The people vs. George Lucas

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Love-hate docu complexity for Star Wars and its creator.

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Documentary features can be entertaining ways to learn things one didn't know, or even realise one wanted to know. The People vs. George Lucas took 90 minutes to show me that a true force of film fans willingly exhibit a love-hate complexity for Star Wars and its creator.

They, and Alexandre Philippe's interesting film essay, initially appear to be making a lot of fuss about nothing really special. Bit by bit, though, the charges leveled at Lucas add up to a damning indictment of the commercial film industry (and its unstated dumbing-down of movie audiences).

1. Lucas's "special editions" of the initial trilogy re-wrote Hans Solo's character so that he wouldn't be seen cold-bloodily shooting an assassin. The fans' rage isn't directed at hypocritical PC squeamishness by Lucas's Hollywood associates.

2. The introduction of Jar Jar Binks as an unfunny (to the older fans) creature apparently designed for a new generation of kids expecting silly voices and fart jokes.

3. The prequel trilogy's diminution of "The Force" into a genetic disturbance.

4. Lucas's control-freakery and apparent deliberate slights for Star Wars fans.

5. The fundamental commercialism of an entertainment industry that either overpowered Lucas or encouraged him to exploit, preventing him ever making another creative film, instead devoting himself to a Darth Vader-like existence running his Star Wars empire.

The most damning evidence of the sixth charge is the Star Wars Christmas [aka Holiday in Wikipedia, probably for the usual modern pc reason] Special for TV in 1978, which Lucas subsequently attempted to deny and destroy. A quarter of the two-hour disaster reportedly comprises an un-subtitled setpiece of growling for Chewbacca and his newly-introduced family.

Although the documentary tries to present a balanced critique of aspects of Lucas's achievements and failings with Star Wars, the non-cooperation by his empire and Hollywood production associates leaves the field clear for the fervent fans' rants (most of which are fairly comical, including an early Simon Pegg send-up).

Clips from many of the fans' home-filmed parodies, satires, animations and denunciations (one re-working Misery to great effect) provide the heart of the documentary, and confirm its claim that Star Wars inspired a generation of film-goers. Lucas "raped their childhood", some fans assert, self-mockingly, even though his sins provoked a new art form of amateur cinematics.

The professionals do the best job though: an excerpt from South Park's condemnation of the Lucas-Spielberg re-launch (depicted as a two-man rape of Indiana Jones) offers the blackest comic commentary on the whole business.