Play It Again, George

From cinemablend, Luke Skywalker had the dark side of the force. Han Solo had vile gangsters. Indiana Jones had Nazis. Movie fandom has an enemy even darker than all of those, however – the man responsible for bringing each of those epic battles to the screen: George Lucas. For all of the good Lucas has created, the man is a menace to fandom, and is showing his true colors again with this year’s potential blockbuster, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

First off, let’s debunk that myth that Lucas has done a ton for fandom. While Lucas is a fantastic idea man, most of his decent contributions have been to filmmaking as an industry rather than as a filmmaker himself. Take away Star Wars (the best of which came from other writers and directors) and Indiana Jones (which Lucas produced and came up with story ideas for, but didn’t actually write), and you’ve got a very small library of films Lucas is responsible for. Sure, there are some classics in there like Willow and American Graffiti, but you’ve also got the independent studio killing THX-1138, Radioland Murders, and Captain EO to contend with. Basically, if Lucas hadn’t been responsible for Industrial Light & Magic, his name would be considerably less legendary. You can’t deny the industry effect his special effects company has had, but most of that is because of the artists involved with that, not because of Lucas directly, but only as the guy who hired the right people.

But Lucas does have Star Wars as a huge accomplishment, although it’s probably not too much of a stretch to assume that someone could eventually have come up with something similar. After all, if a million monkeys at a million typewriters could eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare, how hard would it be for another visionary to come up with a story built on a foundation of archetypes and time honored legends? Sure, they may not have had the radical approach of capitalizing on the franchise’s merchandising – something Lucas pretty much originated. Unfortunately, that same approach quickly led to movies that were more about generating characters to cash in on instead of solid storytelling.

After a decade long delay, fandom went nuts with the news that Lucas was extending his Star Wars franchise with a new trilogy. In the beginning, fans anxiously awaited each new tidbit we could get our hands on. The Internet wasn’t quite as prolific then, so rumors were hard to come by. That didn’t stop interest in the Phantom Menace from practically crashing the Star Wars site when the trailer launched online, and debating what the title could refer to on movie forums everywhere. When the movie finally came out, however, disappointment was high. Even though I was someone who enjoyed Phantom Menace, I could understand how fans were reacting. Lucas had kept us waiting for sixteen years, only to deliver marketable characters like Jar Jar Binks, Darth Maul, and Watto, none of whom really added much of interest to the world we had all loved for so long.

All of this is ancient history, of course. We all know how people reacted to The Phantom Menace as well as the other two movies in the prequel trilogy. With each movie Lucas seemed to discover what had made people interested in his universe in the first place, proving that his original trilogy may have been more of a fluke than the brilliant epic story we had given Lucas credit for. So, if all of this is ancient history, why revisit it? Because, those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, and Lucas clearly hasn’t learned.

You may have noticed solid information on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is hard to come by. Even rumors seem to disappear quickly from the Internet. This is no mistake, my friends. This is the long arm of Lucas stretching out and attempting to remove anything that may spoil his film before it has its day. Officially released information tends to be similar in scope, offering different footage of the same few moments from the movie. Meanwhile, rebel websites who try to run anything unofficial are threatened with being shut down (been there, done that).

Lucas has already started making his apologies, stating in interviews with Steven Spielberg that everyone is bound to be disappointed because the expectations surrounding the film are so high. Lucas remains confident that is what spoiled The Phantom Menace - not a story that was weighed down with dry political maneuvering or CG characters clearly designed for toy sales, but fandom’s own expectations after a sixteen year wait. I have to wonder, if the flannel one truly deserves that, why bother making another Indiana Jones movie, or continuing the Star Wars saga? Because it’s not true. Our level of expectation can be met. Effort just has to be made to please the fans instead of selling toys.

Just in case Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has what it takes to please fans, Lucas is keeping a witch hunt going for anyone who might spoil his picture. Almost anyone running a story about the existence of Indiana Jones spoilers (even if that story encourages fans to avoid them and contains no spoilers itself) receives a cease and desist. Clearly this is a machine more interested in wiping out evidence than taking the time to actually read what was being said. Our inquiries have led to the possibility that this machine wasn’t just the typical studio wheels grinding, but a Lucas-led hunt to keep information off the net – regardless of how such a movement might affect fans.

If Lucas truly wanted to keep his movie a secret, there are ways to go about doing that. Just look at how J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves managed to film an entire monster movie without anyone really knowing about it. Maybe that’s not a fair comparison – a small, new monster movie with a time honored franchise. How about this one – Michael Bay managed to keep a lot of spoilers about Transformers off the Internet without too much cyber-bullying, and Bay admits a lot of that is credited to Lucas’s Indy partner Steven Spielberg, who gave Bay pointers in secrecy.

It seems to me that Lucas is better at pissing off fandom than satisfying them. It’s been 25 years since the filmmaker came up with an idea that inspired audiences, more if you buy into the story that Lucas mapped out most of Star Wars’s long history back when he created the original movie. As an idea man, you can’t deny what Lucas has come up with, but from a public relations standpoint George Lucas is a nightmare, destroying his own creations as he builds on them, then pissing off fans as he attempts to maintain his stronghold on his own creations.

Perhaps Lucas should learn from his successful contributions to the filmmaking industry – come up with a good idea, hire the right people, then get out of the way so a successful product can be made. Just as ILM can make other movies soar, maybe it’s time for Lucas to contribute good ideas and then let people more competent and in touch with today’s audiences (and willing to work with fandom instead of against them) make those ideas soar.

Let’s hope that Lucas hasn’t cursed the latest Indiana Jones picture with his hands-on approach for both the movie (passing up a Frank Darabont script and deciding to write it himself?) and the publicity (threatening websites is never a good community building move). Of course, to hear the producer speak, we’re all going to hate it because the movie he’s put on film can’t compete with the movie we’ve all made in our heads, which is even more incentive to get Darth George out of the picture and let filmmakers who can compete with those expectations take the reins and carry Indy, Luke, and the rest forward.