I still can’t stop but think how stretched out the Hobbit films were, for an otherwise short book. That’s a sin that stains forever with me. The Lord of the Rings films, do have their own flaws, but they’re fairly contained and can be debated as to whether they were good or not. I have so much trouble excusing anything with the Hobbit though.
And I hope we never, ever see anyone tackle The Silmarillion. Simply because, there will be so much improvised fluff in that would-be film, that it’d make the Hobbit films blush.
George undoubtedly said that. However, the idea that there was ever a single master vision that was fiddled with around the edges is kinda his own mythmaking bullshittery, plus wishful/rueful thinking from fans. Any time he was interviewed, that man just proclaimed what whatever he’d been noodling on in the last week, influenced by whatever was going on in his personal life, was always the plan from day one.
Certain core elements seem to persist, but shit like “how many movies,” or “who’s the central core to the narrative” or “exactly WTF are Whills” can go in 180 degree directions depending on the era in which he is discussing them. The analogy I’ve made for George is that all of Star Wars was his American-Graffiti-style garage hot rod. He fixes it up and mods it and rolls it out to show off and race every once in a while, but fundamentally it’s his. He can change whatever the hell he likes, and it’s your problem if you got attached to the red paint job from 10 years ago. This is what I think people are instinctively getting at when they say George doesn’t understand his own creation.
I feel for Lucas. I don’t think he’s fundamentally any different from most creative people, he just made a hugely successful franchise and had a habit of excitedly discussing whatever ideas he had in the moment.
Yeah, most of them sounded VERY ridiculous, but if we could see the ideas of any successful project’s initial stages we’d be losing our minds over it too lol.
Any one of us would be the same way, but we weren’t trying to keep the hyperdrive running on an already ultra-successful forever-money-printing cultural touchstone.
So, I dunno, I’d like some recognition and success but I never wanna be in his position…
For sure. I don’t mean to say he didn’t understand his creation, but rather he hadn’t settled on a final version enough to shoot. It’s Whills and microscopic world and crime boss adventure tale and Leia and politica and Luke with Jedi legacy and its… Whatever the last thing he was thinking about.
Which doesn’t guarantee it would be better than the hot, festering shitpile we got. But it would be hard to do worse.