I don't even think he was lazy in the prequels, he just focused on the wrong things. He was so caught up with creating an amazing background that he forgot about, well, story and acting.
I know this is a four-year-old video but I got to say, I always find it odd that people hate on the special editions when the version they grew up watching of Star Wars Episode 4 A New Hope was itself altered from the original version. When it first hit theaters there was no subtitle, it wasn't episode 4 it was just Star Wars
It's also far older than that. It was originally made for the now defunct Blip TV platform in 2012 -- seven years ago. My old videos were re-uploaded here once Blip died. Anyway, yeah, the Star Wars movies have constantly changed over the years and will continue to change. Maclunkey.
@@renegadecut9875 Google tells me Maclunkey is some sorta Disney+ thing... Idk, I couldn't afford an extra 8 bucks a month to save my life rn But I assume it woulda been funny in context. Hope you and yours have a good holiday season
@Leon Thomas, you have a great channel. I subscribed yesterday when I saw your video about Ran on Channel Awesome. If you haven't seen "The People VS George Lucas" yet, go see it. Some fans are disappointed/angry/sad that Lucas fiercely refused to re-release the theatrical cuts on DVD/Blu Ray. But most of those same fans love him for what he has created.
Quentin Tarantino once said something to the effect of all great directors lose it sometime in their career. They start out making great movies and then they start to suck at some point. This IMO happened to George.
There are exceptions, Martin Scorsese has never made a truly bad movie despite being the director of nearly 60 projects. I believe he will keep making great movies til the day he dies. But yeah, mist directors end up losing their way, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola being prime examples and it's probably why Tarantino only plans on making 2 more movies before retiring.
Never could wrote dialogue, though. Just as phantom Menace has “yippee”, new hope has “but I was going to go into Toshi station to pick up some power converters”.
I agree with the video essay but I think it misses the main point from his detractors. The moral issue for Lucas is that he refused to release the original version of the original trilogy (OT) in a high quality disk format (anamorphic DVD or Blu-Ray). This is a question of film preservation which Lucas does not care about with the theatrical release of the OT. It reminds me of the efforts to colorized black and white movies by Ted Turner. Imagine if only the colorized versions were allowed to be seen on disk? Many great directors opposed this. For those who counter that Lucas was the director of the OT and so can do whatever he wants with it, this is partly false on two levels. With Empire Strikes Back Lucas was not the director or script writer. Second, there is still the issue of film preservation which even a director should respect. (See Ridley Scott and Blade Runner for an example of how that can be done.) - Lucas has tried to destroy a part of film history and that is a fact. And if this results in negative consequences, then he deserves it.
I have no problem letting go of the feelings I have about Lucas when it comes to his later works... The man got old and lost his way. He lost his discerning eye so to speak. He still surrounds himself with the best of the best of the best (the field of visual effects and sound wouldn't be the same without him) but there is a kind of hubris to his works. He needs to be reigned in. No matter how much he hates it... He needs a studio to fight against. That's when he made his best work. In many ways his career was later mirrored by the Wachowskis. They were great att pulling ideas out of each other. But they had to sell it to the studio and most of the bad ideas got filtered out. That way we got what we got in both Bound and Matrix. It's the works of mad geniuses with the bad parts filtered out. And once they reached their success (post the first Matrix) the filters were removed. And the works are just overburdened with bad ideas along with the good ones. And more attention is brought to the tech and visuals than towards the meat of the experience. The story and characters. But what do grind my gears... The part that actually does devolve into accusations around his morals. Is how his view of film-preservation changed dramatically. Change the films of your past. Ok. sure. Go ahead and do that if you feel like its necessary. But George goes farther than that. He went to much murkier territories. He now practices historical fraudelence. He isn't just correcting a few mistakes and doing special editions. He is actively trying to supplant what the films looked and sounded like in the past. The films on the blurays are not what was in the late 70's and early 80's groundbreaking and phenomenal feats of movie-making. The pictures and sounds on the blurays are not what film historians are speaking and writing about in the books of film history. He is trying to swap out pieces of history. Memories. He is tampering with the cultural heritage. And not only with the trilogy. Even THX1138 has been tampered with in the silent. He has swapped out scenes and effects and stunts and erasing the work of hard working artists and workers that lent him the credibility he once had as a budding filmmaker. We are talking about strategies that are more like the works of revisionist dictators. He is trying to erase actual history and supplanting it with history that fits more to his liking. I am sorry. But that is crossing a line I cannot readily accept no matter what kind of great guy he used to be. Own up to your own history. Don't try to hide it. Don't try to swap it out. That is what makes my negative feelings so much stronger about this than say, Luc Besson. Yes. Luc has also lost his way. But he isn't digitally swapping out Leons peace-lily for a cactus and then trying to pretend that it was always a cactus.
