The Dark Side of George Lucas

JuniorJones

TR.N Staff Member
Montana Smith said:

For next installment he'll want you to bark like a frog. That right, a FROG. Gggggrebit!

When he's finished I'll provided the scans.;) Gggggggggrebit!
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Vance said:
Yes, he was more 'Han Solo' at that point. He was not evil bastard that would quickly murder everyone for the treasure and laugh like the bastard in a View to a Kill. You remove the soul from Indiana Jones, he's no longer Indiana Jones.

It took Han Solo until the end of the film to change his mind and 'do the right thing'.

Vance said:
It would have been inhuman of him not to, considering what he had heard at this point. You're not trying to push Indy to be more like Belloq, you're trying to turn him into Toht!

No. Just more like Belloq. The real difference between them is that Indy felt the need to justify his actions. Such as a museum being a worthier owner than the natives - and Indy thereby taking a merc's fee rather than the profit of the item itself.

We see Indy doing this in 1936 after his Indian 'awakening' the previous year. He could have been more callous in TOD, since he was never fully reformed by the time of ROTLA.

Anti-heroes are much more fun than heroes, because they're conflicted by each circumstance. Pulled by their nature, and what they feel they ought to do.

These were ideas Lucas was more comfortable playing with between 1977 and 1984.

Later on he's afflicted with the need to soften and 'educate'.


Vance said:
No, you seem to be demanding an wholly unlikable character and more intense 'dark' for the pure sake of it. Much farther and the movie would have just been an exploitation film, and quite a few people at the time of its release - including Speilberg - were already calling it that.

Depends on your definition of likeability. I'd prefer a character with an edge and a moral conflict over one who's bland.

Hence, as a child I found Han Solo far more preferable to Luke Skywalker.
 

Vance

New member
Montana Smith said:
It took Han Solo until the end of the film to change his mind and 'do the right thing'.

Yes, but there was no doubt that he was GOING to.. it was just a matter of when he would. And, it's not like he didn't have reason, there was a giant turd-lookin' thing with an army of criminals out to kill him... Indy didn't have that impetus to actively NOT do the 'right thing' at the moment.

No. Just more like Belloq. The real difference between them is that Indy felt the need to justify his actions. Such as a museum being a worthier owner than the natives - and Indy thereby taking a merc's fee rather than the profit of the item itself.

Indy's a pulp hero. He shouldn't be any darker than most of Bogart's characters. You have to know that he'll do the right thing, even at great personal risk...even if he grumbles about it... but he has to have a good side for the audience to relate.

Since I brought up Romancing the Stone, look at how the main character was handled. That's about as far down the 'rat bastard' road most audiences will accept for a protagonist.

We see Indy doing this in 1936 after his Indian 'awakening' the previous year. He could have been more callous in TOD, since he was never fully reformed by the time of ROTLA.

Anti-heroes are much more fun than heroes, because they're conflicted by each circumstance. Pulled by their nature, and what they feel they ought to do.

Anti-Heroes work best when there's either a hero egging him on a little (like, Luke Skywalker or Leia Organa).. or the villain is so bad the anti-hero comes off as a hero by comparison (Heath Ledger's Joker).

These were ideas Lucas was more comfortable playing with between 1977 and 1984.

Temple of Doom went too far in most respects in the 'dark' while trying to smooth it out with bad comedy and over-the-top action sequences. Making Indy himself even darker wouldn't have 'saved' the film, since the character himself wasn't really what was wrong in the first place!

The decision to make Willie comedic relief rather than a streetwise jaded urbanite, and the very long 'dark' middle act are what hurt the film. Cut down the torture sequence, re-add the exposition scenes so you know who Chatter Lal was, show Willie send off Blumbert for help, get a better hand on the conspiracy going on, lose some most of Willie's "wide angle" screams... and it would work better.

Later on he's afflicted with the need to soften and 'educate'.
Ironically, he went completely 'Hollywood'... after helping to define it for the 1980s onward...
 
Tom Smith, ILM's general manager, says, I can't think of anything that we know how to do that we didn't do for this movie. George actually made two movies , one gigantic special effects movie, the other a character movie. Twice a day for a year Lucas has held forty five minute conferences in the projection room at ILM to look at special effects film . He either said great or, with a pointer on the screen, explain what was wrong with a shot and how it could be made better. George has Superman eyes, says Smith. It is a very unusual psychological thing. He can see through things to the very essence of a picture and know what is right and wrong with it. For the past four months 150 technicians at ILM have worked 24 hours a day , 7 days a week, in shifts, to finish the movie's special effects. Smith says, after Christmas we gave up our private lives.

