George Lucas to TIME: "All democracies turn into dictatorships..."

TIME Magazine via TheForce.net ^ | April 21, 2002

[Darth Sidious]

Here's the press release for the latest edition of Time Magazine which is on newstands now:

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COVER: Yoda Is An Action Hero
in the latest STAR WARS Feature

TIME Interview--GEORGE LUCAS:
'All democracies turn into dictatorships...That's the issue I've been exploring: how did the Republic turn into the Empire'

TIME's JESS CAGLE Was First Journalist To See the New Movie, Which Opens May 16

New York - Yoda is the real action hero of the newest "Star Wars" prequel opening May 16, reveals TIME's Jess Cagle - the first journalist to see the entire feature this past Thursday, at the side of creator George Lucas at Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, CA.

Now fully computer-animated, Yoda (who appears on TIME magazine's cover) is "no longer the endearing puppet animated by Frank Oz's hand" but is "both more supple and more thoughtful," Cagle reports. "Who'd have thought that our sedentary sage was such a deft martial artist, with lightsaber maneuvers...a Gandhi-turned-Rambo?"

In TIME's cover story, "Yoda Strikes Back!" An exclusive guide to the new STAR WARS movie, Episode II--Attack of the Clones" (on newsstands Mon., April 22), Cagle and critic Richard Corliss provide the most detailed view yet of the much-awaited fifth feature. Cagle talks to Lucas about how Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader - and political analogies in the latest "Star Wars" installment (some scenes remind TIME of Kofi Annan and John McCain).

Lucas tells TME about his own geopolitics, reflected in the features:
"All democracies turn into dictatorships--but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it's Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea. What kinds of things push people and institutions in this direction? That's the issue I've been exploring: how did the Republic turn into the Empire?...How does a good person go bad, and how does a democracy become a dictatorship?"

Lucas also opens up about how Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader:
"Because he gets attached to things...He can't let go of his mother...his girlfriend...things. It makes you greedy. And when you're greedy, you are on the path to the dark side because you fear that you're going to lose things. You fear you're not going to have the power you need."

Lucas admits to TIME that his 1999 Star Wars movie, Episode I--The Phantom Menace, was not universally revered - though it made $431 million at the North American box office, making it the fourth highest-grossing movie of all time (after Titanic, the original Star TIME 'Star Wars' cover story/p. 2 of 2) Wars, and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.) "I'm getting my education now from the press," Lucas says. "They come in and say, 'Wow. People hated your movie. What do you think about that?"

"There's only one issue for a filmmaker," Lucas tells TIME. "Will this make it's money back so I can make the next one?" With Phantom Menace, Lucas admits he did not know: "It didn't have Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher. It was not a slam dunk."

Lucas also talks with TIME about fatherhood ("My kids don't have a perfect life...they don't have a mother, and they just have to get over it"); making movies for 12-year-olds ("We had reached a period in terms of our society of not having a mythology, of not having a code that you pass down to the next generation"); demands of fans ("I can't really make a movie for fans"), and more.

Cagle and Corliss conclude Clones is "two hours of serious fun." By adding love scenes between stars Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen, Cagle and Corliss conclude the hit new feature "looks like Shaquille O'Neal standing three feet from the basket." Clones extends the franchise "from 12-year-old boys (the action scenes) to 15-year-old girls (the love scenes). If it works, Lucas has quite a combo: the Star Wars and Titanic markets in one package."

TIME also reports:

? Interview: NATALIE PORTMAN:
When she's not playing Amidala, actress Natalie Portman has been going to college and keeping a low profile. "When I'm at a restaurant with my parents," Portman tells TIME, "I don't want to be stared at." Yet last week she wrote a letter to the Harvard Crimson objecting to a racially-charged essay about the Palestinian conflict that appeared in the paper; her family immigrated from Israel. Portman has completed her credits for a B.A. in psychology but may go back for another year of college before the summer of 2003, when the next Star Wars film goes into production.

? Interview: HAYDEN CHRISTENSON:
Actor Hayden Christenson, 21, whose role as Anakin Skywalker, Jedi knight-in-training, will make him world-famous, tells TIME "I think I'm a pretty grounded individual and will handle it as well as anyone my age would...Or maybe I'll become a big mess. Who knows?"

? Digital Yoda:
Once rubber, Yoda is now digital for Attack of the Clones. "We didn't want to make him look like he was real," Lucas tells TIME. The digital Yoda remains remarkably true to the delicate puppetry of Frank Oz, who still supplies the voice, TIME reports.

? FIRST ENTIRELY DIGITAL FEATURE 'FILM':
Clones is the first major feature to be shot and, in certain theatres, shown on digital disks. "The result," writes TIME's Richard Corliss, "is a breathtakingly clear image that lends a superreal glamour."

