‘He controls everything… and they have to accept that’
As I write this, it’s eight years to the day since I attended the midnight showing of The Force Awakens. Now, at that point, I was all in on Star Wars. I loved the original trilogy so much and even had some affection for the prequels (particularly Revenge of the Sith which I still maintain is a great movie). Since Star Wars moved to Disney, however, I have lost my appetite for it. I didn’t hate the third trilogy as much as large swathes of the internet, but I do believe that Disney has milked the Star Wars cow too much. I simply can’t bring myself to care about The Mandalorian or Andor or Obi-Wan Kenobi or Solo or any of the other shit they have churned out over the last five years or so. Some people do care, however. They care very much. The People vs George Lucas is a film about those people, but it’s also a film about fandom…
From writer-director Alexandre O. Philippe (Leap of Faith), this documentary talks to superfans of all shapes and sizes as well as occasional archive footage from Lucas himself. As with Room 237, the director here allows the fans the floor without choosing a side either way. It is wildly entertaining to hear Star Wars fanboys raging about the special editions, Jar Jar Binks, Midi-chlorians and anything else worth their ire and I must admit, in many of those cases, they kinda have a point.
For Star Wars fans this is familiar ground. I’ve spent hours sitting in a pub arguing whether or not Han shot first (he did) but even for novices (aka people who live a life of fulfilment), there is enough here to recommend The People vs George Lucas as a reminder that fans will never be happy. Unless you die young. Sorry, George!