http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/GeorgeLucas

Steven Spielberg "George has never stopped asking 'Any ideas?' and the world has been a better place for it."

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George Walton Lucas Jr. (born May 14, 1944), is the man behind Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

In high school, George was a car buff, and wanted to be a professional racer, until a near-fatal crash days before graduation; EMTs actually declared him dead at the scene. After recovering, he attended a community college and turned his passion to filmmaking. As a student, his initial interest was anthropology but a visit to college film societies, and screenings of international films, especially Akira Kurosawa's films made him switch interest to cinema, albeit anthropology (by his own admission) still informed many of his films.

His early student films attracted much praise and support from his peers, being considered far in advance in terms of editing and cinematography than others of his class. Experimental film-maker Thom Andersen, who was a classmate, still considers them to be significant avant-garde films. For instance, his first work was in 1965 with Look at Life, which was supposed to be a 1 minute film of consisting of testing various camera angles; Lucas took the opportunity to create an intense and evocative montage of current events that went way beyond his class assignment. Incidentally, the class was really impressed by this with the teacher going about George, "We have a live one here!"

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This was followed by a number of other shorts, including The Emperor, Freiheit, Electronic Labyrinth : THX 1138 which he would later convert to a feature. A program by Hollywood studios offering students internships led to Lucas working on the sets of Francis Ford Coppola's Finian's Rainbow. The two hit it off, with Coppola being his Big Brother Mentor and remaining very close friends for most of the '70s and '80s before their different careers branched offnote Sofia Coppola admits that Lucas babysat her and other siblings, and "Uncle George" apparently first told the ideas that became Star Wars to them.

He co-founded American Zoetrope with Francis Ford Coppola, to get away from the oppressive Hollywood studio system, and with the success of Graffiti and Star Wars, founded Lucasfilm. Coppola produced his film debut THX 1138. That film's commercial failure sunk their initial plans for independence. Albeit it remains a talismanic film for Lucas, the source of references, with "THX" and "1138" appearing in various forms, providing the name for the THX soundsystem. Lucas' main point in making that film was to show that present day America was close to the dystopias of science-fiction, and he proved his point by using extensive location shooting of what, at the time were, futuristic looking urban development in San Francisco and Northern California. The failure led Lucas to go in what he saw as a commercial direction, i.e. making films about the problems of young people, and proving he can direct a serious drama. Produced by Gary Kurtz, American Graffiti was a major success sold on the Nostalgia Filter (It's tagline was "Where were you in '62?") of the America just-before Vietnam and the counter-culture. It led Lucas to go one step further.

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Believing that his fellow New Hollywood directors had ignored the market for young children and teenagers, who hadn't grown up with the pirate, westerns, and serial films that his generation had, Lucas set out to revive the old serials' spirit but with a more updated and modern polish. His initial idea was to adapt Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials, while also thinking of a concept based on Republic serials with an Adventurer Archaeologist. They became Star Wars and Indiana Jones respectively. For Star Wars, Lucas wanted to revive the old B-Movie serial but he wanted to update it, and give it the scale of an Epic Movie, with sound and visual effects far in advance of anything currently available. To create his vision for Star Wars, George formed his own FX studio Industrial Light and Magic and they revolutionized special effects and post-production techniquesnote Before, the "spaceship flyby" effect was accomplished by pulling a model ship across a starfield backdrop with a string; very limiting, very cheap and unconvincing. George worked with John Dykstra to leave the model static, put it against a bluescreen, and move the camera around it (preventing the shaky look of moving models). Another innovation that Dykstra and Lucas brought to the table was putting the camera movements under the control of a computer, which could be programmed to move the camera a certain way and then repeat that movement perfectly dozens of times over. This let them do a shot of one model, switch the model for a different one and repeat the shot, replace the second model with a third, etc. When the individual shots were composited together the models looked like they were all part of the same shot. The computer controlled camera was precise enough to avoid the kinds of mismatches that previous attempts to composite multiple model shots together led to.. For sound, Lucas wanted to go away from the common electronic synth sounds of conventional science-fiction and incorporate natural sounds with advanced technology to make it more tangible. Ben Burtt was of a similar inclination, breaking new grounds in using unconventional sources for sounds that felt truly alien.

Star Wars released in 1977 was the biggest film in American history, toppling the record for highest-grosses, making more money than several studios had over the last 10 years, and adjusted-for-inflation, it still trails Gone with the Wind as the second-highest grossing film of all time. It also changed the film landscape thoroughly in ways that are too big to go here. Lucas had plans to make multiple serial films but initially conceived it as a standalone. The success demanded sequels and follow-ups, and Lucas believed initially that it could be done by other directors but he became so ubiquitously associated with the brand, and likewise believed he had to protect it from becoming the parody of the serials that many initially expected it was, that he gradually assumed more executive control than he expected. The disastrous Star Wars Holiday Special also confirmed these views, as did a rational belief that Star Wars might plateau its interest and become a fad. The Troubled Production of the first film also exhausted him from directing, and Lucas has repeatedly stated that he prefers the conceptual pre-production and post-production processes to the actual on-set process of directing.

