Love them blinkers, yes we do

[serai]

*snorfle*


George Lucas has announced that his production company, Lucasfilm, is getting out of the movie business: "We don't want to make movies. We're about to get into television. As far as Lucasfilm is concerned, we've moved away from the feature film thing because it's too expensive and it's too risky."


Well, maybe if you weren't making CRAPPY FILMS...

Comments

[wyna-hiros.livejournal.com]

For a second there I somehow misread that as ILM (don't even ask how) and got really worried. xD;

[mews1945.livejournal.com]

Hear hear!

[blackbird-song.livejournal.com]

A-friggin'-men!

I hate, loathe, despise and abominate George Lucas for his horrid attitude toward his fans, his films, WETA, his own 'talent' as a writer/director, and the perfectly legitimate questions people ask him about the future of special effects. I used to have some respect for him way back in the Stone Age, but he's become a vast pustule of misplaced ego and has lost every bit of regard I might ever have mustered for him.

Catherine

[serai1.livejournal.com]

In the immortal words of D. Miller, "He's more full of shit than a whale with no ass."

I still love the first and second SW films, but from there on, the whole thing went down the toilet. Part of it is Lucas's enormous ego, which only kept growing once he opened his own studio and didn't have to listen to anyone anymore.

And part of it (the larger part, in my opinion) is the fact that he is a MISERABLE writer. He had one idea which, while not original in any way, happened to hit at the exact right moment to change the film business. But his writing is horrendous, especially the dialogue. The man cannot write a speakable line to save his life. It is a testament to the personal charm of the original SW cast that the first film didn't fall on its face, because in the words of Harrison Ford, which sum up everything that sucks about Lucas's oeuvre:

George, you can write this shit but you can't say it.


If Lucas is done making films, I thank the gods and do a little jig. Just let him try TV. It's a rather different world, where you have networks to keep happy and Nielsen ratings to keep up. He won't have ticket sales to prop him up, and with any luck, whatever crap he comes up with will die a well-deserved death.

[hobbitlove83.livejournal.com]

Good riddance!

[slipperieslope.livejournal.com]

Jeesh, when I think about how important "Star Wars" was to me when it came out and the absolute reverence I felt for the entire experience of "The Empire Strikes back" . All the imagination and devotion he inspired in me and everything I believed about him and his genius and it just eroded after that... to where this news doesn't even surprise me. And after all these years of decay, I find I really just don't care about him anymore. It's like a footnote, a passing reference. He ruined his own creation, destroyed all that magic... which to me seems tragic... or criminal. I cannot watch him twist and warp and devolve anymore.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is that there really was no genius involved in Star Wars. Nothing about that film was original - it was just a horse opera dressed up in 1940's Saturday matinee costumes, with some shiny gadgets thrown in. Black hats and white hats, amusing side-kicks, the pretty rich girl and the young hotshot. A venerable English actor to give some weight to what was really a laughably amateurish hodgepodge of portentious-sounding pseudoreligious hokum. Some fast and noisy battles and a splashy ending, and that was basically it. Shiny, yes; fun, you bet! But genius? Nope. Not at all. What it was, was pure dumb luck. Had Lucas made that film just three years before, it would have bombed. But it hit at exactly the right moment and took off like a tornado, mowing down everything in its path.

I'm still not convinced it was a good thing, either, at least as far as the movie business was concerned. There've been tons of crappy, Big Shiny Brainless Scifi films in its wake, stuff that would never have gotten produced if SW hadn't had such broad coattails to ride on. And I could have lived without the whole Cult of Sequels and the Church of Blockbuster Box Office, thanks.

[slipperieslope.livejournal.com]

He had excellent timing and he was a breath of fresh air for me. The film in the sixties and early seventies rarely got my attention. And he did. I know he wasn't original except perhaps with the boldness to be ultimately unhip with an action storyline about heroes who cared in a time when cool was all. But he breathed new life in the movies for me.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't remember 70s cinema being about "cool is all". When I think of that time, I think of serious films about real issues, like The China Syndrome and All the President's Men. Those are the kinds of films I miss a hell of a lot, and thanks to George and his yaya crowd, for the past couple of decades, such films have had a hell of a hard time getting made. After SW, the movie business started to focus on making tons of money really, really fast, and pretty much threw over the idea that films could actually teach people anything, or matter in any way. Recently we've started to see films that remind me of those 70s movies, like Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck (thank the gods for George Clooney!), and thank the gods! If the film business starts tilting towards actually SAYING something again, and away from all these Big Shiny Empty things, I'll be happy as a clam.

[elderberrywine.livejournal.com]

Well, you know the poor man is barely hanging in there as it is - God forbid he lose his last dime. *snort*

I remember sitting in the audience in a jam-packed theatre for the first SW, after having waited in a line that went around an entire city block for at least two hours (and this was in Westwood, too, in the old Avco, which was pretty darned big), and when that screen crawl started, and the music hit the speaker, the entire audience gasped, as one, Whoa! You just knew you were in for a helluva ride.

Yeah, it really wasn't anything new, and cheesy as all get-out, but it was premium cheese, yo. And it was flat-out fun, something that was not terribly common in early 70's movies. No message, at least that was noticeable, and Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher were such a great team. Good times. And the second was fine stuff too, but then the Ewoks? *sigh* Jumped the shark right there, IMHO.

Yeah, really, George, don't do us any favors.

[serai1.livejournal.com]

*waves byebye to George*

Have fun stormin' the castle!