George Lucas published an apology to Disney for calling them "white slavers" in an interview with Charlie Rose.
That apology was completely unnecessary. Disney is pretty much like white slavers in the sense that they are exploiting Star Wars for money in a very abusive way, specifically making an Episode 7 that's nothing more than rehash of the original trilogy with a terrible plot, terrible characters and not the least bit of originality for the specific purpose of making money, not to expand George Lucas's first modern myth.
Jason Ward, the guy in charge of MakingStarWars.net, however, apparently thinks it's necessary to defend Disney further. I quote from his text at makingstarwars.net:
"I think Lucas did use an analogy that was hyperbolic and insensitive."
No, Lucas did not use an analogy that was hyperbolic and insensitive. Many people thought selling LucasFilm to Disney was a mistake. South Park dedicated an episode to the sale in 2012 pointing out that Disney was not the best place for Star Wars, as it would put in danger Star Wars's "impeccable legacy."
And just as many people feared, Disney did bismirch Star Wars's otherwise impeccable legacy with the god-awful The Force Awakens.
Ward says:
"I don’t for a second think George Lucas thinks anything is wrong with the work Kathleen Kennedy and J.J. Abrams did."
Then Ward is in denial. George Lucas said it TWICE, once with Charlie Rose and another with Vanity Fair: Star Wars is not about space ships. And The Force Awakens is ONLY about space ships. Namely X-Wings, TIE fighters, and the Falcon.
Then says Ward:
"The Force Awakens does break new ground in that its main heroes are not white males exclusively."
That's not groundbreaking. The Hunger Games movies did that before The Force Awakens.
On the other hand, to claim that only white males were the leads in the original and the prequel trilogy is a lie.
The original trilogy had a very strong lead in Carrie Fisher's Leia Organa ("somebody has to save our hide!") It also added a strong black character with Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
As per the prequels, the leads included Natalie Portman's Padme, and Samuel Jackson's Mace Windu who, may I remind everybody, was the second ranking Jedi Council master only next to Yoda.
And lets not forget: When Samuel Jackson asked for a purple light saber, George Lucas gave his character a PURPLE LIGHT SABER, making Mace Windu even more unique and important in ranking among the Jedi.
So all of this "well, yeah, The Force Awakens sucks but at least it doesn't haven all-male leads" mumbling is BULLSHIT. Star Wars has NEVER had a male-only cast.
Heck! Minor female characters that served only as filling, like Aurra Sing and Mon Mothma became fan favorites even though they were only on screen for a few seconds.
By the way: the one character everybody was expecting to return in Star Wars Rebels from The Clone Wars was Ahsoka Tano, another female lead.
So again; claiming The Force Awakens is "ground braking" for having a female lead is bovine manure. The Hunger Games did it first, and Star Wars never had an all-white-male cast to begin with anyway.
Oh, and before I forget: Which absolutely important character from the original trilogy was nowhere to be found in the "retro" The Force Awakens? That's right: Lando Calrissian. Instead, we have a janitor storm trooper who is only a notch away from being another Jar-Jar Binks.
Wait. Hold on a second. Who played Jar-Jar Binks in the prequel trilogy and was one of the leads in Phantom Menace? That's right! A BLACK actor named Ahmed Best. And what did all the fanboys said about Jar-Jar Binks in 1999? "we hate him." The irony is simply sad...
One more thing; Poe Dameron is NOT Latino. The actor Oscar Isaac is, even though you really can't tell just by looking at him (he could pass for Italian, Spaniard, French, you name it.) Jason Ward claims that's ground breaking. Hmmm... well, in that case The Godfather Part 3 did it first by having Andy Garcia, a Cuban actor, playing the part of... an Italian American.
WAIT! Actually Apocalypse Now did it first by having as the lead a Latino actor called Martin Sheen, whose real name is Ramon Antonio Gerardo Estevez.
Like John Oliver would say, I could continue... so I will. Jason Ward says:
"A New Hope doesn’t really do that well with representation."
Here's where Ward and the Disney apologists are dead wrong: Movies are NOT supposed to be representational. They are supposed to tell a story. That's it. You hire actors who can play the roles regardless of their race, gender, ethnicity or cultural background. What you want is good actors, not patronizing the politically correct peanut gallery.
Nobody hired Natalie Portman because she's jewish. She was hired because she fit the part. Nobody hired Liam Neeson to play Qui-Gon Jinn because he's Irish. And nobody hired Hyden Christensen because he's Canadian. They were hired because they fit the part.
OH WAIT! Nobody hired Jimmy Smits because he's Hispanic, but because he fits the part of Bail Organa.