For most of The '80s, Lucas worked as a producer and writer of his own and other projects. He has collaborated with Steven Spielberg, another close friend, on the Indiana Jones projects, as well as Francis Ford Coppola. He worked on a number of other films both mainstream (Labyrinth, Willow) and avant-garde (such as the Koyanniqatsi documenaries, Paul Schrader's Biopic on Mishima which was the first mainstream Hollywood film entirely in Japanese, and Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha) but most of these were commercial failures. With the exception of Star Wars and Indiana Jones, none of Lucas' later ideas ever found commercial favour, and many of his solo producer work has often been Cult Classic or niche items, with the exception of Howard the Duck being the biggest failure and still considered an embarrassing failure. Alongside that his company, Lucasfilm made many important innovations such as investment in CGI animation, chiefly Pixar studios, which Lucas sold to Steve Jobs. While not involved in the creative process, his name resonates in the video game scene thanks to a branch of his empire, LucasFilm Games — later renamed LucasArts — which experienced a golden age in the 1990s and was responsible for creating many iconic Adventure Games and Space Simulation Games, which are often ranked among the best games ever.

After Return of the Jedi in 1983, Lucas announced the end of the Star Wars franchise, at least in movie form (the concurrent Expanded Universe works kept chugging along for a few years after), but he later discussed plans for either sequels or prequels.note When the films were being made, he said they were part of a projected series of many as twelve films. Eventually in The '90s, he set out on making the prequel trilogy. The successful revival of the Expanded Universe in various media such as books, comics and video games starting in the early '90s and the commercial successes of the Special Edition re-releases of the films for the 20th anniversary of the franchise in 1997 also convinced him that the interest hadn't died down in Star Wars. Unlike the made-as-it-went-along threadbare approach of the original film (by then rechristened A New Hope) that was influenced by casting contingencies and uncertainty on whether any sequels would ever be made, the prequels were conceived from the start as a three-part work, with all scripts written at first. Lucas again tried to interest other film-makers, including Spielberg and Ron Howard, but they all insisted that he should direct it. After a twenty-year gap (1977-1999), Lucas returned to the director's chair on the prequels, which were again technical marvels, innovating on CGI with one of the first entirely CGI motion-captured character Jar-Jar Binks in a mainstream film. For the second and third film, Lucas shot the films in digital, being the first major director to embrace digital film-making, a process that became a norm later in the decades. After finishing Revenge of the Sith, Lucas again retired and went to producing, before announcing his landmark sale of Lucasfilm to Disney in October 2012, in a whopping $4 billion deal.

Lucas was married to film editor Marcia Lucas (formerly Griffin) between 1969 and 1983note His workaholic habits with his filmmaking ultimately doomed their marriage and he has several adopted children, most of whom have cameos in his films. Marcia worked as an editor for A New Hopenote and won her a Academy Award for it and Return of the Jedi, participating in the production of all the three original trilogy movies. In a notable example of Creator Couple, her main contribution to the original trilogy was to serve as The Heart, balancing out Lucas' highly technical, visual-minded vision with an emphasis on character development, plot and emotional response — Mark Hamill in particular has confirmed this. Lucas' divorce from Marcia, occurring at the same time as Spielberg's divorce from Amy Irving, is cited as a leading cause for the Darker and Edgier nature of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, as well as the fate of the Prequel Trilogy. In June 2013, he married his girlfriend of seven years, investment executive Mellody Hobson.

Lucas has always been a controversial figure, despite being personally quite modest and disarming, even a little shy, and renowned for being a good sportnote Number of Star Wars parodies such as Hardware Wars, Spaceballs and "Weird Al" Yankovic's mash up of "American Pie" with Star Wars, "The Saga Begins", were made not only with his approval but tacit support as well as being very generousnote As noted by Mark Hamill, Lucas gave the main cast of Star Wars a percentage of royalties for their performance which ensured a steady income for them, a practice unheard of then and still rare today. Hamill notes, "He didn't have to do that." When Lucas sold his company to Disney in 2012, he donated every penny of the $4 billion he was paid to Edutopia, an education charity.. The success of Star Wars and its revolutionary technique were met with praise but also dismay since it was seen as a shift away from the analog qualities of cinema (chiefly focusing on actors performances, good dialogue, real locations) to the technological, and this criticism has been constant since the beginning. In The '80s and The '90s, Lucas was held as symbolic for the turn in Hollywood away from the adult audience to a more family and child-centric approach, which along with the extensive merchandizing of Star Wars, and the drying up of funds for films with more serious matter, has led him to being accused (with Steven Spielberg occasionallynote This died down when he made Schindler's List in his case) for "ruining the movies". Lucas' embrace of digital cinema and CGI was also driven by similar mix of resentment and technological skepticism. But for most of that time, Lucas could count on being popular with the audiences, rather than the critics. This changed in the Turn of the Millennium, where Lucas experienced a considerable vocal backlash against the prequels, which in turn led to a backlash on himself. Not just from his regular critics who usually disliked the prequels for the same reasons they hated the originals (i.e. the fact that it existed), but from his own fandom, who had formerly been loyal to him, with many now deprecating and questioning his skills as a director and writer. The fact that this period coincided with the rise of the internet and widespread use of online forums and social media spread this to a wider audience than it would have beforenote Lucas himself chided this in the wake of The Phantom Menace and the Jar-Jar Binks controversy noting that online posters represented a minority but owing to their presence, and coverage in news, they get a wider platform than their opinion actually represents. However, with the equally divisive reception of Disney's Star Wars films, especially the Sequel Trilogy, fans have been reassessing both the Prequel Trilogy and Lucas himself in a more favorable light.

