Is George Lucas a Great Director?

This may be a bit off topic from animation, but I'm just curious to hear all of your opinions. After watching the documentary on George Lucas and his journey to making Star Wars I decided to look more into George Lucas movies.
Whenever you think of George Lucas you think of Star Wars and you also think of him being one of the great directors, along side people like Scorsese or Spielberg. But I realized that not many of his movies were great. Yes, American Graffiti and the first Star Wars were great films, but the other films that he directed seems to have very mixed reviews.
Directors like Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino seem to consistently bring out great pieces of work, but with George Lucas only about 2-3 films that he directed really comes to mind. Sure, he created one of the greatest franchises ever and he also helped change the film industry with digital editing, but does that make him a great director?

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 28, 2018 at 9:43 AM

    I feel like Lucas is a great world builder and he can create intriguing characters, but the people behind brining his ideas to life are what really breath life into the franchise. In the documentary, a lot of what people said about him as a director was that he was high strung, a perfectionist, and was trying to involve himself in areas he didn't necessarily be helping in. I understand that this was all in hopes of seeing his vision fully realized, but it seems like as a director he's just over bearing. this is of course based solely on his work on A New Hope, I'm not sure what his directing style was like on American Graffiti or his student and independent films.

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  2. UnknownNovember 28, 2018 at 11:05 AM

    I had similar thoughts on Lucas following the screening yesterday too. I found myself really annoyed and frustrated by his process by the end. I would agree to call him a great world builder and producer but I'm not sure I would call him a great director, especially considering the comments Carrie Fisher kept making about how he treated her. To me, he came off as a pretentious and a bit of a jerk.
    Also did anyone notice Carrie was the only woman in the entire thing? They glazed over the fact that his ex wife edited the first film in about two sentences, even though she won an Oscar for it. It's crazy that no female crew were involved in anyway according to this.

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    Replies
    1. UnknownNovember 28, 2018 at 11:41 AM

      I absolutely agree!! I want ranting about this with some friends yesterday. What a prick! "There is no underwear in space"???? Like, did he make Harrison Ford tape his privates with gaffers tape? NO he made Carrie do it, and it is absolutely ridiculous and sexist. And how messed up was it how they treated that poor man in the R2D2 costume, forgetting him in the sun like that. I absolutely agree that they total glazed over his wife. Editing is basically the only thing that saved the film. Seeing the raw footage is an absolute CRINGE FEST.
      A lot of the "uphill battles" the doc kept referring to seemed to be created by Lucas' own incompetence. The studio was upset with him because he was weeks behind schedule and over budget! While any modern day director would be fired for. Like how they were talking about the issues when it came to the desert shoot. A lot of those issues could have been resolved with proper planning and preproduction. And my girlfriends and I could not help but recognize the privilege that came with his position. As a 20-something year old white boy entrusted with millions of dollars from the studio system even with all his issues and incompetence. They kept saying things like, "oh he was lucky enough to get this composer on this project no one believed in" Like could you image a person of color or a young woman receiving the resources he received from the studio system he claimed to be so resentful of. He was a spoiled brat. Maybe an unpopular opinion by my opinion none the less!

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    2. Tyler JennesNovember 28, 2018 at 3:01 PM

      The fact that the documentary glosses over Marcia Lucas gets even more shady when you think about that whole conspiracy where George changed so much in the Special Editions and ditched the Original Editions just to make it so Marcia wouldn't get residuals for the films, which (if confirmed) would be shameful. I think that without Marcia Lucas, Star Wars wouldn't be nearly as impactful as it ended up being.

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    3. jasonhNovember 30, 2018 at 5:15 AM

      wow, I hadn't heard that rumour before! that is damning if true! and makes me hate those the Special Editions even more!

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    4. Em ZarabetDecember 2, 2018 at 5:13 PM

      wow guys this thread really opened my eyes. honestly george lucas seemed kinda annoying in the video we watched, and jo I totally agree with you about his privilege!! Yes, I get he was super stressed, but the opportunities he had while making this movie were unbelievable and he was so lucky. I did find it pretty comforting, though, that this movie everyone thinks is so great actually faced a lot of problems and set backs while being made.

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  3. Tyler JennesNovember 28, 2018 at 2:55 PM

    Honestly, I don't even think George Lucas himself would consider himself to be a great director. He was always more of an idea guy than all his other Movie Brat buddies. I kinda view him as being more in line with Paul Schrader, who was more of a screenwriter who occasionally directed. In a way, what Paul Schrader was to Martin Scorsese, Lucas was to Steven Spielberg.

    Y'know, I think that there's some alternate timeline out there where Star Wars never got made, and instead we'd have Lucas continuing to make more low-budget flicks along the lines of American Graffiti and THX 1138. And to be fair, I really like those movies. It's tough, because one the one hand we have Star Wars, and all the massive technological advancements it gave the entire industry. On the other hand, we have a unique voice in the industry that was pretty much consumed by this franchise. I mean sure, he still was able to give us Indiana Jones and Willow, but it's interesting to think about what might have been.

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  4. UnknownNovember 28, 2018 at 4:16 PM

    Judging from the cast interviews, it seems like everyone was trying to politely say that George Lucas was a bad director. Hammil, Ford, and Fisher all said that Lucas was a poor communicator, which is a TERRIBLE thing to be when directing actors. He was clearly creative and had vision, but it seems like he was better suited for writing rather than directing.

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  5. UnknownDecember 2, 2018 at 4:54 PM

    I think George's main problem is that he not very good with dialogue/writing. As we saw in the documentary, what he would say to the actors after every take was largely the same. "Faster. More intense." Also there are many lines in the original film that most agree are not on par with the rest of the film. He was lucky the crew was giving him pointers about what did and didn't work for that movie. The prequels, however, had nobody advising him, and it really shows. The terrible dialogue, pointless scenes, and sub-par acting really don't work. Where I think George is at his best, and by best, I mean absolutely fantastic, is visual directing. The prequels are a great example of this. The best scenes in all three of those movies are the ones with little to no dialogue. The scenes where the character's facial expressions, the settings, and the atmosphere are all top priority. Duel of the Fates, the Sand-people genocide scene, order 66, the birth of Vader, and a few others. These scenes, in my opinion are the best parts of the prequels. This common theme of visuality concludes, for me, that while George Lucas is not great at directing with dialogue, he is a master of directing with no dialogue.

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