George Lucas sat in at The Daily Show yesterday promoting his book (well, he more commissioned it than wrote it), George Lucas's Blockbusting: A Decade-by-Decade Survey of Timeless Movies Including Untold Secrets of Their Financial and Cultural Success. Host Jon Stewart began the interview with an impassioned tirade about some logical lapses in a Star Wars plot-point, which was greeted by the director's most earnest, "I'm too old and rich for this shit"-look. Then Stewart launched right into the theme of disappointment, as it pertains to, say, people who cherish the original films and hated the sequels. It's the kind of thing poor George must get a lot; here's how he justifies it.
Step One: The Generational Divide
Lucas explains that just as some people like boys and some people like girls, and some people like chocolate and some people vanilla, some people like the three good movies from the series, and some people prefer the three terrible ones. And believe it or not, those people are divided along generational lines:
"We now have three generations of Star Wars fans. The first generation saw Episode IV, and the next two. Then when the next three came out they hated it, couldn't stand it. And that's when we first discovered that there was a whole new group of kids out there that LOVED it. And they didn't like the first three. They said Episode IV is boring, we don't want to see that. We love Jar Jar Binks."
Step Two: Movies Are So Over. It's All About Animated TV Shows!
The next step involves distancing from the filmic medium altogether, and pointing out that Star Wars currently exists on TV, in CGI cartoon form, and it is very popular! So looking backwards is counter-productive to all.
"Now we have a show on Cartoon Network, Clone Wars, and there's a group of kids that are very young, and some teenagers and some older people, who can't get enough of Star Wars, and that's their favorite show, and some of the kids haven't seen any of the films. That's all they know -- is Clone Wars."
Step Three: Realizing That Long Ago You've Really Painted Yourself Into a Corner Somewhere Deep in the Ablajeck Sector
Finally, acceptance.
"At the beginning I thought it was going to be one little movie. It's not all what I expected it to be -- I expected to turn out great. But you take what you can get."
[via /Film]