Lucas himself admits that he is "the King of Wooden Dialogue". On the other hand, collaborators and actors do not dispute his incredible eye for casting, conceptualization, visual style, and his dramatic instinct (i.e. making Vader Luke's father, one of cinema's all-time great plot twists, which was entirely written by him). As a director, Lucas is known for constantly iterating (for instance, he brought back the cast and crew for reshoots for Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, removing entire subplots that had been entirely filmed and finished as seen in deleted scenes) on set, as well as emphasizing wide and detailed backgrounds within which his characters interact, communicating a sense of place and setting. He's also considered a great director of immersive large-scale action scenes with impressive choreography of multiple moving parts as objects move through the screen. As a producer, a careful glance at Lucas' body of work shows that the number of uncommercial, avant-garde, and niche films that he has produced equal the number of mainstream works he has made, and that he is considerably more risk-taking than many give him credit for.

Lucas is also considered inconsistent when it comes to representation, being progressive and regressive at various points. On the one hand, Lucas deserves credit for making a fantasy series with decidedly Buddhist and Taoist inspirations. He also introduced strong female leads in mainstream movies via Princess Leia, and a major African-American character like Lando Calrissian who had a complex dramatic character arc that made him something more than Token Black Friend or sidekick (becoming in effect a "fourth musketeer" by the end of the original trilogy)note The fact that he originally planned to cast Toshiro Mifune in A New Hope and Alec Guinness was Plan B shows that his vision of Star Wars was intended to be diverse and multi-cultural. His production of Willow was a fantasy epic with a dwarf actor (Warwick Davis) as the Hero, preceding Peter Dinklage's celebrated turn as Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones by thirty years. On the other hand, his Indiana Jones series was criticized for playing the Mighty Whitey Adventure Archaeologist trope straight and for the hilariously offensive portrayal of India in Temple of Doom, while Jar-Jar Binks in the Star Wars prequels was seen as a neo-minstrel portrayal of a black sidekick (though Ahmed Best, the actor who played Jar-Jar Binks points out that this was entirely unintentional), and the fact that the Nemoidians of the prequels were coded as amoral inscrutable Asian businessmen while Watto was seen as a fantasy coded version of anti-semitic stereotypes. As a producer, Lucas has funded Red Tails which dealt with the Tuskegee Airmen, and was a notable case of a mainstream film with an African-American story and setting, while also producing Mishima an American film entirely in Japanese, while also playing a major part in mentor Akira Kurosawa's Career Resurrection in The '80s. On one hand, Lucas has done a great deal more than most American producers and film-makers in raising diversity in mainstream cinema, on the other hand, his films thanks to its great fame, continued to perpetuate a bunch of negative stereotypes.

Lucas is still indisputably a pioneer in film technology and special effects, both in his own films and through Industrial Light and Magic. He's a strong advocate for digital filmmaking, having shot the last two Star Wars prequels digitally (and turned Robert Rodriguez onto the technology), and firmly believes that digital filmmaking will lead to an increase of independent productions (at a much lower cost than studio films, due to film reel development) and be surprise successes. He predicted this in the early 1990s, well before the release of District 9. Martin Scorsese remarked that whenever he wonders what the future of cinema would be like, he would simply visit Lucas at Skywalker Ranch and pick his brain, noting he has never been wrong.

In 2016 he was the subject of a biography by Brian Jay Jones, whose previous work was about Lucas' sometime collaborator Jim Henson. This is Jones' third biography, and his first on a still living person. There are other books including J. W. Rinzler's series on the making of Star Wars, a book of interviews edited by Guy Flatley, The Cinema of George Lucas by Marcur Hearn, Masters of Cinema: George Lucas by Karina Longworth, and Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas by Dale Pollock which was originally released in tandem with Return of the Jedi.

Filmography

Director

Writer and Producer:

Other Work

Gimme Shelter: 1970 Rockumentary about The Rolling Stones in which he worked as a cameraman.

The Godfather (1971): Worked as a second-unit director, shooting the footage used in the gangland murder montage, done in the style of a newspaper montage, that happens between Solozzo's death and Sonny's murder.

Apocalypse Now (1979): Provided financial support with no request for screen credit. Was originally supposed to be directed by him, planned alongside THX-1138 but eventually taken over by Coppola. Harrison Ford appears in a small cameo at the start as Colonel Lucas, as a tribute to his friend.

George Lucas and his works provide examples of: