Though when it comes to Lucas how can he be a bad director, bad editor and bad writer but a great storyteller? Surely he has to be good at some of those things in order to make that claim. You can't in the same breath erode the man's credibility entirely and simultaneously praise it. I mean he convinced Alec Guinness, one of the most acclaimed and universally respected actors in film history to be a part of his quirky space movie based on the script alone.
We've talked about this. Someone can have good ideas, can
think they know how to bring them into existence, and think they're better than they actually are -- or else, be aware of their limitations and do it anyway, so it isn't "muddied" by someone else's input.
Forget RLM, For all that I hate the character, Plinkett's reviews of the PT are spot on at showing where the great ideas got let down by lack of ability to realize them. From showing everyone -- including George -- being dissatisfied with the climax of TPM, to beat-for-beat identical first-year-film-student camera setups across the trilogy (establishing shot, medium shot, alternating over-the-shoulder for dialogue, back to medium shot, next scene), and so on and so forth. You and I have agreed more than we've disagreed over all the places where George got in his own way. We have, from George's own mouth, back when he was a bit more self-aware, how much he hated the actual writing process and how uncomfortable he was directing.
We know, from the clunkiness of his own edit of Star Wars, from the burp and fart jokes he put into ROTJ and the PT, that, while he may have good ideas, 1) not
all of them are good, and need to be vetted, and 2) while he may have a sense of the story, he doesn't really know how to get it
out. You and I both know, from our own writers' journeys, that having the idea is an important first step, but you also need to know the mechanics of structuring a story -- short, novel, teleplay, screenplay, one-act play, whatever -- even if you deliberately choose not to follow them.
So yes, I
can in the same breath praise his imagination while lambasting
some of his ability. And Alec apparently didn't read the script too closely, because he was on record during filming of wishing George would tone down the mystical mumbo-jumbo, and, later, not wanting to come back for the other two films.
I agree that accolades from your coworkers isn't always the best measure of talent and I've said as much on a number of movies, but to try and claim Lucas has:
-no writing ability
-terrible dialog
-poor editing skills
-poor direction
-mediocre photography skills- because I've seen that excuse thrown out a lot too over the years
Then how is it that all that supposed lack of talent generated entire industries and revolutionized everything to do with film?
Um... Those are two entirely different things, my friend. He
is a visionary. He is
utterly a film nerd. His desire to improve the tools and techniques for using them, so as to better be able to control what gets captured and what can be done with it -- that's all technical. When it comes to dealing with people and emotions and motivations? He's crap. Many of us who are on the spectrum are pretty sure he's on the spectrum. Taking refuge in fictional worlds because reality and real people are confusing and messy? Checks out. Wanting to spend his life in some way playing in that comforting sandbox, as a buffer between him and reality? Check. A track record of psychological problems stemming from having to deal with people? Also check.
We have repeated and objective views of him being called out on writing un-empathizable characters, clunky dialogue, and otherwise demonstrating on the page that he fundamentally Doesn't Get People™, while at the same time having an internalized sense of how the Hero's Journey works -- to the point Star Wars is a prime example of it, despite him only reading Conrad
after the film came out, due to how many people were pointing up the similarities. Like some sort of somewhat-functional autistic savant. He gets it without understanding it. He doesn't see why Empire works so well, because it works well because of the characters and their motivations and reactions to what they're dealing with.
We've seen how awkward he is at directing people, but he can storyboard the
hell out of a VFX shot. He can totally cut together an action sequence or space battle with pitch-perfect timing, but knowing where to put what story beats? Seeing that something is redundant and being able to pick what to cull? He trusted Marcia and she shored up his weak points, until that all fell apart. He also trusted Gary until he didn't. I don't know if he started to believe his own growing legend and became insufferable to them, I don't know if there were other things going on beyond what either of them have said about the era, but it is notable that two of the people closest to him, two of the people he worked best with, in the end just had to leave him. And we know that, when shooting ROTJ, he micromanaged Richard Marquand so much the man quit the picture as soon as principle photography was finished. He is easy to work with, if the focus is technical. He is impossible to work with when it comes to people and story. And that disconnect wasn't always so.
I'm not saying he's a god, and I've been very vocal about my hatred for some of his choices, but to say that he has no skills and yet by some miracle can tell great stories is hyperbolic at best and idiotic at worst.
He
conceives of great stories, but doesn't understand what makes them great, focuses on the wrong parts, doesn't trust their inherent value, and has trouble getting them out and down in physical form in a sensical and relatable way. He is best when collaborating, humbly and in full self-awareness.
For all the grief I give JJ or other modern filmmakers they also don't have the track record of Lucas or Speilberg or others from their generation. They don't have those benchmark movies that set the bar like those giants did. They don't have the innovation, vision, or skills those guys did. Hollywood can be sychophantic and vapid I'll give you that, but when you create a piece of art that's endured for almost 50 years where nerds on the internet debate about it heatedly, you can bet your ass that there must be something special about the guy who conceived it. That's just the truth.
Yep, and the people he had working with him at the time. Coppola, dePalma, Spielberg, Kurtz, Marcia, etc. His benchmark films were in the '60s and '70s. Through the '80s, his best "work" was when he collaborated with Spielberg and Howard. After that, his best work has been technical. He functions best in a dynamic of his peers, and he hasn't had that in a long time. He has had admirers, worshippers, supplicants... Even his "co" producer, Rick McCallum, just started the ball rolling and then deferred to George. Ditto Filoni. He has had very few actual peer collaborators over the last thirty years, and none of the films he's made in that time have been
anywhere near as impactful as THX, Graffiti, Star Wars, and Raiders. Meanwhile, he's revolutionized and re-revolutionized
how movies get made.
