It’s pretty common knowledge in my circles that I have no love for George Lucas. In fact, in my crappier modes I have been known to call him a “money-grubbing Ewok.” A loving moniker I’ve given him based on my admittedly outlandish theory that he modeled the look of the Ewoks after himself (seriously, do a side by side comparison, you’ll see what I’m talking about). However, if ever there was an argument that could convince me he isn’t some superficial capitalistic, cash-cow milking, creativity stifling, fan-disregarding, brand-name draining filmmaking force, it would be John’s incredibly well thought out and written piece over at The Movie Blog.
Though I think perhaps John overestimates Lucas latent level of talent - dormant or not - there’s no denying that AMERICAN GRAFFITI and the first two STAR WARS demonstrated Lucas has got “it” somewhere in him, it’s just an “it” that has not - as John points out - been capitalized on since, largely because Lucas can’t seem to pull himself away from his franchises. It’s a great insight, and the author goes on to offer some helpful advice on how Lucas can break out of his creative rut. Definitely worth checking out, if for no other reason than a surprisingly dead-on allusion to LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS.
You’re probably wondering at this point what could possibly be written about the ending and MacGuffin of CRYSTAL SKULL that hasn’t been covered already. It sucked. You know. Well, I thought I’d put down pen to paper (well, not quite) a more serious consideration of why they’re no good, and address/counter what some of the defenses of it have been.
Needless to say, if you haven’t seen the film yet there are SPOILERS (!!!) ahead.
First off, I think we need to get clear who is really at fault here. A lot of people seem to be assigning Steven Spielberg the blame, largely because it obviously elicits his many other alien-based films, most notably CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. Though Spielberg’s hands are far from clean (the prairie dogs and vine-swinging Mutt had his fingerprints all over it), George Lucas is 100% accountable. I highly doubt that even the small percentage of blindly loyal people who always emerge when their great master is criticized can dispute that at this point. Just look up any interview with Spielberg, Ford, and Lucas in the last while, and you’ll find the aliens were not only Lucas’ concoction, but that neither Spielberg nor Ford were thrilled about it. Not to be deterred, Lucas nobly pulled rank and said: “[Spielberg and Ford] wanted to go off on some other tangent. I said, ‘I’m not going to do that. I’m going to stick with [my idea] no matter what, so we either do this or we don’t. That’s it.’”
The internet also seems to offer scattered defenses of the ending, and the general alien theme. So let’s move on to address those.
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Dear Mr. Lucas,
With INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL coming closer, I know this plea might be a little bit late given that production is done and all, but I feel I need to get it off my chest regardless.
You better not have screwed this up.
Though I enjoyed the original STAR WARS trilogy, I loved the INDIANA JONES films. I’ve seen RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE something like over 100 times combined. To me they are not just films, but experiences, ones that turned me into a little child again, full of excitement and dumbfounded awe as I watched. It’s a feeling that seeing the first teaser trailer for INDY 4 gave me again as the Indy theme swelled up as I watched his silhouette appear. I felt drunk on sheer anticipation and excitement.
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Much like he did with the original trilogy a few years ago, George Lucas apparently has decided to go back and re-release THE PHANTOM MENACE, ATTACK OF THE CLONES, and REVENGE OF THE SITH as special editions. It seems the Grand Master of the galaxy far far away is still not quite happy. It’s probably best to let the man speak for himself:
“Though we certainly did our best with the technology that we had at the time we made these movies, we were never quite able to realize the original vision I had for them. Now that moviemaking technology has grown with leaps and bounds, we now have the opportunity to make these movies exactly the way I had always imagined them in my head. I recently re-watched the LORD OF THE RINGS movies, and was really impressed with how well Peter Jackson did with melding together CGI and non-CGI effects. So with these Special Editions we’re going to go back to some of the model based effects we were using back with the original Star Wars.
These Special Editions aren’t just about re-releasing them with new effects, though. There were a lot of story elements that I just wasn’t happy with. For example, I thought the romance between Anakin and Padme was not given enough screen time, especially in EPISODE II, and I’ll be re-inserting some extended scenes of them in the fields of Naboo that were cut from the original theatrical release. It also seems that Jar-Jar Binks really struck a chord with kids, so there’ll probably be more of him too.
I think Star Wars fans will relish the opportunity to see these films the way I meant them to be seen. This isn’t a Director’s Cut so much as a final cut of the movies. It’s not going to make much money for us in the end. It would make a lot of money if I wasn’t rich. But I’m not doing it for the money. I’m doing it as an artist with a particular vision, and hopefully moviegoers all over the world will be able to share it with me.”
Currently the plans are to stagger the releases of each of the three films throughout 2009, with EPISODE I coming out in February, EPISODE II in July, and EPISODE III in November. The Special Editions will then hit Blu-Ray in 2010. There are currently no plans to release the original cuts on Blu-Ray.
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