Hi everyone i would like to know how you truly feel about George Lucas ? don't hold anything back, release it all. How do you truly feel about him ? let the Therapy begin.

Was once a hungry young filmmaker that caught lightning in a bottle, who got corrupted by greed and sold out on any artistic vision he may have had left in order to market toys to children. Yep, he pretty much turned to the dark side himself.

Haven't honestly respected a thing he's done since the early '80s. Even then, I never thought he was all that talented. Not a particularly interesting director, his writing is awful, and his stories are basically stolen or rehashed from legends, archetypes, or other artists' work.

I dig the contributions of his companies to film technology, though.

Talented and driven in his youth.... somewhere along the way (when he hit 50 I suppose) he just lost the passion for film making. Not sure why he didn't pass the torch onto others (and keep collecting the royalties)... but I think he's at the point now where he'll never admit wishing he handled things differently. And he just keeps digging the hole further while missing the really obvious things he could do to start correcting things. In other words, he's human... very few have the same youthful fire for their work as they get into their 50's and 60's.

I think he's a great director, producer, and screen writer because he directed THX-1182, American Graffiti, and Star Wars, and later wrote and produced the Indiana Jones trilogy.

I also like that he's established companies like Lucas Arts that has come out with great video games since the original high quality 16-bit Star Wars games, up to recent games like The Force Unleashed.

But I think he's become to worried over his legacy as the creator of Star Wars that he feels he constantly has to make changes to the films. I can imagine using modern technology to digitally erase wires or special effects bloopers. But it's gotten annoying that he can't seem to stop altering these films. Plus it seems like he's trying to either lie to the consumers or screw them. First he releases the Special Editions on DVD minus the Original Versions because supposedly those are GONE! But later he releases a new boxed set with the Original Versions but grainy and non-anamorphic. Then there's the new Blu Ray set that has Special-er Editions but no Original Versions. I wanted to buy the boxed set when it first came out but becaues of his businesses practices I haven't. I did cave though and buy the single release of ESB.

I don't remember Ridley Scott trying to screw people with the Blade Runner DVD release. All versions were available at once, and all in clear, anamorphic quality.

Ya do know he blames the fans for crushing his spirit on making a new star wars film ? lol

“On the Internet, all those same guys that are complaining I made a change are completely changing the movie,” Lucas says, referring to fans who, like the dreaded studios, have done their own forcible re-edits. “I’m saying: ‘Fine. But my movie, with my name on it, that says I did it, needs to be the way I want it.’ ”

As for the possibility of another Star Wars movie, Lucas had this to say:

“Why would I make any more when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?”

http://nerdapproved.com/movies/georg...tar-wars-film/

I know I know this is a old story but i wanted to add it to the therapy session lol

I think part of that reponse is in regards to his attitude like from that first quote for example.

Greedy hack who caught lightning in a bottle. Good businessman.

I think George was a moderately talented director that knocked one out of the park (Star Wars), got rich, got greedy, lost touch, lost his touch, and blamed everyone but himself for his subpar output since. His contempt for his fans is analogous to a god who wonders why his acolytes don't worship him anymore after he keeps flooding their villages.

Top 6 cultural visionaries who get too much credit:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19576...ser4=yesincite

I think he's a filmmaker of modest talents who got incredibly lucky with "Star Wars." "Star Wars," was, by itself, a rather mundane story that found itself blessed with an incredible art design that made the story seem like so much more than it was. (Thank Ralph McQuarrie?)

I think George's biggest fault is that he doesn't really understand Star Wars. Which is a weird thing to say about the guy who created the universe, but very little in any of the movies after 1980 clicked. Return of the Jedi had a first act that consisted of a grimy puppet show and second act that had woodland teddy bears defeating an intergalactic empire. And the prequels were so different from the original trilogy that almost nothing about them worked. How do you go from The Empire Strikes Back to Jar-Jar Binks and his constant slapstick antics?

Lucas is a guy who's very good at using the talents of others to his own ends. Star Wars was Akira Kurosawa through the filter of Joseph Campbell, but it would have been nothing without the people who designed the world, the sound, etc.

