Disney Buys LFL

[Nicklab]

It sure sounds like George Lucas has no interest in working with Disney on Star Wars.


George Lucas on his decision to "break up" with "Star Wars"

George Lucas, the mastermind behind the Star Wars franchise, says no more.

Lucas told Vanity Fair that he didn't want to be a part of the long-awaited seventh episode of the Star Wars saga, "The Force Awakens," because "it's not much fun" when you "go to make a movie and all you do is get criticized."

He spoke to "CBS This Morning" co-host Charlie Rose about his decision to never direct another "Star Wars" picture.

"The issue was ultimately, they looked at the stories and they said, 'We want to make something for the fans,'" Lucas said. "People don't actually realize it's actually a soap opera and it's all about family problems - it's not about spaceships. So they decided they didn't want to use those stories, they decided they were going to do their own thing so I decided, 'fine.... I'll go my way and I let them go their way.'"

This marks the first time Lucas is not intimately involved, which Lucas compared to a breakup.

"When you break up with somebody, the first rule is no phone calls. The second rule, you don't go over to their house and drive by to see what they're doing," he said laughing. "The third one is you don't show up at their coffee shop and say you are going to burn it... You just say 'Nope, gone, history, I'm moving forward.'"

The full interview will air on "CBS This Morning" in December, as part of our Kennedy center Honors coverage. Lucas is among this year's recipients.



I've got to say, I feel for the guy.  He is the reason why Star Wars exists at all.  He created it.  He brought it to us all with a supreme amount of effort and creativity.  The movies.  The characters.   All of the stories and toys.  Movie blockbusters as we know them today.  EVERYTHING. 

But the audience turned on him.  The audience did not share George Lucas's view that these were kids movies.  And when he went on to create the PT he lost a lot of the original audience.  I have repeatedly chalked that up to an unreasonable level of expectations on the part of the audience, compounded by the fact that their perception of the OT as an integral part of their childhood made it nearly impossible for George Lucas to please them.  And a lot of the hate that's been leveled at George Lucas for the PT really comes across as ingratitude. 

I don't really count myself as a PT hater.  Can I be critical of those films?  Sure.  But I don't have anywhere near the level of invective for GL that some people do.  My criticisms tend to be a bit more broad.  I think that the CGI advances were amazing, but perhaps striking more of a balance with practical effects could have served the story better.  And I think a comparable working situation to the OT where George Lucas would serve as writer / executive producer while another filmmaker stepped in as director might have helped as well.  When George Lucas collaborates with people, like Spielberg or Irvin Kershner, there have been some great results.  But I think at the heart of it all, George's stories are what made Star Wars great.  And that absence from Star Wars moving forward is something that has me wondering where things are going in terms of the big picture.

[Matt_Fury]

I don't feel sorry for him.  He is the one who decided to surround himself with people unable or unwilling to tell him no.  He has great overall ideas, but he needs help writing a screenplay and he is not a very good director.

[Pete_Fett]

There are great aspects of the PT and there are horrible aspects of the PT. I hate to sound like a "PT Hater Broken Record" but there were plenty of laughs in the OT and none of it was in-your-face silly slapstick. It was things that happened ORGANICALLY to the story that allowed for a laugh.

The best example I can think of off the top of my head is when Han, Leia, Chewie and C-3PO are running through Echo Base to evade the incoming Snowtroopers and get to the Falcon. At one point C-3PO finds himself on the opposite side of a door from the rest of the group, C-3PO stands there banging on the door repeating "Captain Solo, Captain Solo" and then gives up and says defeated "Typical" - the door then opens, Han grabs the droid and says "come on!". I'm sure we're all familiar with that scene. It works because of the well established characters and how we know they are to behave. Solo - the scoundrel with a heart of gold and the invaluable droid waaay to prissy to have somehow survived this long in this galaxy. The combination organically makes for good humor.

Flash forward 19 years from ESB and in comes Jar Jar - a character that Lucas many times has said was put into the movie "for the kids". We had no such bumbling idiot character in the OT, not even C-3PO came close. So with the introduction of this character came the sight gags - him stepping in poop, smelling farts, stumbling and bumbling his way through a battle, etc... None of that spoke to the core audience who grew up on the OT and made the OT an event to pass down to their children. Speaking as someone who had a young son when TPM came out who was 10 at the time, not even he enjoyed that ridiculous nonsense. Star Wars movies should appeal to "kids of all ages" not just five year old kids who have spent the first five years of their lives drooling on themselves watching horrible cartoons on Nickelodian (sp?).

I have had many discussions with my friends who are varying ages of 20-50 and we all agree if instead of trying to force (no pun intended) humor into the PT and instead let it come naturally through the interaction of well defined and acted characters the PT wouldn't be as maligned as it is today.

