[ernesttomlinson]

Yeah, what is it with Lucas's proclivity now to invent dozens of new characters (and places)? All with lame names and absolutely no reason given for us to care about any of them. Is it just because Lucas wants more faces to put on Coca-Cola cans? I'm sure that the Capt. Panaka can is worth thousands by now.

The best stories have the fewest characters. You occasionally find the huge epic with tens or even hundreds of characters that works, but mostly I find such epics a bit too cold, and often merely confused rather than complex. (I think of big, sprawling films like Giant or Attenborough's Gandhi; neither film is bad, but neither is particularly involving either.)

Do you know who Lucas reminds me of now? He's the teenaged fantasy or sci-fi fan who tries to write his first fanfic story. The scattershot plotting; the proliferation of characters with stupid names; the strained attempt to "connect the dots", i.e. to "explain" or devise origins for all of the important characters and events mentioned in the canonical stories (e.g. Lucas's coercing Artoo and Threepio into the prequels)--it's all there.

Some artists maybe have only one or two stories to tell. There's no shame in that so long as those few stories are good. Perhaps Star Wars was all that Lucas really had in him. The trouble is that he's put himself out on a limb; he has to keep coming up with Star Wars stories (at least until the release of Episode III) partly because of the inflated claims he's made in the past about having planned out as many as nine movies. He can't quit--or, even if he can, Lucas won't because it would mean losing a lot of face. Maybe he knows, though, that he hasn't got it in him to write more Star Wars stories. He shot his bolt twenty years ago and has nothing left, so he can do nothing but wring out these lifeless, incoherent stories as though he were just another fanboy striving to imitate the object of his admiration.

All of a sudden I'm feeling a little sorry for George Lucas. Artistically he's painted himself into a corner. Nobody expects anything from him other than Star Wars even if he's got no more Star Wars left in him to give.

[Despondent]

Don't go there
scene breakdown

Well, I went. So I guess I won't be surprised in May. Oh well. Only saw Jar-Jar's name twice. Saw the mythical "Journal of the Whills" at long last.

It actually looks promising. Considering that it IS in the PT, mind you.