Yeah, I finished it off. I'm now assuming he got most of his data from his "further reading" list, which looks interesting, too.
It's a great series with a lot of good biographical and background information. The central thing I get out of it is that Lucas was trying hard and facing unheard-of challenges from different fronts, but ultimately it boils down to this: he couldn't pull it off. Every time Sonnenburg talks about a deadline coming up and he's not started the script, I'm thinking, "Well...don't be lazy: do your job." A few times, Sonnenburg states that such-and-such "had" to happen because of the timeline, and I can think of a dozen ways out of it. And, ultimately, Lucas' inability to write a character-driven story really fried him on this one. This is from Red Letter Media, but it fits: Anakin's fall to the Dark Side is a character study. Either it needed to be sidelined for the story of the fall of the Republic, or it needed to be written as a character piece. Lucas isn't the best writer for a political film (Aaron Sorkin, maybe...?) or a character piece.
My take on the whole thing, personally, looking at the prequels and now the sequels, is that the writer who could have pulled it off was... nobody. Nobody could or can live up to fan hype and expectations. "Star Wars" sat for too long as a completed trilogy and is revered too highly for this to ever really work to people's satisfaction. Filmmakers can try, but they'll never do the character "right". They won't ever get it right in fans' eyes because they can't.
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prayformojo (101)
6 years ago
Lucas could have pulled it off by simply dropping his ego and letting others help in the writing process. RLM makes fun of Lucas for seeming like he turned in the first draft of the script he wrote in one weekend and just went with it. This other documentary shows that's almost exactly what did happen! It gives some reasons (excuses) as to why things turned out that way, but there were alternatives available if Lucas was willing to share the credit. He was not.
There was a potentially great story lurking in those prequels, but Lucas himself derailed it. According to this documentary, Lucas threw out the original plan he had for the prequels and instead went with the story about the child Anikin, Jar-Jar, and pod racing. That whole first film is a waste of time. Those video clips of Lucas going over the story boards for Phantom of the Menace for the first time are classic. You can tell everyone in the room is thinking "WTF is this?!?"
To me it's like this: the Original Trilogy shows what a collaborative effort between many talented individuals can achieve. The Prequel Trilogy is a character study into the pride and ego of George Lucas, and the New Trilogy is about what happens when a greedy multi-national corporation purchases and takes over something that was once beloved (they destroy it).
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Ace_Spade (9334)
6 years ago
My impression is that its not all narcissistic pride, but that Lucas is just very nervous about what Star Wars should be. I agree that the buck stops with Lucas, though. He should have sidelined his own ego - born from misgivings or control freak behaviour or whatever - and put the project first.
You hit the nail on the head, too. The original films had a balance (of the Force...?) where the auteur visionary was at the head, guiding everybody, but he was tempered with the right craftspeople around him. The prequels unbalanced on the side of the visionary, giving him too much control and too much on his plate. The sequels are now showing what happens when there is no vision, no navigator, no great artist at the heart and at the helm.
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janelsenor (2042)
6 years ago
I definitely think he's right that the way he made the story, there was not enough for the first two, and too much for the third. It's of the reasons ROTS disappoints me so much. The fact that it gets a pass from so many fans baffles me.
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