In The Big Inning...

I've never been a huge Star Wars fan. In fact, I appreciate it more for its role in cinematic history than as a crazed fan. It's fun, engaging, and at the time was groundbreaking. It also stands the test of time well, which is pretty impressive given how much it relies on special effects to create a convincing world. All of that said, I find George Lucas to be quite repugnant. I can understand how Star Wars devotees resent his destruction of the franchise through Episodes I and II (and I can't imagine III will be worthwhile), but my disgust with him isn't based on him ruining a franchise that many love. Rather, I find him to be amazingly ungrateful, self-righteous, and, frankly, irresponsible.

I just got my latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, featuring an interview with Lucas. I had always kind of resented Lucas just for making horrendous movies, but I had never really concerned myself with his opinions and thoughts on the franchise. Confronted with the article, I found him to be one of the most delusional Hollywood stars I've ever read about, and that's saying a hell of a lot.

In his interview, Lucas seems to display a fundamental misunderstanding of pop culture phenomena, and their role in society. Frankly, given his body of work, I really think that Lucas lucked into Star Wars. Clearly, he needed a decent amount of skill to make the movies, but I'm inclined to say his skills were much more on the technical side of things, not the artistic or even storytelling side. He wrote a fairly simple fairy tale, set it in space, revolutionized the effects industry, and managed to capture the imagination of millions of people. Part of it was the fact that it was the right movie, but part of it is that it was also the right time in America for it to grab hold of people, and I also think that he got lucky with the actors catching on as well as they did.

There are a couple of things that really stood out in his interview, and made me very disinclined to give Lucas any money ever again. The first one was when the interviewer if he seemed was as pessimistic about his new movies as he had been about his previous ones. He responded:

"I said, well, [Phantom Menace] is not going to work because I'm making it about a 10-year old boy and nobody is going to want to see this...they want to see Darth Vader and I'm not giving them Darth Vader; so don't expect this thing to be a hit. And then [Attack of the Clones] is a love story. It's old-fashioned like in the '40s, you know, so it's not a modern, hip, happening romantic comedy with the Olsen twins. It's kind of corny and it's using an aesthetic that is out of use now....It you take them all together it's a fascinating saga."

I have some gigantic problems with this quote. Maybe he's just being self-deprecating, and showing how he never really thought that any of his movies would be the gigantic commercial successes they turned out to be. But in doing so, he's being quite disingenuous, because all of that pessimism was completely and utterly warranted! The interviewer implies in his question that Lucas was excessively pessimistic in the past about the original Star Wars movies, but by no means was his apparent pessimism excessive with regards to the latest films. He completely ignores the fact that even though his new movies may have generated a lot of box offices, they are artistic failures. Maybe he doesn't see things that way, which is fine, although to not address the frustrations of fans and critics alike is really being obtuse.

Ok, so maybe Lucas just loves all of the movies he's made, and he doesn't really care what people think. We're on the right track here. Assuming he's not lying to just save a little face, that means he was completely aware of the failures of the two most recent movies, because he certainly summarizes their shortcomings quite effectively. If he knew that people wouldn't want to see this garbage, then why did he make these movies? To appease some inner demons? Just for the hell of it? Certainly, this was within his right, but just because he can do something doesn't mean that he should. I think there's something more there, though. Aside from the business motivations (and if you want to basically say he's solely motivated by greed, I'd be inclined to agree with you, even despite his current steadfast refusal to make Episodes 7-9), you see a man motivated by ego, but also seemingly trying to hold on to his last bits of success. I think he desperately wants to be that brilliant visionary who made Star Wars by latching onto things he liked about fairy tales and Saturday morning serials. So he goes back to the well - putting in Jar Jar, or corny romances, or big fake-looking battles, trying to appeal to kids, while still hooking in fans of the original series, because he can't let go or these characters. He makes a movie about a 10-year old Anakin, knowing that no one will really want to see what happens....except for himself. To Lucas, this is the greatest story ever told - there's nothing corny about it - Star Wars is the story that made him who he is today, and nothing could be more important.

Maybe that's a little overindulgent psychoanalysis, but I don't think it's too far from the truth. And maybe you think that really, Lucas can do whatever he wants. Once again, you're right - he has the right to, but that doesn't mean it's the appropriate thing to do. But what is really wrong with what he's doing? Well, I have a theory. See, Lucas believe that because he's the author of the series, and because he owns the legal rights to the story, that somehow makes him the owner of the Star Wars mythology. Want proof? Here's the second quote I wanted to share, in response to the question of what's the line between restoring a film and altering it:

"Film is so expensive and it's run by corporations. They just take it away from you, and it's frozen in time at the point where it got yanked out of your hands. I've been lucky enough to be able to go back and say, 'No, I'm going to finish this the way it was meant to be finished.' When Star Wars came out, I said it didn't turn out the way I wanted - it's 25 percent of what I wanted it to be. It was very painful for me. So the choice came down to, do I please myself and [finally] make the movie that I wanted, or do I allow the audience to see the half-finished version that they fell in love with?"

I don't know, George. Make whatever version you want...but if you're going to make it so that the movie everyone fell in love with isn't going to be available, then give back the hundreds of million dollars that the "very painful" version has netted you. No, I don't think that's happening any day soon, you greedy, megalomaniacal bastard.

The hubris of this quote amazes me. I think he really does see himself as some sort of freedom fighter - the last man who wrestled the rights to HIS movie away from the greedy evil corporations (who of course had nothing to do with getting the film made or distributing or marketing it or making it popular, of course...that was all Lucas) (nor would Lucas have anything to do with corporations, like Lucasfilm or ILM or Skywalker Sound) and he's going to use those rights come hell or high water.

You know, if it was just Lucas vs. production companies, I might be tempted to side with Lucas....but it's not. There's a critical third-party here. That third-party has truly made Lucas the man he is today, for better or for worse. That third-party is the fans, the movie-watchers, the rest of the world. It's not just the people that bought tickets or the VHS tapes, or even the ones that go to the conventions - it's all of American (and some foreign) culture that made Star Wars the phenomenon it became. It's Mel Brooks parodying Star Wars with Spaceballs. It's the Simpsons having Mark Hamill as a guest star that does dinner theater. It's the people who bought Star Wars action figures and Star Wars Legos and play Star Wars video games and own their own lightsabers. It's those people that have made Star Wars into a modern-day fable. And it's those people that Lucas is slapping in the face when he decides to please himself and finally make the movie he wanted.

I firmly believe that once something enters the culture, it takes on a life of its own. Some of those lives are quite short-lived, like Tamagotchis, or the Vengaboys, or Vin Diesel's career. But some of them carry on, and become something bigger than themselves, just like Star Wars. Lucas had some part in creating the initial impetus, and certainly deserves credit for the original authorship, but he cannot have ownership of Star Wars at this point because no one person owns it - everyone does. If he goes back and changes something to fit his whims, he's swimming upstream. You're going to have half the people having grown up thinking that it was cool that Han Solo shoots Greedo first, and THAT Han Solo (a murderer, if you will, or at least a telepath) is going to live on in people minds and impressions of the character no matter what Lucas does.

Lucas argues that aside from the Han/Greedo "correction", he didn't change anything - he's just touching things up, fixing little errors, because, as he says, "Star Wars was not meant, in the end, to be seen more than once in the theater." Well, tough. It was. And people loved it. For you to change it now to suit your own little insecurities, to go back and try and relive the high point of your career by improving on something that can't be improved, well, it's disingenuous, indulgent, and frankly, just plain stupid. Get over yourself, George Lucas, and just let Star Wars go. It's ours now. We'll take better care of it that you could ever do.