In an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, George Lucas addressed the controversial topic of artificial intelligence (AI) in filmmaking.
George Lucas on AI
Talking about technological advances, Lucas said, “I have a lot of friends who are on the Film Foundation with me, that’s dedicated to saving old movies, and some of them say, ‘I’ll never do digital. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) was shot with film.’ And I say, ‘No, it’s cinema. It’s the moving image. That’s what it is. It’s not a technology, it’s an idea.’”
He carries this idea forward to discussions about AI.
“Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies,” said Lucas. “It’s very much like sitting here saying, ‘Well, I believe the horse and the buggy is really where it’s at. These cars, they break down, they need gas, there’s all kinds of problems with them and pretty soon they’ll be making them into tanks, and then they’ll be killing people. It’s terrible.’ There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s progress, it’s the future.”
He acknowledged there are risks to AI but said there are also solutions. “If you want AI that tells you when something is fake and where it came from, AI can do that. Humans can’t, we’re not that smart. The whole idea is you’re a human being, you’re responsible for what you say and what you do, and if you’re doing something that’s illegal you should be punished for that. Whatever you do, you should be recognized. It’s just like real life.”
Lucas also talked about his disdain for audience focus groups and thinks studios approach them wrong. He would rather rely on the opinions of his filmmaker friends like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Steven Spielberg.
“The audience doesn’t know what they want to see,” he explained. “If they don’t like a character, that’s interesting, and as a filmmaker I want to find out why. But when the studios hear that, they take the wrong message. They let the audience actually make the movie. Of course, now they go crazy with that. Now, it’s all about what the fans think. That isn’t how you make the movie. You make a movie by finding someone that knows how to make movies, that has a story to tell and is passionate about it.”
He pointed to criticism of Jar Jar Binks in The Phantom Menace and how it mirrored similar comments about C-3PO and the Ewoks in the original trilogy.
“At the beginning there was a huge push for me to get rid of C-3PO, and then in the third one [Return of the Jedi (1983)] people said the same thing about Ewoks. ‘What are you thinking? Get rid of these teddy bears, we want to see an adult movie!’ […] It’s always been a kid’s movie.”
Summarizing his thoughts about filmmaking, Lucas said, “You go to the movies because the stories move you emotionally. Art is an emotional medium.”
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