"Star Wars" creator George Lucas recently criticized modern Hollywood's over-reliance on focus groups and fan opinions, telling "A Rabbit’s Foot" that creative control is effectively being handed over to the audience. He argued that studios often misinterpret feedback from test screenings, undermining the creator's judgment.
"I don't like focus groups. The audience doesn't know what it wants. If they don't like a character, that's interesting, but as a filmmaker, I'd want to know why," he said.
"But when the studios hear that, they get the wrong message. They're letting the audience actually participate in making the movie," Lucas continued. "Of course, now they've gone completely berserk with it. Now, it's all about what the fans think. That's not how you make a movie. You make a movie, you find somebody who knows how to make a movie, has a story they want to tell, and is passionate about it."
He pointed to the backlash against the "Star Wars" prequel character Jar Jar Binks as an example, stressing that the series always had the qualities of a children's film. Lucas explained, "The critics, and the fans who were 10 when they saw the first one and 13 when they saw the second one, complained that they didn't want to see a kids' movie. 'Oh, this is terrible. Jar Jar Binks is terrible!' They said the same thing about R2-D2 and C-3PO before."
"There was a lot of pressure at the very beginning to cut C-3PO," he added. "By the time we got to 'Return of the Jedi,' people said the same thing about the Ewoks: 'What are you thinking? Get rid of these teddy bears. We want to see an adult movie!'"
In recent years, Lucas has also criticized Hollywood for a lack of original thinking and has suggested that the Disney-era "Star Wars" sequel trilogy lost some of the franchise's core elements.
via： A Rabbit’s Foot