Posted on 12/28/2017 2:06:32 PM PST by otness_e
And quite frankly, it's that revelation from Chris Taylor and similar sources that acts as the reason why I'm rooting for the Galactic Empire DESPITE their being villains and no longer root for the so-called "heroes." No one tricks me into rooting for the Vietcong and gets away with it.
Also, might as well post some other links here, considering that there's no way that I know of to post the original hyperlinks in the article (this is my first time posting an article instead of just adding comments to it):
CNN = http://edition.cnn.com/2017/12/18/entertainment/star-wars-politics/index.html
critique = https://nypost.com/2014/09/21/how-star-wars-was-secretly-george-lucas-protest-of-vietnam/
the 1960s and 70s America = http://www.history.com/news/the-real-history-that-inspired-star-wars
I also don't know how to add in pictures, and believe me, if I knew how to, I'd post the pictures as well.
Now it is but the originals were just a good story to tell and weren’t trying to convey any outright political bent. Yeah Lucas interjected it in prequels and the current writers and directors injected it throughout the current films but originally one could hardly tell
I think that the American Spectator had an article about a decade a go that made the case for rooting for the Galactic Empire.
Nope, all the way back to the beginning. The story spun out from George and Francis working on Apocalypse Now, George wanted to do a scifi version, the Rebels are the VC.
Normally I don’t like Freepers who just answer without having read the OP.
This time I will just let go myself:
Star Wars was a child fantasy, a space fairytale between good and evil with good winning and even getting a darned golden olympic medal at the end as well.
Empire is only cool because Darth Vader is a bit of a bad a&(//&” not sure what language I can use here.
It was ww2 in space with space samurays. How cool was that?
The new movie is ok, arguably one of the better ones if not the very best one.
It killed off one of the most annoying characters to ever be commited to film, Luke, in a manner fitting the whiny farmboy we met.
Though apparently feminism might actually have destroyed Phasma who was supposed to be Vaderish, but since they did not want a woman to act like the patriarchy we had to make due with admiral pink hair gender studies doing her thing.
May the force be with you all and merry christmas.
And, Skål.
Anyone miss the irony here? The democrats create a fascist military industrial complex with their EPA, green energy, electric cars, war on coal, etc.
Was Lucas really motivated by long held leftist beliefs, or were his later claims just attempts to curry favor amongst the latter day woke folk in Hollywood? No doubt he was considered a George Pal style, lightweight fantasy filmmaker and not a true artist like Scorsese or Coppola. Everything that was written at the outset was that Lucas dreamed of updating the old Flash Gordon serials. In fact he initially tried to purchase the rights to the Flash Gordon character in order to fulfill his dream.
No matter, because judging the film at face value, one of the charms of the original Star Wars film was that it almost entirely non political. Critics pointed this out in their reviews at the time.
Unfortunately, as discostu pointed out, even the originals were political, they were just disguised politics similar to Goebbels’ views or the views of the Wachowskis in the Matrix trilogy. Don’t believe me? Read Lucas’s own 1973 draft for the film and his commentary (and yes, I actually did photograph those pages directly from my phone):
https://otnesse.tumblr.com/post/162081709399/this-is-from-george-lucas-1973-notes-for-star
ping
I have never been to a Star Wars movies since the first one in 1977. They lost me with those words scrolling across the screen, "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.................
Based on this, he really WAS motivated by long-held leftist beliefs:
https://otnesse.tumblr.com/post/162081709399/this-is-from-george-lucas-1973-notes-for-star
The first image in particular.
Besides, Walter Murch, one of Lucas’s associates at American Zoetrope, already made it pretty clear that was indeed Lucas’ intention from the get go if his book “The Conversations” is of any indication. Even Ian McDiarmid made it pretty clear that Lucas was trying to push politics onto impressionable minds since at LEAST Return of the Jedi if this interview is of any indication: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2005/nov/07/theatre1
If the Rebels are Viet Cong who are the Chi-Coms and Soviets arming and funding them?
Like all metaphors it’s imperfect.
Like all Communist fantasies, Stalinists lie. Always
The only Star Wars movie I feel is worth watching is Empire Strikes Back. Everything else sucks super star destroyers.
The male characters in this latest release are all portrayed as "men" who are either illogical, inept, emotional, incompetent, and unreliable, or a combination of all these combined, while the lead female characters are all solid, unemotional, pragmatic, decisive and heroic leaders who always make the right call.
I hated it.
“Anyone miss the irony here? The democrats create a fascist military industrial complex with their EPA, green energy, electric cars, war on coal, etc.”
Have never met Lucas himself (I did make a short film with his buddy Spielberg one time though but that's another story) however I know many who have worked alongside Lucas in film and business associations over the decades.
Given what they've consistently said, George Lucas is more conservative than most would realize. Part of it is his family background (his father was a rancher who believed in re-investing back into your companies) and George's VERY near fatal car wreck at 16 awakened him to his need for God's purpose for his life, not his own. Had the accident not happened, we probably would have seen George Lucas as a NASCAR driver in the same era as Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough.
He's a complex man. Can't really be pegged as a solid liberal or conservative. But the grief he got from the film industry bigwigs in the Seventies put him in a bind. Either play the liberal game or go home. In the end Lucas left Hollywood and went his own way, but still unable to disconnect completely. It's just the nature of the industry.
Decades from now there will be a biopic about George Lucas. In the right hands, helmed by someone looking for the big picture about his life, it will confound the hell out of a LOT of people who thought he was in "their" camp all along.
If it weren’t for the fact that he has repeatedly stated in multiple interviews, and more importantly, his 1973 story treatment draft for what would become A New Hope (which I posted twice earlier via my Tumblr account), that he based the good guys on the Vietcong and the Empire, the villains, on Nixon’s America, I’d believe your claims that he was closer to a conservative. However, he has repeatedly insisted such was the case, and what’s worse is that this time around, it actually IS backed up by his own handwriting dating back then (plus, apparently Lucas said his philosophy on filmmaking is that “the workers have the means of production”. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think conservatives would actually use Karl Marx as an inspiration for their work ethic.), and based on some of his comments about his ideas on democracy and dictatorships, he actually considers Robespierre’s France, of all things, the best part of the French Revolution, better than King Louis XVI and/or Napoleon anyways.
Besides, as you said, he went his own way and formed his own studio, so he technically had nothing to worry about in that regard if he mouths off, and there are plenty in Hollywood who managed to retain at least most Conservative principles and be open about them without being cast out or blacklisted, like Kelsey Grammar, Kirk Cameron, Clint Eastwood, and Kevin Sorbo, among others.
It’s entertainment. Just relax and enjoy it.
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