George Lucas Returns to Earth, Bearing Gifts

Posted by surprisetalk 1 day ago

Comments

Comment by slg 7 hours ago

It truly is a one of a kind museum. You'll see some of the most famous art in the world from people like Norman Rockwell and Frida Kahlo on the same walls as a random strip from Doonesbury or The Far Side. You'll walk through a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel shortly before walking through a reproduction of the podrace from Phantom Menace. You'll go to the theater and see a 60+ year old experimental short film made without a camera by pressing moth wings into film and then a few minutes later they'll show an episode of Cowboy Bebop.

It's such a bizarre and idiosyncratic collection that the museum itself inspires as much thought as the art in it.

Comment by hamdingers 6 hours ago

Nothing makes me more excited about this museum than the turnover in curatorial leadership throughout the project, capped off by Lucas assuming the title himself.

Give me his unrestrained vision. Put it in my veins.

Comment by slg 3 hours ago

It's reminiscent of the difference between the Star Wars prequel and sequel trilogies. Regardless of your opinions on the quality of those movies, the biggest differentiator is that the prequels were the singular vision of a self-funded artist while the sequels are a corporate product of a global media empire. Even if the latter produces a better movie, it ends up sanding off many of the edges and those edges are where a lot of us found the magic of Star Wars. The Lucas Museum is similar in that it very clearly is the product of an excentric billionaire rather than the same type of curatorial thinking you will find in other art museums.

Comment by dbt00 3 hours ago

These are two crappy choices, and it's not a coincidence that a resource strapped filmmaker having to engage with many skilled artisans to sharpen their "singular vision" resulted in much better films (the original trilogy) than either of those two.

Comment by dhosek 3 hours ago

Let’s not forget though, the prequel trilogies were—not good. Lucas is at his best when he has collaborators who can help take the half-baked ideas and fully bake them.

Comment by Brendinooo 1 hour ago

They were better than good. I wouldn't call them masterpieces (my biggest critique is that they tried to do too much in II which messed up the pacing of Anakin's arc) but they're great films.

Comment by slg 3 hours ago

Yes, but while I may prefer "good" when it comes to the multiplex, I much prefer "interesting" when it comes to my art museums and Lucas's prequels and museum are both very interesting.

Comment by wslh 1 hour ago

IMHO, the best one is the one directed by Irvin Kershner: The Empire Strikes Back.

Comment by ckekcmekcn 2 hours ago

> Give me his unrestrained vision. Put it in my veins.

His unrestrained vision is The Phantom Menace. It’s the sand dialogue. It’s JarJar.

Comment by Brendinooo 1 hour ago

Phantom Menace is a super fun movie. Pure Star Wars. I've used it as an entry to the series for all of my kids (then I skip ahead to the OT to not ruin the twist).

I've generally found that most people who didn't like are people who were already adults when it came out, and had a different vision of what they wanted it to be.

Comment by antonvs 4 hours ago

CGI already did that. It turned out… ok

Comment by grehbies 7 hours ago

Spoiler warning.

EDIT: Get it? For the Museum of Narrative Art?

In all seriousness, I think I would have preferred the [Renaissance masterpiece] -> [Pop culture artifact] progression to have been a surprise. People seem to be more and more focused on expressing their own exuberance and less on preserving for everyone else the experience they put so much stock into. It's a bit selfish and hypocritical.

I knew who Luke's father was years before I saw Empire, and I can only imagine what a shock that must have been to people who didn't. I can only imagine. It would have been nice to have known, though.

Comment by slg 3 hours ago

> I think I would have preferred the [Renaissance masterpiece] -> [Pop culture artifact] progression to have been a surprise.

I never imagined I would be accused of posting spoilers for a museum, but even if we accept the idea that a museum can have spoilers, I think you're reading too much into what I said. There's no overt progression in the curation. I was simply detailing what I was thinking as I browsed the museum. In fact, the museum seems to be specifically designed to let the visitors experience the museum however they want. It was just my personal experience that this attempt to background the curation paradoxically had me thinking more about that curation than if they took a more traditional approach.

Comment by Hugsbox 4 hours ago

Brother it's a museum, not the newest Marvel movie. There aren't "spoilers".

Comment by popalchemist 4 hours ago

It hardly makes sense to conceive of a museum as having spoilers, since you go there to see the things that you know are there.

Comment by Triphibian 5 hours ago

This group photo from the opening gala doesn't have all the stars that were present that night, but what a wild assortment of talent this is. https://deadline.com/2026/09/lucas-museum-opening-hollywood-...

Comment by Keyframe 4 hours ago

Is that Frank Miller next to Spielberg? Quite a crew!

Comment by mungoman2 8 hours ago

Very cool! Can’t help but think that the museum library is inspired by the main hall of the Stockholm City Library https://biblioteket.stockholm.se/about-the-stockholm-public-...

Comment by Karliss 6 hours ago

Isn't multiple floors of bookshelves with open central area a very common theme in large fancy libraries? For example British museum reading room, Oval room in France national library, Morgan Library & Museum, Rose reading room in New York Public Library.

The shelves can't be very high to keep them easily accessible, adding additional levels solves that. Open central area with higher ceiling gives more natural lighting.

