GEORGE
LUCAS IS A
MONEY GRUBBING $#@%!
Commentary by
Dave Phillips and Loren Phillips
November 1998
DAVE'S RANT:
George Lucas is a money-grubbing (nasty word deleted...this is a family EMag, after all...but for the record, it rhymes with "plastered".)
There, I said it. I believe it to be true, and I said it.
I'm sure that I'll get hundreds of emails from people talking about "the Dream" and "the Vision" and all that other nonsense that fanboys just swallow up wholesale simply because George "Slap a number on it and call it a 'collectors edition" Lucas says it. I might even get a note from LFL themselves talking about "defamation of character", but I really don't care since this is MY opinion and the last time I checked the good ol' Constitution it was still okay to have one of those and voice it in your own forum.
Guess what? Welcome to my forum. Nyah.
Don't like that tone of my opening? Don't read any more, because it's going to get worse.
You may ask what caused this total schizoid shift from all other webmasters in the SW Universe who (with a few exceptions) ooze love for George Lucas and every drop of sweat that falls from his brow as he conjures up another way to make us pay for the same information packaged slightly differently. They sit around proclaiming him a "genius", a "visionary", and yes, on three websites I've been to he's been referred to as nothing less than "a God". Not here...here he's going to be referred to more along the lines of the Devil incarnate, and you're still probably asking why. Yes, you may be asking why, and I hope you have by now, since I'm about to start giving you the answer whether you are or not.
I ignored this point of view all through the miscellaneous items that started flocking to the store shelves once someone clued in that gee, Star Wars is a popular commodity and people really like it. (Note: I'm convinced these are the same people that take a $4 million grant from someone to deliver a paper titled "ECONOMICALLY DEPRESSED AREAS LESS LIKELY TO HAVE LARGE TICKET ITEM SALES THAN WEALTHY NEIGHBORHOODS". No joke...read this one on CNN.com not too long ago.)
Then I started seeing things like little tiny notebooks that you couldn't possibly write anything more than the first 3 letters of someone's name on per page with the various movies plastered on the cover. Then FAO Schwarz offers up a Darth Vader nutcracker. Then the deluge of nonsense, like 6,000 different levels of technical information packaged in 19 different books (some of them nearly identical reprints of each other...and some contradicting each other), 3 CD-ROMs, 8 "sourcebooks" from things I never heard of in the first place, a cryptic writing in a Bazooka Joe comic, and a computer game only available for the Commodore VIC 20 and written in Mandarin Chinese. Star Wars sneakers. Star Wars action figures that all look like Rambo. Six different versions of the movies on video and DVD. A telephone the shape of Darth Vader's head, complete with heavy breathing, so you can really make those obscene phone calls with ease, or the Darth Vader Speakerphone, with light-up chest. You take your pick, I'm sticking with my new 900 MHz cordless.
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| Pull out the back of his head or talk into his chest...either way, you'll be paying through the nose for the privilege of using Darth Vader as a communications device. | |
But that wasn't enough to drive me over the edge. No, not me. Because I LOVE Star Wars, you see. I was an idiot until this afternoon opened up my eyes...and here's your wake-up call too, folks.
I was walking through the book store today (and though I usually remain non-plug oriented I'll tell you it rhymes with "Shmaldenbooks" due to our beloved Ferrett's affiliation therewith and the fact that I have a discount card) and something caught my eye. A big box that promised "The History of Darth Vader" was contained inside it.
- First problem: Isn't this story the foundation for the three movies that I'm supposed to be waiting on the edge of my seat to pay $26,000 a ticket for by the time the third one hits the theaters?
- Second problem: The book is like 18 pages long (okay...slight exaggeration. Maybe 118, tops), with limited words per page, and is no thicker than your average spiral notebook we've all used to scribble meaningless love notes in while in High School.
- Third problem: It's SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLARS!!
No, that's not a typo folks...SEVENTY-FIVE dollars. A '7' followed by a '5', with no decimals involved except after the '5' and before the two zeros. And why, praytell, is it $75 you may ask? Go ahead...ask. I'll wait. Thank you...shows you're actually interested. The reason it's $75 is because it comes with a [sarcasm] spiffy [/sarcasm] 13.5" plastic/rubber doll of Anakin Skywalker, much like we saw him at the end of Return of the Jedi. Obi-Wan like robes and everything. Whoo-hoo.
I don't WANT a stupid Anakin doll. I don't BUY 12" figures. I don't LIKE things like that. I buy books. We buy the nicer quality artwork (signed and numbered of course) from Dave Dorman and Ralph McQuarrie. Good ol’ George's coffers are doing just FINE with the money I'm already giving him thanks...no sense in me buying something I've got absolutely no interest in whatsoever, right? I'm a book freak...I like books. Preferably hardcover, so that it takes up MAXIMUM shelf space after I'm thoroughly sick of reading the same plot points yet again and makes funny divots on my sternum when I read them in bed at night. But to buy the book, I have to buy the doll. It's a bundled pack.
Hey, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there something or other in the news about a certain software corporate giant that's getting sued heinously by the entire free world for forcing one piece of their software upon you if you want to purchase a more particularly important program by bundling them as one? Isn't LFL a corporate giant? Don't they make software too? Is anyone else seeing a point here?
