The People vs George Lucas

POSTED BY DANNY CHOO On Thu 2009/12/10 14:05 JST in Tokyo Stormtrooper

"The People vs George Lucas" is a Star Wars documentary movie which is due to be released in movie theaters around the world next year. The producers contacted me recently and asked if I would like to be in the movie.
"You bet!"

The movie documents the opinions of George Lucas by industry folks and people involved in the Star Wars movies like Gary Kurts (Producer Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back) and David Prowse (Darth Vader).
The movie also covers opinions of Star Wars fans who have been brought up on the saga.

Apart from being interviewed for the movie, I've also been helping out getting some comrade hardcore Star Wars fans into the movie like the folks at Kotobukiya and Afro Samurai creator Takashi Okazaki.
Also managed to find some local Star Wars fans through my Twitter - they will also be appearing in the movie.

Trailer for the movie below.

It seems that the Star Wars Special Editions (the ones with the beefed up CG's) left some fans disappointed leading them to hate George Lucas. I personally thought the Special Editions were fine. The Greedo shooting first looked a bit odd though.
Comparisons below.

And then there are fans who didn't like the New Trilogy - Episode 1,2 and 3. Again, I personally like them but thought the Darth Vader "noooooooooo!" could have been better. Still prefer the original 3 films though.

Learned a lot about the Star Wars universe through meeting with the directors of this movie.
So there seems to be this hatred of George Lucas. As we spoke, I started to think why do people go at lengths to express their hatred for something.

After watching the trailer, I started to related to the situation with my haters. George produced something that many people grew up with and loved it. Then George adds a load of CG's 20 years later which didn't meet up with fans expectations - they turn against George and hate him. Its not just the hate but they go around expressing their hatred for George to others.

This is something that I have personally observed too. I used to have many readers who I would converse with by mail and they would be generally supporting of what I write and did. Many of these readers would suddenly turn out to be incredibly spiteful!

dannychoo.com is a place for me to share my life and interests with folks from all over the world. Its also a place for me to log my life so that I can look back at the previous years and reflect on the past, how its shaped the present and how it will shape the future.

When I started to write about figures and not so much about Gundam, a load of readers felt I betrayed them and I started to get hate mail and trollage on the Internets.
If I post photos of myself then folks see it as me showing off. I start to write about Dollfies and see the most trollage ever ^^;

My theory :- Some folks who have been reading DC for a while would have generated a certain expectation of my behavior and contents that I write. When I choose to write about a new subject (like Dollfies for example) that disagrees with them, they feel that they have wasted a lot of time reading my previous content - thus they feel betrayed.

While I do like to get feedback from readers, I'm not and never will try to please everybody because if I do then everything will end up in a complete mess and I'll most certainly be very unhappy indeed.

George Lucas has come up with a universe that has touched the life of millions. While there are folks out there who continue to express their hatred for him, I believe that the number of people who love his work out number the haters.
No matter what George decided for the direction for the movies, people would still complain anyway.

I believe that the voice of haters only seems abundant due to the Internets. Many moons ago, to get your voice out to millions, you would have to be on TV or in the newspapers. Today, you can say something which could be potentially read by millions - and the Internets enable you to do this anonymously.

But why do people continue to spend time and effort devoting their time to hating something when there are more important things in life - like getting a job maybe?!
Could it be that they are actually passionate about their subject of hatred?

Many readers of DC are bloggers and I notice from reading their blogs that some of them get trolled too. But think of it this way.
Some of you may be familiar with the Durian fruit - some of you not. Its not possible to say "I hate Durian" if one does not know what it is.
But once one has an encounter with the Durian, one will either love the taste or hate it due to the incredibly strong smell. So there you go - having a notable amount of people hating you is a measure of your popularity and success.

I've seen bloggers give up writing because of their increased amount of haters. Haters are passionate about hating you. They want you to continue so they can hate you more. So why not continue to give them what they want and at the same time continue to share the content that your supportive readers enjoy.

I also write about haters in length in the Toyosu Photo Walk article. One thing I didn't cover in that article however is another theory that I have about haters and why they are so fixated on their subject of hate. It could be because they have not found meaning to life and that hating you gives them purpose. Can you imagine somebody with a happy fruitful career spending their time and effort hating something or somebody?

Anyway, back to the movie shooting. The director liked my daughters holding the Kotobukiya Chopstick Light Sabers and made sure they made it into the movie ^^;

I've seen an orange Astro Mech somewhere which I would love to have.

Filming in the office done. Geared up in armor and about to head out for more filming.

At the South exit of Shibuya station.

Strapping the helmet on - without the strap it would just fall off when "dancing."
I recall a trooper saying that straps in a helmet is uncool. I like being uncool.
Do any of you troopers out there use a strap to keep your bucket on?