I grew up breathing Star Wars. I was a huge Star Wars nerd, I played the computer games, owned and played with action figures, books, micro-machines, legos, posters, of course the movies, you name it. Star Wars was a magical escape, a mythology bordering on a legend that I believed might actually be true. Going back and watching the 1970s, 80s Star Wars films now, the halo is gone for me. But the original Star Wars movies, the real ones, were solid films; they were groundbreaking for their time, and entertaining. They aren’t as good as I thought they were when I was a child, but they are classic films.

You can imagine how excited I was for the first Star Wars prequel in 1999, and how disappointed I was by it and the following films. They weren’t as bad as some people claim, but they could have been much, much better, and they don’t fit the feel of the original movies. Furthermore, I don’t think the prequels can be reasonably reconciled with Episodes IV, V, and VI–but I won’t get into that, I’ve already amply demonstrated what a nerd I am.

George Lucas also put together a classic with Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. This is still a favorite of mine, and a great film by any standard. I was never obsessed with Indiana Jones the way I was with Star Wars, but it was, and is, a classic. When I first heard there was going to be a fourth Indiana Jones film, I was excited, for about 5 seconds. Then I remembered that the post-1983 George Lucas would be involved. I waited to see what the critics, but more importantly my friends, would say about this film before I’d give George any more of my money (oh, how much he’s gotten from me).

The consensus for this film has been lukewarm to poor. If you’d like to read a review of Indiana Jones and the Lining of the Pocket Book, also know as The Kingdom of the Cystal Skull, a friend of mine sent me a link to this review. After hearing about the film, and the aliens, I opted not to see it–and I refuse to give George any more money, or to be disapointed again by his absurd films. However, one good thing did come out of this film. I now understand what happened to George Lucas, and why Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Last Crusade (these two are debatable, I guess), the Star Wars prequels, and most recently, Crystal Skull, were big disappointments.

The fact of the matter is, based on analysis of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films, sometime around three quarters of the way through Return of Jedi, about the same time as when a bunch of hobbit sized teddy bears armed with rocks and vines, start winning a battle against what the Emperor describes as “an entire legion of my best troops,” armed with Blasters, armor, AT-STs, and Speeder Bikes. I mean seriously, just think what would have happened if the Rebels had found the teddy-polar bears on Hoth, and how that could have turned the tide in The Empire Strikes Back. They would have easily won against the Empire. Undoubtedly, the hobbit bears were what Han and Luke were looking for when riding around on their Taun-tuans. But I digress into nerddom.

Unless George decides to release his medical records, we won’t know exactly what kind of mental or nervous breakdown he suffered from. Will never know what films he may have produced if he had not gone senile. But we can continue to enjoy his pre-1984 films, and try to forget the rest.

I’ve compiled a timeline to visually demonstrate the rise, and fall of George Lucas’s film making: A Brief Lucasfilm Timeline.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 at 1:21 pm and is filed under Film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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