Filmmaker George Lucas visits the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and answers a few questions from the Chicago Tribune about the Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination exhibit.
“Star Wars was designed to stimulate the imagination of young kids. It was to get kids to think and use their imagination and go home and draw pictures and make their own stories,” said Lucas, who was in town to promote the 10,000-square-foot exhibit.
“There is a lot of imaginative science in Star Wars,” Lucas said. “It shows you that by imagining things, you can imagine things that will eventually come through.”
Watch the video interview here, along with the article:
Exhibit from a galaxy far, far away
Tags: George Lucas, Robots, Science & Tech
George Lucas says: “Star Wars was designed to stimulate the imagination of young kids. It was to get kids to think and use their imagination and go home and draw pictures and make their own stories,”
In every interview, in every expression, in every way possible, Mr. Lucas has made it clear that, while appreciating tributes and derivative materials, he has way more admiration for new universes peopled with new races and beings, and filled with their own patterns and anomalies.
Two judgmental forces are working against the sci-fi writer who chooses to set his stories in someone else’s universe:
I- a trend toward absolute originality in all media, with all else being considered second rate.
II- whereas Shakespeare could borrow a storyline or a setting and fill it with unequaled genius, a modern science fiction writer cannot do this as gracefully. Science fiction relies too much on the setting, the technology, the science. It IS possible for a work of art that is set in the Star Wars universe to be greater in genius than any of the Trilogy or Prequel films when the play is played, but this is, to put it in D&D, Very Rare.
If you are bored, check out this bizarre semi-derivative work of Palpatine defeating Gandalf, Galactus, Superman, and Godzilla, entitled ‘Palpatine at the Clavier’:
http://approaching40.typepad.com/antiaging4geeks/2008/02/palpatine-at-th.html
Otherwise, live long and prosper. ;O)
Paul Roe
antiaging4geeks.com