It’s appropriate that I am writing this review on May 4th, also known as Star Wars Day—May the Fourth be with you…! *groan*
Before I talk about The People vs. George Lucas, let me first qualify my review with a short preamble about my relationship with Mr. Lucas.
May 18th, 1999. It’s raining, it’s cold and my friend Craig and I have been standing in line for nearly eight hours. We’re in line to see Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. There were hundreds of other people in line with us, all of whom either saw the original trilogy in theatres or grew up watching the films on VHS. The atmosphere was absolutely electric: a new Star Wars movie had been made and we were about to see it. If only we’d known how disappointed we would be just hours later. Sheer excitement and anticipation would turn to confusion and anger. For me, the gravity of just how badly The Phantom Menace had sucked took some time to set in, but when it did, it was crushing. My 15 year old self couldn’t face my 7 year old self. “How could Star Wars suck?”, I wondered. “George? What happened?!”
The new doc The People vs. George Lucas aims to find out exactly what happened. The film is part biography of the filmmaker/CEO and part history of Star Wars as a cultural touchstone; featuring interviews with film critics, filmmakers and theorists, writers and pop culture experts, fanboys and professional dorks. Director Alexandre O. Philippe appropriately splits his film into several episodes. In episode one he uses archival footage, rare photos, and interviews with Lucas and contemporaries like Francis Ford Coppola to assemble a picture of a gifted and promising filmmaker. Episode two focuses on the fans of Star Wars and Indiana Jones and how important these films were to them. To see grown men, many now respected writers and creators in their own right, absolutely giddy and nostalgic talking about Star Wars sets up the last half of the film. The final few episodes focus on the corporatization of the Star Wars brand, the special editions, the hype leading up to the prequels and reaction against them. To see the same group of people, who thirty minutes earlier could hardly contain their child-like glee about Star Wars, turn around and spew such vitriol against Lucas and the prequels is shocking, but not unsurprising. You have to have loved Star Wars a lot, to hate the prequels the way most of the interviewees do.