Think about this - what would TPM have been like if Jar Jar had been a noble warrior and former leader of the Gungans, exiled when Boss Nass came into power and when we first see him, with only a staff he is adeptly taking on several battle droids at once and only due to overwhelming odds needed Qui Gon to help him and because Qui Gon helped, he pledges a life debt to Qui Gon for standing next to him in the fight and turning the tide.

Cut out all the ridiculous nonsense and then when you go to Tatooine, allow for some of the humor to come naturally because he could be the proverbial "fish (or in this case amphibian) out of water" in a land with no water or moisture whatsoever. Add that you meet up with Anakin at the SAME AGE as Luke Skywalker, completely avoiding bad child actors and you find a GOOD actor who can actually show other emotions beside "spoiled jerk".

When it comes time for the end with the battle, Jar Jar goes to the Gungan people with the group to ask for help in fighting the battle droid army and finds them oppressed by the rule of Nass and his corrupt council, he challanges Nass for leadership of the Gungans, he is reminded of what happened last time, but this time Jar Jar defeats Nass, liberates the Gungans and they are happy to follow him into battle. Anakin gladly jumps into a fighter and is a great asset in space because of his skills in a cockpit, not because of how many times he can say "wizard" and "oops".

Lastly, you give control of the movies over to directors who can actually direct, not directors who provide direction by saying "okay that was good, but let's do it again, only this time do it better" - what the heck does that mean.

These are all simple things that could have made TPM at least modestly GOOD and watchable. Like Matt said in the previous post, Lucas surrounded himself with "yes men" who were so thrilled to be working on Star Wars they didn't care whether or not the Star Wars they were making was crap - and that is where the team behind the PT lost their way.

I find it awfully petty for Lucas to make that remark about how they wanted Star Wars to be about spaceships and not family drama. Unless Kasdan and Abrams totally throw us a curve-ball, I'm willing to bet that a HUGE part of The Force Awakens will be about family and who your family is. It's just that it will also be about spaceships and explosions, instead of humanoid amphibians doing a Jamaican Stepin Fetchit impersonation and stepping in crap for laughs.

[Qui-Gon Jim]

I'll go you one better, Pete. The portrayal of C-3PO in AotC makes Jar Jar look like genius. How they totally got that character so wrong is mind boggling.

[P-Siddy]

That whole droid factory scene is garbage.  It looks like a video game level idea that they decided to put into the movie: jumping, ducking, timing a run with mechanical arms, molders, smashers, cutters, etc.

I'd like to see a Rebels episode where Artoo's rockets get damaged beyond repair.

[EdSolo]

Lucas has lost it in my opinion.  TPM and AOTC were boring movies.  If you are making a kids series, you don't talk about political disputes over trade routes in the opening credits.

A major problem with the prequels is that he ignored the OT.  Kenobi states that Yoda trained him.  Sure you can retcon it into Yoda trained all the younglings or that it is easier to tell Luke that Yoda trained him instead of telling Luke that Yoda trained the guy who trained the guy who trained him, but he deliberately ignored that link to bring in Qui Gon as Kenobi's master.   Leia's memory of her mother is laughable as well.  The whole three seconds that she saw her does not a memory make, regardless of the Force.  Sure, Padme is too important of a character to kill of screen, but he already wrote himself into a corner.  Lucas could have fixed it by going into the future, but he always kept his story contained. 

No one wanted to see a ten year old Anakin.  TPM could have been covered in ten minutes, but, again, Lucas doesn't like to jump forward in time.  What was the one thing everyone wanted to see in the prequels?  The Clone Wars.  What do we get to see?  The opening and closing battles of said Clone Wars while what we wanted to see gets pushed to a cartoon series.  On the whole, I like the Clone Wars series better than TPM and AOTC, but her is where we see Lucas' resentment over the reviews of the prequels.  He decides to do stuff to irk EU fans.  The Mandalorians are now pacifists?  Just silly.  It would be like the hippies overthrowing the US government during the Vietnam era.  His daughter presented Dathomir like it was her idea.  Not one mention of the guy who actually created it.  Lucas goes on the Daily show.  Guess what?  Kenobi is now from Stew-jon.  What a great contribution.  Now he is mad that Disney didn't follow his story lines.  If they were anything like TPM or AOTC, I don't blame them.  Disney paid $4 billion for Star Wars.  I can understand why they would want it to be successful and want to draw the OT fans back.

[McMetal]

Yeah, no sympathy here either. He sounds like a bitter old fart. I can't wait for the new movie to come out and be roundly lauded and see lots of praise heaped on JJ to help salt those old wounds.

