Star Wars creator George Lucas says at the Cannes Film Festival that there’s almost “no original thinking” in Hollywood.
Lucas was in the South of France Saturday to receive an honorary Palme d’Or, which is the Cannes Film Festival’s highest honor. Lucas’ fellow film legend Meryl Streep was also awarded an honorary Palme d’Or at the beginning of the 77th edition of the annual festival, which kicked off May 14.
Answering a question from French media outlet Brut about where the state of movies will be in 10 years, Lucas said (via IGN) the same thing will be happening that’s happening now.
Unfortunately the now for Hollywood, Lucas added, is that the film industry has run out of ideas for new stories.
“What happens now—and it happens in streaming probably more than features, but features, it’s the same thing—nobody knows what to do,” Lucas told Brut. “The stories they’re telling are just old movies. ‘Let’s do a sequel, let’s do another version of this movie.’ And it’s not just in movies, but in almost everything, there’s almost no original thinking.”
Lucas wasn’t the first film great to make pointed comments about Hollywood at the Cannes Film Festival. Earlier in the annual event, Lucas’ longtime friend and mentor Francis Ford Coppola noted how Hollywood was facing a dire future.
“I fear that the film industry has become more of a matter of people being hired to meet their debt obligations because the studios are in great, great debt,” Coppola during a Cannes press conference. “And the job is not so much to make good movies, the job is to make sure they pay their debt obligations.”
Lucas Received His Palme d’Or From Francis Ford Coppola
The timing couldn’t have been any better for George Lucas to be in the South of France, since Francis Ford Coppola was on hand to present his fellow filmmaker his Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday.
Coppola traveled to Cannes this year for the world premiere of his sci-fi epic Megalopolis along with several of the film’s stars, including Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Giancarlo Esposito, Laurence Fishburne and Aubrey Plaza.
In his remarks before awarding Lucas the Palme d’Or, Coppola reflected on their decades-old relationship as friends and collaborators, which began in 1968. According to Variety, Lucas first worked with Coppola on the musical comedy classic Finian’s Rainbow, starring Fred Astaire.
Recalling the beginning of their working relationship, Coppola, 85, said had a very important suggestion that he made to Lucas, who recently turned 80, at the beginning of the production.
“Pleased to have someone in my own generation, I suggested he come every day, but only on one condition: That he come up with a brilliant suggestion every day, which he consistently did,” Coppola said during his introduction of Lucas (via Variety). “And with that began an association that has lasted a lifetime. And he went on and on, making film history, story history, business history and now history in France.”
Naturally, Coppola’s introduction included a Star Wars story, where he recalled how Lucas told him about how the owners of the Flash Gordon comic strip turned down the young filmmaker’s pitch to make it a movie.
“He looked at me and he said, ‘Well, I’ll make my own movie, I’ll call it Star Battles or Star Wars or something.’” Coppola recalled (via Variety). “And so he did, and in the process risked everything he had to make it.”
The 2024 Cannes Festival came to a close on Saturday.
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