> Tolkein … didn’t believe that England has any mythology, so he was dutybound to present > it with one that reflected all those decades of becoming the world’s number one expert on > Norse myth (I’ve suffered for my art, and now its your turn) I think he was a presumptuous > old man

This is strange considering Tolkien began to write as a young man, for himself, long before he became a scholar: he continued to write until the time of his death. He worked under the burden of a publisher’s miscommunication that his life work (20′s through deathbed) was unpublishable. (He wrote anyway.)

From his essay in _Finn and Hengest: The Fragment and the Episode_ it is clear Tolkien loved what he studied for its own sake and from “On Fairy-stories” that he wrote trying to capture that power and fascination. (It was not Norse myth but Norse myth, Finnish myth, medieval Arthurian romances, and especially Ango-saxon literature (his field of expertise) that influenced LoTR.) Tolkien did not think these things were grim dead remnants an audience should suffer through but delightful, strange, renewing stories that made the tedium of industrialized, urbanized life just bearable. He had a geek’s affection for complex arcane stories and linguistic systems — he gave them a significance (renewal and refreshment from the grimness of modern life and the horrors of mechanized war) — but he loved them for themselves.

He wrote _The Lord of the Rings_ because _The Hobbit_ did well and his publisher asked for a sequel: he stumbled a lot through the early drafts of the first chapters, noodling with ideas, picking awful character names, going down dead ends. On his own he would likely never have written _Lord of the Rings_ and he showed no signs of wanting to “inflict” his life work on anyone: he was never happy with it, himself. (_The Silmarillion_ with its near total lack of description, dialogue and characterization is at best a sketch Tolkien intended to work from: pick up nearly any volume of _The History of Middle-earth_ to read his false starts at writing proper novels from _The Silmarillion_’s compressed outlines. You may even find the Science Fiction novel he started.)

You may accuse Tolkien of many things, but he truly thought other people would enjoy the historical permutations of Welsh or the ancient deeds of Anglo-Saxon chiefs cast in verse just as much as he did. Any geek has something they love just as much — which has equally good prospects of falling flat on its face presented to a general audience in its raw form.

This is what being a geek is: by the time you finish explaining what the cool thing is your audience has left — and no one has stayed to hear why it’s so awesome. Tolkien did the thing a writer has to do: he put the awesome up front and snuck in the explanations later. (Watch how Gandalf gets Beorn to welcome so many guests: same storytelling technique.)

-Lisa Shapter

If I understand correctly, the criticism is that Lucas wasn’t trying to entertain the audience. And the evidence to this is that Episode 4 begins with “long long ago”, and therefore he is telling a myth that has already happened and the audience didn’t see it and didn’t partake in it.

But isn’t that also true of the myth that is the “Lord of the Rings”?

If I recall correctly, Tolkien basically wanted to write a “creation myth” for England. And it happened long before the audience gets to watch/read. And the audience doesn’t get to partake in what happened, we only get to hear/read/see what Tolkien wants to tell us. If one wants to say that if the primary goal of the author is “creating a myth” and not “entertaining the audience”, then couldn’t one point to “Silmarillion” and make the same accusation? That Tolkien was more interested in creating a mythology of Middle Earth than in writing a story to entertain? The man invented an entire elvish language, didn’t he?

The problem I see with this criticism of Lucas is that it rests entirely NOT on the attributes of the movies but on your psychological profile of Lucas himself.

Does it matter why an author wrote a work? If Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” was a pot boiler, a story written because he needed money, what does that information affect? Should it alter the way I feel about that poem? Should that information change anything of my opinion of the work itself? I can’t see how the motivation of the author would alter my opinion of their work.

To borrow a quote, no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money. Should it matter that the author had mercenarial intent? Or that they had personal investment in their creation? Or that they were doing it for purely self satisfaction?

You are making an assertion about the psychology of Lucas, which is orthoganol to the quality of his work. It’s like looking at a work by Vincent Van Gogh and pointing out that he suffered from depression. Or a painting by Picasso and mentioning he had syphillis that affected his sanity. Except in this case, you don’t even have the benefit of a medical diagnosis.

Saying “Lucas did not write Star Wars as entertainment” is pretty much an unfalsifiable statement. Unless he confessed as much. But your only quote from Lucas is “there really was no modern use of mythology”, which I would say fails to prove his intent behind Star Wars. And even if it does prove your assertion, then what?

It seems that if this were to tie back to anything about the art itself, it would be the bit where you say this:

writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch says that the problem with written SF is that it isn’t influenced enough by Star Wars, which to her mind is an exempar of good old-fashioned entertainment, and poses it in opposition to much of written SF, which is “jargon-filled limited-access novels that fill the shelves

On the one hand: Rusch is talking about something called “entertainment”
On the other hand: “jargon filled, limited access” novels

Rusch seems to be pointing to an important lesson for authors and would-be authors, which is that jargon-filled stories tend to appeal to a much smaller audience. Not everyone who reads Lord of the Rings is going to read Silmarillion or study Tolkien’s invented Elvish language. Whether a jargon filled story is “better” than a non jargon filled story is a different debate.