With Empire he allowed people more talented than himself to take the reins, and I think it killed him to see how much better they were. Star Wars is great, but Empire is really exceptional. When you're the guy who created it all, it must have been really vexing to see other people who are essentially hired guns top your best work.

The thing is, Lucas is a smart guy. He's not an idiot, but he did get entitled and greedy. Still, he funded many great endeavors and helped pushed special effects into a whole new realm. I mean, even to this day ILM is the undisputed leader of visual effects. I think ultimately his legacy will be technical, because he's done everything he can to ruin Star Wars.

To be fair, it's we who don't really understand what he intended it to be. He never intended the films to be very dark, or too serious. He made a homage to Flash Gordon and the black and white films he grew up on.

But I think most who grew up on Star Wars didn't view it as a love letter to Flash Gordon and Republic adventure serials, but saw it as something else.

The people who made The Force Unleashed seemed to get what fans liked about the original trilogy and made a much better storyline with much more interesting and likeable characters.

Starkiller>Anakin Skywalker
Proxy> prequel trilogy R2D2 & 3-PO
Juno>Padme

Once the genie is out of the bottle, you can't put it back in. Empire changed the way people viewed the Star Wars universe, and Lucas has spent 30+ years trying to change it back.

I don't think ESB really changed that much. I don't think it's possible to write off Star Wars (the original) as just being a homage to Flash Gordon. If that was all it was nobody would have given a shit. And if that's all Lucas got out of his own creation, he really didn't understand what he had created.

Instead, it seems like he took a page from Tolkien and LOTR where you have a naif leave his bucolic home and go on this great adventure in a mythical world filled with wizards, magic, incredible creatures, and great evil. There is a lot of mythology that is hinted at but never fully shown... great battles, family histories, exotic races, warriors, villains. In both LOTR and Star Wars, you follow an everyman on an amazing journey and trial by fire through a world that is much larger than what we have been shown. You watch Star Wars and you know that every creature in the Cantina has a story, each of those beat-up X-Wings has seen dozens of battles, Obi-Wan, Han Solo, and Darth Vader have had all of these great adventures. It boggles the imagination.

And then ESB comes along and not only continues the journey through this grand universe, but it ups the stakes in almost every way.

And then prequels come along, and they're nothing but plasticy CGI sets that look they're from a Playstation game, so much computer animated nonsense going on in the background that it distracts from the drama, and a Step-n-Fetchit alien getting farted on and stepping in shit.

It is a love/hate relationship for me. The guy made a series of movies (the OT) that was such a huge part of my life as a child. I lived, ate, slept, shat, and played Star Wars. The OT has provided me with so much joy, more so than every other movie I've ever watched since combined. So for that, I am eternally grateful, and love the man.

However, the prequel trilogy, subsequent kidlike cartoons, and the constant tinkering with the originals has left me soured on his overall legacy. For the record I'm totally fine with tinkering to update F/X, but when you change the tone (ie: Greedo shoots first or add lame tentacles to the Sarlaac pit), you are overstepping your bounds, IMO, even if it is your own intellectual property. Hell, even Spielberg got the hint, conceded his mistake, and put the guns back in ET. Lucas is so defiant now towards the desires of his fans. Fans that would have taken a fucking bullet for him back in the day. In my mind I need to compartmentalize old Lucas vs young Lucas. I almost treat them like two different people. Perhaps a clone? or a clone of a clone, that isn't quite right mentally. I hate him just as much as a love him for treating the fans of Star Wars as idiots, and not having a good sense of the true pulse of the universe he has created.

I think that's true to a large extent. Film is a collaborative medium, and I think with the first two movies Lucas had to/was willing to delegate a good deal of the overall vision to other (very talented) folks. I think by the time Jedi came around he had enough resources and power to be less willling to give up ground on HIS vision. I think it's safe to say that Jedi and all the prequels are more fully Lucas' vision of the SW movies, and that vision was markedly different from the tone set in the first two movies. And yes, I think that Lucas believed that the success of the first two movies was almost completely the result of his vision, and that he didn't fully understand the contribution and impact of the other people involved in making those films.

