana Jones--and, maybe finally, Red Tails if it ever comes out--that's all Lucas has done for about twenty years. Longer than his "retirement." He started working on the SE in 1993 and TPM in 1994, and now it's going on 2012 and he's still stuck there.

So, he has nothing else. He has no other films to put his creative energy into. There's no experimental films, no original ideas, no non-Star Wars films where he is behind the camera, no nothing, just Star Wars. And now he is so old that he never will ever direct another film again. He'll just be stuck with Star Wars, so while in the past he could tinker here and there but otherwise let it be and move on to other things, he's stuck, and all he can do is obsess over them and tinker and tinker and tinker. And when dealing with the older films, he's not the same person who made them in 1976, 1979 and 1982, so it's like he is taking some stranger's film who shares some vague notions with himself and is trying to re-shape them to better reflect himself now. Old George Lucas is literally trying to out-muscle Young George Lucas.

This goes into reason number 2

2) He's creatively castrated himself in his old age and success. Puggo explained this rather eloquently. It's actually not that abnormal. He became so successful, so wealthy, and so isolated from the real world that he lost the ability to be in touch with other human beings through his art, lost the ability to write captivating or engaging scenes and characters. Sometimes, creativity needs to be exercised or else it withers away like an underused muscle. But more importantly, Lucas lost his collaborators. He was never quite as talented as everyone suspected but he knew how to smartly overcome his limitations by surrounding himself with collaborators and letting himself be challenged. That situation no longer exists, because he has willed it so.

So, you have a man with nothing creative or artistic in his life except this one franchise, which he can't get away from, he has to keep going back because he doesn't have anything else to go to. And then when he does, he has all these awful ideas, because he's not what he used to be, and no one says anything about them, because he's created his own world that he can live and work in.

And so Lucas is stuck in this endless cycle. Rick McCallum said it best, there will be no definitive Star Wars version until Lucas dies. And we'll have to see each painful permutation of it as this aging billionaire with a fading creative impulse and a plantation of lackeys keeps bringing his baby to the plastic surgeon to get her to look the way he thinks he wants.

Hey guys, long time lurker here. This is my first post and I just had to say how well articulated and amazing zombie84's take on this issue is. I also never knew about the back history with Marcia and how the copyrights figure in untill I came across this thread as well. Thanks for the insight guys. Hope to see you around the boards more. 

I think logic has long distanced itself from both GL and his current acolytes. Regardless of the success of the prequels or the SE DVDs etc, there has been an insufferable tyrrany at work which has yielded nothing but the progressive and determined attrition to destroy a series of films once lauded worldwide over generations, now reduced to the cartoonish foibles of a megalomaniac who should never have been allowed such 'control' over his 'work'...

Flatnate said:

zombie84 said:

There are two reasons that I can see why Lucas is doing this:

1) He truely was never fully satisfied with the originals and enjoys tinkering around with them. He did this from the beginning--all the 1977 sound re-mixes, the 1981 crawl, he even tried to restore the ANH Jabba scene back then.

So this is nothing new.

But obviously, 1997/2004/2011 tinkering is much, much different than those. So what changed?

Lucas stopped making films and now this is all he has left. In 1981 he could care less about going to so far as to add dinosaurs to Mos Eisley because he was in the middle of shooting Raiders of the Lost Ark, he was about to make Return of the Jedi, and he had just finished producing Kagemusha and Empire Strikes Back. He was thinking about his retirement from the series and was planning on getting back to making experimental films and producing more interesting movies.

That's the biggest factor, IMO.

The 80s came. He got divorced, let go of Star Wars, took a few years to get his personal life back in order, sorted out his finances. Produced some interesting films like that weird John Korty animated film and Tucker and Captain Eo, made Willow, made two more Indiana Jones sequels, got into the business side of Lucasfilm and advanced the computer division and the video game division.

The 1990s then come. Finally he is financially powerful again, had his "rest", had his "family time" where he adopted two more kids, had his fun producing and being the business guy and now was finally going to be a director again, make those weird film that he always said he was going to make.

But instead he went back to Star Wars. And he would stay there. More books, more comics, more toys, more video releases--he realized there was a sleeping empire there. He starts planning on putting that Jabba scene back in ANH like he wanted to do in 1981, but now he starts getting swept away after Jurassic Park and the CG revolution and within a few years he is using the project as an excuse to dabble in computer technology. But he can't get away from Star Wars. An elaborate Special Edition. Another prequel. Another prequel. A TV cartoon. A DVD Special Edition. Another prequel. Another TV cartoon. A live-action series. More books and games. Another Blu Ray Special Edition.

