The ‘Star Wars’ criticism George Lucas called “completely absurd”
Hollywood changed drastically during the 1970s, with new filmmakers pushing the boundaries of mainstream cinema by taking influence from indie and foreign cinema. Movies like Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde, Harold and Maude, and The Godfather signalled a new era for filmmaking, with the easing of censorship allowing directors to incorporate more taboo themes and violence into their work.
George Lucas emerged during this period, finding significant success with American Graffiti, his 1973 comedy-drama. As sci-fi started to develop during this period, spurred on by the success of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Lucas began working on Star Wars. The film ended up being a huge hit, becoming the highest-grossing film of all time at that point. Family-friendly and truly revolutionary, the space drama piqued the interest of a wide range of people, from sci-fi lovers to general movie-goers.
The blockbuster was a relatively new concept, with Jaws, released two years before, widely considered the first of its kind. Star Wars emerged close behind it and proved that summer blockbusters could make an unprecedented amount of money. Star Wars soon turned into a franchise, with The Empire Strikes Back arriving in 1980 and Return of the Jedi in 1983. Lucas didn’t direct these two, but he acted as the executive producer and conceived the stories for them.
The whole trilogy became incredibly popular and beloved, cementing the importance of blockbuster franchises for boosting financial profits in the industry and even spawning countless merchandising ideas. It was only inevitable, then, that Star Wars would return sooner or later. In the ‘90s, fans were given a new series to sink their teeth into, the prequel trilogy, beginning with Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.
The film introduced new characters, including Jar Jar Binks, who remains one of the most controversial figures in the whole franchise. Introduced as a comedic side character, people were instantly hostile towards him, believing that he made Star Wars feel like a joke. The computer-generated character was also criticised for being a racial stereotype, something that Lucas thinks is a “completely absurd” idea.
Critics and audiences were quick to point out everything from Jar Jar’s accent to his humorous nature, suggesting that the film was playing into offensive Afro-Caribbean stereotypes. However, Lucas found these claims questionable, asking why people would automatically correlate these traits with a certain race. “How in the world you could take an orange amphibian and say that he’s a Jamaican?” he asked during an interview on Newsnight, adding, “Even the idea of taking his ears and calling them dreadlocks is kinda a strange stretch as far as I’m concerned, I mean it’s completely absurd.”
He asserted that “it is in outer space, these are aliens,” affirming that these characters are not based on humans. Of course, whether the intention was there or not, criticisms of the character for playing into certain harmful stereotypes are perfectly valid. Yet, Lucas will always be the first to shoot these accusations down.
In another interview, this time chatting with the late Robin Williams, Lucas said, “They [fans] don’t like comic sidekicks. They just can’t take it, you know, in the first film nobody liked C-3PO, they couldn’t stand him. It was like the most repulsive character ever created on film. Then when we did Empire [Strikes Back], nobody liked Yoda, ‘you can’t understand what he’s saying, he talks backwards’, then in the third one, they hated the Ewoks. They just couldn’t stand them. They were too cute. Too fuzzy.”
He concluded, “It’s sort of inevitable that the smallest, goofiest character just gets despised.”
Lucas believes that certain fans just don’t like the idea of Star Wars containing humorous elements, sharing in the same Newsnight interview, “They want the films to be tough like Terminator.”
He added, “They get very upset and very opinionated about anything to do with being childlike […] they don’t want comedy in these movies.” However, the truth is that Star Wars will always be filled with comedic elements because “the movies are for children, but they [fans] don’t want to admit that.”