Disagree somewhat; I respect George Lucas. I won't argue about the acting in the prequels but I did enjoy the story and took it for what is; a space opera and damn good story.
It's not my first Renegade Cut video, it's my fifth. My history with online videos is a little muddled on account of some videos not being available. Also because I started uploading videos to Blip in 2010, and then uploading specifically Renegade Cut videos to Blip in 2012, then all videos to TH-cam a couple years later. A lot of official-unofficial starting points. Sorry, I'm rambling. The track is called "The Ends" by Basement Jaxx. I stopped using it because TH-cam has stricter copyright enforcement than Blip had. (RIP) My current intro track is from a paid subscription music archive called Epidemic Sound. I can't get in trouble that way.
I think for me the issues are more with greed, how he treats his actors, and getting to the point where he has so much power he doesn't listen to anyone anymore. Like, I don't hate him cause he made some bad movies--I don't even HATE him at all--but with Star Wars it's like, haven't you made enough money off this already? Even though Star Wars was clearly a collaborative project and was only successful because of that--the editor for instance helped a LOT--he was really the only one who got filthy rich off of it, and then he kept releasing mostly just to make EVEN MORE MONEY. With the prequels, he either didn't much care about what he was doing, or was just so domineering on set and behind the scenes that no one could disagree with him anymore--like. Just retire dude. You already have SO MUCH MONEY. So it's not that he made a bad movie--it's that there's so many stories about him being really controlling and belittling to most everyone he works with, and then he STILL ended up with a bad movie.
Good points but it could have been stated in less than 9 minutes ... sometimes it felt repetitive ... then again, such is as necessary when dealing with religious Star Wars fanatics
I really hate the claim that "X modern thing ruined my childhood!" Like that thing somehow travelled back in time and pissed in your face while you were a kid. Nothing that happens today can retroactively ruin your childhood. Your childhood already happened and cannot be changed now. Not liking the modern version of something you enjoyed as a child does not ruin your childhood. The only thing it does is make you upset that this new thing doesn't affect you the way the old thing did.
I think the hate is a backlash from the worshipping that had been going on for years. In time I predict it will settle down. The hype became to big to be realistic. Both ways of judging George this way is unfair. I personally still respect George Lucas but I have come to terms with his personal flaws. Sadly in the age of internet you either just shit on the man or you will defend him till the very end. I am mostly interested in story or character driven movies and less in action or great effects. In the story department George Lucas seemed to have a different view when it came to the later Indiana Jones and Star Wars films. As I often do I refer to the character of Yoda. You have the wise Jedi master and you have a dancing frog. I prefer the wise Jedi master. Every line of wisdom spoken by Yoda is totally absent in the prequels. Same goes for the way young Kenobi and Anakin are written. I am still convinced most of those subtle touches where not created by Lucas himself, storywise. The best stuff (imo) just doesn't add up. Because of this I refuse to look at Star Wars as a six (soon nine) part saga. Call me someone who is too nostalgic or just an old fanboy. But it is just the way I feel after fifteen years of trying to like the prequels. Everyone can make mistakes and if it was just Phantom Menace were the weight of the world was to heavy to bare I could totally understand it was a one off miss. But unfortunate it went in this other direction for all of them. That's why I actually dislike the Revenge of the Sith the most. That transformation story with Anakin is unbearable for me to watch. So I stick with the viewpoint George Lucas was given to much overall credit to begin with. The original team is what gave it that extra bit of magic.
