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SPOILERS - Star Wars The Force Awakens Discussion and Overanalysis

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BenRG:
George Lucas has strongly criticised The Force Awakens as being 'retro', unoriginal and derivative, noting that it rehashes many of the things that he dislikes about the original trilogy. He has attacked it as a 'fan movie' and accused Disney of treating 'his children' (the Star Wars franchise) as 'white slaves'. He has subsequently apologised for that remark and has insisted that he likes The Force Awakens.

In the interview, he noted that his involvement in The Force Awakens ended when he realised that Disney were not receptive to his artistic and story ideas. It is obvious that this hurt him deeply and he describes it as being like 'a break-up' with the films being the children lost to the other spouse's custody.

Given how artistically rubbish Lucasfilm's most recent works were before the sale, I'm not surprised that Disney refused to let Lucas have too much input in the new Star Wars films. Lucas himself actually acknowledged the likely cause in the original interview where he acknowledged that his increasingly 'experimental' film-making ideas were not commercially viable. That said, it is clear that he really doesn't really have any liking for what the viewing public, including the very audience that made him rich, want from Star Wars. He considers the lacklustre prequel trilogy as high art and the blockbuster original trilogy as highly flawed.

So, yeah, Disney were probably right to cut him out; he had nothing useful to contribute. He's made his lack of understanding and dislike of what the fan-base wanted pretty clear. For all their (near innumerable) faults as a corporation, Disney at least know how to make a film that the fans want to see.

I'd love to read the threatening letter that Disney's lawyers sent to him to get him to U-turn so totally within four hours of the original interview being broadcast though! :-D


[edit]
Fixed a mass of typos and tagging errors

Tova:

--- Quote from: BenRG on 01 Jan 2016, 00:50 ---George Lucas has strongly criticised The Force Awakens as being 'retro', unoriginal and derivative, noting that it rehashes many of the things that he dislikes about the original trilogy.

--- End quote ---

It doesn't suprise me to learn that he apparently dislikes all the elements of the original trilogy that its fans loved.


--- Quote from: Thrillho on 31 Dec 2015, 09:05 ---I watched it with my girlfriend, who detests Harrison Ford, so she left pretty happy.

--- End quote ---

Is she happy because Ford won't be in future Star Wars films? That's the only interpretation I can think of that makes any sense.

Neko_Ali:
You see.. I don't see what he considers so fantastic about the prequels. I love Star Wars. I mean love it. It's one of my most favorite franchise ever, if not the top. And I will be the first to admit that it is far from high art. It's all highly derivative from other sources, pretty cheesy, often uses scale to the absurd and has plot holes big enough to drive a star destroyer through.. but I love it. The prequels... while I don't hate on them the way some fans do are not as good as 4-6 in my eyes. A big part of it was that some of the actors were just terrible and gave flat performances. And there was no chemistry between Anakin and Padme, even though the story kept insisting their was. And let us please get away from the creepiness of an 8 year old and 16 year old falling in love at first sight and flirting badly?

The writing though was often bad.. awkward and not making much sense. The times the movies are best is when the action scenes are happening. And at their worst when they are talking about trade federations and sand... So to me the best parts of the prequels are when it calls back to the original three... I guess Lucas wanted to do a political intrigue movie instead? George may have created the franchise that I love so much, but it's clear it was a fluke on his part, and if he were to do it now I wouldn't give it a second glance. So I'm glad his hands are off Star Wars at this point. With Rebels and Force Awakens I think that Star Wars is in good hands with Disney. If nothing else, they know what the fans enjoy about the setting. And it's not midichlorians and trade franchise disputes with slapstick robots.

Thrillho:

--- Quote from: Tova on 01 Jan 2016, 01:45 ---Is she happy because Ford won't be in future Star Wars films? That's the only interpretation I can think of that makes any sense.
--- End quote ---

Precisely so.

Gladstone:
Lucas apparently presented Disney with a treatment for his own vision of the sequel trilogy when they bought Lucasfilm, but they apparently scrapped it and went with their own ideas.  Which leads to the questions:

1. What was Lucas's story about?
2. And why the hell didn't he make them himself, if his ideas were (supposedly) so much better?

A few years ago, before the new trilogy was announced, I wondered why Lucas didn't just remake Episodes IV-VI entirely.  After all, his complaint about the original trilogy was that the special effects he wanted to use weren't possible at the time, hence all his tweaking with the films since, but there's only so many edits you can make to an existing film before it just looks terrible (see: Jabba the Hutt in A New Hope), so if he really wanted to have a saga he could be proud of, he should just start over and do it his way.  And leave the original stuff for us undeserving fans.

Looking back now, I'm glad he doesn't have that option anymore.

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