Why Did Lucas Make the STAR WARS Prequels?

She may be a good producer but that doesn't qualify her to run arguably the biggest film franchise in history, just as George being an idea man doesn't make him an ideal writer or director. There are fan films that are more respectful of the world and the characters than most of the people running Lucasfilm right now. The amount of people who continue to make excuses for her mishandling of the sequel trilogy is so strange. Is something like The Mandaloria genuinely good or is it just a relief that it doesn't suck as much as The Last Jedi? I liked The Force Awakens and LOVE Rogue One, but after that it all began to crumble. Even Lucas couldn't manage to sink his own franchise with the prequels, a feat that Kennedy and her team have somehow managed to do. The toys don't sell, fans are losing interest, the new EU isn't exactly compelling, and a film dedicated to Han Solo lost money. How does that happen under competent leadership?

 

I've always had an issue George Lucas, the man. To me, he's always seemed unbelievably stoic and emotionally stunted. His demeanor informs me he's the passive-aggressive type and he seems impossible comprehend the concept of being wrong about anything. A sit-down where being receptive to other ideas and constructive criticism would be impossible. If you add all these elements into a single person, that translates into someone I would never want to work with or for.

After watching every possible extensive hours-long documentaries on the making of the 1st movie, I'm convinced the fact it was half as good as it was was only a happy accident, from casting to the special effects. To be fair, I'll give him major props for working extremely hard to the point of exhaustion and successfully overseeing and correcting everything necessary so each department would work brilliantly.

In my view, he's an ideas person, and one who can build from scratch entire corporations and make them succeed. I'd value his feedback on the basis of methodology, conceptualization, and production. Any script-writing, casting, or directing ideas, I'd ignore altogether and value input obtained elsewhere.

Every single thing the man has done has been calculated, from obtaining merchandising rights to outright telling Krishner he wanted Empire to be bigger and more spectacular... not for any storytelling purpose, mind you, but specifically in order to open the door to make more SW flicks. This isn't someone I believe has any artistic integrity in the sense of wanting to serve the story. A great writer will throw a line away, even if it is one of his favorites, because it doesn't serve the story. In Lucas' mind, I don't believe for a minute that he even had the Story (with a capital S) in mind when he made any of his decisions. And if I'm honest with myself, that's probably ultimately the main reason I don't see him as anything but a below-average filmmaker at best.

As for the dialogue, he had direct access to Carrie Fisher who had gained by this point a terrific reputation as a script doctor, especially great in fixing clunky dialogue... yet, he again refused to source out help for what are extremely glaring fundamental issues with the prequels.

I invite one and all to look through this extensive and *very* interesting review of Phantom. Not only is it funny, but it brings up a ton of clever points that even though I agree with, that I hadn't yet cohesively verbalized about what exactly is wrong with those pieces of crap.

 

It's refreshing to see someone actually taking the time to analyze George Lucas' talents instead of incessantly dunking on the sequel trilogy as somehow defiling priceless art.

 

Interesting. I find Abrams film, while an effective reboot, wholly lacking in originality or taking risks. I think 8 is the best of the later three films with seven behind it and I like Rogue One quite a bit. They showed that, unlike the prequels, it could be interesting to see a story we knew the outcome of.

 

Yes, very well-said.

I think Abrams did the best he could, but I honestly think all the later sequels were the product of "movies by committee." This is what happens when you get a lot of executives in a room with pie charts and PowerPoint displays with bullet points and tell writers and directors, "you gotta have this, you gotta have that, you gotta put this in," and so on for several hours. I honestly think that's how things go with a lot of filmmaking these days.

 

I think he is stuck emotionally like some of the main characters in American Graffiti which remains, along with Star Wars, his best directed film. He’s good on concepts, ripping off the science fiction writers he enjoyed and packaging it well. He’s a lousy writer (he brought in other writers to help punch up Star Wars and the cart would improvise or improve dialog) but he’s relatively good at story structure. He should have, like Hitchcock had other stronger writers working with him as his strength isn’t dialog, worked with better casting directors, etc. so yeah he had too much power. He was visionary certainly (except his vision on storytelling was to the past) and he is a talented filmmaker but I suspect he was a better producer than director. Imagine if he had directed Raiders? Spielberg could direct rings around him.