Other than a mediocre Indiana Jones--and, maybe finally, Red Tails if it ever comes out--that's all Lucas has done for about twenty years. Longer than his "retirement." He started working on the SE in 1993 and TPM in 1994, and now it's going on 2012 and he's still stuck there.

So, he has nothing else. He has no other films to put his creative energy into. There's no experimental films, no original ideas, no non-Star Wars films where he is behind the camera, no nothing, just Star Wars. And now he is so old that he never will ever direct another film again. He'll just be stuck with Star Wars, so while in the past he could tinker here and there but otherwise let it be and move on to other things, he's stuck, and all he can do is obsess over them and tinker and tinker and tinker. And when dealing with the older films, he's not the same person who made them in 1976, 1979 and 1982, so it's like he is taking some stranger's film who shares some vague notions with himself and is trying to re-shape them to better reflect himself now. Old George Lucas is literally trying to out-muscle Young George Lucas.

This goes into reason number 2

2) He's creatively castrated himself in his old age and success. Puggo explained this rather eloquently. It's actually not that abnormal. He became so successful, so wealthy, and so isolated from the real world that he lost the ability to be in touch with other human beings through his art, lost the ability to write captivating or engaging scenes and characters. Sometimes, creativity needs to be exercised or else it withers away like an underused muscle. But more importantly, Lucas lost his collaborators. He was never quite as talented as everyone suspected but he knew how to smartly overcome his limitations by surrounding himself with collaborators and letting himself be challenged. That situation no longer exists, because he has willed it so.

So, you have a man with nothing creative or artistic in his life except this one franchise, which he can't get away from, he has to keep going back because he doesn't have anything else to go to. And then when he does, he has all these awful ideas, because he's not what he used to be, and no one says anything about them, because he's created his own world that he can live and work in.

And so Lucas is stuck in this endless cycle. Rick McCallum said it best, there will be no definitive Star Wars version until Lucas dies. And we'll have to see each painful permutation of it as this aging billionaire with a fading creative impulse and a plantation of lackeys keeps bringing his baby to the plastic surgeon to get her to look the way he thinks he wants.

 

 

Great summation, though I disagree with one thing here. The last Indiana Jones movie was not mediocre. It was an awful and decrepit piece of filmmaking.  I'd rather watch George's prequels a million times over before watching that again. 

(I actually like the first 2/3 of Crystal Skull!)

To me it seems GL likes the hustling. Not in a greedy, cheapskate miserly way, but just the whole game of it. He always seems genuinely engaged and interested at industry things, and he seems hyper-aware of what everything in the biz costs and what everything makes and how to shave/raise those numbers in new ways. (which is funny for a guy who makes such a big show about not living in/going Hollywood) I think that's fun for him and we know from his own words that making movies is no fun at all. I don't think he can relate to that starry-eyed, childlike love of movies/moviefan thing the way Spielberg can because he was just never that guy. He was into getting more rpms from an engine and still is. Which is perfectly cool, it's just a bummer for us because he can't even relate to the mere idea that anyone would possibly care about using old, broken, inferior parts.

I think GL hasn't aged beyond the 18 year-old loner who wanted to drive cars real fast. But his near-death accident put a hold on his real dreams forever. Since fate could not allow him to be a racer his whole life, I feel he wanted to create a film that millions would love, then gradually destroy it as an act of revenge. He was never a filmmaker in my eyes, just a bitter man who wanted others to feel as bitter and angry at life as he was. It explains Anakin in the PT a lot: the whiny, detached human being who considers himself more important than he really is. And now he has deliberately destroyed three films, something one would have expected in the 1920s-1930s, but not in recent times.

The big question is what happens to the children once Lucas becomes MJ?

First raping childhoods next.....

First he raped childhoods, next he'll dye his skin white like MJ and rape the children themselves!

Sometimes, I think that he may be a bit.. mentally ill. Like a Howard Hughes type. I bet he watches the OT on repeat every day of the week that he isn't working or out in the public to look for "mistakes" to "fix." That's the only way that I can possibly imagine how some of the changes that happened to the Blu-rays were even thought up. Like the R2 rocks and stuff.

And everyone suffers because of it. Why did life have to end up like this?

Promus said:

I think he's already raped childhoods...AND cinematic history...

Oh, did you mean FIST-raping? Oh...oh shit...

FFS...