• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

George Lucas Felt Betrayed By Direction Taken In Episode 7

Whenever I hear that Lucas felt betrayed or hated this or that, I generally take such reports with a grain of salt. Lucas sold off Star Wars to Disney because he was getting older, got a new wife, and wanted to enjoy life and do other things instead of worrying about "the franchise" and its legion of fans. Sure, there are definitely some things with Episodes VII and onward that he would have done differently--and that's to be expected as the creator of the saga--but I think such reports tend to be blown out of proportion, IMO. It makes for excellent headlines and message board chatter though.

But I believe that if Lucas was offered a chance to do another Star Wars movie, he would say "Hell to the no."
It's all blown out of proportion with the whole "if it bleeds it leads" style chatter than is all too common now on the Internet.
 
Underrated point. *If* Lucas really wanted it done his way, nothing was stopping him from finishing 7, 8 and 9 himself. I think he passed the buck to Disney because Lucas is done with fan backlash. That's the impression I get from his recent interviews.



The difference being that Roddenbery's death allowed his creation to really take off and soar (Late TNG and DS9). What we have here is another situation entirely, The Creator still lives! With the timing of Roddenbery' passing, DS9 and the shows that followed were no longer beholden to the desires of The Creator. These points are well established in the HBO doc "Chaos on the Bridge."

Repeating myself here, but I feel it's important to re-iterate that "betrayed" is Bob Iger's word going into Lucas's mouth. Lucas may feel betrayed, but he didn't say it.
I think you misunderstood me- I’m not talking about TNG or any other Trek besides TOS. After TMP, Roddenberry had ZERO control over the next 5 TOS films. He could grumble all he wanted in his memos to the various directors and producers, but he didn’t own TOS and could do nothing. Lucas is in much the same position now except I don’t think he even gets to send memos nor does he get a “creative consultant “ credit.
 
And he donated all of it.
I'll let the artist have his opinion.
George Lucas is neither a good writer nor a good director, a sequel trilogy with him in charge wouldn't have been good, so while he can have his opinion it should be disregarded, he wouldn't know good Star Wars if it bit him in the ass.
 
And he donated all of it.
I'll let the artist have his opinion.

I didn’t say he couldn’t. I said my sympathy for him can only go so far. A point I stand by even if he did donate all of his proceeds. Besides, he is still worth $5.9 billion. He made a fortune off of these movies. He made a choice to sell the company. With that sale, he sold outlines to a sequel trilogy. Disney decided to go a different direction. He can have his opinion but if he wanted his vision seen out, maybe he should have had that provision added to the contract.
 
I didn’t say he couldn’t. I said my sympathy for him can only go so far. A point I stand by even if he did donate all of his proceeds. Besides, he is still worth $5.9 billion. He made a fortune off of these movies. He made a choice to sell the company. With that sale, he sold outlines to a sequel trilogy. Disney decided to go a different direction. He can have his opinion but if he wanted his vision seen out, maybe he should have had that provision added to the contract.
Exactly. Lucas even admitted he could have stayed on to consult but knew he would be "miserable."

I understand he has his opinion, but it's becoming this weird love/hate relationship with the choices he has made.
 
I think you misunderstood me- I’m not talking about TNG or any other Trek besides TOS. After TMP, Roddenberry had ZERO control over the next 5 TOS films. He could grumble all he wanted in his memos to the various directors and producers, but he didn’t own TOS and could do nothing. Lucas is in much the same position now except I don’t think he even gets to send memos nor does he get a “creative consultant “ credit.

Yes, I misunderstood. I see now, your post is about maintaining creative control as the franchise moves on.
Lucas still has his health, while Gene was declining in health during the TOS films. Lucas should be kicking around our galaxy for another decade, maybe two.
 
George Lucas is neither a good writer nor a good director, a sequel trilogy with him in charge wouldn't have been good, so while he can have his opinion it should be disregarded, he wouldn't know good Star Wars if it bit him in the ass.

And that's the kind of thinking that got us Canto Bight.
 