I don't really hate Lucas, I just have an incredible level of disappointment for how his career turned out in the end. I think what Lucas really is is not a bad film-maker per say, I think what he is is a bad solo film-maker. He's an excellent producer and conceptual writer, but he needs a good team to work with beyond that to produce real quality. Unfortunately, I think he bought into his own hype and the auteur theory of film-making, believing that a film is only artistically valid if it comes from the vision of a single person.
Episodes 1-3 are sooooo much better than 7-9! Jar Jar, Jake Lloyd's acting, and Christensen's whiney quality are easily handled vs. a crap story by Abrams and Johnson.
I feel Lucas has some positive thing he contributes with the prequels. Sure it maybe overload with CGI but with the great company he started ILM, he push the limits of technology. The Battle of Coruscant at the start of EP.3 is still great 10 years later. People forget along with ILM he also made THX, Skywalker Sound, and Lucas Arts. He's surely gave a lot to offer to Hollywood and the world of film. I've heard while he was making Clone Wars he just came off with ideas and the Lucas Animation would work with that. If the prequels were like that he would've had another great trilogy. Ep.1 is just ok. Ep.2 was a meh and Ep.3 was good. That's because all of it was only first draft bases and everyone agreed to any idea .
You can take it how ever you want, I truly don't care. I was just trying to make a point on the pioneering Lucas has done from working on A New Hope til he retired. Sad no one can be as civilized as I'm being on this subject. Doesn't really bother me none.
You have to admit though, franchises like Indiana Jones HAVE NOT aged well. The first few ones like Raiders were really offensive to Arabs, Asians and literally every non-white person. They reek of white saviour complex. Yet I suppose it's not completely fair to judge the movie based on that, considering the times it came out in Hollywood didn't exactly care about all this (not like they do really well now).
George Lucas didn´t just made bad movies, he also made a bad movie that conveys arguable, right-wing ideology (The Phantom Menace) and that many people would call immoral. I am also opposed to right-wing ideology, but in my opinion Lucas is a talented moviemaker, anyway and in an interview with him I´ve watched on TH-cam he expressed philosophical thoughts which I find very appealing. As for Indiana Jones: Sorry, this isn´t my thing at all. For me this is very primitive and childish entertainment.
The more you learn about the production of the original Star Wars trilogy, the more apparent it becomes that those movies were great in SPITE of Lucas, not because of him. There were still people who could say no to him, and he was surrounded by people who had much better ideas than he did. The prequels are a glimpse of what the original trilogy would have been like if he had total creative control - and even saying "trilogy" implies that the first movie would have been successful enough to warrant sequels, which is debatable.
I wasn't fond of the prequels when they came out, but thanks to meme culture and the garbage fire of the sequel trilogy the prequels have aged really well
I don't even think he was lazy in the prequels, he just focused on the wrong things. He was so caught up with creating an amazing background that he forgot about, well, story and acting.
Renegade cut on you tube! YEEEEEEEEAAAH!!!
I know this is a four-year-old video but I got to say, I always find it odd that people hate on the special editions when the version they grew up watching of Star Wars Episode 4 A New Hope was itself altered from the original version. When it first hit theaters there was no subtitle, it wasn't episode 4 it was just Star Wars
It's also far older than that. It was originally made for the now defunct Blip TV platform in 2012 -- seven years ago. My old videos were re-uploaded here once Blip died. Anyway, yeah, the Star Wars movies have constantly changed over the years and will continue to change. Maclunkey.
