Sigh
So I saw Revenge of the Sith the other day. I finally really dislike Lucas.
See, he wrote the original trilogy, and in the early 90s (I want to say '93) Timothy Zahn wrote--at the behest of Lucasarts, or whoever controls Star Wars--the first expansion novels. His trilogy, the name of which I don't actually recall at the moment, remains one of my favorites in all genres. Since Zahn, dozens of writers, at least a hundred books, and a few dozen games have expanded the SW universe. Those writers and other producers are the people that really made Star Wars what it is today.
Now, every single one of those creators was approached by Lucasarts (or whoever) and
asked to do work in the SW universe. They worked hand in hand to make sure the plot and other background junk was acceptable. So, basically anything you see published in the SW universe was approved by some high level Lucasarts dude, if not George Lucas himself. That's how all franchise-type operations work in writing, see, be it D&D, Starcraft, whatever. You can't just set out and write whatever you want for obvious reasons--you know, copyrights. Also, they don't take submissions from fan-fiction type people because if they were to read it, then happen to use a plot device coincidentally some years down the road from a rejected manuscript, the rejectee could sue. They return those with a big ass stamp that says it wasn't read so you don't get any ideas to do that.
So where the fuck does Lucas get off ignoring or flat out contradicting all the work of those other, mostly superior authors? Hmm? My guess is he is a conceited, arrogant fuck that thinks he can just piss off his commitment to those authors to do
their work justice, as they did his. I'm not going to list off my complaints just yet because I'd need to watch it a bunch of times on DVD to catch them all, but some day I probably will just to see how much he deviated.
Okay, I'm going to complain a little about the movie as a movie alone. Way too much flash, poor continuity between installments (mostly between the two trilogies), wooden acting... That says it all. I had to stop watching most of the scenes with Anakin and Padme because they were so horrible. Oh! And I have an excellent example of Lucas being a dick: in Timothy Zahn's trilogy, Mara Jade tells Luke that after the Cloud City debacle, the emperor took Darth Vader's biological hand. Hmm, too bad he was already apparently missing both by then, thanks to Lucas's work in the prequel trilogy! Look, guys, it's the little things that really ruin books and movies.
