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George Lucas upon seeing The Force Awakens for the first time: "There's nothing new."

sphagnum

sphagnum

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Bob Iger released a memoir about his time as CEO of Disney and it looks like he discusses the company's at-times tense relationship with George in it. Someone who read the book posted some quotes to the StarWarsLeaks subreddit (don't got there if you don't want IX spoilers, but here's the link to the thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsLeaks/comments/d8abhf/bob_iger_on_george_lucass_involvement_in_the/)

On George sending his outlines for the Sequel Trilogy:

At some point in the process, George told me that he had completed outlines for three new movies. He agreed to send us three copies of the outlines: one for me; one for Alan Braverman; and one for Alan Horn, who'd just been hired to run our studio. Alan Horn and I read George's outlines and decided we needed to buy them, though we made clear in the purchase agreement that we would not be contractually obligated to adhere to the plot lines he'd laid out.
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On George's new role of creative authority:

He knew that I was going to stand firm on the question of creative control, but it wasn't an easy thing for him to accept. And so he reluctantly agreed to be available to consult with us at our request. I promised that we would be open to his ideas (this was not a hard promise to make; of course we would be open to George Lucas's ideas), but like the outlines, we would be under no obligation.
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On revealing to George they weren't following his plot outlines:

Early on, Kathy brought J.J. and Michael Arndt up to Northern California to meet with George at his ranch and talk about their ideas for the film. George immediately got upset as they began to describe the plot and it dawned on him that we weren't using one of the stories he submitted during the negotiations.

The truth was, Kathy, J.J., Alan, and I had discussed the direction in which the saga should go, and we all agreed that it wasn't what George had outlined. George knew we weren't contractually bound to anything, but he thought that our buying the story treatments was a tacit promise that we'd follow them, and he was disappointed that his story was being discarded. I'd been so careful since our first conversation not to mislead him in any way, and I didn't think I had now, but I could have handled it better. I should have prepared him for the meeting with J.J. and Michael and told him about our conversations, that we felt it was better to go in another direction. I could have talked through this with him and possibly avoided angering him by not surprising him. Now, in the first meeting with him about the future of Star Wars, George felt betrayed, and while this whole process would never have been easy for him, we'd gotten off to an unnecessarily rocky start.
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On George seeing the Force Awakens for the first time:

Just prior to the global release, Kathy screened The Force Awakens for George. He didn't hide his disappointment. "There's nothing new," he said. In each of the films in the original trilogy, it was important to him to present new worlds, new stories, new characters, and new technologies. In this one, he said, "There weren't enough visual or technical leaps forward." He wasn't wrong, but he also wasn't appreciating the pressure we were under to give ardent fans a film that felt quintessentially Star Wars. We'd intentionally created a world that was visually and tonally connected to the earlier films, to not stray too far from what people loved and expected, and George was criticizing us for the very thing we were trying to do. Looking back with the perspective of several years and a few more Star Wars films, I believe J.J. achieved the near-impossible, creating a perfect bridge between what had been and what was to come.
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It's been obvious for some time that George was not happy with TFA - his initial muted praise for the film was that it was a movie the fans would like, he infamously referred to Disney as "white slavers" and so forth. I'm surprised that, at least according to Iger's telling, he really thought they had a gentleman's agreement to follow his outlines, since there was never a chance Disney would really give up creative control.

That said, we do know a lot of George's ideas survived due to the TFA and TLJ art books: Exile Luke living at an ancient Jedi Temple, a war between two sides with their basis in OT era aesthetics (New Republic vs Imperial Remnant in George's VII concepts), "Jedi Killer", the main character being a female Jedi, and so on. But we also know a bunch of stuff from his time didn't make it in: Midichlorians/Whills/the microbiotic world, Darth Talon, Felucia, VII having some sort of pirate villains, etc.

Lucasfilm has said he's involved as a creative consultant for IX, but he's technically been that for the entire post-buyout period, so I think it will be interesting to see if IX ends up having more Lucasian influence, considering they had to rewrite the whole thing anyway after Carrie's death and Trevorrow's firing. Since we know IX is trying to tie all three trilogies together, it's plausible that JJ would have wanted to pick George's brain more than for TFA where he had a directive to get back to basics.
 
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He's not exactly wrong. Disney had to make a movie that said, "this is what Star Wars is supposed to look like, right?"

And they did.
 
Ryan.

Ryan.

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Oh boy.

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TyraZaurus

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His idea of new was making them shrink and go inside people's bodies.

Maybe keep that in perspective.
 
Dixie Flatline

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He's not wrong. Disney did play it safe with TFA but I understand why they did. After the prequels, playing it safe for the "revival" was understandable.
 
CoolestSpot

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He isn't wrong, but man wanted people to shrink and go inside the force, so it's not like his direction was right either.
 
kyle mechlachlan

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New doesn't always = better. A lot of the point of the first movie was how stuff the past effected future generations. It was used as a theming.
 
Keldroc

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Dixie Flatline said:
He's not wrong. Disney did play it safe with TFA but I understand why they did. After the prequels, playing it safe for the "revival" was understandable.
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And, of course, it worked. To the tune of $2 billion. It was the Star Wars movie that was needed at the time, no matter what the writer/director of Attack of the Clones has to say about it.
 
Meows

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I completely get where he is coming from, his philosophy as a creator was innovate, innovate, innovate and The Force Awakens was about regrouping what works.
 