Lucas also kept his Superman eyes on the development of the monsters for Jedi. He says he barely managed to get 20 simple monsters in Star Wars., then decided to put all technical Energies into making just one sophisticated monster for Empire. Jedi, however, has more than one hundred sophisticated monsters, thanks to the marriage of computers to puppetry, achieved in part in Star Wars but perfected in Jedi. The creatures aren't hatched whole in Lucas's mind. He will visualize a monster and characterize it to his creature designers, Phil Tippett and Stewart Freeborn , or his art director Joe Johnston. Jabba the Hut, for example, Lucas described as a large, repulsive, slug like creature, half slob, half Sultan, the ultimate slob Godfather. They'd work for months coming up with designs and designs and designs and I'd reject them or accept them, Lucas says. Phil Tippett would give me 25 little sculptures of various creatures and I'd pick two or three . I'd say, change the nose on this one, put the ears from that one on one and I'll take it. I wasn't the main creative force behind creatures , Lucas adds. He told Johnston and Freeborn that Yoda should be blue-green, have sort of a big head, giant ears, and a funny little pug nose. It took about 10 months for the team to approximate Lucas' vision of Yoda.
End of Part 4

Montana Smith said:
I bet you have them, too! But we'll have to wait for Rocko to read all twenty-two pages out loud before you'll reveal them!
I bet he does!:D

Montana Smith said:
Get back to reading out loud! :whip:
Aye aye captain...:hat: Can't find it online can ye?!
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Rocket Surgeon said:
I bet he does!:D

Because I presume it's from Worrell's book, Icons: Intimate Portraits, which was originally written as background material for Time magazine.

Rocket Surgeon said:
Aye aye captain...:hat: Can't find it online can ye?!

Google Books has no ebook available. Sometimes you can get lucky there and find samples of the pages you want.
 
Lucas had always wanted a primitive free spirited society to end up battling the hi tech evil empire. Before Star Wars was made, the wookies we're going to be the primitive race. But in Star Wars, Lucas had already shown Chewbacca, a Wookie and Han Solo's copilot, to be highly civilized. Wookies are tall, 7 foot 5 inches tall. Lucas decided simply to cut them in half, and make them primitive, short haired, short people. He scrambled the letters of the word Wookies and came up with Ewoks. That's where the idea of the ewoks came from, Lucas says. In the end, part of the decision in designing the ewoks was not to worry about the fact that they were cute. It's just in the nature of things that anything short and fuzzy ends up looking like a teddy bear, so I just said, well, look, will just make them cute, what the heck. I have a feeling we are going to get trashed for making them cute. I don't care if everybody thinks they look like teddy bears. Critics will say the movie is just an excuse to sell teddy bears, but I don't care.

However well done special effects are, or however real the monsters look, Lucas is rarely satisfied. He says, after Star Wars I used to say that only 25 percent of what I intended was up on the screen. In the next movies a lot of those goals were made a reality. But I have learned that no matter how hard you try, no one has control. It isn't how well you can make a film, it's how well you can make the film under the circumstances. That's the challenge. You always have limited resources and extenuating circumstances, acts of God. That's the joy and the heartache of it too. Sometimes the lack of control makes the films better, sometimes worse. But you have to accept that the movie is not going to be as good as you wanted to be. The bigger the movie is the less control you have and the more you have to go with the flow. Go with whatever happens.

Just one example of Jedi go with the flow production problems: 40 dwarves were hired in London to be ewoks, and each was fitted for an ewok suit. Individual plaster casts were taken of the actors hands and feet so that perfect fitting latex gloves and boots could be made, to which hair and nails would be added later. The boots turned out to be too heavy for the stage platforms of the ewok village built in the trees 20 feet off the ground, so new plaster casts had to be taken and lighter boots made. Forty new dwarves were found in the United States for the ewok scenes shot in the forests of Crescent City, California. Again, each was fitted for costumes and plaster casts were made. Then a choreographer had to be hired solely to teach the diverse dwarfs how to walk and run and move like ewoks. During the filming, after each ewok shot, the actors had to take off their masks or their plastic eyes would fog up and they wouldn't be able to see where they were going.
Montana Smith said:
Because I presume it's from Worrell's book, Icons: Intimate Portraits, which was originally written as background material for Time magazine.
Exclusively there and soon...right here.:D
Montana Smith said:
Google Books has no ebook available. Sometimes you can get lucky there and find samples of the pages you want.
Amazon does the same, the electronic way to peruse before you buy...
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Rocket Surgeon said:
Exclusively there and soon...right here.:D

(y)


Denise Worrel/George Lucas said:
In the end, part of the decision in designing the ewoks was not to worry about the fact that they were cute. It's just in the nature of things that anything short and fuzzy ends up looking like a teddy bear, so I just said, well, look, will just make them cute, what the heck. I have a feeling we are going to get trashed for making them cute. I don't care if everybody thinks they look like teddy bears. Critics will say the movie is just an excuse to sell teddy bears, but I don't care.

Short and fuzzy didn't necessarily need to look like a teddy bear. There were abandoned designs for shorter Wookiees that could have averted the issue.

