It's Time To Forgive George Lucas

[TotallyFake]

Why are midichlorians always picked on as a bad thing? I never got that.

I liked them, it was a bit like mitochondrial DNA in concept...

I always dug that too. Less magic, more 'science'. Awesome.

Ouch, this hurts to read for me .... The entire concept of intelligent microscopic organisms is just ridiculous. There's a reason we are of a certain size in relation to the interacting parts of our cognitive systems (loosely our nervous system). It is difficult to imagine a very small organism being capable of managing information entropy (which means managing energy) in a sufficiently complex way to allow higher-order abstractions and thus intelligence. The alternative is that they work together as a collective to be intelligent, but that is really what ordinary cells do. If they would display this emergent behaviour, midichlorians themselves would just be ordinary cells so that's not what is implied.

Science aside, what does it mean anyway? Everybody is a nation consisting of on the order of trillions to quadrillions (Anakin has over 20,000 per cell) of intelligent beings. What? What does that have to do with anything Star Wars? Sure, the idea might work for something like the Reapers of Mass Effect, but really ....

If they were like mitochondria, I'd have no problem with 'em. It's this "intelligent" crap that's the problem.

When are they ever described as intelligent. Qui-Gon just calls them microscopic. And there's enough bullshit in his sentence to bury the concept even without being intelligent.
They're living organisms inside cells, without them life would not exist. Presumably he means life OTHER than them, but it's still a horrible phrased statement.

The big problem is that they destroy all the magic of The Force and replace it with a crappy pseudo-scientific explanation. It just screams of the fact that Lucas apparently forgot what made the original trilogy so good.

 

[Scde2]

This article was ruined by Jar Jar's ugly mug jumping out at my unprepared ass on page 2. Well, okay, not ruined but I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have without it. Goddamnit I hate Jar Jar...

Hasn't anyone even seen the Star Wars Holiday Special?

I haven't yet but now that I found it online (with original commercials) I will soon...

I strongly urge you to not to. But if you like eye and ear rape, go ahead.

 

[Cpu46]

I don't think the prequels were bad, just different. Me? I love the Clone Wars era.

Same here, sure jar jar was slightly annoying but he was still funny to listen to. My only problem was episode 2, the romance between padime and skywalker seemed a bit too corny and it interrupted the action. Episode 1 was fun to watch, 2 was OK, 3 was all kinds of epic.
I do think that the original trilogy is still miles ahead of 1,2, and 3 in terms of story and characterization though.

 

[Dhatz]

my theory that all old guys(yes all, not some or most) are retarded and nothing can help them just got confirmed. jar-jar was the funny character and that's his purpose, you can't think movie is wrong just because it's not completely obsessed with the borders of it's own genre. TBH I don't need any genres, best movie of all time would have everything and everything on the master level. same goes for games and pretty much any form of art(if art still exists).

 

[pixiejedi]

time to get over it dorks, film evolves. there were plenty of gems back then and the star wars franchise was a legendary piece of filmmaking. but there have been so many, many GREAT films: Lord of the Rings, The Dark Knight, District 9, The Hangover, Toy Story, Spider-man, X-Men, Kick-Ass. All are making an impact on film history without Lucas, film has evolved without him.

Without him? hardly. His influence has made many of those films possible. While they are probably much better without his direct involvement. Its impossible to disregard the influence the Star Wars movies had on future projects. I also know that Lucas and Pixar are connected, but not how off the top of my head.

OT: Its about 50/50 for me. I appreciate the prequels because I love Ewan McGregor and the prequels were the first (but by no where near best) time I noticed him.

On the other hand, I despise Hayden Christianson and the kid who played Annikin in the first was also pathetic. The retconns were annoying and well, Jar Jar Binks... There were some unintentionally funny moments though. Right before the last fight in Revenge of the Sith Annikin says that "your either with me, or against me" and Obi Wan responds with "only Sith deal in absolutes" which is itself an absolute. I got a chuckle in the theater over it at least.

For the record, it also annoys me that Christianson appears in Return of the Jedi now. But I still don't hate Lucas, I kind of pity him. It would suck to have to try and top yourself with success so young in life.

 

[Echolocating]

The only thing I can't stand are people who claim that the prequels weren't a disaster.

 

[Pendragon9]

I never hated Lucas. He wasn't a bad guy.

But he just does things that irk me. Like the Clone War series.

He basically made a version of Star Wars with even more terrible CG graphics and a Hilary Duff ripoff (Asoka whoever) to boot.

