my latest post on Hollywood Elsewhere

After Return of the Jedi, George Lucas had a chance to enter the pantheon of great human storytellers. You laugh, but his Star Wars movies brought him to the edge of greatness. After his first three, all he had to do was a great followup trilogy. Had he blown us away with Episodes I - III, he would have joined…brace yourselves… Shakespeare, Kurosawa, the Brothers Grimm, and the others in the Hall of Stories. His influence on movies and marketing is not in dispute. I’m saying his stories themselves were good, and had potential to be great. His characters, their universe, the backstory - they bored their way into our minds until they became archetype. Jedi is even a recognized religion in some places. He was right there and he blew it. Like the Wachowski brothers, he had a chance to make something great; bigger than him, bigger than all of us. Something to last into the future. Had he made a cohesive six-story epic that excited and held our fascination, he’d be in, and they’d still be talking about The Force and Darth Vader a thousand years from now. But like the makers of The Matrix, he is going down in flames. Of all the storms creative people weather in their lives, why must the hardest be success? — Jon Rahoi

from the WIRED box…