George Lucas Blames 'Star Wars' Critics for Killing Series

Starman said:

That's humanity for you, right or wrong. If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

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The idea that somehow the artist must be willing to take anything the audience chooses to dish out without comment or reaction seems hypocritical.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander, you know. We fans are putting our comments out there to the public, too. It is, if you will, our art. It, then, should also be open to critique, and he gets to say what he likes about it.

My thought is that if the public, the audience in aggregate, cannot keep itself to speaking in proportion, without showering the artists with hyperbolic vitriol, then the audience does not deserve to have good art made for it.

And you wonder why, maybe, we get so many crappy movies. Maybe it is because we're kinda crappy, ourselves. We get what we deserve, hm?

Umbran said:

And you wonder why, maybe, we get so many crappy movies. Maybe it is because we're kinda crappy, ourselves. We get what we deserve, hm?

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I recall a thread in which I said almost exactly this and got a warning for it. Apparently it's ok for you to call people crappy but it's not ok for me to do it.

Who's the goose and who's the gander in this scenario?

Umbran said:

My thought is that if the public, the audience in aggregate, cannot keep itself to speaking in proportion, without showering the artists with hyperbolic vitriol, then the audience does not deserve to have good art made for it.

And you wonder why, maybe, we get so many crappy movies. Maybe it is because we're kinda crappy, ourselves. We get what we deserve, hm?

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In some discussions online somewhere I have very likely said that I do not like the prequels. I'm honestly not sure because, frankly, its not that big a deal to me

I've certainly voiced a negative opinion on the prequels to people in person,

I am fairly sure that I was always reasonably polite in that criticism.

I have NEVER attacked Lucas personally.

The above 2 paragraphs are almost certainly true for the vast majority of people who dislike the Prequels (or just about anything else).

Heck, even on this thread most people are being reasonably polite about the Prequels and very few are attacking Lucas personally.

I utterly reject the idea that a small vocal minority of douchebags means that society as a whole "deserves" crappy movies.

Umbran said:

The idea that somehow the artist must be willing to take anything the audience chooses to dish out without comment or reaction seems hypocritical.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander, you know. We fans are putting our comments out there to the public, too. It is, if you will, our art. It, then, should also be open to critique, and he gets to say what he likes about it.

My thought is that if the public, the audience in aggregate, cannot keep itself to speaking in proportion, without showering the artists with hyperbolic vitriol, then the audience does not deserve to have good art made for it.

And you wonder why, maybe, we get so many crappy movies. Maybe it is because we're kinda crappy, ourselves. We get what we deserve, hm?

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I'm not defending the people who have clearly crossed the line in their comments. I'm saying that there will always be people who do this, but Lucas seems to be conflating this vocal minority with the majority of people who have seen his films. Lots of people disliked the prequels, but not all (or even most) have directed angry bile at Lucas personally. Lucas is well within his rights to say that these attacks are over the top and ridiculous. But when he starts saying stuff like, "People say mean things about my movies, so I'm not going to make anymore," he doesn't sound like a reasonable adult who has been unfairly attacked; he sounds like a peevish child.

I think what Lucas fails to realize is that it's NOT that fans will criticize anyone and anything that changes the Star Wars story. There have been LOTS of Star Wars stories that have been very well received by the fans ("Legacy," "Knights of the Old Republic," "Jedi Academy series"). Fans are willing to go with you if you're respectful of the source material and use it in interesting and faithful ways. Lucas decided instead to totally screw with the source material (apparently on the grounds that it was his and he'd do whatever the heck he wanted with it), and as a result the fans weren't willing to trust him with it.

I don't need to go into every single solitary detail, particularly here. Midichlorians are the least of it! There's retconning Anikan's history so it makes no sense in light of the original movies, there's the utterly wooden romance with Padme (which itself required retconning the original movies!).

I could go on and on, but I know I don't need to. What others have done with the materials and done well has been very appropriately praised (even if it's not necessarily universally loved), but Lucas was careless with his story, and apparently thinks that the fans owe him devotion for phoning in what was ultimately an unsatisfactory set of movies.

None of which is to say that he deserves the kind of vitriol that he's gotten from some fans, but you'll always get that in the age of the internet from some quarters. You've got to roll with it. And it's also not to say that there wasn't a lot of awesomeness in the movies as well. Pretty much every lightsaber battle was worth watching over and over again. But in themselves, they could not hold up the movies in the absence of a good story and respect for what had come before.

I don't need to go into every single solitary detail, particularly here. Midichlorians are the least of it!

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2 other things I picked up on in Phantom Menace:

1) certain starship sequences looked like they had been CGIed over footage from air-power shows like Wings (not the comedy, the history show).

2) some of the species/characters played were likewise thinly veiled CGI references to RW stereotypes. Not that i believe Lucas is racist, but certain it's could come across that way.

Again, not the limit of list of things I disliked, just further exemplars. To me, the flaws I found spoke of laziness in storytelling and an overall lack of caring or artistic vision.

Dannyalcatraz said:

2) some of the species/characters played were likewise thinly veiled CGI references to RW stereotypes. Not that i believe Lucas is racist, but certain it's could come across that way.

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Stereotypes are a real time saver.

If he'd done something creative with the stereotypes, I wouldn't have been put off by their uses.

Dannyalcatraz said:

2 other things I picked up on in Phantom Menace:

1) certain starship sequences looked like they had been CGIed over footage from air-power shows like Wings (not the comedy, the history show).

2) some of the species/characters played were likewise thinly veiled CGI references to RW stereotypes. Not that i believe Lucas is racist, but certain it's could come across that way.

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This was intentional. Not derivative, but an homage. Lucas has always been into classic sci-fi serials and war films, and ALL of his films (well, maybe except for American Graffiti) quite intentionally try to recreate these types of films to some degree. If you look at his latest film, Red Tails (in theatres now), you'll see it again.

While I won't go surfing for the links, I'm 99% sure that Lucas has outright stated that he designed just about every space battle in all six movies to replicate the dogfights of war movies, and some of the action sequences are shot-for-shot recreations, substituting star fighters for fighter bombers. This isn't lazy, it's actually harder to do, especially if you do it right.

You can like it or not, but to claim Lucas is being derivative is to miss an important aspect of his work.

As for characters, I doubt Lucas intended to be racist (although I agree that some of his characters certainly play that way), but again, he did deliberately use stereotypes based on the pulp serials. Again, not lazy, but an artistic choice. Although you can certainly argue how successful he was at it . . .

Let me just follow up last nights post by stating that the worst thing for me about the prequel trilogy is that they've made the originals almost unwatchable for me. Every time Obi Wan tells Luke about his father for the first time in "A New Hope" I have flashbacks to the pod race in Episode One and weep. George Lucas stole my imagined back story from me! And its was better than his!