I think it's the same with Star Trek. I remember how vocal people were about their hate for Voyager, Enterprise, Berman and Braga. Now those same fans carry on like Voyager and Enterprise were the pinnacle of Trek achievement because they don't like the new kid in school, Discovery.

I think that's pretty few, it seems to me most people who dislike Abrams and Discovery also think Nemesis was terrible and the VOY and Enterprise were at best mediocre if not mostly bad ...

Science-fiction fandoms can be the worst.

I think it's cool that at least with Trek a lot of fans can be and are pretty nuanced, especially feeling with Voyager it was an OK mixed bad (rather than just loved it or just it was garbage) and when reevaluations do occur it's usually not much of a reevaluation, only changing to the extent of admitting expectations at the time may have been too high.
 
And that's the kind of thinking that got us Canto Bight.

I liked Canto Bight and had been looking forward to that scene ever since I heard they wanted to mirror the cantina scene from the original trilogy. The fact that they used physical sets and real world locations really shows through there.

George Lucas is neither a good writer nor a good director, a sequel trilogy with him in charge wouldn't have been good, so while he can have his opinion it should be disregarded, he wouldn't know good Star Wars if it bit him in the ass.

He does his best work when he's forced to collaborate with others and be selective about what makes it into the final product. When he's given free reign to do whatever he wants, it never ends well.
 
George Lucas is neither a good writer nor a good director, a sequel trilogy with him in charge wouldn't have been good, so while he can have his opinion it should be disregarded, he wouldn't know good Star Wars if it bit him in the ass.

Ah but he had a hand in cobbling together a bunch of ideas that gelled and thought of new ones along the way, even if the retconning doesn't always stand up but don't tell that to the frothing menace... He picked a good wife to have helped re-edit the 1977 original into something that gelled. At least for the OT. The PT proved all the big names in the world couldn't save that horrendous dialogue. The PT proved stuffing too much detail with no room to flow, apart from such awesome lines involving... sand...
 
I liked Canto Bight and had been looking forward to that scene ever since I heard they wanted to mirror the cantina scene from the original trilogy. The fact that they used physical sets and real world locations really shows through there.

It was different, only the escape scene felt like a rushed ending. But it introduced the ST's greatest character so far - DJ. One isn't sure of who his allegiance is, it turns out to be the First Order, but with possible wiggle room for a turnaround in a future movie. Like Lando except DJ has completely different origins and motivations, almost like Han. Benicio Del Toro was a coup of casting.

He does his best work when he's forced to collaborate with others and be selective about what makes it into the final product. When he's given free reign to do whatever he wants, it never ends well.

^^this, the PT proves that rather too quickly :( The ideas are there but the execution was sub-hokey. To the point that Lucas' ideas melded with the ST's staff to keep things in check may have been better, but I will always defend TLJ.
 
But it introduced the ST's greatest character so far - DJ.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that he's played by an actor known for great work elsewhere, nearly everything about the character sucks.

It sucks that they're all too conveniently placed in a cell with a guy who is super-conveniently a master slicer on par with the one they were sent to find and who apparently has super-conveniently not been searched and can break out of the cell anytime he wants to... yet for some reason he's chosen not to up until that point. His stutter sucks. Why even put something like that in? ( Was George Lucas secretly involved here? That's Grievous' cough version 2.0. ) His dialogue sucks. ( What's your story, roundy? ) He makes punching motions while BB-8 is helping to bring the suck. And that part where he goes "Ahhhhhhh" or whatever - now we've gone full Jar Jar. He might as well have said "Exsqueeze me" at that point, it wouldn't have made it any worse.

And to top it all off the writer doesn't even bother to name him in the film, as if subliminally conceding the character's suckiness. Thus, Finn and Rose, as extensions of the writer, aren't able to address him in a natural fashion. Keep in mind, we saw these two meet. "You're Finn." "I'm Rose." Names were established, as you would normally do. But when they meet "DJ", for some reason all that goes away and they never even try to ascertain what they should call him. They don't even go the Half Baked route and call him "the guy". It comes off as entirely stilted for no good reason at all.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top