George Lucas Must Be Stopped

Remember when George Lucas was someone to look up to? I remember those days fondly, as they were the days of my youth. I grew up watching Star Wars and Indiana Jones, among other things, and those things I watched (with appropriate guidance from my parents) helped shape my interests and my understanding of the world around me. Ah, those were the days of carefree lollipops and having my teeth knocked out by my brother throwing a couch pillow at me (true story).

Then something happened. I don't know what; it's like George Lucas suddenly lost his mind. All of a sudden he started making movies again, except they were all terrible. Oh, George Lucas, you could have been such an epic figure in Hollywood. You made one great trilogy after another, both of which helped to define a generation, and one of which was absolutely groundbreaking. Then you had to get greedy and fuck it all up.

Just to see if I can do it, I'm going to use Libya as my metaphor today. I mean, hey, why not? I feel like being topical. In Libya you have a powerful dictator who's been ruling with an iron fist, abusing his constituents, and who hasn't let up his stranglehold on power in over 40 years. Then, an uprising ensues! Rebels from all across the country rise up against him, and over the course of a long, exhausting rebellion, they finally overthrow him, and everyone gets a free puppy. Oh happy day!

Now, let's suppose that all we actually know of the man is what happened over the last 7 months. How did he rise to power? What if he was originally interested in doing right by everybody, but through a series of events that he was involved in but had no control over, was slowly demented towards malevolence? A tragic figure, who only wanted to accomplish one thing in his life: saving the woman he loved, at any cost. You know what? I'd pay to see that movie. I'd even pay to see it in trilogy form. The tragic fall of a noble hero who ultimately becomes the greatest villain ever known to man? Sign me up!

That would have been something, wouldn't it? Instead we got three subpar prequels that totally destroyed the magic of the Star Wars universe and gave us fucking Jar-Jar Binks. Do you want to know what ruined the prequels? Because it wasn't Jar-Jar. It was scripts injected with racist stereotypes and nonsense story arcs, shitty character writing, and casting the worst possible actors in the world to play The Boy Who Fell. George Lucas took a perfectly good premise and turned it into nausea-inducing garbage that includes a fucking 50's diner and stereotypical cave-painting-style aliens.

If George Lucas had just sat tight, he would have been remembered as one of the most visionary film-makers ever to walk the Earth, walking tall right beside Spielburg and Fincher (J.J. Abrams isn't there yet, he still has to prove he has staying power, as does Peter Jackson). Instead, he's going to be remembered as the selfish greedy pimple who couldn't leave well enough alone and raped his own franchises without lube or reach-arounds in order to squeeze as much money as possible out of his used-to-be-fans (without lube or reach-arounds).

And it doesn't stop with the prequels, either: when he remastered the original real trilogy, he changed an early scene in Star Wars so that Greedo fired first, and Han shot in self defense, presumably in order to make him a more sympathetic character to the viewer. Why!? Han Solo is a mercenary who's on the run from both the law and his debtors, and his very life depends solely on his ability to stay a step ahead of everyone else; do you really expect us to believe that he's going to wait until someone fires at him before killing them? If he thinks he's going to have to kill someone, he's just going to fucking do it before the other guy has a chance to kill him first. Otherwise he'd be an idiot. A handsome idiot. He'd be The Situation.

That's what I mean by shitty character writing; if you have a developed character background, stick to the fucking backstory. Han Solo was one of (if not) the biggest money-making characters of the franchise when it came to collectables, do you really think the audience gives a shit whether his term in the franchise begins with him being kind of a dick? Hell, he could have kicked Greedo in the balls until they bled and shot off both his ears, and we still would have eaten that shit up. Mercenaries are not nice people, that's why we love them.

And what discussion of Star Wars character development would be complete without looking at Anakin Skywalker in Episode 2? That was supposed to be the movie in which Anakin slowly evolves from a fresh new Jedi who's still new to the world with a bit of a rebellious streak because he doesn't know better, into the darker figure that will be corrupted by the Emperor in Episode 3. We were supposed to sympathize with him over the course of this movie, so that we are emotionally invested in the character of Anakin, to the point that when the third movie comes around, even though we already know going in that he's going to become Darth Vader, we still hope against a new hope that he can find a way to redeem himself.

Instead we got Hayden Christensen playing Anakin as an uninteresting prick from the getgo with stupid hair, who may as well have started out as a Sith-In-Training from the very first scene he's in, who's just hiding out amongst the Jedi Knights in order to learn their secrets in order to more readily destroy them. We're supposed to sympathize with him, and instead he was just annoying and unlikeable. To make things clear, in this case it wasn't George Lucas' writing that was at fault; the script was fine in that respect. It was his complete and utter failure to recognize that Hayden Christensen has no business being in Hollywood, let alone playing the role that will become the most evil-defining villain of all time, that was the problem.

I mean, seriously, what has Hayden Christensen done since Star Wars? Do you even know? I had to look it up. He was in Jumper, which was at best a mediocre 2008 version of the 2009 movie Push, and he was in Takers, which didn't look good enough from the trailers for me to even bother seeing it, and a couple garbage roles. Everyone else in Hollywood has recognized that Hayden Christensen has no talent. Everyone except George Lucas and his casting directors.

But all of this, all of it, pales in comparison to the latest trick up George Lucas' arbitrarily grease-stained sleeves. You know how there's a new Blu-Ray box set coming out of all six Star Wars movies in a single set? You know that awesome scene at the end of Return of the Jedi where (spoiler alert I guess?) Darth Vader silently decides that saving the life of his only son is more important to him than ruling the galaxy, thus redeeming himself and returning him to the heroic figure he once was supposed to be? Remember how that quiet, noble sacrifice of power made that the best part of the movie?

Remember that fucking pussy scream that Hayden Christensen ejaculated all over our ears at the end of Revenge of the Sith when the Emperor told him he'd killed Amidala? Guess what's going to be overdubbed on that epic sacrifice at the end of Return of the Jedi. It may not be that exact scream, but does it really fucking matter? The silent sacrifice was the entire point of that scene, and now it's going to be ruined because George Lucas just can't fucking leave well enough alone. There are things that they're updating that make sense: Ewoks should blink, Vader's light saber at the end of Return of the Jedi needs its colour fixed, etc. But Vader speaking in that scene? NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

George Lucas could die tomorrow; any of us could. George Lucas, who gave us Indiana Jones. George Lucas, who gave us the most epic science fiction trilogy ever made. George Lucas, who single-handedly defined an entire genre, who directly influenced millions of children, and who tacitly encouraged them to reach for the stars and stretch their own potential, because anyone could grow up to be important regardless of where they came from (even New Jersey). And if George Lucas were to die tomorrow, do you know what people would say?

Thank God he died before he could fuck up anything else.

Fuck you, George Lucas. You've ruined two of the most beloved movie franchises in history. Your fans hate you. You have turned yourself into a joke. And here's what's funny: If it turned out that George Lucas was originally only interested in doing right by everybody, but through a series of events that he was involved in but had no control over, he was slowly demented towards malevolence; a tragic figure, who only wanted to accomplish one thing in his remaining years: fleshing out the stories of the trilogies he and everyone else loves; I would pay to see that movie. I'd even pay to see it in trilogy form. The tragic fall of a noble filmmaker who ultimately became the most reviled director in Hollywood, even moreso than Uwe Boll? Sign me up!

Too bad I know better.

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