 

Well see Abrams has recycled other film directors and movies he’s seen before so a lot<of that IS Abrams. Super 8 is a Steven Spielberg movie directed by Abrams. He can take others good ideas and make them work well (especially with Lost which he didn’t come up with the premise but had to execute it) but is lacking in originality.

 

I think,part of that was 1)$ due to his divorce 2) wanting $ to do the prequels his way as he hates the Hollywood system 3) he dombed them down knowing they would sell lots of toys 4) he’s a lousy writer and a good visual stylist but isn’t good at directing actors 5) he couldn’t afford to make those small films and have them possibly fail.

 

Me-sa agree!

 

Do you have hard and fast numbers on the toys not selling? You can make an argument that the toys aren't selling as well, but I dunno if they're disastrous. I'd agree the franchise is fading, but you can say that about a lot of 40-year-old movie series:

Disney Can No Longer Deny That 'Star Wars' is a Damaged Franchise

The films after Lucas stack up like this:

The Force Awakens - 12/18/2015 - $2.068 billion
Rogue One - 12/16/2016 - $1.056 billion
The Last Jedi - 12/15/2017 - $1.333 billion
Solo: A Star Wars Story - 5/25/2018 - $393 million
The Rise of Skywalker - 12/20/2019 - $1.074 billion

Mandalorian did extremely well, and a lot of critics credit this one show as helping to give the fledgling Disney+ streaming service 50,000,000 subscribers in less than six months:

Disney Plus already has 50 million subscribers around the world, even though it only launched 5 months ago

From my point of view, Lucasfilm is doing well, and I think overall they're making a lot of money. The problem is often the Fandom Menace that wants to tear everything down and complain (which Lucas himself told me personally was discouraging):

The Fandom Menace: Why The “Last Jedi” Hatred is Proof of Its Success

Critically, I think the films were mixed at best, and there are things you can justifiably criticize in the films. To me, it was an impossible job because the bar had been set so high. The fact that four out of the five films made over a billion dollars is pretty amazing. Solo was an unmitigated disaster, and I don't know what could've been done to save that. Ron Howard is a very talented director and producer, but clearly bad decisions were made -- and I really disliked that film... a lot.

 

If nothing else, the overall success of "The Mandalorian" should indicate something about the SW films: folks like the concepts and the SW universe, but would like to see those concepts translated into a different set of characters and storylines that are not directly related to the Lucas movies.

 

While I can be critical of some of Lucas's questionable decisions for the franchise/movies, I very much respect his tenacity, particularly when it came to making "Star Wars".

In one of the OT BluRays there is a documentary on the making of "Star Wars" which delved into the huge amounts of ridicule and adversity he experienced from the studio, actors, and even from his colleagues. It was intense and unyielding throughout the entire production. My understanding is that the studio thought so little of "his little kiddie space movie" was why he was able to retain the merchandising rights and achieve the means to independently produce subsequent movies. Everyone seemed to be against him....that he pulled it off is a testament to his drive, vision, and courage.

That he was able to declare massive victory after "Star Wars" became a mammoth hit, infusing our culture to the extent it has, giving Fox studios their best profit year in years (or ever up to that time??), creating an entirely new VFX industry, setting new technical standards, and changing so much of the movie making landscape always made me go "yes! Take that all you of little faith!!!". I love it when the underdog triumphs so mightily against all odds and people who continually drop roadblock after roadblock on them.

Given all of that, and enriched with massive $$$, I can see why he became a man of singular vision and was hardened against all who would question him, his ideas, vision, and what he wanted to do in future projects after suffering such adversity. His adoption of a "my way or the highway"mode of operation, understated as it may be, is understandable going forwards after seeing that documentary. I find that doc very, very inspiring.

 

The Mandalorian is a television series not a movie, so it's disingenuous to say it succeeded when others failed... had that series been a two-hour theatrical feature instead, it'd be interesting to see just how well it would have done... I'm thinking it would have done Solo numbers at best.