Deleted member 11637

Oct 27, 2017
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He's right. TFA was such a deflating experience for me when I realized it was just rushing through the same beats of A New Hope without adding anything truly new or exciting. There was no spark of imagination anywhere in that movie.

The prequels are poorly-executed nonsense, but they still captured the excitement of visiting new planets and admiring the flashy space ships and bizarre alien cultures.
 
Kalentan

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I still disagree with the idea that they needed to play safe with TFA.

If TFA had been radically different but still felt Star Wars people would have still watched it. It was first live action Star Wars movie since 2005. Of course people were going to see it.

People (typically prequel haters) have this odd delusion that Star Wars was this dead franchise until TFA.
 

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Interestingly enough, I love all of the "new" things that have happened in the latest trilogy and dislike a lot of the fan service.

On the other hand though, Bob and JJ pulled the ultimate marketing move - Making something familiar but surprising.
 
Anth0ny

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it's nothing new because the fucking load of garbage you shit out of your ass in the form of the prequels was so awful that people needed the reminder of what star wars actually is

and it was great

rey has more personality and heart in that one movie than anyone in all three of your garbage prequels combined
 
Enduin

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Yes and that was both a strength and flaw for the film. People wanted and needed that reassurance that Star Wars could feel like Star Wars again after the PT. But at the same time Abrams and co needlessly and poorly in a number of cases followed that original outline a bit too much or without thought. Biggest issue for me was things like Starkiller Base and the over handling of the New Republic/First Order and failing to establish stakes for the audience to hold onto and care about. Character and feeling wise they did a great job. Overall I still think it's a damn fine movie, just one that is held back a bit due to some choices from being truly great.
 
Richiek

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Like everyone else says, George isn't wrong. TFA played it super safe aping things from the OT and it's full of unexplained plot contrivances and coincidences (like how the Falcon just convenently happens to be on Rey's home planet). I know it's fashionable to bash the prequels on ERA, but at least Lucas was trying to do something different and expand the SW universe.
 
Ryan.

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Hobbes said:
Interestingly enough, I love all of the "new" things that have happened in the latest trilogy and dislike a lot of the fan service.

On the other hand though, Bob and JJ pulled the ultimate marketing move - Making something familiar but surprising.
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Speaking of marketing, and I saw this brought up on Twitter the other day, nothing comes close to the marketing push that Disney had for TFA (except maybe The Phantom Menace). It was everywhere.
 
Kuroyume

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I feel the same thing anytime I see content from Disney these days whether it be remakes of old animated films, or yet another Marvel movie. It all looks the same because there's no incentive to try anything new when people will just line up to watch the same crap over and over again. I don't expect them to ever do anything crazy with Star Wars... They'd probably get backlash from old fans anyway if they tried.
 
Lifejumper

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Anth0ny said:
it's nothing new because the fucking load of garbage you shit out of your ass in the form of the prequels was so awful that people needed the reminder of what star wars actually is

and it was great

rey has more personality and heart in that one movie than anyone in all three of your garbage prequels combined
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Peeps are quick to forget the state of live action star wars after the prequels.
 
Murfield

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I agree with him. There is nothing new of substance in TFA. It is basically ANH with terrible pacing, and a very confusing/non-nonsensical backstory.

For context, I liked Rogue one and haven't seen TLJ.
 
Garlador

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I enjoy The Force Awakens, but it really is a pretty big copy of A New Hope.

"No, you see, OUR Death Star is even BIGGER. No, OUR desert planet is TOTALLY different. No, killing the mentor figure in this one is TOTALLY fresh and original. No, you see, the droid with the secret plans is round this time. Look, do you want us to go back to Jar-Jar? We WILL if you want us to."

It's a film with great execution, but not really original ideas.
 
Lunar Wolf

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He's right though. It's literally a remix of the OT.

Rey is just a derivative of Luke and Ben is a derivative of Anakin.

Desert planet where the protagonist starts.

Droid with secret plans ends up on the desert planet and makes contact with the protagonist.

Empire versus Rebels 2.0

Another Jedi Massacre. Last Jedi hermit mentor.

Death Star but bigger.

Palpatine as the Big Bad again.
 
808s & Villainy

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Hobbes said:
On the other hand though, Bob and JJ pulled the ultimate marketing move - Making something familiar but surprising.
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The only surprising thing was Finn not being a Jedia/force user

Gwenpoolshark said:
Reminder that Star Wars itself has never been an original art object and is explicitly built on nostalgic connections with prior media/culture.
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Okay? He's clearly talking within the context of the Star Wars universe, not within media as a whole. I don't think he's ever stated it to be a wholly original idea. Ya'll are really doing your best to discredit anything Lucas says just because you disliked the prequels
 
Paz

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TFA is just about the safest movie ever made, and George isn't wrong at all, but after the prequels I think that was the best thing they could do.

If episode 9 is also a safe film I'll be sad but I don't think it will be.
 
Yerffej

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I don't disagree and yet I find it very rewatchable at the same time.
 
BossAttack

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JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!

Even fucking Bob Iger tactility admits to George's point, he only counters with the time constraint and need to please old-time fans with a "quintessential" SW experience. Are we fucking done now disagreeing that TFA wasn't just a re-tread?

In this one, he said, "There weren't enough visual or technical leaps forward." He wasn't wrong, but he also wasn't appreciating the pressure we were under to give ardent fans a film that felt quintessentially Star Wars.
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