The part where you seemed to have taken and run with it, is the word “entertainment” and whether Star Wars qualifies for that term or not. And your definition of entertainment seems to hinge on the psychological frame of Lucas when he created the films. Did he intend to entertain the audience or was he doing it for his own satisfaction. It might be that you were right and Lucas was a tosser. But that seems to be a rather pedantic reading of Rusch’s point. And maybe Rusch even intended the term that way.

But if the point was to educate writers and would be writers, and possibly improve the quality of science fiction and fantasy, it would seem that what is essentially gossip about Lucas’ state of mind as he created Star Wars is pretty much irrelevant. Just about every bit of writer advice I’ve read for the genre of science fiction and fantasy at least mentions the problems of too much jargon. I think its good advice. Useful advice. As for whether or not dystopia’s are “good” or “bad” fiction, that’s more debatable, but clearly the phrase “hollywood ending” points to happy endings.

Star Wars doesn’t have a lot of jargon. It’s got jargon, but it doesn’t go into long explanations of how the hyperdrive bends space and makes the ships cover large distances, or how the “restraining bolts” makes droids more obedient, or how a light saber works.

And Star Wars has a happy ending. It’s not dystopic. Episode 4 by itself follows the three-act-play arc. In the end, Luke destroys the Death Star. Episodes 4, 5, 6 together form a larger three-act-play. And both have happy endings. Certainly both have dark act 2′s, but that’s that point of act 2, to show the protagonist fail.

Star Wars was entertaining in the sense that it doesn’t have a lot of jargon and it had a happy ending. I don’t know if that’s what Rusch was intending to say or not, but it seems to be the useful bit of educational information to take away from this conversation.

That Lucas was or was not of a mental state to entertain his audience seems fairly orthoganol to the work itself, seems mostly unfalsifiable, and the one quote from Lucas you provide would just as easily convict Tolkien and many other sci-fi/fantasy writers of the same “crime”, and in the end, doesn’t teach any authors anything they could use to improve their fiction.

Went to see Ep. I for Liam Neeson (plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose), but was so appalled, I never went back. Eps II and III remain a blessed blank for me. I can learn from my mistakes.

I’d point out that it’s merely a matter of degree. Jacksons’s material, ie LOTR, The Hobbit, Silmarilion etc were established material *to him* by the time Jackson came to them. However, take just one step back up the generation tree and guess what – Tolkein *made them up*. He quite deliberately set out to create an English mythology. Certainly drawing on Norse and other roots, but part of his impetus to do so was that England had no mythology.

So I’m puzzled as to why Star Wars is so reveiled, apparently for being a deliberatel;y created mythology, while LOTR, just as deliberately and knowingly a created mythology, seems to get a free pass.

“I think that audience entertainment would have to be specifically excluded, a la those films I mentioned. And I don’t think there’s evidence that that’s what Lucas did, anyway.”

As I note in the entry, Lucas doesn’t keep the audience out of his universe, he just doesn’t care that they’re in it. The artist doesn’t have to exclude an audience for what he/she creates not be considered an “entertainment”; being indifferent to the desire of the audience is sufficient. I very strongly suspect in the Star Wars films, particularly in the prequel trilogy, that Lucas is fundamentally indifferent to the audience for the work. Not antagonistic — I think he’s perfectly happy to let those he works with suggest and implement entertaining elements, so long as they don’t get in the way of his vision of things, and he himself is content to add in what entertains him and therefore might additionally entertain others as a side effect — just indifferent. He doesn’t have to make the films for anyone but himself, so he doesn’t.

And as I’ve also noted, this is fine; heck, sometimes I myself write things just for myself and couldn’t care less what anyone else thinks about them. If they like them, groovy; if not, oh well. It’s a privilege of a creator. But in those cases I wouldn’t argue that what I’m doing is an entertainment, in the sense that its purpose is to amuse and engage others. Lucas is doing the same thing, just on a rather larger scale.

To dismiss…

I’m taking a different perspective, not dismissing.

…he’s made several like it.

I see what you’re saying. I disagree, but I understand.

Likewise, attempting to dismiss the considerations of the era in which Lucas made Star Wars is overlooking quite a lot,…

Actually, I thought I specifically addressed that. Besides, Logan’s Run and Planet of the Apes are dystopias, while 2001 is… well, I’m not sure what sub-genre to file it under. (and if ever a sci-fi film was inaccessible and incomprehensible…) What they’re not, however, are space operas. I’d say Star Wars bears as much resemblance to those movies as Avatar does to Terminator: Salvation and Moon. Fox made what, at the time, any studio would have seen as a good business decision.

…in fact prior to Star Wars…

But that’s just it. It’s not unreasonable to divide the history of American filmmaking into BSW and ASW eras (so long as one remembers that there are several such breaking points.). It was Star Wars, specifically, that allowed Lucas to become an archetype for an era.

