George Lucas: The Forgotten Auteur Part III
Welcome back once more, dear readers, for the final installment of my retrospective on the films of George Lucas and how he is more of an auteur than most give him credit for. In previous installments, I discussed Lucas’ consistent themes in his work as well as his life and views on politics and the world made it into films. In this pivotal climatic chapter, I will explore Lucas’ most consistent thematic concept and throughline in his films: the desire to escape.
As a child in Modesto, Lucas’ dream was to escape his average life and race cars for a living. This aspect of the desire to escape was embodied in two characters from American Graffiti (1973): Hot rod racer John Milner, who in the sequel fulfills his dream but never leaves his hometown, only racing local circuits, as well as the timid creative, Curt Henderson, who was reluctant to leave the normality of his hometown to go to college and become a writer, but finally chooses to grow beyond the limits of familiarity. Both of these characters are evocative of Lucas’ early life choices to stay in Modesto with his cars or escape Modesto and go to college to study as a creative.
This facet of Lucas found its way into Star Wars (1977) through his desire to escape his hometown. He mirrored his desires after his near-fatal car wreck in 1962 to Luke Skywalker’s: Lucas dreamed of going into the film industry, escaping the mundanity of his life, and making films with societal commentary—it was his way of fighting against an oppressive force. Meanwhile, Luke Skywalker dreamed of venturing into the galaxy from his home planet and making a difference against the tyrannical galactic empire; he is also the sci-fi equivalent of a “car guy.”
While at USC film school, Lucas had the opportunity to shadow filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola as he shot his feature film Finian’s Rainbow (1968). During this period, the two became close friends and later co-founded their film company, American Zoetrope, independent of the studio system. American Zoetrope aimed to take chances on unconventional films driven by distinct filmmakers with prominent voices that most conventional studios would turn down. In 1969, Coppola and Lucas signed a deal with Warner Bros. to distribute seven American Zoetrope films theatrically.
One of these was Lucas’ feature-length directorial debut, THX 1138 (1971), a film that follows a man living in an underground civilization whose government enforces a lack of emotion, restrictions on sexual intercourse, and the need for mind-altering substances to enforce compliance. In the film’s climax, the eponymous THX 1138 protagonist makes a daring escape attempt to leave behind the sterile city for the real world on the surface.
A potential reading of THX 1138 (1971) is that it reflects the founding of American Zoetrope: Lucas, much like THX, wanted to leave behind the stale studio system of the early seventies and make unconventional, independent films, like those that defined the American New Wave generation, such as Easy Rider (1969) and Five Easy Pieces (1970). THX 1138 was the first Zoetrope film released by a major studio and was believed to be their ideal style: strange, unconventional, driven by creativity, and with something to say. As a result, it was a box-office disappointment, and THX 1138 (1971) led to the early cancellation of American Zoetrope’s deal with Warner Bros.
Another method of escape Lucas yearned for was the escape of limitations. In his first two directorial features, Lucas had to deal with studio interference, cutting several scenes in both films that Lucas objected to but had no say in. However, due to the success of Star Wars (1977), Lucas then had no limitations; no studio would dare interfere with his process and art.
Throughout the 1980s, Lucas and his special effects company, Industrial Light and Magic, would push the boundaries of special effects; Lucas’s only remaining limitation. One of the greatest achievements from this period was Willow (1988), which used state-of-the-art digital technology to make human characters morph between different appearances, such as a goat or a lion. Lucas wrote the film’s story, following a young individual named Willow, who wanted to escape from his status as an amateur magician and learn “real” magic, much like Lucas’s desire to develop special effects to entertain audiences through Industrial Light and Magic.
By the time the Star Wars prequel trilogy had come and gone—the early 2000s—Lucas was in a state of semi-retirement. His time was now dedicated to his family, film preservation, and numerous charities. Even so, Lucas felt restrained by the phenomenon that had begun channeling his desire, the need to speak to the world, told as a science fiction fantasy story. Lucas would continue serving as executive producer and consultant on many Star Wars franchise projects until 2012 when he sold Lucasfilm to the Walt Disney Company and effectively closed the chapter of his life in the film industry.
George Lucas is in no way perfect. There are some major complaints about his convoluted stories, which are full of plot holes and wooden dialogue packed with hard-to-understand technobabble—all of which are valid criticisms. However, no one should say he is not just as much of an auteur as his contemporaries, like Stephen Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Coppola. While his impact and legacy may be that of action figures and billion-dollar adventures, within all of Lucas’ work is a part of him. Whether it be his passions, real life, political beliefs, or lifelong desires, George Lucas is just as much an auteur as anyone else.
Thumbnail Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons