George Lucas to give up film-making because of Star Wars critics

[fhdz]

GI Joe and Transformers both were bad TV shows designed to sell toys.

There weren't many 80s cartoons better than Transformers.

Robotech

[Razgovory]

GI Joe and Transformers both were bad TV shows designed to sell toys.

There weren't many 80s cartoons better than Transformers.

Never got into Transformers.  I liked He-man and GI-Joe.  Also some the Disney ones like Ducktales and Talespin.

[Eddie Teach]

Duck Tales was awesome. 

[Barrister]

I'm the furthest thing from a movie snob. I've seen very few movies compared to most people. What I am doing is viewing it without the nostalgic baggage. Phantom Menace was the first Star Wars movie I saw, that was in 2000.

From that point of view it is a horribly cliche plot. Poor backwater kid discovers he has some magical power that can save the world and does so, discovering along the way his long lost family etc. The kind of story teenage girls write.

And Harrison Ford couldn't act his way out of a paper bag. Carrie Fisher wasn't much better, and of course Hamill was much worse.

Ah, but what you aren't recognizing is the time period this film was made in.  Some thing that is endlessly copied looks cliched from hindsight.

Well, one man's cliche is another man's iconic story.  But that's what made me question Max when he said there was no compelling plot.  It is a tale told numerous times, but it's been told numerous times precisely because it is a compelling one.

[Maximus]

I find it unlikely that it wasn't a cliche story in the early 70s, but it's possible.

[DontSayBanana]

Honestly, I didn't have a critical problem with the prequels until Episode II.  I actually liked The Phantom Menace.  Attack of the Clones was full of so many deus ex machinae and quick writing cop-outs that I completely lost faith in George Lucas' ability to write a problem-solving chain of events.

As far as turning me away from a rabid fan of the franchise, it's not really Lucas' fault- ironically, it's the amount he let other people muck around with his stuff.  I really blame the Yuuzhan Vong story arc for that one.  It felt like the whole purpose was just to show that our favorite characters could lose, and lose in a big way.

[Admiral Yi]

It's a cliched fantasy story but off the top of my head I can't think of a time it was applied to syfy.

[crazy canuck]

We have had this discussion before.  It is hard to explain to the youngsters what a huge cultural impact Star Wars had.  The music track was number one - all the cool kids had the Stars Wars record.  Everyone was saying "May the force be with you".  The idea of the Force tapped into the positive thinking selve help hippy craze at the time and so it was also very popular with adults.

There have been few movies that have ever had that kind of impact.

[Ed Anger]

I remember standing line for it. And standing. And standing. AND STANDING. 

[crazy canuck]

Honestly, I didn't have a critical problem with the prequels until Episode II.

I had a problem with an all powerful Jedi Knight allowing a young boy to risk his life in a crazy race so the Knight could acquire a spare part for his broken down spaceship and then when it is time to leave tells the boy - I am not here to save your mother.  And then the learned council turns the training of this boy, who normally would not be admitted due to his age and who is very powerful in the force, over to one of their most inexperienced members.

The prequels went downhill from there.

[The Brain]

Poochie Binks was awesome.

[Barrister]

Honestly, I didn't have a critical problem with the prequels until Episode II.

I had a problem with an all powerful Jedi Knight allowing a young boy to risk his life in a crazy race so the Knight could acquire a spare part for his broken down spaceship and then when it is time to leave tells the boy - I am not here to save your mother.  And then the learned council turns the training of this boy, who normally would not be admitted due to his age and who is very powerful in the force, over to one of their most inexperienced members.

The prequels went downhill from there.

Yeah, the whole broken spaceship / pod race was the most transparent effort to get an action scene in mid-story.  It had plot holes you could drive a sandcrawler through.

My biggest frustration was that at the end of the day it didn't move the story forward in any appreciable fashion.  He had to move the story forward 10 years when it came time to make Ep II.  It seems to me you could have started the whole prequels at the time Ep II started and explained Anakin's origins on Tatooine either through dialogue or a flashback.

[PDH]

I find it unlikely that it wasn't a cliche story in the early 70s, but it's possible.

Actually, there were sociological papers looking at how Lucas used and combined classic elements in a new way...

[Razgovory]

Honestly, I didn't have a critical problem with the prequels until Episode II.

I had a problem with an all powerful Jedi Knight allowing a young boy to risk his life in a crazy race so the Knight could acquire a spare part for his broken down spaceship and then when it is time to leave tells the boy - I am not here to save your mother.  And then the learned council turns the training of this boy, who normally would not be admitted due to his age and who is very powerful in the force, over to one of their most inexperienced members.

The prequels went downhill from there.

I felt the biggest problem was that it was boring.  Stuff happens, but it's so divorced from the actual actors as to make it dull.  It's like having a light show going on in the background.  Distracting for a moment, but loses it's impact pretty quick.  This could have been solved with better directing and acting, but it just doesn't cut it.  As it is, the film has characters recite dull dialogue at one another between taking shots of Valium.

[MadImmortalMan]

As far as turning me away from a rabid fan of the franchise, it's not really Lucas' fault- ironically, it's the amount he let other people muck around with his stuff.  I really blame the Yuuzhan Vong story arc for that one.  It felt like the whole purpose was just to show that our favorite characters could lose, and lose in a big way.

I agree with that. But on the other hand, everything that has come out that was great since about that time has also been by people who are not Lucas. I'm thinking mainly of the KOTOR-type stuff. The problem is he was so loose with it. Too much crap was written, and too little of it should have been. And the stuff Lucas himself wrote in the time period does not qualify for the latter either.