This past Friday, May 4, was a notable one to cinephiles for multiple reasons – most importantly as the U. S. release of Joss Whedon and Marvel’s four-years-in-the-making superhero film, The Avengers. However, there is a smaller, typically less publicized (and less festive) event that has occurred on this date for the past several years – May 4 has been dubbed by many film fans as “Star Wars Day.” As in, “May the fourth be with you.”
Believe it or not, this simple play on words marks a real holiday for many people – smaller festivities among individual fans have existed for several years now, but just last year the first ever organized celebration of May the Fourth took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, complete with a trivia competition and a costume show.
Indeed, George Lucas’ sci-fi space opera saga seems to have taken on a life of its own since its debut in 1977, with the release of Star Wars. An epic story, groundbreaking special effects, and timeless characters all lent themselves to the series’ success, and perhaps no other instance of storytelling media since has had more of an impact on American popular culture.
So it is interesting to observe that perhaps no other filmmaker, artist, or entrepreneur has received more praise and had a larger sphere of influence, while simultaneously being the victim of so much bitterness and criticism, than George Lucas. Creator of such iconic films as the Star Wars saga, the Indiana Jones series, American Graffiti, and The Land Before Time, Lucas has not only formed the childhoods of many grown men and created one of the most successful bodies of filmmaking work in history, he revolutionized the industry as well – pioneering new technical processes and changing the way business is commonly handled in Hollywood.
Nearing the turn of the century, however, Lucas’s luck began to change, at least in the eyes of his formerly loyal fans, as well as critics. After a 22 year hiatus, George Lucas made his return to directing – and to the series that made him famous – with Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Finally, the long-promised prequel trilogy had begun, and fans who adored the three original films – Star Wars (later retitled A New Hope), The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi – had grown up, many with children who had never experienced these stories before. When released on May 19, 1999, two decades of hype and anticipation drove hordes of fans and cinephiles to theaters, shattering box office records and eventually grossing over $900 million.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the movie’s release was such an astronomically huge event that many businesses and companies shut down in anticipation of a mass exodus to theaters that day; one Chicago worker’s firm estimated that 2.2 million workers took the day off to see Phantom Menace on opening day, resulting in a $293 million loss in total productivity.
Despite the massive commercial success of the film, responses to the newest chapter of the Star Wars saga were extremely mixed – while the special effects and action sequences were almost universally praised, fans were extremely disappointed by the film’s lackluster story, dull acting, and unmemorable (sometimes even annoying) characters.
To worsen the situation further, the introduction of “midi-chlorians” – microscopic creatures existing in all living things which mediate the use of The Force, a concept central to the lives of the characters physically and spiritually– was harshly criticized as reducing the series’ mythology from its former deep spirituality to mere scientific fact. This, fans argued, greatly diminished the overall impact and meaning of the saga’s storyline as a whole and uprooted the ideas upon which many fans based their adoration of the films.
While the subsequent two movies in the prequel trilogy (Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith) arguably improved upon many of the criticisms of Episode I, most film geeks never believed they achieved the same level of greatness, instilled the same feelings of attachment and excitement, as the original trilogy.
This, combined with the gradual growth of dislike towards Lucas’ new preferred methods of digital, computer-generated special effects (as opposed to the “practical effects” using miniatures, puppets, and makeup which were utilized during the making of the first three films), drove many of the filmmaker’s formerly dedicated fans away.
They longed for an earlier time, driven by the nostalgia of their childhood memories and the stories they grew up on; to them, the George Lucas of the present day was one devolved from the creative and technological pioneer he once was. His other more recent works, such as the adequate fourth film in the Indiana Jones series, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, have only helped to drive more nails into Lucas’ proverbial coffin; he has also become notorious for making digital alterations to his previous releases, meaning that film purists have no way of viewing the movies they originally saw as youth.
As we enter the present, it becomes clearer now more than ever what kind of person George Lucas has become in the eyes of fans. Paradoxically, he is both the god who created this fictional universe they so adored, as well as the demon set out to destroy it. Simply Google the man’s name, and you’ll find a plethora of opinions, rants, and arguments on the subject, with headlines ranging from “1998 George Lucas Would Totally Hate 2011 George Lucas” to “Why Does George Lucas Hate ‘Star Wars,’ Fans, and History?”
Depending on whom you ask or where you look, some fans simply say they aren’t a fan of his later work; others take it much more personally, practically becoming hate-mongers towards a man whom they believe has done them – them, personally – great wrongs.
Of course, there are countless opinions in between, as these are merely two ends of a vast spectrum. In 2010, there was even a feature-length documentary chronicling and examining this fan-creator relationship, titled The People vs. George Lucas. Indeed, opinions on the matter of Mr. Lucas and his moviemaking history are largely split. However, after debating and arguing for so long, one can only raise the question – does George Lucas, despite any criticisms held against him, truly deserve hatred?
It seems that many people have become so obsessed with the details of Lucas’ supposed downfall, simultaneously infatuated and infuriated, that they have overlooked the facts. What has this man, as an entrepreneur, a technological pioneer, a storyteller, and a philanthropist, done for the world?