@@renegadecut9875 Google tells me Maclunkey is some sorta Disney+ thing... Idk, I couldn't afford an extra 8 bucks a month to save my life rn
But I assume it woulda been funny in context. Hope you and yours have a good holiday season
I agree with evertyng in this video XD, fucking love it, is great that you are on YT
Excellent points about the toxic discourse amongst fandom.
@Leon Thomas, you have a great channel. I subscribed yesterday when I saw your video about Ran on Channel Awesome.
If you haven't seen "The People VS George Lucas" yet, go see it. Some fans are disappointed/angry/sad that Lucas fiercely refused to re-release the theatrical cuts on DVD/Blu Ray. But most of those same fans love him for what he has created.
Thanks rc
Quentin Tarantino once said something to the effect of all great directors lose it sometime in their career. They start out making great movies and then they start to suck at some point. This IMO happened to George.
There are exceptions, Martin Scorsese has never made a truly bad movie despite being the director of nearly 60 projects. I believe he will keep making great movies til the day he dies. But yeah, mist directors end up losing their way, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola being prime examples and it's probably why Tarantino only plans on making 2 more movies before retiring.
Even Tarantino's most recent films have not been that great.
Yeah, his 8th best movie.
more like when his wife, who was the real creative force, left him in 1983.. he then began sucking via howard the duck immediately after
Never could wrote dialogue, though. Just as phantom Menace has “yippee”, new hope has “but I was going to go into Toshi station to pick up some power converters”.
Lucas stole a lot of American Graffiti from shenanigans that locals in Modesto did.
I agree with the video essay but I think it misses the main point from his detractors. The moral issue for Lucas is that he refused to release the original version of the original trilogy (OT) in a high quality disk format (anamorphic DVD or Blu-Ray). This is a question of film preservation which Lucas does not care about with the theatrical release of the OT. It reminds me of the efforts to colorized black and white movies by Ted Turner. Imagine if only the colorized versions were allowed to be seen on disk? Many great directors opposed this. For those who counter that Lucas was the director of the OT and so can do whatever he wants with it, this is partly false on two levels. With Empire Strikes Back Lucas was not the director or script writer. Second, there is still the issue of film preservation which even a director should respect. (See Ridley Scott and Blade Runner for an example of how that can be done.)
- Lucas has tried to destroy a part of film history and that is a fact. And if this results in negative consequences, then he deserves it.
The prequels are fucking gold!
Cool video dude! He is a genius. What was the music at the end? Cheers
The beats man the beats are totally worth it brah they made me go high on the waves and low in the skater park.
🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂
I have no problem letting go of the feelings I have about Lucas when it comes to his later works... The man got old and lost his way. He lost his discerning eye so to speak. He still surrounds himself with the best of the best of the best (the field of visual effects and sound wouldn't be the same without him) but there is a kind of hubris to his works. He needs to be reigned in. No matter how much he hates it... He needs a studio to fight against. That's when he made his best work.
In many ways his career was later mirrored by the Wachowskis. They were great att pulling ideas out of each other. But they had to sell it to the studio and most of the bad ideas got filtered out. That way we got what we got in both Bound and Matrix. It's the works of mad geniuses with the bad parts filtered out. And once they reached their success (post the first Matrix) the filters were removed. And the works are just overburdened with bad ideas along with the good ones. And more attention is brought to the tech and visuals than towards the meat of the experience. The story and characters.
But what do grind my gears... The part that actually does devolve into accusations around his morals. Is how his view of film-preservation changed dramatically. Change the films of your past. Ok. sure. Go ahead and do that if you feel like its necessary. But George goes farther than that. He went to much murkier territories. He now practices historical fraudelence. He isn't just correcting a few mistakes and doing special editions. He is actively trying to supplant what the films looked and sounded like in the past. The films on the blurays are not what was in the late 70's and early 80's groundbreaking and phenomenal feats of movie-making. The pictures and sounds on the blurays are not what film historians are speaking and writing about in the books of film history. He is trying to swap out pieces of history. Memories. He is tampering with the cultural heritage.
