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The London-based sales company is handling international sales on the documentary that explores the love/hate relationship that fans have with the Star Wars creator. Director Alexandre O. Philippe has boiled down over 700 hours of footage submitted by fans. Clips include online parodies lovingly created in needlepoint, Lego, claymation and puppets. Witnesses including original Star Wars/Empire Strikes Back producer Gary Kurtz, Neil Gaiman and Dave Prowse (Darth Vader) all give evidence.
Producers Denver-based Exhibit A Pictures are hanging on to Canada and UK rights themselves. The People Vs. George Lucas is wending its way through the festival circuit, having had its world premiere at SXSW.
Samantha Horley, MD of Salt, said the plan is build the audience through social networks and online. “It’s the future of film sales. As a huge Star Wars fan myself I loved this film, so I know there’s a clear audience out there for this. We plan to find them.”
Let’s face it, we all loved Star Wars until Lucas went out and ruined it. First, he tinkered with the originals, then he made the prequels, and let’s not get started on Jar Jar Binks. The film asks the question: who truly owns that galaxy, far, far away — the man who created it, or the fans who love it?
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The man who created it. That’s how it is, and always will be.
Sad, but true.
Movies are a collaborative effort, though, and one of the reasons why the original trilogy works so much better than the sloppy mess of the prequels is because back then Lucas had people who could tell him when his ideas stunk. He had people who could tell him that the scripts needed work, or that it was okay for someone else to direct the movie. These weren’t the work of a lone auteur, they were films that benefited from the contributions of skilled professionals.
Decades later, Lucas forgot about all of that and just surrounded himself with full-time employees who could never say no to him about anything. The scripts barely went through a first draft before shooting started, the storytelling got trampled beneath distracting CGI, he couldn’t work with actors, and most of all the bad decisions never got caught and fixed. Sometimes the creator’s sole ownership of his work turns out to be a bad thing, because the creator doesn’t have enough talent to do everything solo and won’t loosen his grip enough to bring in talented artists to make the work better.
But the fans? Fuck the fans, seriously. As a fan, the tickets you bought entitled you to see what the creator made, not to tell the creator how to make it. If you don’t like it, say so, and stop giving the guy money for it; just remember that, shitty as it may be, it’s still his work and not yours.
This is playing tonight in LA at 8:30pm – outdoor amphitheatre screening as part of the LA film festival.
Go get’em if there’s any tickets left.
I know this is a hard thing for older fans to accept, but most YOUNG kids DID love the prequels. I know my friend’s kids, as well as my own two nephews, went crazy over them. A young Obi Wan was their new idol, and they think of the prequels as their generation’s set of films.
As an OLDER fan myself…and when I say “old”, I mean over 40 and part of the generation that was lucky enough, back in May of 1977, to experience STAR WARS in a theater when it debuted…the prequels really aren’t THAT horrible. But they do needed tightening up, which was really the problem. The difference in pacing and tone between PHANTOM MENACE and REVENGE OF THE SITH, and how much better the latter film is, is all the proof you need.
If Lucas was REALLY smart, when he does his “ultimate blu-ray edition” (which leaked information says Lucasfilm is secretly working on, right down to adding scenes once again), then he should go all out and shock the fans by fixing certain KEY things to make the overall saga much better. For example, in PHANTOM MENACE just throw out the scene with Liam Neeson talking about midichlorians (since that plot point went nowhwere) and re-dub Jar Jar, so his voice isn’t so annoying. I’m talking about tweaks like that, as well as some core re-editing, to make things tighter and to bring the prequels more in line with the originals.
And, of course, let Greedo shoot first!
“For example, in PHANTOM MENACE just throw out the scene with Liam Neeson talking about midichlorians.”
Nerd.
Saw this at SXSW and loved it. Hope to see it distributed in the U.S. outside the film festival circuit.
Hey LA screenwriter, you sure you saw the original movie in 1977? Han shot first. Not Greedo. Plus, pacing and tone were not problems for the later three films; story and character were.
earn: agreed
Are you sure you read LAscreenwriter’s comment?
He said ‘LET Greedo shoot first.’ Meaning, if they change it, make Greedo shoot first.
Fanboys feel such a sense of entitlement. It’s ridiculous.
They complained non-stop for years about Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man and Raimi’s deviations from the comic book, even though mainstream audiences loved it. Fanboys don’t get that these movies have to appeal to more than the hardcore base. They slagged on the Lois and Clark TV show so hard, because it reached out to (gasp) women. They pour haterade on Smallville, because like Lucas, they aimed at appealing to the younger generation and the fanboys felt left out. These properties have to worry about extending to younger generations and sometimes that means the old fans feel left behind.
Lucas was right to concentrate on appealing to the next generation. DC was right to push Superman’s appeal to new demographics and the next generation. Raimi was right to appeal to the wider audience by making sensible changes to Spider-Man. Old fanboys who feel butthurt over not being the center of the universe anymore can get over it.
Right on, right on. Will the ‘fans’ please stop moaning, me and the kids are trying to watch the movie.
There is a difference between attempting to appeal to a new generation and horrible writing. The writing in the prequels was just pathetic and so were a number of the actors.
As for the changes Lucas made to the original and for that matter what Spielberg did to ET, South Park dealt with the issue quite well some time ago.
Lucas did nothing wrong. This monument to arrested development is worse than anything he ever did or will do. He’s not a studio he runs a private company and used his only assets as testbeds for all the new technology the industry is using for production and exhibition and gave everyone that claimed to want more Star Wars 3 more movies that are materially no different than the ones that came before.
You’re welcome.
Saw this last night — what a great film. The audience was busting up the whole time. I had a huge grin the whole time, haven’t laughed like that in a while.
I believe the filmmakers are showing it somewhere on the East Coast tonight.