As a filmmaker, George Lucas has made more strides in technology than possibly any other filmmaker, probably second only to James Cameron. He founded Industrial Light and Magic, the special effects company created to invent the effects necessary for the first Star Wars film. The strides made on those first three movies totally and completely changed how visual effects were achieved in Hollywood and upped the ante for big-budget special effects films. After Star Wars, ILM would go on to create special effects for over 300 more films, and today it still stands as the king of movie effects companies.
In 1979, ILM hired Ed Catmull to begin developing computer-generated animation and effects; a few short years later, CalArts animation graduate John Lassetter was hired on as well. After developing CG effects for films such as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Young Sherlock Holmes, the division, now comprised of 45 members was sold off to young entrepreneur and technological wunderkind Steve Jobs shortly after he left Apple, the company he had founded in 1976.
This newly formed partnership eventually became Pixar – yes, the same Pixar that made the first-ever fully computer-generated animated film (Toy Story), that has won almost every Best Animated Feature award at the Oscars since the category’s inception in 2001, and that has generated billions of dollars for the Walt Disney Company, their distributor (and now parent company).
Apart from his heavy influence on Hollywood’s animation and visuals, George Lucas has also had a huge impact on film sound. When making Return of the Jedi in 1983, Lucas and audio engineer Thomas Holman developed THX, a new quality assurance system and technological standard to ensure that the best sound is reproduced in all venues; since its creation, the system has become widely utilized in movie theaters and home theater systems.
In addition, when creating Star Wars, Lucas founded his sound effects, editing, design, mixing, and recording division, which would later become known as Skywalker Sound. Along with Industrial Light and Magic, Skywalker Sound has become one of the most recognized and esteemed companies in their respective fields of production – in fact, since the creation of the Academy Awards for Best Sound (Mixing) and Best Sound Editing, SS has been nominated (or won) every year in both categories.
With these achievements, George Lucas has done more for Hollywood than possibly any other filmmaker – he has made the impossible possible, created and developed what others could only dream of, and helped usher movies into the digital age.
Obviously, though, no amount of technical achievements will negate the anger or hatred many cinephiles feel towards George Lucas’s work. And quite frankly, that’s fine – an avid fan’s opinion of any beloved work, whether it be the Star Wars saga or the Indiana Jones films, is hard to change once it’s been established, and no matter how great Mr. Lucas’s impact on the industry becomes, his films will always stay the same works they originally were (unless, of course, he decides to change them again…), for better or for worse.
But it also doesn’t seem to sufficiently convince his harsher critics away from their opinion of the man himself – that he is a destroyer of childhoods, that he is a selfish billionaire with no sympathy or feeling towards his fans, that he is pretty much a despicable human being who squanders all he has earned. To believe this, however, is to fall into the same aforementioned trap, the ignorance of the facts.
In addition to being one of America’s richest entrepreneurs, he has also for many years been a highly generous philanthropist, particularly towards education. In 1991, Lucas founded The George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit created to encourage and celebrate innovation in schools. In 2006, he donated over $175 million to the University of Southern California, his alma mater, to further develop the highly prestigious School of Cinematic Arts. Oh, and he also plans on giving half of his entire fortune to charity as part of Bill Gates’ The Giving Pledge. Obviously the work of a despicable human being.
It is to be expected that people will get defensive when talking about the things that matter to them, and this defensiveness is only amplified when it involves childhood memories, or the stories that formed and surrounded them. Everyone is raised in part by the collective imagination and cultural memory of their contemporary stories, and for the youth of the late seventies to mid-eighties, George Lucas had a huge role in creating, shaping, and delivering these stories, and in a way no one else had before.
So the gigantic emotional backlash against him, which occurred due to the release of a truly mediocre film after two decades of anticipatory buildup, is understandable. Childhood memories of daydreaming, imagining, anticipating the continuation of the movies they had come to love, shattered in a single day, and never fully redeemed after yet another decade of the franchise’s existence. To make things worse, the subsequent changes Lucas made to the Star Wars films, as well as more film releases of decidedly second-rate quality, seemed to rub the disappointment continually in the fans’ faces.
But that’s not to say it justifies the way casual fans and cinephiles alike tend to treat George Lucas – sure, they have every right to complain and bicker, criticize and critique everything the man may have executed wrongly, realized poorly, or just done in bad taste. But no one deserves the amount of hateful comments and expletive-ridden messages that he receives on a regular basis.
Certainly his greatest achievements, both past and present, can attest to this, and while they may not make up for all the bad content he’s put out over the past decade or so, they should at least deter people from blaming him for their supposedly “ruined” childhoods. After all, he did make some great films back in the day, which by every means hold up today, whether you’re talking about the original Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark or THX 1138.
After reading a blog post entitled “Why I Hate George Lucas,” one Internet commentator managed to step back and succinctly sum up both sides of the dilemma, in perhaps some of modern pop culture’s truest words: “I’ve long said the worst thing about Star Wars is the fans. The second worst thing about Star Wars is George Lucas” (http://josephdevon.com/2011/11/why-i-hate-george-lucas/6758/).
Well said, good sir. Well said.
