George Lucas is known to everyone as the creator of Star Wars, perhaps the greatest science fiction franchise of all time. That side of Lucas is familiar. Those films came out of his own mind – a strange, personal mix of Joseph Campbell and Flash Gordon, of Samurai films and Westerns and World War 2 movies. Lucas created that world. Chewbacca was inspired by Lucas’s dog who used to ride in the front seat of his car. Luke Skywalker’s first name sounds suspiciously like Lucas. The Millennium Falcon was apparently inspired by Lucas seeing a half-eaten hamburger with an olive sticking out of it. This is Lucas as a creator, but there are many sides to Lucas. There’s Lucas the Businessman who instead of a large salary demanded the merchandising rights – after the success of the film making Star Wars toys was like printing money, and Lucas made a killing. There’s Lucas the Innovator, the Lucas who used pioneering special effects, first practical effects for the Original Trilogy, and then ground-breaking computer generated effected for the Prequels. But the Lucas that is not focused on enough in my opinion is Lucas the Director.
To get to know Lucas the Director, you have to go back to before Star Wars. Star Wars in a way ended Lucas’s directorial career. He made six films. He made two films, THX 1138 and American Graffiti and then since 1977 he has only directed Star Wars films. For such an important filmmaker to only have six films is remarkable. Of course, six films is understating Lucas’s influence. After the first Star Wars in 1977 he was too exhausted and burned out to want to direct the next two films in the series so he took a role as Executive Producer, a title that dramatically underplayed his role – without him the films wouldn’t exist so Lucas was as hands on as he possibly could be without getting in the way of the two directors he hired: Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand. He also had a pivotal role in conceiving the Indiana Jones films with Steven Spielberg, as well as producing projects such as Howard the Duck and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. But still, only six films where he is officially the director and two thirds of them are Star Wars.
Lucas is to my mind not respected enough for his directorial work. I’ve previously made the case for the rehabilitation of the critically maligned Star Wars prequels. Revenge of the Sith to my mind is Lucas’s best movie and a fine culmination of his career. It has all of the themes that have driven his work: the nature of family, the rise of totalitarianism. It has the technical mastery and special effects he is famous for – the final battle on the lava planet of Mustafar is breath-taking in its operatic and emotional beauty every time I see it – and it is a fine end to his life’s work. However, if you really want to be convinced by Lucas as a director you need to watch his earlier films to understand a different path he could have gone down.
Lucas was born in Modesto California in 1944. It was a small town and there was little to do so Lucas developed in interest in cars and racing, taking part in the emerging hot rod culture. A few days before his high school graduation Lucas suffered a serious car crash; his vehicle flipped several times and his seatbelt broke, ejecting him and possibly saving his life. After a long stint in hospital Lucas lost interest in racing – filmmaking became his priority. He left home and began to the attend the University of Southern California, one of the earliest schools with a film programme. At USC Lucas made his famous early film Look at Life. As part of an animation course at USC students had to make a one minute short film incorporating basic camera techniques. Lucas took the assignment one step further, adding sound and creating an abstract montage of unsettling political images. The film was a hit at USC and helped develop Lucas’s reputation as one of the leading next generation filmmakers.
THX 1138 was Lucas’s first real film. An expansion of an earlier short film THX takes place in a dystopian future. Sex and love are banned. Mind-altering drugs are mandatory and keep the population in check. Workers, clad in white and heads shaven, perform tasks in what is essentially a giant Amazon warehouse, under constant supervision. Citizens are commanded to ‘Work hard, increase production, prevent accidents and be happy.’ The film doesn’t quite work for me, and it didn’t work for either critics or audiences. Although made on a tiny budget, it was still a flop. However, THX 1138 shows so much promise. The film is visually striking, all white backgrounds and creepy automatons. The sound design by Walther Murch is meticulous and inventive. And the ideas are all there. The movie is eerily prescient, and powerful, through it’s combination of stark colour, light and sound. For a first film it is a truly excellent effort – Lucas was just 26 when he made it.
THX 1138 taught Lucas a lot. Most notably that 70s audiences did not want to see a depressing dystopian picture, as the political climate itself was depressing enough. On the back of THX, Lucas wrote American Graffiti, a personal story about car culture in Modesto California. The film concerns a group of teenagers and their adventures during one night in the summer of 1962. The three main characters represent different parts of Lucas’s persona and their stories intertwine during the film. American Graffiti is one of those beautiful, charming, light 70s films. It has a killer oldies soundtrack from Buddy Holly to the Beach Boys, all coordinated throughout the film by the legendary radio DJ Wolfman Jack. The film has a vintage, documentary-like look as Lucas wanted to accurately portray his childhood. The movie is also genuinely funny with charming performances from an ensemble cast, including a young Harrison Ford. Made on a small budget, the film proved to be an unexpected hit making over $140 million. By making a warm, coming-of-age comedy Lucas had tapped into the cultural zeitgeist.
American Graffiti should have made things much easier for Lucas, but he still had a hard time getting Star Wars, a story that he had been working on for years, made. All but one studio turned him down. But, as they say, you only need one. Star Wars had a notoriously troubled production – no one thought that Lucas’s weird space movie for children would be a hit. But a hit it was, becoming the highest-grossing film of all-time. The rest as they say is history. But history could always have taken a different path. Perhaps Lucas never became obsessed with science fiction serials as a child. Perhaps every single studio rejected Star Wars and it never got made. Then Lucas probably creates more independent, experimental low budget movies. And he’s a more critically respected director, because Lucas clearly had the skill and vision and talent to keep making interesting films.
Instead, he made Star Wars and presided over two trilogies of films as well as an entire entertainment franchise including video games, television shows and books and comics. And that has paradoxically hurt his reputation as a filmmaker. Simply put, he became too successful to be taken seriously. His movies were seen as vulgar and commercial and too reliant on special effects. But, if you’ve seen Lucas’s early work it is clear that is not that case. Lucas made personal, intimate films in the style of the 70s ‘New Hollywood’ along with other directors such as Robert Altman, Brain De Palma and Francis Ford Coppola. In the ‘New Hollywood’, the director, not the studio was king. The director’s vision was paramount and Star Wars is a shining example of ‘New Hollywood’ filmmaking. It’s a personal story and one that was never designed to as popular as it was. Lucas wasn’t giving the public what it wanted, he gave them something they didn’t even know they wanted.
The success of Star Wars helped to kill ’New Hollywood’ – though the movement didn’t exactly help itself as a string of flops such as Heaven’s Gate (1980) and One From the Heart (1982) convinced the studio that auteur’s needed to be reigned in. Star Wars along with Jaws was the first real summer blockbuster and it marked the change from a more artistic, small-scale moviemaking to one that emphasised commerciality above all. Lucas the Businessman may have contributed to that. He may have become the very thing he had tried to avoid – by emphasizing independent filmmaking that was not corporate, Lucas paradoxically became the head of a corporation, and then in 2012 he sold it to the most sinister corporation of all, Disney. But, let’s not blame Lucas the Director for the sins of the other Lucas’s. His filmography is magnificent and inventive, and that’s even without the Star Wars saga. I’m a Star Wars fan, but above all I’m a George Lucas fan. If you haven’t yet seen Lucas’s early work I urge you to seek it out.
This article originally appeared in Interkom magazine.
Excelent reading!