George Lucas:

trollface.jpg

omg... I wasn't aware of this shit...

Darth Maul was one of the very FEW characters in the prequel trilogy that were  "good ", and this is just like a huge slap in the face.

At least we're getting Blu-Ray =P

 In my official capacity as Boomer, the Big Wolf,  Slayer of Men, Triumvir of the Clan, I grant you permission to rip off his head and shit down his neck.

George Lucas should have been killed shortly after American Graffiti made it to theaters.

Then there would have been no Star Wars.

Or probably Indiana Jones for that matter.  Lucas discovered Harrison Ford as a carpenter I believe while working on sets for American Grafitti.

There are some necessary evils out there.

Also, no ILM.

Look at just about any movie from the 80s or 90s.

Everybody used ILM for effects of some sort.

The movie-going experience for the past 30 years would have sucked.

I can live with a set of prequels that are not up to par with the orginals. I can live with whoring out a copyrighted franchise until you have money pouring out of your anus. I can live with a lot of the shit I've been sppon fed by Lucas over the years. I can even live with the prequel trilogy only making sense if you read the novels for the movies and the nnovels for the events in between.

But there a point where I have to draw the line...and this fucking shit is the god damn fucking line!

Now we have to be honest with ourselves, movies are about making money first and art second. But when do you come to a point where you've made enough money? Why doesn't Lucas try making other movies? He had a pretty interesting carerr until the prequel movies came out.

Whatever, here have some of this:

http://www.redlettermedia.com/clones.html

Then there would have been no Star Wars.

And you consider that a bad thing?

 I would

Mr. K does realise most people on this site are star wars fans, right?

Star Wars pushed the limits of special effects and through that Industrial Light and Magic was born.

Without ILM, Star Wars, Star Trek (Wrath of Khan to the present), ET, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, The Neverending Story, The Goonies, Labyrinth, batteries not included*, Field of Dreams, Backdraft, Jurassic Park, Forrest Gump, Jumanji, Mission: Impossible, DragonHeart, Twister, Transformers etc. etc. etc. would have all felt much less real and believable to us.

Though I don't know what he could contribute personally in this day and age so . . . yeah, go ahead and take him out.

 Many people start out with a masterpiece, then go through a career of crap and end it with another masterpiece at their elderly years like Marlon Brando so I'd say let the guy die of old age.

 Frankly, if George Lucas hadn't created ILM and advanced the state of the art...someone else would have. He just happened to be in the right place and at the right time. 

While I do believe that science and engineering make big leaps from the efforts of talented geniuses, I also believe that progress is an inexorable juggernaut that creeps forward even without genius...by virtue of sheer effort.

Maybe we wouldn't have had his movies, but we would have had something equivalent...

Indeed. What Gene Roddenberry was doing the 60s, George Lucas was doing in the 70s. Someone else would have done it.

Lucas is a hack.

I don't compare Star Trek to Star Wars, based on the following statment alone

Star Trek is Science Fiction,  Star Wars is Science Fantasy.

Star Trek has always relied heavly on the how and why things work to push their stories forward.

In Star Wars, things just work, and the characters drive the story forward.

And I'm not, either. Boomer was commenting that someone else would have done it-- and I added that it probably would have been Gene Roddenberry.

I don't think Gene would have stepped up to create something like Star Wars.

Roddenberry created stories around ideas in science. Star Trek for example centers most ofit' stories around warp fields, and engines. and how matter and anti-matter are used to propell the ship forward.

If Roddenberry would have stepped up to make Star Wars (or something like it) I don't think it would have had the same impact, and I don't think it would have done as well.

Ugh. You still aren't seeing what I'm saying. I'm glad Gene Roddenberry would never create films like Star Wars. Step back and re-read what Boomer said.

Boomer was talking about ILM. Someone would have created something equivalent to ILM. And I believe it would have been Roddenberry, just to necessitate TNG-- which was in the works before the first Star Wars film was made.

Read this.

http://www.matchflick.com/column/1717

If not Roddenberry, then Ray Harryhausen would have.

