George Lucas is "Retiring" From Film

[masticina]

Good

Your new smaller projects, sounds fine..
Well no Howard the Duck please...

Maybe something outside your usual. Doesn't means one has to leave the basic story archetypes but.. another place with other influences.. can make it quite another movie. Maybe co-work with someone..

 

[Jezzascmezza]

I think he'd gain a fair amount of respect back if he just released the original versions of the original trilogy (no CGI) on DVD and blu-ray...

 

[Char-Nobyl]

George Lucas is sick of hearing complaints from the Star Wars fanbase, so he's leaving big-budget filmmaking for smaller projects.

Coolness. This brightens an already pretty good day.

"I'm retiring," Lucas stated in the the interview. "I'm moving away from the business, from the company, from all this kind of stuff."

Even better. Lucasarts has consistently proven to have been successful in spite of George Lucas' participation, and once he was declared a creative genius, those checks and balances crumbled like a sandcastle in front of a fire hose.

This may also mean that Lucas will finally be done with creating any more adventures (good or bad) in Star Wars' far, far away galaxy, although Lucas sort of attributes this to the increasing backlash he's received from the Star Wars fan base over the 1997's special edition release of the original trilogy and every subsequent re-edit [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/112701-LucasFilms-Confirms-adding-NOOOOOO-to-Return-of-the-Jedi] since. In explaining why, Lucas likened the negative response to the kind of demands he used to hear from major film studios, who in the past have forcibly re-edited his earlier films like THX 1138.

So we have them to thank for all the good things that Lucas tried to destroy in the original trilogy?

Lucas feels his ability to re-imagine the Star Wars films into what he originally wanted them to be is being restricted by the criticism he's heard over the Star Wars films.

Oh, really?

So he's going to re-dub C-3PO to sound like "an oily, used-car salesman [http://www.virginmedia.com/movies/features/20-things-you-never-knew-about-star-wars.php?page=7]"?

And use CGI to turn Han and Chewie into a "a huge, green-skilled monster with no nose and large gills," and an eight-foot "huge, grey bushbaby with fierce baboon-like fangs"? Respectively, that is. Here's an artist's rendition of these two iconic characters if Lucas had his way:

Great stuff, eh?

"Why would I make any more," Lucas stated about continuing with his popular sci-fi universe, "when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?"

Because he is terrible at his job. He lost the input from all the people who made the original movies successful, surrounded himself with sycophants who just agreed with his decisions and laughed at his jokes (seriously, watch any DVD extras: they're clearly just chuckling so they can keep their jobs), and sacrificed what shreds of integrity remained in favor of action figures and fanservice that backfired horribly.

While it remains to be seen if Lucas' retirement sticks, his next film, Red Tails opens this Friday, and is a historical drama about the all-black fighter squadron known as the Tuskegee Airmen, who fought in the second World War.

Oh, joy. I'm upset about this for one simple reason: it will probably be a decent movie, and Lucas will get undeserved credit. And do you know why? It's because he doesn't have the absolute power over creative liberties that he had with the prequels. As soon as other people have say in the movies and he can't override them, it turns out good movies. That's how we got the original trilogy.

I'm happy he's finally gotten the hint, at least.

 

[RoBi3.0]

And George doesn't fix the obvious things, like movie mistakes that are fine if the audience misses them until someone points them out:

Still not fixed, not on any version.

I'm NOT against all changes, especially if they are improvements.

But that is clearly not Lucas' aim nor intention, he's clearly just adding shit in for the sake of adding shit in with the most shallow thought to how it affects the films and lore as a whole.

I honestly see nothing wrong there I grew up my entire life wanting to force kick the shit out of people just like Luke Skywalker.

 

[BlackWidower]

You made your universe, now live with it!
Oh right, it wasn't good enough for you.
I feel as if a million fanboys suddenly cried out in joy
The thing George Lucas never really appreciated was that after he released the Star Wars to the public, it wasn't just a part of his life anymore, it became a part of OUR lives. And as the obscene amounts of money he made off the original Trilogy showed, WE liked it just fine. So when you start going back and altering/ruining with other people's memories for your own selfish reasons, you shouldn't be surprised that we got A LITTLE UPSET ABOUT IT!