? 'Star Wars' Effect:
The series' huge success "forever altered the way Hollywood made movies and did business," according to TIME. Now, "films are made for kids, especially teen boys." Once, "movies were one-offs; there was no 'Gone With the Wind II." Now, "Studios swing for the fences to get a megahit action film that can win name-brand recognition and be profitably cloned for years to come."

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You can read more by clicking here and check out the Lucas interview by clicking here.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

Av: So I may categorize your theory as one that is all greed driven? You will allow no room for theory that is fear driven?

semper:

• They crave power (greed) but inflict fear on their opponents.
• They at the top believe themselves to be just and moral men!
• Even though those who have felt their boot know them as cruel, immoral, selfish and greedy.

• It's the unusual man who has no fear, no matter how high. And you are attributing this to more than one. While I admit it may be possible, I would think that (at the least) they have the fear that they will fail in challenging God, not to mention they must fear each other. Please provide some proof for your assertion that they have no fear.
  
  
• They believe themselves to be just and moral? How do you know what they believe?
  Can you demonstrate how they successfully delude themselves and their followers that they are just and moral but are not?
  What form of morality is this? What form of justice?
  
  
• Please expand your boot from metaphor to specific feet and specific history and show how they made it appear moral.

[VaBthang4]

Oi.

When are people [including some Freepers] gonna stop lending credence or pay attention to the political ramblings of people in Hollywood?

The guy is a friggin movie maker!

I do not care about his pontifications.

[Festa]

I have not read that book yet, but he seems right on the money. Thanks. I will have to check it out

Festa

[ricer1]

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

John Adams

[otness_e]

“That is why a founders rejected direct democracy and instead created a Constitutional Republic.”

Well, most of our founding fathers, anyways. Unfortunately, there were some who were all too eager for a direct democracy of the sort the French Revolution promoted, which included Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin (certainly, he was practically in love with Voltaire, who was one of the fathers of the French Revolution with his venomous writing style that left many of us Catholics massacred), and, heck, even Thomas Jefferson (that guy actually went as far as to write a letter praising the Jacobins for their excesses in the defense of “liberty”, which is called the Adam and Eve Letter.).

But yeah, I agree, Democracy’s pretty much a dictatorship. Heck, it’s even WORSE than a dictatorship, it’s closer to anarchy, especially a nihilistic dog-eat-dog world. Just look at France post-Revolution and you’ll see what I mean.

And Lucas’ examples are also extremely poor examples of a dictatorship being elected. As others have pointed out, Caesar was never elected by the people at all, he was elected by the Senate, and even THERE, he had to bring the military over to force the senate to grant him power. And with Cromwell, he only got power after a coup against the king and parliament (which definitely wasn’t a democracy either, since none of the people there were even elected by the people). Napoleon took over after the coup, and even then, I’d argue that in his case, democracy becoming a dictatorship was arguably a very GOOD thing considering that the democracy there was FAR worse (let’s put it this way, the populace celebrated their freedom and newfound democracy upon unlawfully killing Louis XVI by essentially committing gang wars and having sadistic revel in slaughtering people in various painful ways just for fun. The French Revolution is in fact the main reason I utterly hate democracy). Probably the only example Lucas gave that actually came CLOSE to being democracy being made into a dictatorship via votes was Hitler, since he was technically voted into office. Even there, he was merely appointed to chancellorship, and there’s evidence to suggest Hitler only won the “election” due to what was essentially ballot-stuffing. And for the record, like France, Germany essentially because a site of gang wars between the National Socialists and the Communists even before Hitler came to power thanks to Woodrow Wilson’s stupid insistence to make all of Europe democracies.

And to be honest, try as I might, I could not find any evidence to Palpatine, say, trying to stuff the ballot box, not even in the Expanded Universe (both the old one and the new one). A would-be dictator would ALWAYS resort to stuffing ballot boxes to ensure they get elected or get their agenda pushed, no exceptions. It happened with the Communist party in practically every country but the USSR (though even there it’s iffy. I believe it was Stalin who said that it doesn’t matter who votes, but who counts the votes). It happened in Nazi Germany, it happened during the French Revolution when they decided to kill King Louis XVI via a vote. Heck, it even happened multiple times within our own country of America (really, just look at ACORN and how they got Obama elected, or even the questionable results within the 2012 elections, where there were more votes in a city than the total population in said city going for Obama.).

Then again, what can I say about Lucas, this is the same guy who labeled himself a 1960s-style liberal in this article and others, meaning he’s more likely to think of democracy in terms of the kind of participatory democracy that the Jacobins, Bolsheviks, and the SDS, Weathermen Underground, and OWS thought regarding participatory democracy (ie, causing riots on the streets), not the general election process.

[rollo tomasi]

Which is why the United States was never intended to be a democracy. A Constitutional Republic using democratic principles is far different then saying the United States is a Democracy

[otness_e]

BTW, that reminds me, can you post a source claiming that the elections for Hitler were rigged? I might need it for source material for someone.