...Jumper however...

I know we like to hate on Hayden Christensen around here, but what he said about Lucas is EXACTLY why Lucas is a shit director. He can't direct actors.

I want to know what he did that made him say "Yup, I'm an actor"?

i think the real question is will anyone actually watch long enough to tell...

@Epaminondas: Well I guess it all started the first time I went through the second grade. I caught my reflection in a spoon while I was eating my cereal, and I remember thinking "wow, you're ridiculously good looking, maybe you could do that for a career."

Shattered Glass.

Waahhh I got to swing around a lightsabre... Waahh I got to portray one of the most iconic film characters of all time and I knew is going in... Wahhh Lucas can't direct actors... I had to look at a green screen and a tennis ball, sniff sniff. Jesus. You know Harrison Ford, Mark Hammill and Carrie Fisher all have said that Lucas can't direct actors line to, yet they almost always finish that sentance by explaining that they just... acted.

Whereas they offered the job to Ewan McGreggor and he said "Too Fookin' Right!" (actual quote) and then proceded to channel Sir Alec for three entire movies.

Good actors take what's not on the page and use those blank spaces to put something memorable on the screen. That's their job.

@tetracycloide: brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

And, yes, Lucas is a hack when it comes to directing actors. And, yes, Hayden is a hack when it comes to acting. I think I read that the voice-overs for the new series and movie are the same as the original Clone Wars series? Whoever it was that did Anakin actually made me wish for Hayden, though...he was terrible. He does Anakin's voice in the "Revenge of the Sith" game (had that on the PS2) and his little one-liners made me play the game with the sound off.

Well, at least with voice acting it's just that: Voice-acting. The real acting will be better because he won't be doing it, an animator will.

I know I'll catch a load of poo for defending Lucas, but he's only "a hack when it comes to directing actors" and "can't direct actors," etc., if the performance he wanted on screen *is something other than the one he got.* I think he got exactly the result he did want, which means he *can* direct actors, he just doesn't do so in a way that most directors would consider desirable.

I don't know if i computer-generated Anakin will be less robotic but I don't think it'll be any worse.

I mean how much worse can you get?

@PhilipFry: Have a look at the differences of opinion Kersher and Lucas had during the filming of Empire Strikes Back, specifically the scene where Leia confronts Han before he's frozen in carbonite. If I recall correctly, Lucas had wanted Han to respond to Leia by saying something utterly contrived like "I love you too", and antagonized Ford by making him do a dozen takes to get it just right. Then Kershner took over and told Ford to just do what felt natural, which lead to the "I know" reply that everyone knows and loves.

So there were definitely times when what Lucas wanted didn't make it to the screen, but since it was usually for the better, he never complained about his vision being altered lest he look like the hack he is.

Also worth noting is an NPR interview with Kershner where I recall he mentioned that his plan was to have a total of six movies with the emperor only being revealed in the final, climactic installment.

Looks like a couple of posters have watched a SW documentary on the History channel. I love hearing that Lucas can't direct actors from people that aren't actors or have never worked with him. It warms my heart.

@AmericanHector:

The reason most people say that has everything to do with the fact that nearly every actor who's worked with Lucas has said that. And the extremely publicized hatred several actors have of him. (Carrie Fisher absolutely hates his guts).

This looks TERRIBLE. Am I missing something? These designs look like they wouldn't pass muster in a videogame, much less a show. Stiff, flat and cartoony. Come back, Genndy Tartovsky, all is forgiven!

@extracrispy: No problem, no acting in his movies. There was better acting in 10,000 BC.. and that was the Mammoths.

@Garrison Dean: Harrison Ford is the only one of the three that has had a real career later.

@Evdor: Carrie Fisher has issues. She famously said "Paul Simon is the same as my father, Eddy Fisher; a little Jew that sings."

@codydog: True enough. and I mean that literally, didn't she get counseling?

Ford wasn't a big fan either, memory serves. He was the one that uttered that oh-so famous "You can write that **** (can't remember if language is a no-no here) but you can't say it) and made a point to take a monsterous number of jobs afterward to avoid being typecast.

Come to think of it, most of Lucas' creative team hated him too. I think most people do hate him.

I really can't blame them. Every time he issues a statement he comes off like an insufferable prick. But I think lowly of anyone who blames the community that likes his stuff for 'not getting' what he's trying to put forward. His constant blamings of fans for the bad reception of the new films--no, no, it couldn't have been his fault!

@tetracycloide: Zoolander! It's sad that I'm the only one to catch you out on that isn't it, ha well you knew it, so that makes two sad people.