I just don't know what to think anymore.

 

[Zero=Interrupt]

Here's something to think about:

The suckage in the prequel trilogy was due to inability of the people around Lucas to say "George, that's a stupid idea."

Think about it for a minute. If more people would have said no his boner writing (ie; Jar-Jar, Kid Anakin, and the dialogue during ep.3's lightsaber battle, Anakin's dumbass motivations, etc, etc) , then the prequels wouldn't have sucked. Likewise, they shouldn't have let him direct, because it was obvious he was nowhere near as good as Lawrence Kasdan or Richard Marquand.

In short, his entourage allowing him to suck by being failures as people.

We wanted George to be good and make good things. He didn't, because, like everyone else, he needs people to say "No, that's iditotic". His stuff needs polish to shine. That's why it's a team effort.

As for Indy 4, it failed for me when Shia Lebouf stepped on screen with his big, wet eyes and wimp-ass attitude. But again: bad writing, stupid ideas. I would've had Indy's son be from, say, some formerly hot 50-ish Brit actress, and be played by Jude Law, who would then proceed to be a badass like his old man....

 

[Scde2]

Ok, we can agree how bad it was. He was in financial trouble (Splinter of the Minds Eye was written to be a possible sequel). But he DID NOT need the money from the special. A New Hope is one of the highest grossing movies of all time. The Holiday Special came out a year and a half later, when A New Hope had already made hundreds of millions of dollars.

Yes but George at this point was more focused on making a trilogy. Sure George could have just kept the money and lived a comfortable life, however we would not have TESB or ROTJ as a result. TESB was actually paid for out of Georges own pocket, the money from the first movie also went into creating Skywalker ranch for the Special effects and filming (and thus PIXAR was born as a result of this). George needed all the money he could get to finish TESB.

I realize he almost ran out of money for TESB, but the Holiday Special didn't make him any money. It was broadcasted only once, viewers stopped watching by the thousands, and it was never released later on video. If anything it might have had a minor impact on the TESB box office. And for being noncanon, Lucas sure didn't mind taking stuff out of it. Like the wookie homeworld (Kashyykk?) and Boba Fett, both appearing for the first time (A good thing from a nightmare).

 

[Sovvolf]

Ok, we can agree how bad it was. He was in financial trouble (Splinter of the Minds Eye was written to be a possible sequel). But he DID NOT need the money from the special. A New Hope is one of the highest grossing movies of all time. The Holiday Special came out a year and a half later, when A New Hope had already made hundreds of millions of dollars.

Yes but George at this point was more focused on making a trilogy. Sure George could have just kept the money and lived a comfortable life, however we would not have TESB or ROTJ as a result. TESB was actually paid for out of Georges own pocket, the money from the first movie also went into creating Skywalker ranch for the Special effects and filming (and thus PIXAR was born as a result of this). George needed all the money he could get to finish TESB.

I realize he almost ran out of money for TESB, but the Holiday Special didn't make him any money. It was broadcasted only once, viewers stopped watching by the thousands, and it was never released later on video. If anything it might have had a minor impact on the TESB box office. And for being noncanon, Lucas sure didn't mind taking stuff out of it. Like the wookie homeworld (Kashyykk?) and Boba Fett, both appearing for the first time (A good thing from a nightmare).

He didn't have any way of knowing it would have bombed, he just accepted the money from a T.V show company, let them use the characters and that was that. Boba Fett and Kashyykk were already thought up of before the T.V show, I think Boba was going to be in the original star wars film too.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I like Star Wars, a lot. Although I really dislike the prequels, I've never seen my childhood as raped by George Lucas. Some people really need to move on. I've never met the guy and I probably never will. By all accounts it just sounds like the story of a guy who had huge success and failed to meet the standards he set the second time. That has happened to me (albeit on a smaller scale) and probably to you too. I forgive George Lucas for not being a robot who can replicate the same quality of work all the time.

 

[Calatar]

Why are midichlorians always picked on as a bad thing? I never got that.

I liked them, it was a bit like mitochondrial DNA in concept...

I always dug that too. Less magic, more 'science'. Awesome.

Ouch, this hurts to read for me .... The entire concept of intelligent microscopic organisms is just ridiculous. There's a reason we are of a certain size in relation to the interacting parts of our cognitive systems (loosely our nervous system). It is difficult to imagine a very small organism being capable of managing information entropy (which means managing energy) in a sufficiently complex way to allow higher-order abstractions and thus intelligence. The alternative is that they work together as a collective to be intelligent, but that is really what ordinary cells do. If they would display this emergent behaviour, midichlorians themselves would just be ordinary cells so that's not what is implied.