1. He is, IMO, the most important innovator in movie making technologies of the last forty years. This is his true legacy. His work on pre-visualization, motion control, editing automation, digital filming, sound editing, animation, compositing etc has all been groundbreaking and hugely influential.

2. Relatively limited as a director and screenwriter, but very talented as a storyteller. His dialog and character development almost universally sucks, but he's clearly good at picking and adapting age-old story motifs and getting them to resonate.

3. Unashamedly commercial and profit-seeking in his work. He's obviously a shrewd businessman. One of his primary goals in making the prequels was to make them cheaply and quickly, to demonstrate and sell the power of his technology expertise to other filmakers. His films have always been as much advertisments for his companies as pieces of entertainment. Also, his careful but pervasive licensing of his properties is probably where he's made most of his money. He was the first guy to truly see the money-making potential of licensing agreements.

4. A great HR person but limited in delegating authority. He has uncovered terrific talent on every project he's been involved in and surrounds himself with talented production people (he's less successful in casting). However, he likes to be a dictator and does not allow people to tell him no. The directors credited on films he didn't actually play the role of true directors.

I think in any arts we have it in us to do one good thing or a few.
Some of us who have the talent to keep out putting more damage the talent with booze & drugs.
Lucas ran out of talent and instead tried to tweak things and messed things up.
It would be like if the BEATLES, ROLLING STONES, MADONNA, and ELTON JOHN redid their work in Hip-Hop Rap. Imagine the outrage.

Was never a big fan, Star Wars was visionary for the time and would still be today, but otherwise I've never been particularly impressed with his output. He seems to be an idea man, but needs other people to help him keep the story grounded.

Made one great movie once, American Graffiti and it was all downhill after.

My exact feelings.

Honestly? I don't think about him at all.

THX-1138 was a visionary film far beyond anything else he ever did. In 1977, STAR WARS turned me into a life-long movie geek when I was 6. RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK in 1981 made me forget all about being be crushingly disappointed that we didn't get to go see "Clash of the Titans" the same night. EMPIRE... blew my mind about what a sequel could really do for a film.

Everything else means little or nothing. I moved on. The Prequels are crap, sure, but there's plenty of other crap movies to ignore as well.

Hack director, very good story writer when someone else can handle dialogue (I mean he has the story credit on Raiders), loyal to money and not fans.

I don't think you can break it down easily. Just looking at the responses here, the folks that spend more than a few sentences describing him get closer to the mark than those that just call him a "lucky hack".

He hit a flashpoint with the original Star Wars. Yes, the story is as old as dirt, but as pointed out, the art direction ( I still sometimes want to see McQuarrie's Star Wars more than Lucas') knocked it out of the park. And then Empire took all the groundwork, and truly took it to the stars. People try to defend the lighter tone of the prequels, by saying ESB was too dark, but there comes a point when you have to be dark to tell your story. The story of a small band of terrorists fighting a massive Empire, and mixing an ancient (and actually provable) religion into it, isn't going to be all kittens and rainbows. And Lucas will say he's telling a story for kids, but again, you don't have to be kittens and rainbows. Kids can handle some dark stuff (as long as you're not showing excessive gore and such). I'm reading my five year old a book of Greek mythology at night, and that's some demented shit going on there, but he's loving it.

Lucas is like Roddenberry is to Trek. Both had a great idea, and were both needed to get it off the ground, but then the projects needed to be handed off to others that better understand the needs of the story.

As for Lucas' little grudge against the fans, the only thing I truly take issue with is not keeping the original versions of the Original Trilogy in constant, comparable quality availability. I seriously wouldn't care about him making changes, if he kept the first versions available (and I would own all the versions). He could release them on Bluray tomorrow and I would forgive all.

Has an interesting vision for far-out sci-fi.

Persistance in all of the Skywalker Ranch stuff (audio, fx, etc.) is a good thing, and consumed a lot of his lifetime.

Is too laid back to be developing different unique projects. If he worked on developing scripts over the past thirty years, he probably would have honed in on something perfect. But he was all over the place with ILM, toys, and those different ventures.

Obsessive fans latched onto Star Wars and have their personal vision for what George Lucas is.