Actually, no, it still is his. He made it, and then he altered it later to fit with his original vision a bit better since the technology caught up. At least that's what the back of the box says, and if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

The man's full of shit anyway. He claims he planned this big epic story, but the original film wasn't even called Episode IV, anywhere.

I find it funny though that he's comparing big executives who insist he edit his opus for the sake of financial gain, with fans who insist he not edit his opus for the sake of artistic integrity.

Does anyone really care about Star Wars anyway? I know I don't.

 

[Treblaine]

And George doesn't fix the obvious things, like movie mistakes that are fine if the audience misses them until someone points them out:

Still not fixed, not on any version.

I'm NOT against all changes, especially if they are improvements.

But that is clearly not Lucas' aim nor intention, he's clearly just adding shit in for the sake of adding shit in with the most shallow thought to how it affects the films and lore as a whole.

I honestly see nothing wrong there I grew up my entire life wanting to force kick the shit out of people just like Luke Skywalker.

I don't see anything hugely wrong with it. I'm just saying that if Lucas was going to change anything then he could change this first.

Other directors have done the same thing, there was a minor error in James Cameron's Aliens where you could see beyond someone's gore prosethesis. You wouldn't notice it normally as your attention was on another part of the screen... until someone points it out then it's all you can see. He fixed that with a seamless digital edit, you couldn't find it even if you were looking for it.

That is a good fix, you are staying true to the vision you went out to create, what people originally paid ticket prices for.

But things like adding Jabba into a scene where he reverts to an early character plan where he is TOTALLY DIFFERENT from his character in Jedi. That's no good, that is conflicting with the vision of the films he and his co-creators made. All I see here is Lucas had a deleted scene but seems to be unable to square how it no longer fit anywhere in the film. He seemed to add it in just to say "hey, I added in a deleted scene" rather than have it actually improve anything.

 

[OceanRunner]

George started Star Wars from Episode IV because he wanted better film technology for the subsequent prequels. Considering the original trilogy has been such a hit, and the restrictions the tech of the time, this opens the possibility that he was not as great a filmmaker as he believed himself to be and needed to be held back just the right amount to make the first films such hits.

 

[Treblaine]

George started Star Wars from Episode IV because he wanted better film technology for the subsequent prequels. Considering the original trilogy has been such a hit, and the restrictions the tech of the time, this opens the possibility that he was not as great a filmmaker as he believed himself to be and needed to be held back just the right amount to make the first films such hits.

Except when the first film was made he gave no indication it was 4th in the series.

In fact he didn't even give an indication it was the first in any sort of Trilogy. The original title of Star Wars A New Hope was simply "Star Wars" it was only the much later theatrical re-releases and VHS releases that retonned in the "Star Wars: A New Hope" and EVEN LATER after that when the "Episode IV" was introduced, way way after Return of The Jedi had been released.

This is not so unusual. The first Indiana Jones film was simply called "Raiders of the Lost Ark" with no "Indiana Jones and the... " prefix. That didn't appear till the VHS release after

http://media.screened.com/uploads/0/1109/104594-raiders_of_the_lost_ark_poster.jpg

 

[LordXel]

QUICK! This may be our only change! Remove the Blu-Ray change to Return of the Jedi before he violates his retirement like Spock violated his to be in Transformers 3!

But in all seriousness, while the Star Wars prequels were flawed I still like them. The six Star Wars films have a place in my heart and I thank George Lucas for that, but shouldn't he have realised the hate years ago? And in all honesty, why did he change Return of the Jedi like that? Most illogical, Mr Lucas.

 

[DarthSka]

I'm sorry to see you go George, I seriously am. Star Wars is my favorite film series of all time, but I just never understood the hate brought on by the changes and prequels. People will always whine that they changed what didn't need to be, but in the end, it didn't alter the experience for me. If a few cgi inserts and inserted lines ruined the other two hours of film for you, then I just pity you. In the end, it's his movies, his scripts, his ideas. Get the hell over it. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get excited for the Episode I re-release (yeah, I liked that one.)