Posted by Smalls at syr-24-24-14-133.twcny.rr.com on November 20, 2001 at 01:27:23:
In Reply to: STAR WARS question posted by BrianLynch on November 20, 2001 at 01:12:14:
: Why is STAR WARS bad?
I realize that this is a mock of all the pointless Star Wars questions about... but... I'll still take a crack at it.
Star Wars is bad because Lucas started to believe his own press.
His best work was ALWAYS when his amazing visual sense and his love of archetypal plots were tempered by writers and producers and actors who had the pull to tell him when his personal vision was spinning out of control into something visually stunning but woodenly written and perhaps even a little juvenile in story construction.
The mechanism inherent to the success of the first three films gave Lucas such a wealth of cash, influence and geek-infallibility that he's been able to push aside most if not all of his peers who'd question him or his choices on any substantive levels... leaving him a short-sighted genius surrounded by yesmen... who can throw out weird diatribes about the absolute perfection of the digital, the disposability of the actor, a re-envisioning of his career of that of kids movies and ramblings off into pop philosophy without being challenged.
And then he makes movies believing that that mixture of overenthusiastic futurism and overly-simplified archetypialism is what the audiences loved all along... as opposed to his sense of visual and spectacle, the real reason for his success, while others used to keep the other parts in check.
That's why... not Star Wars as a film... but STAR WARS as a franchise, Star Wars as a lot of Jedi, a lot of Episode One and all the Special Edition extras... StarWars sucks.
Mike