Lucas reflected on his life in work in a wide-ranging chat in Cannes, where he received an honorary Palm d'Or.

Lucas reflected on his life in work in a wide-ranging chat in Cannes, where he received and honorary Palm d’Or.

  • sepi@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    First off, George Lucas should shut the hell up. Second, he’s not entirely wrong.

  • makeshiftreaper@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    As a non Star Wars fan who just re-watched Phantom Menance, what the fuck are you talking about Georgie? I like the original trilogy well enough, but to say Star Wars has cohesive ideas and themes is ludicrous. You jumped the shark when the 7th word on screen was “taxation” in Episode 1. Not to mention when a 7 year old Anakin Skywalker raced a hover jet to buy his freedom from a thinly veiled Jewish epitaph

    Everyone who comes to Star Wars does their own thing with it and most of it is goofy as shit. Hell, even the original Yoda was an actual Muppet. Star Wars at best was a metaphor against the Vietnam War, but even that was pretty loose. I think George has an over-inflated sense of ego about what Star Wars actually is

    • xyzzy@lemm.ee
      1·
      3 months ago

      I think you might have meant “epithet,” but since that is specifically about a word or phrase, “caricature” is probably the closest match.

      The original, unmodified trilogy was a pretty archetypal hero’s journey for Luke (or rather, a series of journeys within the larger character journey). It was well done, reasonably cohesive, and had strong themes, owing in no small part to Gary Kurtz (producer for the first two movies), Marcia Lucas (editor on the first and third movies and uncredited contributing editor on the second), and Irvin Kershner (director for the second movie).

      It began to fall off the rails a bit in the final movie when Lucas asserted more control, resulting in Kurtz’s departure, but ultimately in my judgment it stuck the thematic landing.

      The rest were… ehhh…

      We saw what happened with the prequel trilogy without those collaborators to rein him in and add actual human emotion. It’s not good, but it’s uncharitable to lump the original (again, unmodified) trilogy in with them.

      The sequels were just completely incoherent.

      Part of the problem is the unmodified originals have been effectively disappeared for an entire generation, so people who watch the “original trilogy” on disc or Disney+ are actually watching the atrocious CGI versions. It really does make a difference, in my opinion.