It wasn't the titular character, or visuals, or story that did it, it was...


Without the little guy, it wouldn't have caught fire the way it did... but hey, success is success, right?

The Mandalorian is symptomatic of everything wrong with current SW... same old alien species', design iconography, rough timeline, etc. The vast, infinite universe of endless races, worlds, and possibilities seen and hinted in both the OT and PT has increasingly contracted and compacted under Disney to a small handful of familiar faces, families, designs, and creatures; remixed, rejigged, rebooted... wash, rinse, repeat... and they wonder why franchise-fatigue is starting to set in?

I don't know, no-one does for sure, why George made the prequels... but I sure wish he had dropped the mic on SW after they were done and put the whole thing into (perfect) hibernation thereafter... modern-day Disney is the epitome of everything Lucas despised about Hollywood in general... and he handed his life's work and legacy to those vultures!

 

I think of it as another Star Wars project. There's a lot of whispers that Disney execs were so pleased with Mandalorian, there is talk that they're going to make Jon Favreau the head of Lucasfilm at some point. Note that Kathy Kennedy is close to 67.

Let's agree to disagree. I think from the studio's point of view, it was wildly successful because it sucked in millions and millions of subscribers into an unproven streaming service. This story makes a good argument that it has bigger ratings than Stranger Things, which is pretty shocking:

Is Disney+’s ‘The Mandalorian’ More Popular Than Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things?’

It also currently has a 93 on Rotten Tomatoes and a 70 on Metacritic, which ain't bad. I'd say both are a lot better than Solo.

One thing for sure: the "Stagecraft" technology that ILM used for the massive wall-size LED screens is going to have a huge effect on film & TV production in the new post-COVID world. It's a whole new way of making films, and I have to hand it to Favreau for getting this technology to work.

How Lucasfilm's New "Stagecraft" Tech Brought 'The Mandalorian' to Life and May Change the Future of TV

Knowing how much Lucas disliked the idea of spending lots of money on massive sets, and how enamored he was with green screen/blue screen technology and making partial sets and using digital to finish the sets, I bet he would approve of this part of Mandalorian for sure.

 

Ya hear that, George? Kathy Kennedy's throwing shade your way ...

 

That is some genuinely impressive tech, I have to admit... between virtual sets, digital capture cameras, non-linear editing, etc, it's frightening just how decades ahead of everyone else George Lucas was, and just how much of what modern filmmakers take for granted was pioneered by him... if he'd been as good a screenwriter/director as he was a visionary, the prequels would have been astounding!!!

 

She’s one to talk. How did the sequels turn out again? The prequels did way more right than the sequels did.

 

I'm not so sure "disingenuous" is the word you want here; what in my statement is "knowingly false or insincere" by pretending to know less than I do know, which is what the term denotes? Regardless, as @Vidiot said above, it's a Star Wars project, whether done as a TV serial or a feature film is not really relevant. Pretty safe to say it has succeeded in being a SW project without benefit of recurring characters from the original trilogy. I think it would have been better artistically to use the 6 films Lucas made as a starting point for new stories, with completely new characters, rather than what was eventually done. I did like (much) of "Rogue One", however. I did like the "Mandalorian" idea of the action occurring in the margins of the Star Wars universe, rather than smack in the center of the action.

 

And you're absolutely right... 'disingenuous' was the wrong terminology, my apologies for any unintentional insinuations.

Everyone seems to love The Mandalorian, but I just see a pretty rote western-with-child motif grafted onto SW iconography... I guarantee you this series will be all but forgotten in a few short years... whatever you think of the prequels, at the very least, George was telling a story of actual substance that wasn't solely relying on OT nostalgia to get it over the finish-line... alas, the same cannot be said of the Disney output.

That being said; Rogue One... unnecessary in purest terms but feck it... at least it fed into the core saga, and it rocked like biscuits... good enough, even by the skin of it's teeth ... but honestly, enough already!!!

 

This is not the way.

