Author Topic: Ewan McGregor hates Star Wars  (Read 18723 times)

Offline Matt

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Ewan McGregor hates Star Wars
« on: October 11, 2007, 05:53 PM »
Man, oh man, Ewan's still got his Alec Guinness impression down pat!

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McGregor dislikes Star Wars movies

02/09/2007 - 14:06:41

Scottish actor Ewan McGregor regrets filming the Star Wars movies - branding the sci-fi films the worst work he has done.

The 36-year-old actor visited a Scottish hospice recently in order to spearhead a new school fundraising campaign - and spoke to three-year-old Cameron Glasgow and his father, Hamish.

Cameron suffers from a rare incurable condition called Hoyeraal Hreidarsson.

Hamish says: "Ewan was really down to earth. He was great with Cameron. He was really relaxed and you could tell he's a really good dad.

"He said the favourite movie he'd done was Trainspotting and the one he liked least was Star Wars."

McGregor starred in 1999's The Phantom Menace, 2002s Attack Of The Clones and 2005s Revenge Of The Sith.

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I like that this apparently came about during a visit with a three-year-old child.  "Yeah yeah, Star Wars is total rubbish, but you should totally check out Trainspotting.  It's my best work."
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Offline Jesse James

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Re: Ewan McGregor hates Star Wars
« Reply #1 on: October 12, 2007, 12:26 AM »
Wonder if he meant all 3 or just 1 of them...  Or if it's true at all, or just something taken out of context or whatnot.

BTW I hate Trainspotting.  Never did "get" that film or the way people like it.  I liked him better in Moulin Rouge.  :-[
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Offline Ryan

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Re: Ewan McGregor hates Star Wars
« Reply #2 on: October 12, 2007, 08:42 AM »
Wonder if he meant all 3 or just 1 of them...  Or if it's true at all, or just something taken out of context or whatnot.

BTW I hate Trainspotting.  Never did "get" that film or the way people like it.  I liked him better in Moulin Rouge.  :-[

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Offline brian_peppers

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Re: Ewan McGregor hates Star Wars
« Reply #3 on: October 12, 2007, 05:18 PM »
Wonder if he meant all 3 or just 1 of them...  Or if it's true at all, or just something taken out of context or whatnot.

BTW I hate Trainspotting.  Never did "get" that film or the way people like it.  I liked him better in Moulin Rouge.  :-[

Do yourself a favor and flick your nuts to see if they are still there... Me thinks they may have fallen off somewhere. :-X

ha ha good one ;D
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Offline Tracy

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Re: Ewan McGregor hates Star Wars
« Reply #4 on: October 12, 2007, 06:18 PM »
BTW I hate Trainspotting.  Never did "get" that film or the way people like it.  I liked him better in Moulin Rouge.  :-[

Do yourself a favor and flick your nuts to see if they are still there... Me thinks they may have fallen off somewhere. :-X


Cut the man some slack will ya? 

At least he had the good graces to use the "embarrassed" emoticon :-*
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Offline Jesse James

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Re: Ewan McGregor hates Star Wars
« Reply #5 on: October 13, 2007, 01:43 AM »
Thank you Tracy, spoken with true rationale thought on my post.  I appreciate that.

My nuts are quite intact.  There's plenty of hot chicks in that movie, and I noticed them.  Not the least of which is the beautiful Nicole Kidman in skimpy outfits.  My nuts and I all 3 noticed her, trust me.
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Offline Ben

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Re: Ewan McGregor hates Star Wars
« Reply #6 on: October 22, 2007, 12:16 AM »
A lot of creative types don't like the previous work they've done. I've had teachers who have written novels who never read them after they finished them.

Maybe in McGregor's mind, he feels he could have done a better job. Star Wars did take up eight years of his life- you get tired of anything in that amount of time.
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Offline DarkKnight2k4

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Re: Ewan McGregor hates Star Wars
« Reply #7 on: October 22, 2007, 09:08 AM »
Very weird... wonder if he dislikes his bank account as well ?

Offline Matt_Fury

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Re: Ewan McGregor hates Star Wars
« Reply #8 on: October 22, 2007, 12:18 PM »
It is kinda funny how he parallels Alec Guiness a bit.  Alec thought that the dialog was very odd and was more proud of Bridge over River Kwai which did earn him an oscar, or even Lawrence of Arabia which is arguably one of the greatest films of all time, but Star Wars was what made him financially secure for the rest of his life.

Granted, Ewan has done a lot of great films in his career as well, but I bet most people will recognize him from films like Star Wars and The Island rather than some of the indie films he's so proud of.
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Offline Darth Broem

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Re: Ewan McGregor hates Star Wars
« Reply #9 on: October 27, 2007, 04:28 PM »
The British seems to do this quite a bit with Star Wars.  Liam Neeson said pretty much the same, Alec Guiness, and now McGregor.  But yeah, you never see any them giving the money back to Lucas.  I don't know why McGregor would care he's been lucky to get in other stuff and not get typecast as Kenobi.  I think that was Alec's big gripe that nobody would recognize him for anything else after doing SW.    But what is more important?  Being remembered greatly by audiences in at least one film or by stuffy critics reactions to acclaimed performances?  I can see a case for both but in the end it's how your performance(s) are remembered by the public.  I would think? 