And not only with the trilogy. Even THX1138 has been tampered with in the silent. He has swapped out scenes and effects and stunts and erasing the work of hard working artists and workers that lent him the credibility he once had as a budding filmmaker.
We are talking about strategies that are more like the works of revisionist dictators. He is trying to erase actual history and supplanting it with history that fits more to his liking.
I am sorry. But that is crossing a line I cannot readily accept no matter what kind of great guy he used to be. Own up to your own history. Don't try to hide it. Don't try to swap it out.
That is what makes my negative feelings so much stronger about this than say, Luc Besson. Yes. Luc has also lost his way. But he isn't digitally swapping out Leons peace-lily for a cactus and then trying to pretend that it was always a cactus.
i miss your old intro it was awesome
The prequels really weren't that bead IMO. I mean, not as good as the originals but not the unholy sins against cinema people paint them as.
Disagree somewhat; I respect George Lucas. I won't argue about the acting in the prequels but I did enjoy the story and took it for what is; a space opera and damn good story.
I decided to finally see Leon's first video and I like it!
Btw, what is your theme song?
It's not my first Renegade Cut video, it's my fifth. My history with online videos is a little muddled on account of some videos not being available. Also because I started uploading videos to Blip in 2010, and then uploading specifically Renegade Cut videos to Blip in 2012, then all videos to TH-cam a couple years later. A lot of official-unofficial starting points.
Sorry, I'm rambling. The track is called "The Ends" by Basement Jaxx. I stopped using it because TH-cam has stricter copyright enforcement than Blip had. (RIP) My current intro track is from a paid subscription music archive called Epidemic Sound. I can't get in trouble that way.
I think for me the issues are more with greed, how he treats his actors, and getting to the point where he has so much power he doesn't listen to anyone anymore. Like, I don't hate him cause he made some bad movies--I don't even HATE him at all--but with Star Wars it's like, haven't you made enough money off this already? Even though Star Wars was clearly a collaborative project and was only successful because of that--the editor for instance helped a LOT--he was really the only one who got filthy rich off of it, and then he kept releasing mostly just to make EVEN MORE MONEY. With the prequels, he either didn't much care about what he was doing, or was just so domineering on set and behind the scenes that no one could disagree with him anymore--like. Just retire dude. You already have SO MUCH MONEY. So it's not that he made a bad movie--it's that there's so many stories about him being really controlling and belittling to most everyone he works with, and then he STILL ended up with a bad movie.
Good points but it could have been stated in less than 9 minutes ... sometimes it felt repetitive ... then again, such is as necessary when dealing with religious Star Wars fanatics
I really hate the claim that "X modern thing ruined my childhood!" Like that thing somehow travelled back in time and pissed in your face while you were a kid. Nothing that happens today can retroactively ruin your childhood. Your childhood already happened and cannot be changed now. Not liking the modern version of something you enjoyed as a child does not ruin your childhood. The only thing it does is make you upset that this new thing doesn't affect you the way the old thing did.
I think the hate is a backlash from the worshipping that had been going on for years. In time I predict it will settle down. The hype became to big to be realistic. Both ways of judging George this way is unfair. I personally still respect George Lucas but I have come to terms with his personal flaws. Sadly in the age of internet you either just shit on the man or you will defend him till the very end.
I am mostly interested in story or character driven movies and less in action or great effects. In the story department George Lucas seemed to have a different view when it came to the later Indiana Jones and Star Wars films. As I often do I refer to the character of Yoda. You have the wise Jedi master and you have a dancing frog. I prefer the wise Jedi master. Every line of wisdom spoken by Yoda is totally absent in the prequels. Same goes for the way young Kenobi and Anakin are written. I am still convinced most of those subtle touches where not created by Lucas himself, storywise. The best stuff (imo) just doesn't add up. Because of this I refuse to look at Star Wars as a six (soon nine) part saga. Call me someone who is too nostalgic or just an old fanboy. But it is just the way I feel after fifteen years of trying to like the prequels.
