Grid Effect

It appears George Lucas is working on a new television series he is referring to as a cross between Sopranos and Deadwood…in space! On the surface this sounds like quite possibly too retarded from a guy who still lives off a trilogy he completed a quarter of a century ago, but then we recalled what the prequel trilogy entailed, and well, we decided that his description probably isn’t a misquote.

What can we expect from something like that? I’m picturing a bunch of Italians eating lasagna and drinking wine in a rusty saloon with shotguns and androgynous females. Maybe that is too on the nose, maybe it is something like a gang of wookies that speak with Italian accents in a mining town that is too close to the sun. That sounds just right. Essentially, its going to be like the bar scene from Star Wars but with an abundance of humans.

Imagine them all holding lightsabers. Yeah, that’s a fucking goldmine.

If almost anyone else had said this it would be a laughing stock, not something that everyone anticipates with great vigor. I’m going to announce a project that crosses Mr. Baseball and The Deer Hunter, it’s set during a war in the US after a Japanese baseball player is drafted in a coalition effort. The baseball player forms a bond with his fellow soldiers and crazy high jinks ensue on many battlefields in a war torn country. Amidst all the strife, he teaches his fellow soldiers — among other valuable life lessons — not to take the war so seriously before they are all killed in an air strike. Genius. It’s tragic and zany.

For every word that I hear this guy say and every project he has announced, I am all the more grateful that Annie Hall beat out Star Wars for best picture in 1977. It’s not like Woody Allen has been on his A-game for the past twenty years or anything, but Crimes and Misdemeanors, Sweet and Lowdown, Mighty Aphrodite and Match Point alone make for a better post magnum opus career that anything Lucas has been apart of, and I’m not even including his work from 1978 to 1987.

Maybe we should stop rewarding projects to people who never demonstrate any consistency. If you are kind enough to take a gander at his IMDB page, you will notice that it is extremely, almost obnoxiously long, but outside of Star Wars movies and I’ll throw Willow into the mix, is there anything else that received commercial or critical praise? Don’t get me wrong, Howard The Duck has its qualities, but by no stretch of the imagination is it considered a success.

Whatever, all the Star Wars films (even the most recent three) grossed more money than the GDP of most African countries, so he’s always going to get film and television deals and that is just a reality. Until he doesn’t, and then we’ll see the prequel “remastered” to match the quality of modern day film (South Park covered this mockery quite aptly). But when this project ultimately disappoints, just like so many others he has been apart of, do not complain that you weren’t forewarned.