Praising George Lucas For A Change??

Before you get the wrong idea, this is not an article about Red Tails. This is simply a decisive article about my opinion of Lucas' most recent statement wherein he said that he is retiring from "blockbuster" filmmaking. Thank God. Between the Star Wars prequels and the Indiana Jones sequel I honestly didn't know how much more I could take from the one time phenom. And to put it more clearly, I think Red Tails looks like the work of a confused, misguided filmmaker a la Oliver Stone's Alexander. Some times passion projects just don't make sense. The long and short of it is this, Lucas is a tired old man with little left in the way of ideas... so he has to edit and reedit his old work until it no longer resembles the thing we once loved. He has, over the course of the last twenty years, essentially ruined his two great franchises. And in the wake of this, I've personally discovered that his other films just don't interest me in the slightest. American Graffiti is incredibly overrated and contrived even for its time. And THX 1138... well I can't say overrated because I have yet to meet anyone who likes the film... but it is certainly derivative in the worst kind of way (ie. we can see the cut and paste from the literature he copied). Then suddenly even his greatest achievements become derivative as Lucas himself calls Star Wars a remake of The Hidden Fortress. In the end, I've come to find that Lucas has never had an original idea, rather he has surrounded himself with people that make him look better. The mere fact that he calls The Empire Strikes Back his least favorite Star Wars should be proof enough that he simply doesn't understand. Empire is the one that he didn't write and man does it show. So yes, I am praising Lucas (in a rather negative way). Thank you for what you have done... the wonderful things you gave me in my childhood. But thank you even more... for going away. Your presence will not be missed on the film front. Leave the rest to Spielberg. He's the reason we've put up with you for so long anyway.

I'm not a negative person, but when someone so frequently destroys the things I love, I can only be malicious in return. It's simple like that. We fans can only take so much abuse before we snap. And the studios clearly get it... not giving Lucas any help in producing his latest film. Now if we could only get quality, untouched editions of those great classics that made us like him to begin with...