r/MadeMeSmile • u/moonpies4everyone • 27d ago

This letter from Ron Howard to Newsweek after they grilled 9 year old Jake Lloyd’s performance in The Phantom Menace. Favorite People

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u/Skatcatla 27d ago

They’ll put the blame absolutely anywhere but where it belongs: on the fact that George Lucas is a shitty writer.

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u/GiraffesAndGin 27d ago

George Lucas is your typical sci-fi writer. He can build an intricate and intriguing world with plenty of moving parts and factions, but he can't write good dialogue, and he introduces way too many characters that end up hurting the development of the protagonist(s) and antagonist(s).

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u/mjacksongt 27d ago

Basically, George Lucas - like nearly every writer ever - needs an editor who will actually challenge them.

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u/AccomplishedRush3723 27d ago

"George, you can type this shit, but you sure can't say it!" - Harrison Ford

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u/Volgyi2000 27d ago

This is hearsay on my part, but I had a friend who had a friend on the Prequel sets and what he told me is that George has no idea how to direct actors. Like he's actually terrible at giving direction.

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u/ValhallaForKings 27d ago

How many skills can one person have 

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u/Fzrit 27d ago edited 26d ago

Problem is that Lucas fired anyone who tried to give him advice contrary to what he wanted to do in the Prequels. Watch all the behind the scenes stuff.

Lucas famously hated Empire Strikes Back (the highest rated Star Wars movie till date) because of how little input he had on that movie, and he disagreed with pretty much all the best parts in it.

With the Prequels he refused to just stick to what he's good at (sci-fi ideas), and became a control freak who wanted to do everything from a chair on a computer. He basically viewed actors as robots/tools to be told what to do, just read their lines and then back to CGI.

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u/ValhallaForKings 27d ago

By the time I am a multi million dollar art guy, if a bunch of people start arguing with me on my own damn baby, I would fire them and get someone to agree with me too.

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u/JaesopPop 27d ago

People absolutely blamed George Lucas lol

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u/Roflkopt3r 27d ago

The same happened with the non-Lucas Sequels as well.

The loudest critics of Episode 8/TLJ blamed "wokeness" and the actors instead of the writing.

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u/Tripleberst 26d ago

He's not just a shitty writer, he is a shitty director. The director is the person who is responsible for getting the actors to emote the way that he needs them to in order to portray the appropriate emotions on screen. So for one thing, he wrote a 9 year old character like an adult but then had an actor casted that simply wasn't capable of pulling it off naturally and on his own (i.e. without direction).

You can see this issue along with the other major acting complaints within the movie. Portman is stiff, Christiansen is incredibly awkward, McGregor is probably the best natural actor and even his performance came off a bit stilted. If you have that much solid acting talent in your movies and you can't get them to emote, you (the director) are fucking bad at your job, period.

The suffering of Jake Lloyd, Best, Christiansen, and anyone else tainted by those movies (maybe Ray Park) is on George Lucas. You can't do a horrible job and then blame people for reacting negatively, even if that negativity is misplaced.

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u/Skatcatla 26d ago

He's both a shitty writer AND a shitty director. There's a reason he brought Lawrence Kasdan back.

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u/Sonofbluekane 27d ago

He's a shitty writer but at least he had creative ideas. Disney Star Wars is worthless AI mush

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u/Fzrit 27d ago edited 26d ago

Disney Star Wars has great cast, music, shot composition, editing, etc. It's just all let down by terrible writers, and so the writing is all that people remember.

The Prequels had some really cool interesting sci-fi ideas, but Lucas didn't know how to write (or direct) a movie with those ideas. Basically every aspect of movie-making was neglected or forgotten with the Prequels.

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u/David_the_Wanderer 26d ago

Lucas is not a creative writer, lol. He's built all of Star Wars off other successful movies and Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

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u/esmifra 26d ago

I don't even consider him a particularly shitty writer. We are all better at some things worse at others. Movie making is a collaborative work, involving hundreds of people for that reason. Normally each person checks the other persons work and fixes flaws or improves them.

Even the things we are good at, there's always errors or tunnel vision of our own work, we are biased about our own work. Checks and balances, independent reviews, are crucial because of it

The problem with the star wars prequels is that Lucas had all the power and surrounded himself of people that idolised him which made impossible for others to fix his shortcomings and improve on his work.

Honestly I even think looking from a continuous story thread his ideas were solid, the execution and editing were the main flaws.

The new last trilogy had the opposite problem, action scenes and dialogue were ok, but the continuous story thread was a shit show.

Lucas was a victim of his own success in the prequels.

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u/brainomancer 27d ago

George Lucas is a shitty writer.

I blame people like you for the Disney Star Wars films. Those are the only Star Wars movies you should ever be allowed to watch ever again.

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u/LossforNos 27d ago

Lawrence Kasdan

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u/ValhallaForKings 27d ago

They are coarse and irritating! They fly now!

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u/Cronstintein 27d ago

I’d still take those over the prequels.

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u/SecreteMoistMucus 27d ago

You have been banned from /r/prequelmemes

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u/brainomancer 27d ago

Yeah, we know. You are the only people who enjoyed Rise of Skywalker.

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u/Fzrit 27d ago edited 26d ago

ROS was utter shit and it has no reason to exist, but it never committed the ultimate crime of making me fall asleep or start thinking about something other than the movie. All the action scenes in ROS are dumb as hell, but they were at least watchable. The actors acted. Effects were alright. Overall 2/10, maybe 3/10.

But the Prequels just felt so incredibly long and boring. Literally every scene involving any dialogue was shot flat like a boardroom meeting. Even the fight scenes were mercilessly dragged out to the point where they became boring and the dance choreography lost impact. Too many parts where either nothing is happening, or some CGI sequence is getting dragged far too long. Jarring tone-deaf humor scenes mixed randomly with serious sullen scenes. I physically can't rewatch the Prequels without pulling my phone out or falling asleep, and for me that's the worst thing any movie can do (no matter how bad it is). That's a 0/10.

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u/brainomancer 26d ago

If you thought Rise of Skywalker was cooler than this then there is something fundamentally wrong with your taste in movies and you should be shamed into silence about it for the rest of your life starting today.

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u/Fzrit 26d ago edited 26d ago

Call me crazy but I evaluate movies as a whole. I don't judge a movie based on a fan linking me their favorite 3 minute clip from it. If that's how you evaluate movies, then more power to you. You'll be in good company with everyone else who saw the Prequels when they were age 6-10, and who as adults cream their pants whenever a Jedi pulls out a lightsaber. Nothing wrong with that. I won't shame your taste in movies for thinking the Prequels were masterpieces or something.

The Disney sequels were utter trash from a writing and character perspective, and they have no reason to exist. But the Prequels were bad in every perspective. With the Prequels we saw a George Lucas who basically fired anyone who disagreed with him and proceeded to forget the basics of moviemaking, screenwriting, dialogue, story, etc.

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u/brainomancer 26d ago

The reason you like the Disney franchise so much is because you will accept whatever corporate lowest-common-denominator slop gets shit out in front of you. If the characters aren't engaging in "quirky" Marvel-movie banter in every scene, you get bored and start looking at your phone.

Stop talking to me. Enjoy your Disney movies. They were made for people with your taste.