Though I suspect cash-strapped Lucas was considering the pre-school spin-off opportunities of teddy bears. The Ewoks films and cartoons...
 
Making movies is the art of compromise Lucas says, I hate compromise. It really used to depress me. You have a vision and you see a movie on the screen that doesn't come near the vision. After I stopped directing, it didn't bother me quite so much anymore. Once I felt personally, creatively, off the hook, I wasn't as committed to the vision and how well it got accomplished. Lucas can't say if Empire and Jedi would have been better or worse if he had directed them. They would have been different. I know they would have been because I was there on the set watching the director and I knew I would be making this or that decision differently. Lucas says it is difficult to compare Kirshner and Marquand. They're just different, he says. It's even hard to say what I would have done in certain situations. It's like taking 3 people and putting them in front of an easel with 3 different colors and asking them to make 3 different strokes. Which is better? Who is better? You end up with 3 different interpretations of 3 strokes with 3 colors.

Lucas says he always works with the directors and never pulls rank. I've never directed over anybody's shoulder. It's impossible. It's too subtle an art. It's always been collaborative. If there is a question, I talk to the director back in a corner. Occasionally there is tension, but I've tried to be very conscious of it. I've worked with the crews since Star Wars, so it's very easy for them to ask me a question, but I defer to the director. Within reason, I've always tried to let the director make his movie his way. Sometimes I'll pull him aside and discuss why I think something else would be a better idea. I don't think I've ever said, this is the way it's going to be. This is final.

Only once did I get conflicting directions, recalls Carrie Fisher, who plays Princess Leia. When I came into Jabba's throne room disguised as a man, Richard told me to stand like and English sentry. Then George walked in and said, Carrie, you're standing like in English sentry. You want to be more swashbuckling.

What I do, Lucas says, is go around offering suggestions. Walt Disney said he went around pollinating little groups of people . I go around saying, how about this? or I got an idea, what if... I act as a glue. There are a lot of gaps unique to Star Wars. Questions only I can answer. I act as the ultimate source. How would this robot walk? Should this creature have a radio antenna? I'm the only one who has the whole vision and I know it intimately. The director comes to one of these films and has a pretty good grasp of what's going on, but he hasn't lived with it for 10 years and he can't give an instant ( Lucas snaps his fingers) answer to any question that could possibly come up. The directors relied on me as a backlog encyclopedia.

There is an enormous amount of grossness to filmmaking. But into the grossness you put a lot of little details, subtleties. How are the mosaics patterned, the door handles shaped, the niches carved? Film starts out with a giant brush and ends up with a team of artists painting in the details. In the Star Wars saga I have a lot of control over the giant brush strokes, the sets, the plots, the casting. I try to add in as many details as I can, but a team of 30 or 40 people add the rest . You can pan across one scene in a set, and suddenly the audience is jolted out of it because of a carpenter who didn't do the right thing. The scene is destroyed by a detail. This is especially true in fantasy films like Star Wars. Star Wars isn't the Wizard of Oz, with giant purple sets and phony little trees. With Star Wars, if you let yourself go slightly, the world is sort of real. It's very hard to create an immaculate reality out of nothing, to make what's totally incredible credible. I've always tried to create a reality you can believe in without going that far to suspend your disbelief.


Montana Smith said:
Though I suspect cash-strapped Lucas was considering the pre-school spin-off opportunities of teddy bears. The Ewoks films and cartoons...

He didn't care because it WAS an excuse to sell teddy bears.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Denise Worrell/George Lucas said:
What I do, Lucas says, is go around offering suggestions. Walt Disney said he went around pollinating little groups of people.

The dirty bugger. I always thought there was something iffy about that Disney guy.

Denise Worrell/George Lucas said:
There is an enormous amount of grossness to filmmaking. But into the grossness you put a lot of little details, subtleties.

He wasn't lying.

Indiana-Jones-And-The-Temple-Of-Doom-1984-movie-props.jpg
 

Colonel Corey

New member
Why must Lucas sell Lucasfilm to Disney?! WHYYYYY?!... Oh well. I guess everyone must have their opinions... Just like darn old George Lucas...
 
JuniorJones said:
...well, I don't want to spoil his inert thunder.
Well, I appreciate that.

I wish it were so:

tumblr_m91f9xn3oY1r6clwp.jpg


My little girl made Varsity Basketball (as a freshman) so Daddy has been a bit busy to fully endulge his "nerd-ity"...

You know, if you cared so much, you both might help me out in the Racism Thread, instead of (at least Tana) distracting the lunatics from the question at hand with lengthy tangents!
 

JuniorJones

TR.N Staff Member
Rocket Surgeon said:
You know, if you cared so much, you both might help me out in the Racism Thread, instead of (at least Tana) distracting the lunatics from the question at hand with lengthy tangents!

We'll be on our way...

birth-of-a-nation-11-640x300.jpg
 
Top