I would just like to say that ILM revolutionized special effects.

And ILM still doesn't have any major competitors that I can think of.

I mean look at any major movie with (for their times) cutting edge special effects.  ILM did it.  If there were to have been anyone that would have made a similar impact, we would have heard about special effects rivalries and the debates would be about how much better the one company would have done a particular movie.

Even Roddenberry outsourced.  ILM has done all the Star Trek movies since .at least Wrath of Khan

Simply put, ILM was created around the needs of Star Wars.

Lucas said "let's do this" and his team proceded to create a way to do it.

The question becomes, where would special effects be today without Lucas and Star Wars?  And when would someone have invented some of techniques employed by ILM?

Whether you like Lucas or not you have to admit that special effects would be in a very different place than they are now, and, I wager, years behind where we are now.

And I don't believe they would. Like Boomer said, someone else would have done it. We'd be just where we are now and without those terribly cliched movies.

Lucas didn't invent stop motion, nor did he perfect it. He simply created a studio that offered to do it for other companies in need of the animation. At the same time, Ray Harryhausen had his own production company doing the same thing. Lucas' caught on. Harryhausen's didn't.

Had people not gone ape over Star Wars, we'd have Harryhausen's production company. His would have progressed in the same way ILM has.

And if you've seen Jason and The Argonauts, Clash of The Titans and the three Sinbad the Sailor movies, Harryhauser's stop motion was better than Lucas'. Harryhauser could do it in bright light and not look blocky. Lucas did it on a black backdrop and you could still see the effects frames.

re-read what I wrote. Never said another person wouldn't step up, just presented my thoughts on what  fail a Gene Roddenberry Science Fantasy woud be.

Jeez, Arkus, what did any of that have anything to do with science fantasy? You simply aren't listening.

I, nor Boomer, never said anything about Gene Roddenberry making a movie like Star Wars. It was about special effects houses-- not movies. Someone would have created a special effects house that would have done the equivalent to what George Lucas did with ILM.

Why are you so focused on the movie when that's not remotely what we're talking about?

Besides, I asked you to re-read what Boomer wrote. Not re-read what you wrote.

whoa there, calm down. Look, the fact is that ILM was created for the effects in Star Wars. Would another Special Effects house come along and replace ILM? That's...complicated...

At the time no one was really trying to push special effects outside of horror movies. Sure a moive here and a moive here tried someting new, but it wasn't like today where movies create something grand and great to stand out from the rest. Star Wars is what really kicked-off the trend to push and push and push special effects. 

Now, what would have happened if ILM didn't exist? Then the collective minds that make up those effects would work for different companies, work on different movies, and perhasp would never meet. Why does that matter? Well those colletive minds are what created the effects for the movie and those people not working together, well who knows when/if special effects would be pushed like they were.

Lucas was a rebel film maker and hated the studio system. He was constantly asking Fox for more money for Star Wars. Money which was poured into ILM. Someone Like Gene Roddenberry was just a story teller, and wasn't honestly interested in what movies could be, but what movies are. A Science Fantasy by Gene Roddenberry he wouldn't have pushed for more money from the studio, I'm sure he had gotten used to working within a budget with Paramount and Star Trek. A Science Fantas yFilm by Roddenberry would probably be bogged down with explanations on how things work and why they work that way, filling time that could have used to show and epic battle in space.

If Star Wars had flopped it would have changed the landscape of films for the next 30. Studios would be less likly to take risks on film like it, not just sci-fi or fantasy films, any film that had big demands for special effects. Movies like the Matrix, Avatar, Jurassic Park, and Lord of the Rings probably either wouldn't exist or be vastly different. If A studio doesn't think they can make their money back, they aren't going to bother with risking it on movies with a record of failure.

ILM is to special effects that Hension productions is to pupptry, Sure other puppets came along, but are you going to look me in the eye and tell me they are equivalent to muppets?

Sooooo, science fiction films like Logan's Run, A Clockwork Orange and Andromeda Strain-- which all came out before Star Wars-- don't really count?