Offline manglord

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Re: Ewan McGregor hates Star Wars
« Reply #10 on: December 12, 2007, 11:38 PM »
Ha! I doubt he'd ever make another film that would rival or equal the success that Star Wars had. Is he serious? What a HACK! Alls i can say is it must really suck knowing you've already done your best work and I would imagine He's just upset over it.

Offline Nicklab

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Re: Ewan McGregor hates Star Wars
« Reply #11 on: December 13, 2007, 10:53 PM »
Natalie Portman has a very similar stance on the movies as well.  I think that they might have all approached the project thinking that it was going to be incredibly fun to do, as they might have had great memories of the original movies.  But the actual process of making a movie like this can seem like total drudgery.  There's so much blue/green screen work that the actors are totally taken out of their element.  And truth be told the dialogue isn't so great as to show off their acting chops.  Harrison Ford has said as much numerous times. 

Plus as film projects go the pay for these movies isn't that high.  There are definitely residuals from the normal outlets and licensed products though.  But a big selling for the prequels has been "Hey, you're going to be in Star Wars!"

And then there's the fans.  Thinking about it objectively, we tend to be a somewhat....obsessive lot.  I imagine that a good number of Star Wars fans always trying to track down these actors for autographs can seem like a bit much.

There's also something to be said for Ewan McGregor basically being too cool for school.  And it's something that a lot of British people in general are guilty of from time to time.  They love something intensely for a while and then all of a sudden it becomes uncool and they hate it.  I see it all the time with the British music scene.  They'll be completely mad for a new band for about 6 months or so, saying that they're the best band ever, blah blah blah.  6 months go by and all of a sudden they hate said band that they were raving about.  Whu?!  HUH?!?!?!  This kind of about face is the toughest one to understand, but if you're familiar with British pop culture you no doubt know what I'm talking about.

But given most of these things, I can somewhat understand the potential for disillusionment with the actors in the Saga.
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Offline Darth_Anton

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Re: Ewan McGregor hates Star Wars
« Reply #12 on: December 23, 2007, 10:25 AM »
I knew McGregor was pretty sharp.  :-X
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Offline Darth Vorax

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Re: Ewan McGregor hates Star Wars
« Reply #13 on: January 4, 2008, 10:10 PM »
Lucas worship isnt to good, I agree with Ewan, but of course he and they all shoulve spoken up sooner, though probably wouldve been fired. The Prequels were really bad movies, and bad movies often today make a lotve money. So there isnt always a correlation, as some people using  numerative   value as deciding factor for a movie being good or bad.  Lucas was never really a good writer or director on his own, and whatever writing talent he had he lost long ago, probably after WILLOW(which was basically CONAN mixed with LOTR). ROTJ was also a very bad sequel.

If you look closely at the Prequels you can find them to be weak imitation of the original Tales of the Jedi/Jedi vs Sith series from the early 90's along with rehashments of the Original series.
« Last Edit: January 4, 2008, 10:14 PM by Darth Vorax »

Offline Brian

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Re: Ewan McGregor hates Star Wars
« Reply #14 on: February 12, 2008, 11:46 AM »
I thought of this topic while I was re-watching some of "The Beginning" documentary on the Phantom Menace DVD.  Ewan seemed more than happy to be in Star Wars at that point (although, like others have mentioned, it is like 8 years of their life).  I do get a little tired of some of the actors moaning about how much they hate Star Wars now, or regret (in a way) being a part of it.  Granted, some of their comments might not have even happened - or are taken out of context - but we know that some have repeated it on numerous occasions.  We all know that Star Wars isn't Shakespeare, but isn't ok to just be part of a "fun" movie in your career?  For all the grief he gets, someone like Hayden Christiansen seems to be a good sport about it.  Whenever I have seen him interviewed for other work he's done, Star Wars inevitably comes up (especially lately with Jumper), and he always says how happy he is to have done the movies, how he enjoys children coming up to him and asking him questions, and things like that.  If its not your favorite work, that's fine, but for many to most of these actors its their "biggest" work, probably some of the best paid, and certainly one - if not "the" - best known movie(s) of their career.

I noticed, around the time of the 1st OT DVD release, and now with Indy, that Harrison Ford seems to have backed off his bashing a little bit.  He seems to lean more towards the "opened a lot of great opportunities for me" and "George is a great storyteller" type of comments.  Natalie Portman has been pretty careful about her words as well that I've seen, and often mentions how she is happy she did the movies.  I sometimes hope that this McGregor comment was incorrect, because he is probably my favorite character in the prequels - and did a good job I thought - hopefully he is more thankful for the part than this comes off.