back to article 'Why would I make any more Star Wars movies?'

This was the week in which Google tiptoed into the weird end of the news when it patented tracking your fridge - yes, your fridge. The designs describe registering the change of ownership of an appliance as well as storing info about its usage in a communications card. You might have thought that the patent was just going to …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    'have you tried turning it on and off again'

    Or, as is commonly said in our office '<sigh> just bounce the fucker'.

  2. nematoad

    Well, it may or may not be a good thing that George Lucas is threatening to retire. Some of his stuff is good Star Wars, some not so good "Howard the Duck" being an example of the latter.

    With "Red Tails" Lucas has put right a wrong that has lasted for far too long. The 332nd Fighter Group or "Tuskegee Airmen" have never been given the credit which they are due. As a bomber escort group they were exemplary, they gained a reputation for never abandoning the bombers assigned to their care and it was only the colour prejudice of senior commanders that denied several of the pilots of the group from gaining ace status.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      > With "Red Tails" Lucas has put right a wrong that has lasted for far too long

      It's basically a remake.

      http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114745/

      Lucas is retiring because his creative bankruptcy has become obvious to absolutely everyone.....

      1. Max_Normal

        Lucas - a film maker not a storyteller?

        Did Lucas every really have much creativity? Star Wars itself was just a remake of 633 squadron with robots wasn't it? Funny how people started describing his movies as shit when he started writing his own storylines (Raiders notwithstanding but a big raspberry to Crystal Skull).

        Maybe he should have done remakes of "The Guns of Navarone", "The Cruel Sea" and "Lawrence of Arabia" with droids and Wookies, instead of the Ep 1-3 Star Wars plotlines he finally plumped for.

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OZq-tlJTrU

        Dunno about this film, he's obviously been obsessed with WWII aeroplane movies for some time, I guess he can afford to fund his own hobbies and interests these days, but I'd bet my left teste that 633 squadron is better.

    2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Howard the Duck

      HtD is a far better film than any of the dreadful SW prequels. Idiotic? Sure. But it has some amusing lines ("Something's growing inside me, replicating and superseding my internal organs!" "We'll stop at a bathroom."), an actual plot, and some decent acting, particularly from Jeffery Jones - all things missing from SW 1-3.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge

    Ah, one in which you have to pay for a univesity education twice. Once at source then later on with higher taxes.

    1. Naughtyhorse
      Trollface

      awwww...

      assuming you get a decent job that is. :-)

      so much fairer if eveyone else gets to pay for your education and you get all the rewards eh?

      1. spiny norman
        Flame

        Education, education, ......

        My mother's elderly tory friends came up with this 10 years ago. "Why should I pay for other peoples' children to become doctors?". Now they complain they have to wait weeks to see their GP and, when they do, the counter assistant in Boots has better diagnostic skills.

  4. Heironymous Coward
    FAIL

    Idiot kids...

    "I've worked with kids who will urinate in a bottle in their room, rather than leave the screen."

    WTF? Wouldn't diapers be both easier (hands-free, eyes can stay on the screen), more risk-free (no bottle to knock over or fill up), and solve more problems (can handle a bowel movement).

    1. Vic
      WTF?

      > WTF? Wouldn't diapers be both easier

      A catheter is yet easier - in operation at any rate.

      Getting the damn thing off can be troublesome, though - especially if no-one has told you about shaving...

      Vic.

      [I'm a diver. It's not half as glamorous as it looks in the movies]

    2. Jaruzel

      ...

      If urinating in a bottle was good enough for Howard Hughes, then it should be good enough for the rest of us. :)

    3. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Urinating *into* a bottle would certainly be easier, unless it's a very large bottle. How do those kids get in there in the first place? I realize modern youf are said to be spineless, but this is ridiculous.

  5. Bernard M. Orwell
    FAIL

    Re: Idiot Kids

    "I've worked with kids who will urinate in a bottle in their room, rather than leave the screen."

    Translation...

