Anybody who’s followed the life and career of George Lucas knows that as optimistic as American Grafitti and Star Wars are, he’s got a fairly pessimistic world view.
THX-1138 confirmed that sentiment pretty early on in his life, actually. And of course we all know he’s been a popular punching bag in the geek community for what he’s done to his Star Wars trilogy, and how he’s supposedly ruined many people’s precious childhood memories. But has it finally gotten Lucas to where he wants to throw in the towel?
Reports have hit that on the eve of the release of Red Tails, his first original story in a long time, that George is indeed fed up with the fanboi nonsense, and is done with Star Wars, although the TV series is still going forward.
He told the New York Times, “I’m retiring. I’m moving away from the business, from the company, from all this kind of stuff.”
And his producer Rick McCallum, also claimed “Red Tails will be the last blockbuster Lucas makes. Once this is finished, he’s done everything he’s ever wanted to do. He will have completed his task as a man and a film-maker.”
Lucas is getting close to 70, but he’s not a broken-down old man and can keep making movies for at least ten more years if he wants to. The question is, does he want to? Remember, Lucas often promised he would dedicate the rest of his career to smaller movies that wouldn’t make money like THX, but perhaps once you’ve incredible success and fame it’s hard to step down from that.
Lucas has also been incredibly stubborn his whole life, often to the point of self-sabotage, and has always revolted against authority, so it’s hard to imagine him bridling to a bunch of nerds, but apparently the crap they’ve heaped on him has simply piled up too high. ”Why would I make any more [movies] when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?” he asked rhetorically.
Still, there’s apparently a fifth Indiana Jones in the works, so he’s not completely done yet, and according to another report on Collider, Rick McCallum said that Lucas is taking “a little bit of rest, now I think he can set up the next chapter of his life and figure out, ‘Okay, do I have a new set of films, a new kind of films that I want to do? That’s what we hope and wait anxiously to hear from him on.'”
Whether he makes another movie again or not, Lucas has changed filmmaking forever good, bad or indifferent, and there are very few people who actually make that kind of mark. Sure, there’s a lot of losers complaining about his movies, but Star Wars changed film technology for good and advanced it by a wide mile.
Plus, it’s greatest legacy may be that the original trilogy probably launched and inspired more filmmakers than any modern day film you can think of. A 10 year old kid isn’t going to watch an Ingmar Bergman film and want to be a filmmaker, if anything, it will probably put him to sleep. But seeing Star Wars at a young age for a lot of people, well, it made them want to figure out the magic, and try to do the same thing themselves.
