The People vs. George Lucas: A look into how adults can nerd rage too

Here is a documentary review that I did for the fine folks over at http://www.grabbagcinema.com. Please be sure to check it out there and all of their other great reviews

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Star Wars. Amazing. Episodes 4-6. Awesome. Prequel trilogy. Utter garbage. These are the thoughts and sentiments of many fans of the Star Wars saga by George Lucas. As befitting nerdom, you can ask any fan and they will be able to both laud Lucas as the creator of one of the most fantastic universes in science fiction and also vilify him as the architect who will not leave well enough alone. Those are my personal feelings and it is the tone of the documentary The People vs. George Lucas by Alexandre O. Philippe.

Philippe is obviously a fan of the Lucas and Star Wars. There are very few people who have watched movies in the last 35 odd years who have not at least seen one of the Star Wars films, and most people who see them do end up liking them. However, fans are also disgruntled with how Lucas has handled his Empire and they are very vocal about it. Particularly those who do fan films and documentaries as Phllippe does.

Philippe takes a humorous view at poking fun at Lucas. He uses both animation and genius splicing of fan film footage into his dialogue to get his point across. And his point is that even though the things Lucas has done to his image and his brand, the only reason so many people are disgruntled with him is because he is successful and he is tweaking things that we as a people love.

For the actual content of the documentary, it consists of interviews with fans and some commentators giving the background of George Lucas himself and how he developed such a great label as Star Wars. It gives the history of what started out as a simple man trying to make it in Hollywood, but eventually became a business mogul who ruled over his Empire of merchandising, licensing, and production. Inherent in that journey is the root of fans angst with Lucas. He was the rebel filmmaker who bought his story’s rights from Fox and turned it into a franchise that is unrivaled by anything save Star Trek. When you are that popular, fans tend to dislike tweaks to their favorite story.

I personally liked the documentary as done by Philippe. However, you could probably draw stick figures in the mud and call it Star Wars and I would like it so I am not an unbiased opinion. I give it 3.5 bags only because it does tend to drone on at times and if you do not like Star Wars or have never seen it, a lot of the points made you will not care about. They are only things true nerds and fans for life quibble over or could find fault with. Be sure to check out The People vs. George Lucas on Netflix or you can probably buy it at your local video store or online. Look forward to my next installment in 2 weeks here at grabbagcinema.com.

May the Fourth Be With You

            So today is May 4^th, and as all you geeky people out there probably know, it is Star wars Day. May the Fourth Be With You! I had planned today on doing the Lego competition (http://us.starwars.lego.com/en-us/creations/default.aspx?domainredir=www.starwars.lego.com) but with wanting to do something new, we do not really have the money for me to go out and get a set to do to upload. I did scour the sales racks at local stores in hopes I would find something but it was a disappointing selection. With Lego being out of the day, I was able to get my son dressed in his Star Wars t-shirt with the original trilogy montage on it and we proceeded to go to the book store and our favorite local comic book store, the Comic Cellar. Got my son his first comic book today and he enjoyed reading it while we waited on dinner. Currently am waiting on him to wind up watching his Elmo for the day and then putting him to bed to watch Episode 3 with my wife who has never seen it before.  All in all a pretty fun Force Day.

            About Star Wars; if you have been born any time after 1960 and have not seen these movies you have got to have lived under a rock. These are excellent movies. Sure Lucas gets his complaints for the prequels and his snobbishness towards the fans in the expanded universe, but in all honesty, if he did it any other way a whole new group of people would be complaining. That is the price of creating one of the greatest universes and sagas our world has ever known. Creative genius at its finest and I, for one, mostly enjoy the prequels. Jar Jar can rot in hell however and should have never been in more than a spot scene in Episode I.

            George Lucas does not get nearly enough credit in how he has enterprised the Star Wars franchise. He knew he had a cult following and bought the rights to his masterpiece from 20^th Century Fox. There is a reason Fox no longer sells licenses to anyone on any of the projects they do anymore. They lost entirely too much money allowing Lucas to take Star Wars and run it under Lucasfilm. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in those board meetings afterwards and seen the heads rolling.

            In owning the rights to Star Wars, Lucas has made way more money in the expanded universe and merchandising than he has done in the movies. By allowing others to write novels and stories, which he still has final say on creative license, he allows others to spread his vision while doing minimal amount of work. It’s pure genius and obviously works as you can see from the hysteria of Star Wars fan boys and geekdom in general. I know I am not the only person who wishes they had been the one to originate the Star Wars universe, nor are we the only ones who dream they might be able to come up with a mythos than can rival it.

            I know this is not a book review as normal but with it being a special day, Force Day, I thought it deserved its own entry. Heaven knows if I ever get back to reading the Star Wars novels we will have plenty of entries to peruse and there is no penalty for not sticking strictly to book reviews. May the Fourth Be With You all and pleasant role-playing, reading, constructing, mmorpging, or tabletopping. This is truly our day and I wish the best on everyon