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| Bundling books with dolls ...what's next? Having to take Internet Explorer with every Star Wars computer game, and being forced to pay for the honor? |
Anyone have Janet Reno's email address? Ken Starr's? Anyone? I think I just came up with a way for them to keep their names fresh in the news...
LOREN'S RANT
Unlike my husband Dave, my disillusionment with the Star Wars mystique began about a year ago. When I saw the "Story of Anakin Skywalker" promo pack, it was with no shock that I viewed the price tag. I've been seeing the overmarketing of Star Wars occurring for quite some time, and the $75 fee for a cheap plastic doll and pathetically small book was nothing more than yet another example of George Lucas squeezing every last penny he can out of the fans who worship his "vision".
The point is, bundling a $24.99 (tops) book with a $19.99 (tops) doll should cost $44.98, right? Actually, most of the time you purchase any two items bundled into a special package, you usually pay LESS than if you bought them separately. But Lucas is tacking a SIXTY PERCENT SURCHARGE on the thing to allow the consumer the privilege of owning a "collector's item" that most people can't afford to buy. There is some other Star Wars book on the market, the "Star Wars Chronicles", that sells for the unbelievable cost of $150. The only books worth that kind of money are first editions from world-renowned authors like Hemingway and Twain, and the like. Another collection of "facts" about a fictional story written by a basically unknown person is not worth $150.
Some kid is going to see these books in a store and beg his mom to buy them for him. And she's going to shake her head and tell him not to be ridiculous. And that kid is going to be heartbroken because he's going to think he's missing out on something really cool.
So what's happening here? Lucas is taking "Star Wars" away from the kids. You remember them? That was you and me and the other thirty-something folks who sat dumbstruck in a dark theater those many years ago. We were the young people that the films were aimed toward...along with the "young heart and soul" of the adults who loved the films as well. Lucas created films which represented the joy he received as a child himself, from the magic his predecessors brought to the big screen. So what happened to "sharing the magic"?
I'll tell you what happened...the magic became the marketing. Marketing every possible thing that could possibly be marketed to get people geared up to buy a ticket to see the remade "special editions". Marketing to sell videos of the original movie versions before the special editions came out, by threatening they'd never be available again. Then marketing the special edition videos six months later. And using all of the special edition marketing as a tool to get people geared up for the fresh onslaught of new merchandise to gear everyone up for the prequel. A Christmas catalog we just received already sells toys of the prequel's characters and sets, just in time for the holiday rush. Aren't there enough Star Wars toys available already that we don't need to see "spoilers" just because we want to do some shopping for the holidays??
It's been an endless cycle of more and more redundant merchandise being released on a daily basis. We host a hugely successful Star Wars forum, and we can't even keep up with the unbelievable quantity of crap being sold with the Star Wars logo slapped on it. It's commonly known as "overkill". There's been so MUCH overkill that I, a Star Wars fan who even met her husband through a Star Wars online forum, can't stand the sight of the Star Wars logo anymore. The knowledge that Star Wars has stopped being a wonderful story and become a mega-marketing machine is enough to destroy the magic it once had. It totally destroys the excitement I could have had for "The Phantom Menace", because now I feel like it wasn't filmed so Lucas could share more of the story with his fans...he made it so his fans could share more of their paychecks with him.
You want to know why "The Empire Strikes Back" was so great? Because nobody knew what to expect before we sat there watching it in the theater. No one had a clue what the story line was going to be. We were quivering with uncertainty as we watched the opening scene. Now we have books and trailers and a production company that leaks like the Exxon Valdez, and there's no mystery.
I don't WANT to know who every character is in the film before I see it. I don't WANT to know who does what to whom before I see it happen on the big screen. I don't WANT to know how they made every special effect in the film so I'll know what the "trick" was when I see the movie. I don't WANT to know what the fabulous new things in the Star Wars universe will be before I've paid my $7.50, bought my popcorn, and get to sit in a dark theater as an impressive and exciting film is presented on a huge screen the way it's meant to be. Seeing so much beforehand on television sets, computer screens, and printed pages does nothing more than cheat us out of the experience we want to recreate from seeing the original trilogy when we were young.
But instead, LFL is selling toys that show us the upcoming sets, books that tells us too much of the story, and generally pushing way too much at us way too long before the films even come out. Lucas doesn't care about the magic of Star Wars anymore...he cares about the magic of the marketing of Star Wars. And LFL says he's had total control of every aspect of the filming and promotion, so we can't even blame it on some hired marketing team. Lucas has sold out...period. He's no "visionary". He's just yet another person who's decided to make as much money of as many people as he possibly can, to fatten his own wallet.
I think he used to care about the fans. I think somewhere deep inside he remembers the reason he made Star Wars in the first place...not for the money, but for the joy. It's sad to think that this person who once led us all into another place and time where we could revel in an exciting new world has decided to take advantage of a new generation of kids who now think they're supposed to own everything with a Star Wars logo on it in order to consider themselves "a true fan". It's destroyed the love of a wonderful series of films for one person in the Phillips house, and it's working it's claws into the other, slowly but surely.