This is just my opinion and I know I'm probably in the minority, but I think Star Wars is very overrated. I understand that the original was groundbreaking in terms of box office and Hollywood etc., but IMHO George Lucas is an awful screenwriter. Empire is by far the best of that series and he didn't write it. The original Star Wars is pretty hokey, IMHO and the acting is pretty bad. If you compare it to something like Blade Runner, it's not even close. However, I give Lucas a lot of credit for coming up with story and being a lead mind in putting things together, including Raiders of the Lost Ark. But I think dying with dignity was lost when Jar Jar Binks hit the screen.
Again, I know I'm in the minority, but I just don't get the thrill from Star Wars that others get.
Well you wouldn't be in the minority on a lot of that.
It's worth noting that Lucas has only directed
six feature films. Two of his first three were incredible, Star Wars and American Graffiti. It's no secret, Lucas is a fantastic producer. But that's how it is in Hollywood, and why teams--not people--create movies. Some people are great at coming up with bold new ideas; others literally have the job of taking raw ideas and reworking them; others have specialties only in certain types of plot lines and can work them into films to deepen them; others are great directors; others are etc etc etc. George Lucas will be remembered as a producer first and foremost.
Still though, you cannot understate the important of George Lucas/Star Wars in Hollywood. The man is a founding father. I love telling this story of how George Lucas basically created modern Hollywood:
When Lucas was a senior at USC, his thesis project (a short segment of a film they need to shoot to graduate) was called
THX and was a futuristic dystopian film that was super unique. I believe it won the national 1st place prize, and Lucas wanted to make it into a feature film. His friend (and I believe professor), Francis Ford Coppola agreed to put money down from Warner Brothers and help him make the film (and even make Lucas get someone else to rewrite his crappy script).
The film basically bombed (although now has an 89% of RT). Now Coppola owed Warner Brothers a ton of cash, but Warner Brothers owned a script to a little movie called
The Godfather. The first few directors had other obligations, and Coppola refused to direct it too. But WB, fearing a backlash from Italian-Americans, desperately wanted an Italian American to film it, so they told him they'd write off the money owed if he "made them smell the spaghetti."
The Godfather--while brutal to make in its own infamous story--turned out to be, well, the best ever. In fact it was so good that Warner Brothers actually wanted a sequel. That doesn't sound special but go ahead and name for me some big budget sequels prior The Godfather. It's tough to do, they were quite uncommon.
The Godfather proved to financiers that sequels could work.
Back to Lucas, he put out American Graffiti and it was terrific but he wanted to go back to sci-fi and was writing what became Star Wars. No one wanted to touch it. Eventually, Fox agreed and gave him a shoestring budget so that they wouldn't lose money on it if it flopped like THX-1138. He got $11mil (~$40mil in 2011) to do so. When he showed it to the Fox President the man literally bawled his eyes out (from joy) saying that it was the best movie he had ever seen. The stock of Fox doubled in two weeks from the release of one film. When it was shown in Japan the entire crowd remained completely silent after the film and just sat there. Fox executives feared that they hated it, but in fact silence is the highest amount of reverence that one can receive in Japan. It was beyond a massive hit.
Now, Star Wars was very much a standalone film--but thanks to his good buddy Coppola proving that sequels can be made, Fox let him produce a whole trilogy. The impact on Hollywood is unmistakeable. When James Cameron saw the film, he immediately quit his job as a truck driver and moved to LA. He would sneak into the USC library and rent the thesiseseses (prob not a word haha) and learned how to do special effects from basically stealing books of the kids on the front edge of the science.
So yeah, Star Wars and George Lucas basically changed everything. haha
...and that's not even counting that Lucasfilm created Pixar.
