Well, Lucas did come up with the three laws of Jar-Jarbotics.

Law-sa 1-sa: No human-sa musta come to harm-a!

Law-sa 2-sa: Jar-jar-sa listen to Lucas-sa ALLL time!

Law-sa 3-sa: Any-sa BUILT C3PO-sa. Kill-sa ALL who say no-sa!

I agree.

and I like willow.

That's reassuring because I liked Jar-Jar Binks.

Let's get our facts straight: "THX, named after THX 1138 (George Lucas' first feature film), was developed at Lucasfilm in the early 1980s. George Lucas wanted a way to ensure a movie would look and sound exactly the same no matter where it was played. Tomlinson Holman, former corporate technical director for Lucasfilm, and a team of THX engineers took on the challenge of developing a baseline set of standards. "

It was George who set the standards. Yes, Tomlinson Holman had a key role, but it was George who wanted sound to be better to start with. Let's do our homework next time.

Um, the original name of the system, invented by Tomlinson Holman, was Tom Holman's Crossover. It was then renamed Tomlinson Holman's Experiment. These are facts. All THX patents come directly from Tom Holman's experiments and research.

Look, I respect what Lucas did back in the day, but he's clearly lost whatever he once had at this point. And while he may have driven some of the things mentioned, he didn't make any of the games that LucasArts put out, so I feel no need to praise him for those, nor for any of the other LucasArts production that he at most signed off on.

And yes, I would blame Bill Gates for Windows. God, what an awful OS. But I'm not sure how much he had to do with XP specifically, so I reserve judgment there.

"For $200 million, I could make 50-60 two hour movies for TV"

For $200 million, you could make 50-60 two hour movies for film, too. $4 mil a pic. Kevin Smith's movies, coincidentally, probably average out to that amount (consider the dramatically low costs of Clerks ($27,000) and Chasing Amy ($240,000) and the ridiculous $20 million for Jay & Silent Bob, and then the ballpark range of his other movies being about $4 million, give or take).

As a huge Star Wars fan I believe that many people come down on the prequel trilogy a little too harshly, and overrate the original trilogy just a bit. Sure 'Episode I' leaves a lot to be desired, but I can watch it when taking it as basically a fun popcorn movie more or less aimed at kids, but with some intriguing plot lines to boot. Granted these plotlines don't stand out too much in the film, though I've read the novels (which flesh out those stories much better) and it makes more sense to me. 'Episode II' was better, but still could have been improved. Overall a somewhat more mature offering than 'Episode I'. Having watched the deleted scenes I feel this film was hurt by some of the editing choices. And I'll hold that 'Episode III' is at least as good as the original Star Wars.

Some of the acting may have been chringe-inducing on the prequels, but I feel that's more to due with having badly written material to work with rather than a reflection of the actors themselves. Ewan McGregor, Samuel L. Jackson, Natalie Portman, Ian McDiarmid - none of these are bad actors, but all come across as rather B-film at various points during the prequels.

Lucas is a brillant conceptual guy and has an incredible eye for effects, but he can't write or direct actors. Too bad he didn't realize this for the prequel trilogy.

What movies did Isaac Assimov make again?

Oh that's right...they based the Will Smith vehicle "I, Robot" on oone of his books....genius.

Point being, everybody in Hollywood has made a bad movie. But not everyone has made 2 of the greatest movies of all time.

And Isaac Assimov has never made a movie.

Just popping in to add another name to the guest list for the "I like Willow" party. It's simple, it's amusing, and I can watch it with the kids at work and not worry about whether it's okay for them to see or not.

So long, George, and thanks for all the fish.

Does 'semi-retired' mean no more tinkering with old films?

Nope. I liked it, too.

-TM

... and making movies has what to do with the sci-fi genre, specifically? I guess you think Sam Mendes has done more for drama than Shakespeare.

And, just for the record,: I, Robot (the novel) is a collection of short stories. The script for the film was written independently and not based on Asimov. Once Fox determined that certain aspects bore a resemblance they hedged their bets, purchased the rights to the name and had nominal changes (character names, the laws of robotics) made to the script to link it to Asimov... What that has to do with whether George Lucas has done more for sci-fi than Isaac Asimov? No idea.