    "I've watched a particular South Park episode and leapt to some conclusions that will keep the gossip-mongers, ill-educated media and the PC brigade happy, increasing my social standing with those groups."

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Translation...

      "I've watched a particular South Park episode and leapt to some conclusions that will keep the gossip-mongers, ill-educated media and the PC brigade happy, increasing my social standing with those groups."

      "

      actually....

      an ex girlfriend of mine had a son, and from the age of 15 onwards, would sooner piss in a bottle in his room than go to the toilet dragging himself away from his tv or games console.... #scumbag

  6. Lloyd
    FAIL

    Probably just as well

    From what I've read it's a shit film, which will make a nice change after the Oscar winner that was Indy 4.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Here's why...

    "Why would I make any more Star Wars movies?"

    ...when I can just use our super computers to do a little cut & paste from all the material already on file and make our computers generate new movies all by themselves ?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      You forgot

      'and run it through the 3dalizer'.

  8. wheany

    George Lucas

    "Why would I make any more, when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?"

    Or you could try not being a terrible person. That might also work.

    1. Lamont Cranston

      He does appear to have confused his constant tinkering with the existing films,

      with the act of making new ones.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Good call, Mr. George

    You should indeed NOT make more movies. Why, I hear you ask ? Well because the three first ones were very good, the three last ones were dismal, Jar Jar Binks is the product of a deranged mind, the bloke that played young Darth was an affront an the cartoons and merchandising were just insuling.

    If that is all you can come up with you should indeed apply your undeniable talents elswhere.

    1. Vic

      > Jar Jar Binks is the product of a deranged mind

      Jar Jar Binks: a problem in need of a Land Rover, a length of chain, and a motorway...

      Vic.

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  11. John A Blackley

    Wow!

    I'm honored to be in the company of all of you who appear to know George Lucas personally - to the point of know that he's not a nice person, even.

    I assume that everyone who's diminishing his career achievements have achieved at least as much or more.

    1. dogged

      If only it were possible to diminishing his alarming neck.

    2. Graham Dawson Silver badge

      You don't have to be a celebrity chef to know when food tastes like shit. Likewise movies. I've achieved a lot of things that I've wanted to achieve in my life (including what I consider to be the perfect low heat chilli) but I've never made a movie. Does that disqualify me from saying that George Lucas has produced a very large amount of crap over the years?

      It's obvious that he had a great writing team around him on the first three movies. He didn't write more than spec scripts. People told him when his ideas were stupid and made him change them. On the latter three movies he was in complete creative control. He had nobody to say "That's a stupid idea George" and it really, really shows. Oh how it shows...

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Woz FTW..

    I knew I liked one of the Apple blokes more than the other...

  13. Ron Christian

    "Why would I make any more Star Wars movies?"

    Totally agree, there's no reason for George Lucas to make any more Star Wars movies. But what if someone else made Star Wars movies? Could it be that the idea is still good, it's just the recent implementation that sucked?

    1. Dave Bell

      I have very mixed feelings about the way that the original three Star Wars movies have been reworked. The original space-battle seems used ground-breaking tech, and we seem to have lost so much of that with CGI replacements, but making Mos Eisley look more like a busy small city often worked (one or two visual jokes, not such a good idea). None of that changed the story.

      The big problem can be summed up by the declaration that "Han Solo shot first". The first movie to be made enthralled a generation. It combined being a huge success with acquiring cult status.

      Mess with the story at your peril.

  14. illiad
    Trollface

    "Why would I make any more Star Wars movies?"

    "I make waaaaaayy to much money renting my characters to rich advertisers like voda!!! :) :) :) "

    yes, pay me plenty you must... :P

  15. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    pay for education?

    "Ah, one in which you have to pay for a univesity education twice. Once at source then later on with higher taxes."

    Like most idiotic political ideas, this is doomed to fail spectacularly.

