The name George Lucas will probably forever be associated with Star Wars. In 1977 he brought the first adventure of Luke Skywalker and Co. to the big screen with Star Wars. Since then, Star Wars has become… pop culture milestone and become one of the most successful franchises in history. In 2012, Lucas sold his production company Lucasfilm to Disney for around $4 billion.
As of April 2024, George Lucas is the richest celebrity on earth. With a fortune of $5.5 billion, he tops the Forbes list of the most successful people in the entertainment industry. The curious thing: In contrast to directors like Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, who are also on the list, Lucas I haven’t made a film in 19 years. So what is he doing today?
Star Wars creator George Lucas hasn’t made a film since Episode 3 and is still saving the cinema
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, Lucas’ last directorial work, was released in cinemas in May 2005. As a producer and source of ideas, he still appears in a few projects today. However, this has been the case since Red Tails (2012) and Strange Magic (2015). about formalities. The George Lucas who appears in the credits of the new Indiana Jones adventure was unlikely to have been involved in the making of the film.
Disney
Jon Favreau, George Lucas, Rosario Dawson and Dave Filoni on the set of The Mandalorian
However, Lucas has not completely disappeared from the world of cinema. Although he doesn’t make any new films himself, he has become one of the leading figures in Hollywood concerned with preserving film history. A concrete example: the one launched by Lucas’ in 2007 Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation (formerly the George Lucas Family Foundation) has already financed the restoration of around 150 films.
Looking at Lucas’ career, this should hardly come as a surprise.
George Lucas was always interested in preserving film history and promoting cinema
Lucas’ commitment to film heritage dates back to the beginning of his career. While he redefined blockbuster cinema as a filmmaker and led the digital revolution in Hollywood, he addressed the question of… Accessibility and preservation of film. With the big name he had thanks to Star Wars, he even supported his colleagues’ projects.
The best known is the case of Akira Kurosawa’s 1980 samurai epic Kagemusha – The Warrior’s Shadow, which would probably never have seen the light of day without Lucas (and Francis Ford Coppola). The Japanese production from Toho the money had run out. Lucas approached 20th Century Fox to raise the rest of the budget and secure international distribution rights.
For many people, Lucas is the epitome of commercial blockbuster cinema, but the truth lies in his cinematic ones Roots in the avant-garde sector. Regular cinema-going in the 1960s influenced his cinephilia and opened the door to European cinema, where the Nouvelle Vague turned the rules of filmmaking on their head, as Brian Jay Jones writes in his George Lucas biography.
Warner Bros.
An Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB (Short film by George Lucas, 1967)
These experimental models influenced Lucas’ short films more than the pulp stories and TV series that later formed the basis for Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Co. The Star Wars creator has an often underestimated Awareness of film history
– and not just the common classics: No wonder that Lucas invests his fortune to preserve this film history in the best possible way.
Through his Foundation, Lucas saves numerous films from being forgotten forever
As early as 1988, he spoke out before the US Senate against the post-colorization of black and white films. In 1990, he joined Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, which focused on promoting the Restoration of films from all over the world has specialized. Less related to film, but with a mission for education, Lucas founded the George Lucas Educational Foundation a year later to improve school education in the USA.
The large-scale project Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which was initiated in 2014 (and has not yet been completed), is intended to give artists a stage. These include comic legend Jack Kirby and concept art mastermind Ralph McQuarrie, who is responsible for many of the iconic designs from the first Star Wars trilogy responsible for. And then there is the aforementioned Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
Endless streaming options and elaborate home theater releases create the impression of ultimate availability. The truth is different: only that is available Tip of the iceberg cinema, which includes so many more works than are listed in the catalogs of Amazon, Netflix and Co. A shockingly large proportion probably couldn’t even be uploaded to a database.
Inked Pictures
Restored with funds from the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation: Night of the Living Dead
Many films are only preserved as fragments, if not completely lost. And the rolls of film stored in archives are often in suboptimal condition and require careful care to stand the test of time.
This is exactly where Lucas’ work comes in.
From the groundbreaking masterpiece Night of the Living Dead to the forgotten silent film $500 Reward, about the theft of a valuable necklace, the films restored thanks to financial support from Lucas’ Foundation, cover a wide field. Well-known directors such as Jia Zhang-ke, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Ernst Lubitsch are represented here – and those who only appear as a marginal note in the history books.
The number of lost films is greater than we care to admit. Missing film reels, destroyed material, distorted colors and incomprehensible soundtracks: as robust and irrefutable as film appears at first glance, in the end it is extremely fragile medium. Just remember how easily the tape on a VHS cassette gets tangled or a DVD gets scratched and you can no longer play it.
We can’t trust streaming services like Netflix, but George Lucas won’t let us down
With a few exceptions, such as Netflix’s restoration of the long-lost Orson Welles film The Other Side of the Wind, streamers and other young media companies show little interest in film history. The work is even more important, which Lucas does through his foundation, even if the effort remains invisible to many. None of this is self-evident. Nevertheless, it is in keeping with Lucas’ work.
Disney
George Lucas is far from the end of his film work
One of the qualities that is often forgotten about Lucas is that he uses his successes to reinvest. Star Wars would never have been as groundbreaking if Lucas hadn’t looked for ways to create images that had never been seen before in cinema. He recognized the possibilities of digital very early on and tried to translate traditional filmmaking processes into a new form of craft.
Among other things, Lucas initiated the development of digital editing programs such as SoundDroid and EditDroid. The success was relative, but the pioneering work behind it is just as important admirable cinematic spirit like his commitment to film history. Who knows what film you’ll watch next by Michael Curtiz or John Huston. A name may appear at the end of the credits without whom this film experience in 2024 would never have been possible: George Lucas.