Everyone can make mistakes and if it was just Phantom Menace were the weight of the world was to heavy to bare I could totally understand it was a one off miss. But unfortunate it went in this other direction for all of them. That's why I actually dislike the Revenge of the Sith the most. That transformation story with Anakin is unbearable for me to watch. So I stick with the viewpoint George Lucas was given to much overall credit to begin with. The original team is what gave it that extra bit of magic.
I don't really hate Lucas, I just have an incredible level of disappointment for how his career turned out in the end.
I think what Lucas really is is not a bad film-maker per say, I think what he is is a bad solo film-maker. He's an excellent producer and conceptual writer, but he needs a good team to work with beyond that to produce real quality. Unfortunately, I think he bought into his own hype and the auteur theory of film-making, believing that a film is only artistically valid if it comes from the vision of a single person.
Howard the Duck LOL
Episodes 1-3 are sooooo much better than 7-9!
Jar Jar, Jake Lloyd's acting, and Christensen's whiney quality are easily handled vs. a crap story by Abrams and Johnson.
I feel Lucas has some positive thing he contributes with the prequels. Sure it maybe overload with CGI but with the great company he started ILM, he push the limits of technology. The Battle of Coruscant at the start of EP.3 is still great 10 years later. People forget along with ILM he also made THX, Skywalker Sound, and Lucas Arts. He's surely gave a lot to offer to Hollywood and the world of film. I've heard while he was making Clone Wars he just came off with ideas and the Lucas Animation would work with that. If the prequels were like that he would've had another great trilogy. Ep.1 is just ok. Ep.2 was a meh and Ep.3 was good. That's because all of it was only first draft bases and everyone agreed to any idea .
Episode 3 good. Ha ha ha. What a laugh.
Hey all film is subjective bro. I didnt say it was great. When i mean good I mean it was ok to mere average.
You can take it how ever you want, I truly don't care. I was just trying to make a point on the pioneering Lucas has done from working on A New Hope til he retired. Sad no one can be as civilized as I'm being on this subject. Doesn't really bother me none.
Aww man 7 year old me thought Howard the duck was a Great Idea
You have to admit though, franchises like Indiana Jones HAVE NOT aged well. The first few ones like Raiders were really offensive to Arabs, Asians and literally every non-white person. They reek of white saviour complex. Yet I suppose it's not completely fair to judge the movie based on that, considering the times it came out in Hollywood didn't exactly care about all this (not like they do really well now).
George Lucas didn´t just made bad movies, he also made a bad movie that conveys
arguable, right-wing ideology (The Phantom Menace) and that many people would call immoral.
I am also opposed to right-wing ideology, but in my opinion Lucas is a talented moviemaker,
anyway and in an interview with him I´ve watched on TH-cam he expressed philosophical
thoughts which I find very appealing.
As for Indiana Jones: Sorry, this isn´t my thing at all. For me this is very primitive and childish entertainment.
sorry I can't watch this video. I agree with the content, but the background music is so obnoxious, I can't get through the 9 minutes :(
The more you learn about the production of the original Star Wars trilogy, the more apparent it becomes that those movies were great in SPITE of Lucas, not because of him. There were still people who could say no to him, and he was surrounded by people who had much better ideas than he did. The prequels are a glimpse of what the original trilogy would have been like if he had total creative control - and even saying "trilogy" implies that the first movie would have been successful enough to warrant sequels, which is debatable.
I wasn't fond of the prequels when they came out, but thanks to meme culture and the garbage fire of the sequel trilogy the prequels have aged really well
This video reminds me i still havent seen THX 1138 or American Graffiti