    The state pays your fees with loans that will be recovered from you via the tax system later. So you take the money, go to school, get a degree. And then promptly clear off overseas to somewhere sunny where the UK taxman's sticky fingers don't reach and you'll pay the same tax as everyone else. Once you're 50, anything outstanding is written off, so if you want to work in blighty again, you can do.

    So not only will the idiot politicians not recover all the money spent on education like they think they will, they'll also force a large number of those they've paid to educate overseas - leading to a loss in general tax revenue and a skills shortage.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Australian HECS

      This system (minus he writeoff at 50) has been in place in Australia since the '90s. Despite the same misgivings as being aired here, the system does indeed recoup much of the money. The only notable hole are the "professional students" who just keep doing new courses and never get a job, but without the HECS system they would be on social security (the dole) anyway.

  16. M7S

    I think that George doesn't realise that his work situation is actually rather ordinary.

    "Why would I make any more, when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?" could probably be applied to most of the jobs that most of the people I know are in. Management these days is like that.

    He's been lucky in that he now has enough money to retire and indulge his whims and good luck to him. I hope not to forget the effect the opening scenes of his film had on me in 1977. For that I am grateful. I can remember my parents dismissing it as "nonsense, men in silver suits with ray guns". If the studios had done the same to his idea we might be far worse off for SF entertainment.

    Later sins can be forgiven, lest we become hypocrites and stifle too much the creative urges of any to come after him.

  17. Alien8n
    Alien

    More Star Wars movies?

    Part of the problem is that there's a wealth of exciting and diverse material to choose from, from the books (Splinter of the Mind's Eye springs to mind), the games (there's some excellent story material in the earlier Jedi Knight PC games) and as far back even as the original Star Wars comics by Stan Lee. All that choice, and we still end up with Jar Jar Binks....

  18. ManOfPrinciple

    SHAME, SHAME, SHAME : Bad Journalism Reg, where is your INTEGRITY?

    The subtitle "Plus 'I've worked with kids who will urinate in a bottle in their room'" is deliberately mis-leading. Next to a picture of George Lucas, it leads people to think George is a pedophile with a fetish which is not true.

    Children peeing is placed in the context of George directing actors. I had to read the entire story to discover it it was a completely unrelated person.

    Perhaps this was your intention : to DECEIVE your readers with false sensationalism to get them to read the article. If that was the case well it BACK FIRED because you lost me - I'm LEAVING The Reg for good.

    Shame on you Reg.

    1. Vic

      You registered just to barf that one out?

      A "moral high ground" username, a bunch of toss in the comment, ...

      I smell something disingenuous.

      Vic.

      1. ManOfPrinciple

        Absolutely! I registered to have a say because it was a public holiday so I had plenty of time and I get really pissed off with bad journalism - especially when it denigrates one of my heros.

        BTW: I get pissed off at the prejudiced press against Apple over the last decade - but don't get me started on that.

        Its a pity that honesty and courage is rewarded with suspicion.

        1. Vic

          > Its a pity that honesty and courage is rewarded with suspicion.

          Honesty? You said :-

          > I'm LEAVING The Reg for good

          Which has proven to be neither true (you haven't left) nor meaningful (you only joined to flounce out).

          Vic.

          1. ManOfPrinciple

            Dear Vic,

            You are wrong on all counts. It seems like you are desperate in your attempts to cast mud upon me now. So, let me spell it out for you:

            1) I will no longer read the reg (I have not since I said I would not) - I have taken it out of my list of website I load every morning to read.

            I refreshed this one page of posts to see what responses I am getting. Its unfortunate you are the only one responding and you care not to discuss ethics - just give the rest of us a great example of a lack of them.

            2) I joined to make a statement. Why is it so hard for you to believe that some people in this world actually have ethics and the moral courage to speak up about it? I guess this is a new concept for you - mores the pity.

            If I don't respond to this forum anymore - you'll know why. I probably won't refresh this page anymore and hence my promise and honesty are intact and you will be speaking into a void of people who don't care about your negative pessimism.

            Adios

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re:

              What a remarkably silly man you are.

              We won't miss you.

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