Science aside, what does it mean anyway? Everybody is a nation consisting of on the order of trillions to quadrillions (Anakin has over 20,000 per cell) of intelligent beings. What? What does that have to do with anything Star Wars? Sure, the idea might work for something like the Reapers of Mass Effect, but really ....

If they were like mitochondria, I'd have no problem with 'em. It's this "intelligent" crap that's the problem.

When are they ever described as intelligent. Qui-Gon just calls them microscopic. And there's enough bullshit in his sentence to bury the concept even without being intelligent.
They're living organisms inside cells, without them life would not exist. Presumably he means life OTHER than them, but it's still a horrible phrased statement.

The big problem is that they destroy all the magic of The Force and replace it with a crappy pseudo-scientific explanation. It just screams of the fact that Lucas apparently forgot what made the original trilogy so good.

I don't really mind it personally, as it does explain why some are force-sensitive while others are not, and especially explains why force-sensitivity can be passed genetically.
Clearly it's an unholy combination of mitochondria and chloroplasts, those oh-so-useful little organelles that make the whole world go. But it's the word that's annoying to me, not the concept (not unlike unobtainium).

The Force is nearly everywhere, but not everybody can control it. Why is this?
Options available are:
a. Anybody can be a Jedi, you just need to have the proper training
b. Not just anyone can be a Jedi, you need to have innate mental talent for it
c. Not just anyone can be a Jedi, you need to have a biological predisposition for it

And honestly, I'm fine with any of them, even the last one.

Science fiction loves to have pseudo-scientific explanations for things. Its best not to overthink them or you'll realize it doesn't make sense. Because of the "fiction" part.

 

[Raithnor]

Here's the thing: Star Wars is bigger than Lucas.

I think a lot of the enduring popularity of Star Wars was in the setting. Having snappy lines in the first three movies helps. The prequels had some gems, but they were fewer and far between.

Anyways my point is it's entirely possible to see the entire Star Wars Galaxy and not have it be about the characters that show up in the movies.

This is why I prefer the KoTOR era (even though I originally hated the Dark Horse comics it was based on) it allows people to play in the universe without having to worry about the main movies.

Besides I reserve all my nerd rage for Michael Bay. Watch Transformers 2 and then watch Phantom Menace. TF2 will make TPM look highbrow.

 

[Bagaloo]

Why does everyone hate the prequels so much?

I kinda liked them. I'm not going to go out on a limb and say they are brilliant movies, but it was a bunch of guys in bath robes swinging around swords made of pure energy at hilariously inept robots; it can't be that bad!

 

[Dogstile]

Why, why do people hate Jar Jar? Its JAR JAR! I'd do him! YOU HEARD ME!

 

[TsunamiWombat]

C.S. Lewis, in describing his gradual personal transition from staunch atheist to Christian philosopher (and author of the Narnia books) described his period of unbelief as a state of being "angry with God for not existing."

Ow Ow Ow, I don't know who that guy is but that comment made my brain owie, I'll have to read Page 2 some other time

I think the theory there is that you can't be angry with God and not believe in Him at the same time. Or is it just the strangeness of the sentence that vortexed your brain?

OT: Sure I'll forgive the little scamp! But only if I get to tug on his magic beard for luck.

The amount of stupidity from his comment hurt my brain, if he was angry with God, he failed at being an Athiest

Not to say the man couldn't or didn't say dumb things, C.S. Lewis was probably one of the most intelligent and learned men of his era... Just throwing that out there.

Interestingly enough the author of the Divine Comedy had the same problem. He wanted to believe but looked at the world and couldn't, and hated god or the idea of god for that.

OT, I was in the FUCK YOU LUCAS bandwagon for a while but yeah he's not a bad guy. What I don't like is his insistance on marketing only to children when there's obviously a hoarde of nerds with money to blow who want to see a more adult side of the Star Wars brand.

 

[QuickDEMOL1SHER]

Bout time someone said this. I think the hatred of George was kinda just a fad everyone jumped onto, because looking down these comments, a lot of people really liked the prequel trilogy, myself included.

I mean they had shitty moments, like Anakin's whining in Attack of the Clones and every single scene Jake Loyd was in on episode 1, but overall they were very enjoyable. And Revenge of the Sith was just awesome

 

[JediMB]

I like Jar Jar Binks. His silliness amuses me.