Thebumwhowalks
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I don't think that's true, if he had delivered 3 films that were as almost as good as the OT, a lot of disapointed SW fans would have instead been very satisfied. I would have been anyway.
I did not think he would be able to recapture that lightning with the prequels, mainly because I felt the OT's success rested on the leads of Luke, Leia, Han and Darth, not the universe itself. But, I thought he might be able to come up with some interesting new characters, and of course we would get to see the young Darth making his journey to the robot side.
But, it was all a bit stiff really, Lucas' lack of practice on script writing duties and directing was readily apparent. Hell, even as an ideas man, he seemed to be running out of great new ideas by the time of Jedi.
I was reading a review of Jedi from back in 83 the other day, I happened to come across an old arts magazine called 'Streets Ahead' and the review ended on this prophetic note:
'The only difficulties noticible in this series, are: how Lucas can move his characters away from their Marvel comics format. And how he will be able to continue the element of surprise without a clutter of gimmicks or gadgets.'
and that is what happened, the only moments that come close to the OT are when everyone shuts up and the action is on full blast, and even that is not always successful, an over-reliance on CG can cut us off from caring, it not feeling real. He can now do things he couldn't before due to CGI, give us new environments and action scenes, and a lot of enjoyment rests on this, when it works that is.
Comparable thrills in terms of action are nothing though, even apart from the fact the action always felt real in the OT, the original films touched a generation in a way that no other film series has ever done, and that was not only by giving us state of the art believable sci-fi action for the the first time, but through giving us memorable characters.
and I really do not think the flaws of the OT can be compared to the PT, when you are talking about just about every lead character in the prequels being an uninteresting stiff, whereas the original characters became household names overnight.
Hell, the best characters in the prequels are from the OT, Yoda and Palpatine, and the ones played by younger, different actors are pale imitations of the originals, Obi-Wan and Darth.
It is also very ironic that the original success of SW was in bringing us that forementioned believable sci-fi action for the first time, only to be replaced with 'superior' technology, that feels less real, CG Yoda standing in a CG environment talking to a CG Clone Trooper...man, who can get lost in that reality when it is readily apparent that we are watching something not real in any sense of the word? Whereas puppet Yoda in carefully created film set of swamp talking to 'real', constructed R2-D2... that took you away to another world.
Hell, if anything, the prequels 'superior' tech make you appreciate the OT's creative ingenuity even more.
Would a lot of these fans, who you say were as enthralled with the prequels as the OT, even be attending the Celebration thing, if the prequels were the only SW films in existence? I would guess not.
They might be fans of the movies, but i imagine alot of them would not have bothered making any kind of pilgramige if it were not for the fact of the OT bringing them into the cult in the first place.
I enjoy watching epIII now and again, but it is mainly because it is jam packed with action, and the story is far more interesting to me, as it is directly linked to the OT, the one we had heard plans about all those years in the SW wasteland when Lucas would give out tidbits from his proposed plans.
The sfx are a lot better thanin I and II, and the acting and script are too. But it still suffers from lacklustre characterisation in the case of Darth, which is the main draw of the movie, his final fall being what we all came to see the prequels for in the first place.
I am not a hater, man, I don't even mind Darth's 'Nooooooooooo!' I'm just giving my honest considered opinion of wtf happened with these films, he done gone ****ed up the potential there, and I suspect he knows it.
He can make up for it with the live action tv series though, give us hours and hours of quality live action SW if he is hard on himself creatively, and also leaves the ego at the door and employs others to write and direct. Hell, we can just forget ep I and II ever happened, and just think ep III is I and the tv series is II and III, lol.
I suspect that is part of the reason why he wants to make one, and is waiting until he can get it right this time, so he can claw back some of his rep.
I mean, he has said words to the effect of 'People don't realise how hard it is to recapture that type of creativity, you can only do the best you can.' He probably didn't think they were as good as the OT when he was making them, but thought they were still good old fashioned fantasy romps, but, man, TPM is a real dull slogathon, with not much of a pay off for spending all that time in stuffy rooms with a bunch of stiffs talking about trade and politics that doesn't make sense in the first place, or at least very, very tentative sense, in the way that you can't let go and escape into the fantasy, because your brain is thinking, em, what? why don't they just... how does that work?! None of that political and trade plot made any sense, it was not smart enough to withstand scrutiny, and it has to be able to do that in order for you to let go and believe the fantastical stuff more readily.
I think he ended up realising he put a lot of genuine crap in there, in the first two films anyway.
He was waaaaaaaay out of practice as an artist, you have to stay in practice in order to keep up the skills to recognise the crap when you are in the middle of creating it.
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... bust looks pretty cool though.