The old EU books (now branded Legends) are adored to this day, to the point of much complaining when Disney branded them all non-canon (as if they were any more canonical than the films to begin with, of course). The Mandalorian is new EU with just enough ties to keep bringing people back. Will it ever rise to the same estimation as the original trilogy? No. Nothing ever will.

Fortunately, you will not be troubled by any of these productions going forward, as you have said.

Repeatedly.

 

A mistake people keep making is that they often assume that since they themselves are no longer interested in something,they often tend make the logic leap that they are in the majority. Confirmation bias.

When I hear statements like "no one likes the sequels and they will be forgotten in 10 years. " or "The mandalorian is going to be forgotten soon" or something along those lines ,I have to laugh.

Because you know what else people would "forget about in 10- 20 years " ?

The prequels.

I remember the same exact thing being said about them then. Hell at one time I believed that as well when I was younger and less mature about these things.


Yet here we are still talking about them.

Not only that,you have quite a lot of very devoted fans of the prequels out there making their voices heard. The kids that grew up with that being their first exposure to Star Wars,and those kids are now adults and probably now make up a majority of the Star Wars fandom. Heck,I've even seen the trend in the fandom as of late that there are many in that group that love the prequels and the stuff surrounding it,more than even the original trilogy!

And while I don't agree with that at all...you know what? More power to them. That's great. Most of us older gents and ladies 40 plus likely think that's sacrilege and awful....but the fact is our time in the sun of driving the Star Wars fandom is done. And one day,when the kids that got into Star Wars post Lucas with the current films and the Mandalorian grow up,that will be their Star Wars. That's fine. That's how it should be. That's how these things work.

Now...have the prequels and the current films overshadowed or even reached the original trilogy's cultural significance? No. Not even close. The circumstances are simply different on a number levels. It's not 1977,1980 or 1983 anymore and Star Wars is no longer the only game in town when it comes to franchises that dominate the popular culture. It has competition it simply didnt have even 20 years ago.

However there's a far berth between "the current Star Wars films and shows aren't the end all be all like the OT was in its time " and "no one will remember or care about 'fill in Non OT Star Wars film or show' in ten years".

I'm reminded of an old quote from another 80s franchise.


"I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet....but your kids are gonna love it."

This is the way.

 

I believe their thinking now (partly because of the failure of Solo) is: let's try something completely new, maybe even in a different galaxy, where we're creating entirely new creatures from scratch that still live within the Star Wars universe. Basically: no Skywalkers, no Yoda, none of the familiar faces... all new characters and new stories. I think the producers believe maybe they won't get as much flack that way if it's completely new. Will it work? I'm "iffy" on it.

Yes, Lucas was an absolutely genius for saying (40 years ago), "why can't we do it this way?" and "what if we had the technology to do this?" He's by his own admittance not that technical a guy, but he can see the bare bones of an idea and then hire people who have the technical skills to make it work. There's a great 2005 book by Michael Rubin called Droidmaker: George Lucas And the Digital Revolution, and it shows all the incredible behind-the-scenes ideas Lucas had for changing the way moves were made and finished:



https://www.amazon.com/Droidmaker-George-Lucas-Digital-Revolution-dp-0937404675/dp/0937404675

It's an extraordinary tale, and I give Lucas credit for being able to carry through many ideas that others were never able to bring to fruition. Don't forget, Francis Coppola (George's 1970s mentor) tried to edit movies on videotape in the early 1980s and failed miserably. Lucas took that concept much further, along with many more, and it changed everything.

But I agree, Lucas' scripts... not so much.

 

I can't forget them because they're much too stinky and steaming. It would take a lot to force me to watch them right now. Literally, you'd have to pay me $100 per film to sit down and watch them. For that, I'd do it. And lunch -- I'd have to have free meals with that, too. And drinks. And a comfy chair.

 

The way they've been shooting those "Mandalorian" episodes is very impressive - there were a number of scenes where I assumed they'd been shot on sets. Very well done, and it's a little jarring to see that production quality on a project intended entirely for the domestic viewing scene. "Wow" indeed.

 

Me too. I'm (mostly) indifferent to the recent crop of SW films, but I wouldn't waste another minute on the prequels.