The Spotlight: Bad Film 101 with George Lucas

Everyone loves a good George Lucas bashing right? I'm really no exception to that rule. I rant about it enough in real life, so it only seemed fitting to write up an article about it.

Given that many of us watch the Original Trilogy through coke-bottle-thick rose colored glasses, I still think the OT is pretty groundbreaking. At the end of the day, I have to stand up and attest to the life-changing cinema experience that those three movies represent... all the while acknowledging that they are, still, imperfect.

The New Trilogy takes the old trilogy's imperfections, stuffs them in a moldy potato sack, drop kicks the sack into a barrel of cacti, then sets it ablaze using a combination of napalm and scalding apple pie filling. Oh yeah... then it takes it all out again and smears itself with the molten mess, and proclaims itself to be the most beautiful butterfly. Where to even start with how it went wrong? Others could give you a novel. I've got my own list.


Problem 1: George wrote it. Not only do you get a movie that dumbs itself down to kids, I think it actually made kids who watched it dumber. Yeah, I'm talking to you Episode One. Rumor has it that his kid was responsible for some of the character names. If true, George only made the mistake of accepting said terrible names. And you know what? I kind of hope the rumor's true. Because for a grown man to have thought up Count Dooku, Mace Windu, Qui Gon Jinn (which, honestly, sounds like a kind of fried dumpling) and Jar Jar Binks... well, that's just embarrassing.

Problem 2: Jake Lloyd as Young Anakin. I swear, the only time I saw him in anything good was an Oreo commercial way back when. I know he's supposed to turn evil, but I wanted to punch him in the face (or... as a last resort, my own face) halfway through Episode One. Watching him try and act was more evil than I could take. Talk about the dark side.

Problem 3: Jar Jar Binks. Yikes. Need I say more?

Problem 4: R2D2 far more technologically advanced in the NT versus the OT. R2 always was a bit of dues ex machine. You'd be able to get out of any jam too if you had a galactic swiss army knife following you around. But the NT took it way too far.


Problem 5: Wasted Talent. You've got Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen, Christopher Lee and Sam "The Man" Jackson for crying out loud! How hard do you have to try before you're able to ruin the abilities of every single one of these A-List stars?

Problem 6: Too much CG. Would it kill you, George, to have busted out a plastic suit from the old days? The last thing I want to see is a real actor's head superimposed on a CG trooper. I can't even call it laziness, because head replacement/tracking is infinitely more difficult than getting a dude into a costume. No, the operative phrase here is more along the lines of "stunned exasperation."

Problem 7: Midichlorians? Oh come on. This is just sad. J.J. Abrams knows a thing or two about the power of mystery, which is to say that sometimes, not knowing (or never knowing) is a far more powerful thing than the explanation. The Force was crazy cool when we had no idea what it was. Microscopic thingamajigs in the bloodstream (that, sadly, also sound like some kind of pool cleaning detergent)? Great. The Force has been demoted to a hereditary medical condition.

Problem 8: Messing with success. At the very least, it would have been nice if the badness of the NT was put under quarantine, with the OT being allowed visits on the weekends, but only through double glass shields. But alas, no. George had to spread Problem 6 into the OT, resulting in jarring CG and... get this... a full character replacement from David Prowse to Hayden Christiansen at the end of The Return of the Jedi. What? How does that make any sense? The spirits are locked in visually at the ages they were at death right? Some say that Anakin's spirit is young because that's the last time he was good. But wasn't he good just before he died?


I'm not a hardcore Star Wars fan (I tend to lean towards science fiction, as opposed to science fantasy), but I'm really scratching my head at some of this. Is there something I missed? Or does it really not make any sense?

I don't like being overly negative, so I'll wrap this article up with a positive spin. Here are my grand ideas on how George could have made the most stunningly successful prequel trilogy the world has ever seen.

Major Fix 1: Take a page from Episodes 5 and 6, George. Don't direct it, and don't write it (at least not by yourself). Tell people with talent what your outline is, and leave the details in other peoples' capable hands. Stick to producing. It suits you better. Also, find a better casting director who won't hire snotty kids and give every single bad guy an embarrassingly stereotypical minority accent. Heck, that goes even for good guys with terrible accents (Jar Jar).


Major Fix 2: This is the big one. Don't use CG, and don't use visual effects. Yeah, that's right. Defy convention and make the prequels using the same optical effects that you used to create the OT. Crazy? Maybe. Boldly genius? Oh, absolutely. If fanboys stepped into the theater and saw three movies that looked even grungier and more gorilla-film-makery than the OT, they would have flipped their lids, guaranteed. It may have been tougher, and it may have been restrictive, but those restrictions make leaner, better movies. Unlimited excess and zero accountability make for seriously bloated fare. And nobody likes bloated movies... especially if they were a bit soulless to begin with.

And news flash. Han shot first.