Lucas reflected on his life in work in a wide-ranging chat in Cannes, where he received and honorary Palm d’Or.

  • makeshiftreaper@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    As a non Star Wars fan who just re-watched Phantom Menance, what the fuck are you talking about Georgie? I like the original trilogy well enough, but to say Star Wars has cohesive ideas and themes is ludicrous. You jumped the shark when the 7th word on screen was “taxation” in Episode 1. Not to mention when a 7 year old Anakin Skywalker raced a hover jet to buy his freedom from a thinly veiled Jewish epitaph

    Everyone who comes to Star Wars does their own thing with it and most of it is goofy as shit. Hell, even the original Yoda was an actual Muppet. Star Wars at best was a metaphor against the Vietnam War, but even that was pretty loose. I think George has an over-inflated sense of ego about what Star Wars actually is

    • mean_bean279@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      My wife and I recently rewatched every star wars movie, show and short made. My takeaway was the only good live action movie was Rogue One and that the Cartoons continue to be the high point of the whole thing. Maybe it’s a bit of a crazy take, but I agree with the cohesiveness not being consistent. Not to mention that the scripts on the originals are just awful.

      • higgsboson@dubvee.org
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        1 month ago

        Did you use a list for that re-watch? I was looking for one just yesterday and didnt have much luck.

    • xyzzy@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      I think you might have meant “epithet,” but since that is specifically about a word or phrase, “caricature” is probably the closest match.

      The original, unmodified trilogy was a pretty archetypal hero’s journey for Luke (or rather, a series of journeys within the larger character journey). It was well done, reasonably cohesive, and had strong themes, owing in no small part to Gary Kurtz (producer for the first two movies), Marcia Lucas (editor on the first and third movies and uncredited contributing editor on the second), and Irvin Kershner (director for the second movie).

      It began to fall off the rails a bit in the final movie when Lucas asserted more control, resulting in Kurtz’s departure, but ultimately in my judgment it stuck the thematic landing.

      The rest were… ehhh…

      We saw what happened with the prequel trilogy without those collaborators to rein him in and add actual human emotion. It’s not good, but it’s uncharitable to lump the original (again, unmodified) trilogy in with them.

      The sequels were just completely incoherent.

      Part of the problem is the unmodified originals have been effectively disappeared for an entire generation, so people who watch the “original trilogy” on disc or Disney+ are actually watching the atrocious CGI versions. It really does make a difference, in my opinion.