An Open Letter to "Papa" George Lucas

Dear Mr. Lucas,

I've been wanting to write this for a while. I wanted to send this directly to you, but I feared it would get lost in the sea of letters you must get all the time. And even if it did get to you, I was afraid you'd mistake it for the haters and not read it all the way through. This is why the title of this post has the affectionate nickname, so if one day you decided to brave Google for your name, this might catch your eye.

Simply put, I wanted you to know that I am a huge fan of your work on Star Wars and Indiana Jones (I haven't seen American Graffiti yet, but I promise I will!). I want you to know that Star Wars especially is probably my favorite of all my favorite things, and has been since I managed to see the Special Editions in theatres in 1997 (I was 11).

And now to the purpose of this letter. I adore Episodes I, II, and III of the Star Wars Saga. I love what you did with them, the depth you gave them, the classic Star Wars silliness you imbued them with. I love them from beginning to end. On the whole, I actually prefer the storyline in the newer films, though I do love all six individual films fairly interchangeably. I thought Jar Jar was brilliant, and while it took me a while to see I also thought Hayden Christiansen was the perfect choice. For the record, although I'm not as huge into Indiana Jones as I am with the galaxy far, far away, I did quite enjoy Crystal Skull and find it a close third to Raiders and Crusade (admittedly, I'm least fond of Temple of Doom, but I do appreciate it for what it is).

The point to all this is to tell you how much I love your work, especially your most recent, and thus I want to register my sadness at hearing of your upcoming retirement. Now, I wouldn't dare to be presumptuous enough to try and talk you out of it. What I've said so far indicates that I trust your overall judgement and if you feel you need to step away, I won't argue. It's just that I, like a number of fans who feel the same as me (and there are more of us than people would have you think), can't help but worry that the sea of endless hate had something to do with this.

You're a very smart man, so you probably know what I'm about to tell you. However, when we're at our lowest, it still feels good to hear, so here goes. Mr. Lucas, the people who claim to have loved your older work and yet pile the venom upon your recent ones are, in a word, complete morons who utterly fail at film comprehension. They never got Star Wars (or Indiana Jones, for that matter), and don't understand that they are entitled to nothing from you.

While they are quite vapid, they do have a large megaphone and thus an absurd amount of influence. You certainly saw what happened to your friend Steven Speilberg. While I did and do have a respect for his work as well, he folded like a napkin on the E.T. front and that, to borrow a term from you, is letting the dark side win. This is what my fellow true fans and I are most worried about; that without you at the reigns, these people will step in and finally do what they've stupidly claimed you've been doing for years: ruin Star Wars.

You are the artist. As long as you're alive, you're the only one who can stop this. It does betray my inner-nerd to be so referential, but the fact of the matter is that you are our only hope. Please, if you must step away, don't step away too far. Don't let them win because they haven't got a clue what they're talking about.

Sincerely,
Adam D. Bram
a.k.a.
The Nilbog

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P.S. To all my readers: Unlike my other long posts, I'm not putting the bulk behind a link. I want everyone who visits this site to read the whole thing whether they click "Continue Chapter" or not. Spread the word. See if we can actually get George to read this. May the Force be with you all.