the big money that entertainers and their hangers on are used to is a quirk of social and especially technological factors of the 20th Century. It didn’t exist before then and there is nothing that guarantees it to continue, and no moral basis for its continuation. It’s just a matter of tech and social arrangements. The entertainers (incl support people, etc) who lived then were lucky to live then, nothing more.

Trying to artificially keep it in the same model will not succeed any better than other attempts to freeze a dying industry in amber. The laws should NOT be further changed to favor them, their treatment is already more favorable than can be justified by a fair analysis; nor should teh productive industries of the future be taxed to preserve them. They should adapt or die, just as everything else has to.

Frankly, I suspect they could adapt. Someone linked to e report that despite his last clunker, Denzel Washington won’t come down on his $20M guaranteed salary for projects. Well, seems there’s plenty of room to cut costs on talent, and that alone might buy the industry teh years it needs to review its whole model and develop something more attuned to the 21st century.

If not, I won’t miss them.

I used to be a Huge fan of Lucas, and now I loathe him. I am not sure what happened with him, but I have a couple of theories.

One, while he may have hated the Hollywood system and sought to separate from it, he became corrupted by the culture. He seemed to absorb the post-modern attitude in his films, in that he treated the last 3 Star Wars films as idiotic fluff without substance, except to put in boiler-plate liberal tropes.

Two, Lucas, when all is said and done, is not a very good film-maker or artist. He has talent, perhaps a decent imagination, but I am not sure what it is, beyond picking other talented people with imaginations as well.

How can I say that?

When you look at the Star Wars movies, all of them as a whole, you begin to see Lucas used the same damn plot in almost all of them, particularly the end sequence.

Battle in space to destroy something, large battle on the ground, battle between Jedi occurs occurs Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, Phantom Menace, and at least one other (I hate them so much I have only seen them once each, and they blur), which make it 4 out of 5.

Add to that that he got the whole concept of Star Wars from an old japanese Samurai movie, and…well, sorry, but as painful as it is for a former fan to say so, he’s terribly derivative at best.

WG

It’s interesting that George Lucas scored so well, i.e. 2, 12, 14, 16 and 19.
George Lucas hated Hollywood culture and removed himself from it after the
success of the original “Star Wars”. His original “Star Wars” is one of my
favorite movies. However almost everything that he’s done after “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace” has sucked. Star Wars: Episode II stunk so bad
that it was almost unwatchable and the last cartoon that he did “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” was completely unwatchable. It’s remarkable that Lucas has completely burned out after having been one of Hollywood’s greatest talents.

1 Gone with the Wind (1939^) -$1,450,680,400 ($198,676,459)
2 Star Wars (1977^) $1,278,898,700 ($460,998,007)
3 The Sound of Music (1965) $1,022,542,400 ($158,671,368)
4 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982^) $1,018,514,100 ($435,110,554)
5 The Ten Commandments (1956) $940,580,000 ($65,500,000)
6 Titanic (1997) $921,523,500 ($600,788,188)
7 Jaws (1975) $919,605,900 ($260,000,000)
8 Doctor Zhivago (1965) $891,292,600 ($111,721,910)
9 The Exorcist (1973^) $793,883,100 ($232,671,011)
10 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) $782,620,000 ($184,925,486)

Makes for a very different list.
Box Office Mojo is where these numbers came from. Their notes:

Adjusted to the estimated 2009 average ticket price of $7.18. Inflation-adjustment is mostly done by multiplying estimated admissions by the latest average ticket price. Where admissions are unavailable, adjustment is based on the average ticket price for when each movie was released (taking in to account re-releases where applicable).

^ Indicates documented multiple theatrical releases. Most of the pre-1980 movies listed on this chart had multiple undocumentented releases over the years. The year shown is the first year of release.

Most pre-1980 pictures achieved their totals through multiple releases, especially Disney animated features which made much of their totals in the past few decades belying their original release dates in terms of adjustment. For example, Snow White has made $118,328,683 of its unadjusted $184,925,486 total since 1983.

The balance of the top 25 looks like this:

11 101 Dalmatians (1961^)
12 The Empire Strikes Back (1980^)
13 Ben-Hur (1959)
14 Return of the Jedi (1983^)
15 The Sting (1973)
16 Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981^)
17 Jurassic Park (1993)
18 The Graduate (1967^)
19 Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999)
20 Fantasia (1941^)
21 The Godfather (1972^)
22 Forrest Gump (1994)
23 Mary Poppins (1964^)
24 The Lion King (1994)
25 Grease (1978)

I haven’t seen Star Trek but the comment about a Spock/Uhura romance is typical of one of the things that are wrong with Hollywood SF. In fact, the very existence of Spock is also typical. In fact, the very existence of humanoid (very humanoid, with minor changes in facial features) also is. Why?

Vulcans have green blood and come from another planet. Spock’s father (I forget his name) would be less likely to have a sexual or romantic attraction for his mother (and vice versa) than you or I would be to want carnal relations with a petunia. And if for some odd reason such an attraction did develop, the chance of it leading to any offspring would be even lower. This sort of nonsense really grates.

Seriously, who casts runty Keaton as Batman? Why not Seagal, (he kicks butt and seems naturally a little disturbed) unless he wouldn’t cut his stupid ponytail? What, actors are actors because they were too runty to play football? Tom Cruise? Has he ever made a flick good? More manly male actors, please. When has Bruce Willis ever made a poorly grossing film? He used to be a bouncer. (Of course, Van Dammes films all suck, because his effete Frenchiness sucks out the manliness. Suckitude.) Nicholas Cage is a turnoff to me with those Bassett Hound sad eyes, but at least he buffs up for his roles.

How about Cameron Diaz? A second-rate Michelle Pfeiffer. Pfeiffer’s a lady, through and through, and it comes through no matter her role. Diaz is trampy. A cheap copy.

Barrymore? Anyone else notice that she is a Plain Jane verging on homely?

Idiots passed up Jolie for Megan Fox! WTF? Jolie oozes sensuality. Fox is a mannequin. The movie, of course, bombed. Younger is not always better, nay, is rarely better.

Same goes for music. It used to take forever to break into stardom. You really had to work at it and sacrifice. Starving artist devoted to your craft. You got educated in music. Many had doctorates. You were in your 30′s and 40′s. Now, if you’re in your 30′s and 40′s, you’re disqualified.

Stardom is no longer earned. It is anointed. Fame is earned. Celebrity is happenstance.

#139 Alston – Thanks for showing up. I thought we might, for once, have a thread with no trolls. We still have a perfect record. We’re #1! Trolls’R'Us.

“6. Make your good guys good and you bad guys bad. Enough with the ambiguity and moral shades of gray. Makes for a horrible story.”

I disagree on this point. Moral ambiguity does not make for a bad story. Quite the opposite – it’s what drives the drama forward. The road to hell, as well we know, is paved with good intentions, and one of life’s great mysteries is the way in which evil can give rise to something good in spite of itself. Gollum is perfect example and in fact all of Tolkien’s work rests on this idea. And yet no one could ever accuse him of moral equivalence.

Lefty/artsy moral equivalence is so offensive not because has too many subtleties but because it chickens out of the dilemma altogether. It reduces flesh and blood moral choices to a set of neutral abstractions and refuses to take a stand. “Unforgiven” is a great movie, and yet the bad guys are good and the good guys are bad. “The Lives of Others” is another – it has plenty of shades of grey yet in the end there is no mistaking the difference between good and evil and who stands where.

Thufferin’ thuckitude. What a line.