I'm not going to mention Star Wars or Hayden, because I don't feel like smashing something. I shall watch THX 1138 and all shall be forgiven, once again. He's so loveable now with his big fat Jabba neck.

So you don't become an actor to act in something like Star Wars... right.

@codydog: By who's standards? They didn't all go on to become 'A' list movie stars, that's true. But to say that they didn't have careers is demonstrably UNTRUE.

Hammill's voice acting career is pretty well-known (and his turn as the Joker from Batman considered by many as the best take on the character). Fisher is a best-selling author and a well-known Hollywood script doctor. Both have done broadway. 30 years after Star Wars and they both still have active careers in Hollywood. That's a hell of a lot more successful than most actiors out there.

I also notice some selectivity there: several actors in Star Wars were already stars from day one, so you convienently ignore them. Or do you think that Peter Cushing, James Earl Jones, Sir Alec Guiness, Frank Oz, or Ian McDiarmid. And even minor character actors like Warwick Davis and Caroline Blakiston are still actively working actors.

The idea that no one from Star Wars ever went on to be successful is just plain silly. Unless your only definition of success is that of being Harrison Ford, I suppose.

@Evdor: i think she wrote a book about her trials.. i hear her whining on NPR every so often..

But Lucas did manage to produce the myth of the decade, so i dunno.

When i think of Star Wars, i see static shots like the two robots on the sand dune, the death star, or action shots of machinery. That first sequence in IV with the huge ship followed by the huger ship blows the mind and sets up the suspension of disbelief for the rest of the movie.

So that's cool. But acting? Forget it.

@WizarDru: With a start like that Hammill should have been huge, and of course established stars were not hurt.

Carrie Fisher was pretty embarrassing as an actress all around, considering the advantages she started with. Liza Minnelli she ain't

Natalie Portman is doing real well too. But my real point was that Star Wars was not about acting at all. It was about archetypes, machinery, and settings. Real typical 1930's SF. That also suffered from cardboard characters, stilted dialogue and ridiculous plots.

What it had was sensawonder, strong conflict and lots of kaboomium.

@Garrison Dean: And the movies they were in weren't "directed" by Lucas. Only "New Hope" was him. He wanted the ewoks in for his kids, and we all know how they went. As much as I don't like HC, he makes a perfectly valid point. Lucas has great ideas, but when it comes to directing he should have always opted to take the backseat. The prequels were horrible. I've gone back to watch them just to see if I was wrong. Nope. Still suck, and I dont just blame the acting.

Look carefully at Portman in Revenge of the Sith when she utters "Ani, you're breaking my heart..." No matter how good an actress she is (and I personally feel she could read the PHONE BOOK and I'd watch it), you can just SEE her wincing at the sheer vapidness of the line.

Let's be honest here: Star Wars, in its day, was groundbreaking in that it upped the ante on what the Sci Fi genre could deliver. It took all the standard concepts you'd find in pulp westerns (and WWI and II films) and refitted them into something that was NEW for its time (well to Western audiences anyway). The 'prequel' movies did a piss-poor job of innovating in any way. The characters were weaker and more cardboard than their predecessors, the writing is stiffer and MORE contrived by comparison. NOT A SINGLE PERSON I'VE EVER TALKED TO felt Anakin was a character you gave a rat's ass about in ANY of the 'new' films, and he basically did the entire series to show off spiffy effects shots and the actors seemed tacked in there as an afterthought.

Granted we're not talking Shakespeare here to begin with, but OMFG the inner child in me wants to wring Lucas' neck (assuming I could find it) for basically screwing up his own universe (repeatedly) for the sake of appeasing his own over-inflated ego. I LOVED eps 4-6, and not even obsessively like many 'fans', and to me it's appalling that I couldn't find a reason to give a damn about ANYONE in eps 1-3. And it's not the actors that I have a problem with (even HC, who it should be noted was told 'this is how you'll play Anakin' and he did exactly what he was paid to do, so any reference to how awful the character is should be directed at Lucas since that was what HE wanted), it's the uneven storytelling, the dialog that makes the dialog in eps 4-6 look like Hemingway by comparison, the bloody AWFUL character 'development' (when they remember to actually DO any), the retarded attempts at 'humor' (we won't even GO into Jar Jar), the "ZOMG LOOK WE HAVE SPFX on COMPUUUUUTERS" CG effect overload, and in general the ham-handedness with which the whole thing was put together.

Nope, can't lay the blame of 'the whiniest jedi' on HC people, that's pure Lucas magic there. :P