Comment by tanseydavid 1 day ago

I used to see him (and occasionally his wife) eating breakfast at "greasy spoon" restaurant called Hilda's in San Anselmo (Marin County, CA).

Hilda's sadly closed for good in the past year or so.

Comment by kkotak 21 minutes ago

I used to see him often around one of his homes in Russian Hill. We used to live around the corner :).

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Comment by msisk6 8 hours ago

I accidently bumped into him at the Borders Bookstore in San Rafael back in the late 90's. I was looking at the new hardbound SciFi books and he was looking at the Star Wars books on the top shelf. I just said "excuse me" and he said "no problem" and we returned to our tasks.

Comment by Rendello 6 hours ago

He pops up in the background of a random documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC9RI8_QYmw

Comment by kridsdale3 6 hours ago

Maybe that's when he read about Coruscant, picking up Heir to the Empire in there.

Comment by assimpleaspossi 7 hours ago

My son used to wait on him at a restaurant in Chicago when he came by to visit his now wife. My son, being a professional actor, had to use his best skills to treat him as just another customer

Comment by FlowingRiver 6 hours ago

Obligatory random appearance of George.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OC9RI8_QYmw

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Comment by Animats 8 hours ago

Fortunately, that thing didn't get built in the Presidio of San Francisco. That was proposed a few years ago.

Comment by YesBox 6 hours ago

I'm openly (very) curious to hear the reasoning behind that statement, not having lived in SF.

From what I've read, George Lucas funded 100% of the project, and the Presidio trust rejected it. Then he tried building the museum in Chicago, but he was sued and blocked for a couple years and eventually gave up. Finally he found a spot in LA. IIRC the project took 12 years. The same source mentioned SF hasn't started any major museum projects since 2016.

America is falling behind on public works. We used to have the largest aquarium in the world, and now we're sitting at #5 or #6.

So I am genuinely curious why you and others are opponents of public works projects? I honestly do not understand.

Comment by mixmastamyk 3 hours ago

It's a gorgeous park in a place with very little space left. ILM already takes up some of its space. That's probably enough reason.

Need to leave some room for Starfleet Academy as well. Anyway I'm glad it came to Exposition park, which needed some love.

Comment by ghaff 1 hour ago

My objection is mostly personal. I have or can make reason to go to SF. LA, less so.

Comment by garbawarb 8 hours ago

Why is that fortunate? Seems like a loss for San Francisco whose arts scene used to be thriving.

Comment by ramesh31 8 hours ago

>"Seems like a loss for San Francisco whose arts scene used to be thriving."

No no. San Francisco must be preserved in state as it existed in 1970 for all time, you see.

Comment by khazhoux 25 minutes ago

Don’t know if you’re kidding, but I strongly disagree. We need to radically expand housing in SF, to provide enough luxury high-rise apartments with waterfront views for the upcoming wave of AI IPO multi-millionaires.

Comment by WillPostForFood 8 hours ago

Fortunately for Los Angeles, unfortunately for San Francisco!

Comment by tomjakubowski 7 hours ago

We're happy to have it. It's a gorgeous building and I can't wait to see the weird museum exhibits.

Comment by dhosek 3 hours ago

He also wanted to put it on the lakefront of Chicago, but that’s not what Chicago’s lakefront is for.

Comment by ghaff 1 hour ago

Because existing buildings like the Art Institute of Chicago are obviously illusions. </s>

Comment by fullshark 8 hours ago

I think he wanted to have it on Treasure Island at one point also

Comment by sanex 8 hours ago

And Chicago lake front on museum campus.

Comment by assimpleaspossi 7 hours ago

I'm told Chicago screwed themselves on that

Comment by joezydeco 6 hours ago

It was an impasse. Chicago wants the development money and tourism, but it also holds pretty strongly to the idea that the lakefront belongs to everyone and shouldn't be developed with private money and closed off. Yes, it was a parking lot. But it was a public parking lot.

That means sometimes these kinds of developments don't happen and you can argue either way. Lucas got a little pushy about how he wanted the museum to be developed and also turned down alternate sites. So he took his ball and left and that's okay too.

Comment by hamdingers 6 hours ago

Chicagoans fought quite hard to preserve the parking lot it would have replaced. I hope they are happy with their choice.

Comment by stockresearcher 6 hours ago

I hope you are happy with their choice, because it would have required overturning this [1] to build. The museum lost in federal court, BTW.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Central_Railroad_Co._...

Note that the museum was planned to be built on the actual land that was the subject of that Supreme Court case ;)

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Comment by hamdingers 5 hours ago

> The museum lost in federal court, BTW.

Nope. None of the frivolous NIMBY lawsuits ever made it to trial, nor was the museum ever a defendant in any of them (it was the city being sued for approving it). I don't see what you gain from misrepresenting this years after the fact.

The city could've gone to trial for the one case you're referencing, and would've won given enough money and time, but by that point the museum had already started investigating other locations.

Comment by stockresearcher 3 hours ago

He gave up in Chicago because the federal judge wasn’t ruling in their favor.

“They would have won given enough time and money” is certainly debatable, but this ruling was ultimately what ended the museum in Chicago:

https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/illinois/il...

In federal court. And sure, if you want, you can put “lost” in scare quotes and claim I’m misrepresenting things.