One of the reasons why I brought up Ray Harryhauser was because he's a better example of what I'm trying to say than Gene Roddenberry. Harryhauser's films really pushed stop-motion animation further than Lucas did-- and he did most of it before the release of Star Wars. Look at the skeleton scene from 1963's Jason and The Argonauts and tell me that it doesn't look better than some ship flying through space with giant blocks of effects frames around it.

Chances are, Harryhauser would have created an effects studio that does the same thing ILM does.

Like Boomer said, science and engineering are an inorexable juggernaut that you can't stop. We may not have Star Wars, but we'd have something equivalent.

And I add, the technology that goes with it.

I just wish someone had given Lucas' mom a falcon punch.

At the end of the day it's about how much money can be made off this stuff, and before Star Wars, Science Fiction didn't make money for studios.

The orginal Trilogy for Star Wars made $1.7 billion in worldwide sales. A new Hope made $775 in world wide sales alone.

Logans run was called a "vast, silly extravagaza," and "the worst film in seven years" by critics. Sure is progressing a genre in here. Logans Run made only $25 million at the box office.

A ClockWork Orange is a cult film. That means it didn't get any sort of following until After it left threaters, and the studio lost money on it.  The gross revune from A ClockWork Orange was only $22 million.

I can't locate box office numbers for Andromeda Strain. I will admit that I didn't look ver yhard tho.

I agree that Science and Engineering are "inexorable juggarnauts." However, you need to understand where these get applied and when. We only make improvements in fields where we need them, if there is no need then no one will bother.   There has to be a great need for something, or someone has to see that something is worth investing in before it gets off the ground.

The above mentioned movies are great. They tell great stories and tell it in an interesting way. However, they didn't push the boundries of special effects.  If they had, a studio like ILM would already been around, and working for a few years refining their craft and a movie liek Star Wars would have been over-looked as just another with cool effects.

I'm not sure why you dislike Lucas so much that you wish he wasn't born (I might wish he was dead or retire), but i have enjoyed the experience of Star Wars and the impact it has had on films for the last 30+ years. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, haters gonna hate.

I simply don't agree. I demand more out of a plot than what Star Wars has to offer.

 I finished my exams and I'm drunk! *feels the tension, and leaves with his drink elsewhere*

lol, I don't hate what Star Wars was, but I hate what it's become. I like my capitalism and all, but there is a line and it's clearly been crossed.

Star Trek is Science Fiction,  Star Wars is Science Fantasy.

Star Trek has always relied heavly on the how and why things work to push their stories forward.

In Star Wars, things just work, and the characters drive the story forward.

I like the terms on the different between  Science Fiction and Science Fantasy since I have seen the word Science Fantasy before and thought it was people just merging the word Science Fiction and Fantasy into one group. One thing I prefer in stories are things made up and can not be made or even physically possible in real life.

I Dunno MWM, I thuroghly enjoy a good steampunk. and while we never did develop that branch of technology into the wonders that good steampunk often present, there's no saying we couldn't of.

If I become wealthy enough to make the shift from crazy to eccentric, I'm still planning on building a working airship.

I will be checking into Science Fantasy more. So Steampunk would fall under it?

it's kind of a border land and really depends on the author. Some steampunk that has things like fully articulate (and artificialt intelligent) clockwork automotons, I will concede is more Science Fantasy. Others, which are more about things like difference engines, steam weaponry, airships etc. Often fall more under Science Fiction.

Ooh...steampunk...one of my other shameless pleasures...

Anybody reading Girl Genius?

I keep meaning to dig into that one Boomer, but keep on letting it slip by. 

I've recently fallen into the capable hands of Gail Carriger and am in the middle of the 2nd book in the Parasol Protectorate series (Changeless) 

Really quite wonderful stuff, I highly recommend her.

Hmm... I vunder vat ze boom vhinks off da Jagerkin?

I love the Jagerkin antics...and their hats.