Again like John Oliver said: I could stop... but I won't. Nobody hired a whole bunch of English actors to play imperial officers (a lot of the officers were not English, by the way), but because they were filming in England.
Now that we're talking about English actors, guess what? Denis Lawson, the actor who plays Wedge Antilles in the original trilogy is British. Not only that, he's EWAN McGREGOR'S UNCLE. But guess what? He NEVER speaks with a british accent!
The only one moment in the original trilogy where you can claim there was a problem with LucasFilm being sexist would be switching a female rebel pilot's voice to male because she looked I suppose masculine.
But then there's Episode 1, where the main Naboo pilots are a black actor and an actress who looks well beyong 40 years old.
But quite frankly all of that is a moot point. Lets suppose I wanted to make a story about the conquest of Mexico. Should I hire a black actor, an Asian actress, and Canadian child actor just to make it politically correct? No! I should hire actors who fit the parts and can play the roles.
In some contexts it is absolutely necessary to have diversity. Lets say, if you were making a story about an inner city high school in the United States. It would be offensive not to have diversity. But if you're making a story about a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, who gives a shit if you don't have a cast that reflects an American city TODAY?
Unless you really want people to think that a whole galaxy should be representative only of American values.
Jerry Seinfeld faced a similar problem when he started his show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Immediately he was told he should have black comedians, and female comedians, etc. His reply? He didn't care for the comedians' race or gender. He cared about people who were funny.
So the "representation" argument doesn't work. At best, it's a cop-out to justify Disney for making a terrible movie for one purpose and one purpose only: squeeze as much money as they can out of Star Wars even if it means bismirching its legacy as the first modern myth.
Finally, at the end of his rant, Ward says a couple of things that are downright preposterous. First he said:
"George Lucas used a poor analogy. He admitted as much. Hell, he didn’t even really finish the analogy in the interview as he knew it was the wrong comparison."
No. George Lucas used the right analogy. Pixar went downhill when Disney took it over. Cars 2 was made just to sell toys. And it is the worst movie Pixar has made to date. If George Lucas didn't finish the analogy it was because it wasn't necessary to do so. We all know what Disney represents.
But then Ward says this:
"We know George Lucas isn’t a racist. He’s a guy that misspoke using a bad analogy."
What the FUCK are you talking about? NOBODY is acusing George Lucas of being a racist! George Lucas is married to a black woman and the last two movies he made, Red Tails and Strange Magic, both feature interracial romantic relationships. To even imply that George Lucas is a racist is a complete falsehood; it is beyond offensive to Lucas and it only shows the level of bullshit the Star Wars fan sites are pushing in order to kiss Disney's ass.
Because, quite frankly, I find it very strange that after 16 years of bashing the prequels, now the Star Wars fan sites censor comments pointing out to the fact that The Force Awakens sucks.
That suggests that the fan sites don't want to piss off Disney even though they know The Force Awakens is a ripoff and an insult to true Star Wars fans. So now they bend over to kiss Disney's ass so they don't get cut off from the Star Wars faucet.
Oh, by the way: George Lucas also told Charlie Rose his stories for the sequel trilogy were about Darth Vader's grandchildren. Not "grandchild" in singular, but "grandchildren" in plural. And he said as well that that's been told in the Star Wars novels.
Well, the Star Wars novels have Han Solo and Leia as the parents of three children. The first two are a boy and girl who became Jedi: Jansen Solo and Jaina Solo. Luke Skywalker had a son called Ben Skywalker. That implies the George Lucas stories actually had a female lead. So there's absolutely NOTHING groundbreaking about Disney having a female lead. Oh, John Boyega? Sorry, but Boyega's Finn is not even close in importance to the Star Wars mythology as Lando Calrissian. We wanted Lando or Mace Windu, but instead Disney gave us Jar-Jar Binks 2.0.
Give it up, Ward. The Force Awakens SUCKS and you know it.
PS: Lets not forget two things: 1. George Lucas is a major Disney stock holder. He owns 2.1% of Disney because Disney paid half of the price for LucasFilm with stock, making George Lucas the second largest non-institutional shareholder of Disney after Steve Jobs's trust (source). Bashing Disney means a dive in the stock price and thus he loses money, and he uses that money for educational programs, affordable housing, philantropy and the like. Want a real reason for George Lucas apologizing to Disney? That's a more believable reason. 2. George Lucas's daughter Katie is a screenplay writer ans has worked for LucasFilm making scrpts for The Clone Wars. Should George Lucas really get into a fight with Disney, something tells me his children could have problems getting jobs in Hollywood because of Disney. JJ Abrams is a hack and Disney made a horrible movie with The Force Awakens. Admit it. It's the truth. And George Lucas let us know that's what he thinks pretty clearly in his Charlie Rose interview.
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