Rather than Lucas being an archetype of a popular and commercial director, he was in fact a stereotype of a certain type of 70s filmmaker…

I find him to be, paradoxically, both. As well as a case study in how difficult it is to serve two masters. Unquestionably, he wants to make the films he wants to make.* He also knows that you need the clout to be able to do that. And he knows – or, at least, knew between 1973 and 1977 – how to get that clout: by making something that gets butts into seats. He created the modern version of the dramatically simplistic, highly technical, special effects extravaganza. I think he knew that that kind of film would be commercially successful. That’s what he continued to do, though, ironically, audience sophistication may have outstripped him.

Finally, I’m not sure as to why you need me to reassert a point which I made clearly obvious in the essay.

Well, “need” is an awfully strong word. But that’s the question I’m hoping to have answered. Because, to this reader, it’s not that clear. Your thesis – Star Wars is not entertainment – depends on defining your terms, specifically “entertainment”. I think I can surmise, form the essay and from some of your comments over the last couple of days, that the definition you’re working from is that entertainment is, and must be, designed to be entertaining, above all other considerations. But, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, so I ask for clarification.**

*An artist driven by ego? Particularly one with total control over the product? The hell you say. Actually, i think Robin Williams put it best. “The writer-producer-director: the only creature on Earth that can blow smoke up its own ass.”

**I actually disagree with this definition. I think that audience entertainment would have to be specifically excluded, a la those films I mentioned. And I don’t think there’s evidence that that’s what Lucas did, anyway. No, I don’t expect you to care. I didn’t actually expect you to respond at all, though I’m certainly grateful that you did. Thank you.

To dismiss THX 1138 simply as a first film is to fundamentally misapprehend Lucas as a filmmaker. It’s also incorrect to say he’s never made another film like that, since the kind of film it is, is a personal vision which is not particularly concerned with being approachable or even comprehensible to anyone but Lucas. In which case, he’s made several like it.

Likewise, attempting to dismiss the considerations of the era in which Lucas made Star Wars is overlooking quite a lot, including, incidentally, the relative success of science fiction immediately preceding Star Wars; from 2001 and Planet of the Apes in ’68 through Logan’s Run in ’76 there had been a number of very successful SF films, tuned into the tenor of the time. There had been enough science fiction out in the market that Star Wars was not utterly alien as a concept (although, of course, it turned out completely different in execution).

Regarding “Hindsight as opposed to what,” the “what” here is the expectations of the people putting up the money to make the film, i.e., the studio, which has to make it own estimation as to the commercial and popular viability of a film in order to decide how to market and promote it. In this case, Fox doesn’t appear to have thought the commercial prospects for the film were all that great. The studio execs in this case turned out to be wildly wrong, but their assessment was not uninformed.

The point to all this is before we go asserting that Lucas is obviously an archetype of a commercial and popular filmmaker, it’s important to remember that in fact prior to Star Wars his filmography included an aggressively uncommercial and unpopular film which in its form, structure and intent far more closely resembles the Star Wars films than the one film which Lucas in fact wrote explicitly to be a mass entertainment, namely, American Graffiti .

Rather than Lucas being an archetype of a popular and commercial director, he was in fact a stereotype of a certain type of 70s filmmaker, the one who made aggressively personal films — and indeed if you listen to him discuss his film and his work, he very much sees himself in that vein. He is a filmmaker of a certain school who, by dint of being in the right place at the right time with a work that no one knew they wanted so very much, finds himself cast as another sort entirely.

Finally, I’m not sure as to why you need me to reassert a point which I made clearly obvious in the essay.

Anyone who’s seen THX 1138 would see the flaw in that assessment; the film was neither commercial nor popular.

That was his first feature, made in 1971, 6 years before Lucas himself created the environment in which he could become the archetype of the modern commercial, popular filmmaker. He’s never made another movie like that. Besides, no one saw Piranha 2 either, does that make Cameron a schlock B-movie director? (Yes, YMMV on that.)

Likewise, the suits at 20th Century Fox apparently thought so little about the commercial/popular potential of Star Wars that they thought they had gotten a good deal by signing away sequel/merchandising in exchange for Lucas reducing his directing fee.

20th Century Fox was operating in a mid-70′s, pre-Star Wars environment. What Lucas asked for in terms of sequels and merchandising rights was largely unheard of. Meanwhile, the space opera had not been a successful bet for more than a decade, and Hollywood was in the midst of its “Golden Era” of “personal films”. They had no reason to expect it to be successful, and no context to value things Lucas was bartering for. Or, at least, so goes the conventional wisdom – I’m not a film scholar.

Lucas is commercial and popular in hindsight (and because he was both canny and lucky). The day before Star Wars came out, however, he was a director who had gotten lucky once with American Graffiti and now likely to blow his cred on a junky space film.

“Hindsight” as opposed to what? Canniness and luck are going to be a factor in any artist’s commercial success. Everything in this paragraph is true, but what what is your point?

Anyway, all of this is a tangent to my actual question: if entertainment must be entertaining by design, does that then mean you assert that Lucas had no intentions of entertaining an audience (other than himself, which I take as a given)?

Not sure why all the drama over Star Wars. Love it or hate it, it has made a ton of money. Why? Because people like it. Pretty simple and clearly pretty successful.