People turned on you because A) you could not stop screwing with the original 3 films, which were perfectly fine as is; and B) you made 3 terrible, soulless CGI-laden movies that bore little to no resemblance to the OT. Some of the worst acting and dialogue in those movies I can ever remember. You got so rich and famous that it put you out of touch with your core audience and the basic principles of storytelling that built your little empire. (pun intended)

You know what else ex-boyfriends don't do? Give silly interviews about the breakup. The deal is done, let it go, the franchise is in much more capable hands now. go back to being a rumpled plaid recluse already.

[Pete_Fett]

I'll go you one better, Pete. The portrayal of C-3PO in AotC makes Jar Jar look like genius. How they totally got that character so wrong is mind boggling.

That whole droid factory scene is garbage.  It looks like a video game level idea that they decided to put into the movie: jumping, ducking, timing a run with mechanical arms, molders, smashers, cutters, etc.

I'd like to see a Rebels episode where Artoo's rockets get damaged beyond repair.

100% Agreed. The funny thing about that scene is that it was a last-minute addition. It's one of AOTC's best examples of how having some more "no men" on the team would have really helped.

[Qui-Gon Jim]

Lucas has lost it in my opinion.  TPM and AOTC were boring movies.  If you are making a kids series, you don't talk about political disputes over trade routes in the opening credits.

A major problem with the prequels is that he ignored the OT.  Kenobi states that Yoda trained him.  Sure you can retcon it into Yoda trained all the younglings or that it is easier to tell Luke that Yoda trained him instead of telling Luke that Yoda trained the guy who trained the guy who trained him, but he deliberately ignored that link to bring in Qui Gon as Kenobi's master.   Leia's memory of her mother is laughable as well.  The whole three seconds that she saw her does not a memory make, regardless of the Force. 

This X 10000.  I don't hate the prequels as much as most, but there were so many lost opportunities.  For example, the Falcon should have been in there, somewhere, and Kenobi should have been on it.  Fans went CRAZY when they saw the first shots of the Falcon sets for TFA, and even more so for the appearance in the trailer.  For a guy so keen on compositing a shot to call back to a scene from a previous movie, Lucas is totally tone-deaf sometimes.

[JediJman]

So here's a question to think about: Given the fairly poor reception for the prequels and Disney's willingness to erase the expanded universe, does anyone think Disney would ever eliminate the prequels or re-write them?  They'll be pumping out new stuff for the next decade, but as that push dies down, is there any chance of revisiting the prequels or will they just let them be?

[P-Siddy]

Oh, I bet they'll be redone at some point, along with the originals.  As for when, I hope I'm long gone.

[EdSolo]

So here's a question to think about: Given the fairly poor reception for the prequels and Disney's willingness to erase the expanded universe, does anyone think Disney would ever eliminate the prequels or re-write them?  They'll be pumping out new stuff for the next decade, but as that push dies down, is there any chance of revisiting the prequels or will they just let them be?

I actually had the same thought.  Would they reboot the prequels and keep the OT.  Never say never, but Disney's official answer at this point would be no.  When they moved the EU to Legends, they were pretty specific on what was canon.  If they run out of ideas after Episode IX and the third anthology film and don't go for a Episode X to XII trilogy, redoing the prequels would seem logical.  They would push them on the Clone Wars cartoon series into legends and have free range with a new story of Vader's birth.

[Jesse James]

I say never say never, but I don't think they'd do it.  There's possibly something prohibiting it too even.  Lucas is protective in his own way, so I could see that actually.

There is pretty fertile ground for them to do film after film after film though too.  Especially if writing over EU material's obviously not an issue too.  I don't see it, personally, but that's me.

[Dave]

I hope they don't redo the prequels.  Why bother?  Maybe make a Clone Wars movie or tell some new stories in that time period, but redoing these movies would be a waste.  There are lots of other new stories that can be told anywhere along the timeline.

I don't know why GL takes himself and Star Wars so seriously.  He doesn't do that with Indy.  Indy is a fun pulpy story.  Star Wars should have a good story at its core (it does), but needs to be entertaining - e.g. spaceships.  Cut out all the pandering and worthless soap opera family backstory, and tell a fun story.

I'm glad he has stepped away and hasn't tried to get too involved.  I'm 100% confident JJ will create a kick ass story.

[Nicklab]

In light of the criticism of George Lucas as a director for the prequel films, some interesting quotes have come to light.  Notably, regarding directors that Lucas approached to take on the prequels, and they turned him down.  Like?  Spielberg.  Zemeckis.  And Ron Howard.  They all turned down the job. 

http://epicstream.com/news/These-3-Oscar-Winning-Directors-Turned-Down-The-Phantom-Menace