Well atleast make so he made Star Wars yeah, if we're still inciting murder but stop Howard the Duck... seriously. Make this happen, I'll convert a Beetle into a time machine that runs on uranium and demands 2.12 terrawatts of power but it will be so worth it.Only four seats so we'll need to assemble our lynch mob, or would it be a team rather due to low numbers?

Any how I find recent additions to the expanded universe (which I would consider clone wars to be in) has been rather shotty anyway and this specific addition is rather fanservice-y, just seems like a lot of slash fiction became canon.

Could be also that I don't care for Darth Maul

Err...

....you want Lucas gone just because of Darth Maul's brother? 8P Or because Lucas is playing a character on his own show? I guess I'm not sure what your exact gripe is here, Arkus.

Don't misunderstand; there is plenty to complain about, in regards to George Lucas. But I guess I'm not sure what your beef is with the article you linked. Which "fucking shit is the god damn fucking line" that was crossed here?

Also, I don't think there is or should be "a point where you've made enough money". In this country, you're free to make as much money as you can, and that's the way it should always be. ^ 3 ^

This was the very first topic I ever posted in when I joined the site. Kinda brings back memories.

Though I wish people would acknowledge that I did bring up Ray Harryhausen, who could have mounted a production house similar to ILM, had Lucas not existed.

Glad I could bring you nostalgia? 8P

Harryhausen did amazing things, for sure, and it is interesting to consider what could potentially have happened had he started a company like ILM. I...don't know! Perhaps he would have lead the way for special effects instead (although you could easily argue he already did).

Don't get me wrong, Harryhausen's movies still look dated, but if you compare, say, the scorpion scene from Clash of the Titans (or the skeleton battle in Jason & The Argonauts) to the snow battle scene from Empire Strikes Back, hands down, Harryhausen wins in the effects category.

Lucas had to go back and retouch that scene for it to look right.

Hey, I think the AT-AT's look great in 'Empire! It's one of the most iconic scenes in the series, and...perhaps in movies, period. They did a great job!

Er...what do you mean "Lucas had to go back and retouch that scene for it to look right"? You mean digitially? Thankfully, that's one scene he didn't mess with (although 'Empire has very little new edits that Lucas made, thankfully)! I'm...not sure what you're referring to, then.

I'm not talking about the content of the scene. Sure, the snow battle is iconic in the series.

What I'm saying is that when you compare the effects, Harryhausen did it better.

And Lucas did mess with that scene. A lot of the stop motion block effect shots were still visible and many things were transparent. He went in and removed all of that and solidified the transparent places.

He even said in an interview that no one on his staff had the expertise to do stop motion on a white background. Yet the technology still existed.

Hmmm...I did not know....or even notice that had been done. I wonder how many other people even noticed...

If you had the last release of the VHS, there was a 20-minute documentary about the new effects for that particular movie at the start of every cassette. Because so little was changed in Empire (other than making Bespin seem less like a space shuttle), he spent a lot of time discussing the technical aspect of altering the snow battle sequence.

But like I said, it was all technical-- not aesthetic.

Nope, I didn't get the last VHS release, which was a re-release of the Special Edition, I think. I did, at the time, get a new VHS copy of the 'Jedi SE, since our old tapes were busted, but that copy didn't have such an extra feature on it.

Here's a bit of news relating to good ol' Lucas. An acquaintance of mine hosted a Star Wars marathon for a group of friends (All of the movies, even the shitty prequels); he bought food and treats for the lot of them, though they pitched in. Somehow, Lucas caught wind of the marathon and is now suing him.

George Lucas is suing a random guy in Canada for having a Star Wars marathon, pretty low.

.....wait, what???

Lucas himself is suing your friend who had a private party, where he showed the Star Wars movies? That's....not possible, unless your friend is showing them in a public area, without persmission. There are some copyright laws there, I believe. If your friend is just having people in his own house and showing movies, uh, no one can sue him for that.

But...how the Hell would...Lucas himself even find out about this? That...doesn't make sense or sound likely.

So, what's going on here? Can you verify  this somehow, and provide more details?