Friday, May 11, 2007

Web and Mud Slinging

As has been pointed out in the comments of my Spider-man 3 review, George Lucas has recently been quoted as calling the movie "silly." Yes, this is like the pot calling the kettle a talentless hack. And I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that Spidey just beat Sith's box office records. Jealousy is an ugly thing.

Even if Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith had somehow not sucked even more than The Phantom Menace, George Lucas would still be the man who gave us Jar Jar Binks. He has about as much standing to judge silly as a FOX television executive has to evaluate what makes a quality show.

Speaking of television... there's another area where George Lucas and the folks surrounding him have no clue what's what. For a while now, there have been occasional news stories about the Star Wars television series under development. Rick McCallum has said on a few occasions that "it will run 100 episodes."

Do they honestly think that's how television works? You just decide a show is going to run 100 episodes, and it does? Someone tell Tim Minear, Joss Whedon, and Aaron Sorkin! I suppose that yes, on the basis of it being Star Wars, they could probably get some network to commit to a full season of it sight unseen. An HBO or a cable network might even sign up for two seasons (though at 13 or so episodes each, I'd imagine). Producing television is not at all like being the "small, independent filmmaker" George Lucas fancies himself. (None of the three words in that description is really true, is it?)

I don't know why I'm at all surprised to hear new tales of the anti-reality bubble that seems to surround George Lucas' brain. I think he had us at "ex-squueeeeze me."

1 comment:

GiromiDe said...

What's more confusing or aggravating is that this film beat some box office record. From the trailers alone, I could tell this one wasn't going to live up to the previous two installments. I haven't seen this myself, but given the lukewarm reviews from people I know and trust, I'm going to wait for rental.