Where Have You Gone, George Lucas?

Can any more be said about George Lucas? A new documentary, The People vs. George Lucas, thinks there can. Either that, or it’s a chance for fans and critical producers to unload a serious consignment of anger, frustration, and confusion at a man whom many believe betrayed a generation of film-goers.

Assembling interviews with Skywalking author Dale Pollock, producer Gary Kurtz, and actor David Prowse, as well as a wide assortment of fandom, the documentary film takes a critical gander at the creator of Star Wars, his mad push into merchandising, his choppy career, and the poor reception of his prequel trilogy.

The myth behind the maker makes for a story as compelling as his farm boy fairy tale. Ask any three fans and you’re likely to receive a trio of narratives that overlap and diverge in significant details concerning the original intent of Lucas’s space opera. (Was it going to be one film or nine? Were treatments for the entire series written as far back as 1980?)

Other questions arise when his broader ambitions are taken into consideration. Well into production on the prequels, Lucas declared he’d return to smaller, independent films in the vein of THX-1138. Nearly three and a half years since the credits rolled on Revenge of the Sith, Lucas has yet to take a seat at the wheel of another film. He’s since produced an underwhelming Indiana Jones sequel, and it looks as though Red Tails -- a story of the Tuskegee Airmen — just might make it off the runway. Someday.

For a considerable portion of the 1980s, Lucas churned out material on a regular basis. Raiders of the Lost Ark was his first real jump out of the Star Wars mythos. He guided production on Tucker: The Man and his Dream. IMDb gives him a story credit for Captain EO, the Michael Jackson themed ride at Disneyland. He let Ron Howard direct Willow. He even managed to produce a terrible little film called Howard the Duck. The '90s gave us the unsuccessful Radioland Murders and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles before returning to a galaxy far, far away.

Most fans already recognize the significant shift in the creative processes between the two trilogies. The original three films, particularly The Empire Strikes Back, were models of successful, collaborative filmmaking. Lucas had even surrendered the director’s chair after finishing Star Wars. By his own admission, Lucas was never much of a writer — Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) did uncredited rewrites on Star Wars; Lawrence Kasdan, who also penned Raiders, handled scriptwriting details for Empire and Jedi.

Article Author: Travis Johnson

Travis Johnson is a freelance writer in Colorado Springs, and spends most of his time writing magazine features or grant proposals. He also blogs about the movies, and is hard at work writing his first novel.

Visit Travis Johnson's author page