It’s truly a testament to George Lucas that his legacy keeps on, despite not having any dogs in the hunt for Oscar gold. His legacy’s presence was commonplace at this year’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards (or in other words, Oscars). In the 83rd giving out of the golden man trophies, Lucas didn’t have a single nomination, and yet he was still a big part of the night’s festivities, perhaps even more so than those that did, like Disney.
While many of the references were not so much directly related, but had a part of the movie juggernaut at one point or another. One could make this argument on just about any connection to anything else in Hollywood. If Kevin Bacon won, would they spend time talking about Footloose or Tremors, because he was in them? Probably not, but the world of George Lucas is just so expansive that it’s hard to separate out it’s alumni without the connection coming to mind.
There were some very direct references, including George Lucas’ appearance in montage tribute to his friend Francis Ford Coppola, the Star Wars Theme played during the tribute to John Williams before the Best Score was announced, and Amy Adams speaking of THX-1138, which was Lucas’s first film. There was also a tribute to the fallen in 2010 which included Grant McCune, a master model maker, Irwin Kirshner, who directed Empire Strikes Back and cinematographer Alan Hume, who worked on Return of the Jedi.
But when it came to some of the winners of awards being Star Wars alumni, this is where the connection plays out a bit like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon. The biggest name, of course, was Natalie Portman who played Queen Amidala. True, she was one of the most popular characters in the newest trilogy, but Portman had quite an academy quality career before she even set foot on Tatooine and continues to have an amazing career and talent. And so to associate her work on Lucas’ projects with her current success as the emotionally damaged ballerina in Black Swan is kind of unfair to her. Star Wars didn’t make her, she enlightened Star Wars with her contributions.
Another famed Hollywood legend that won was Rick Baker, the master monster makeup guru. He’s done so many films in which he’s displayed his talents for everything from cute creatures to hideous zombies. And while he did work on Star Wars, his work on Wolfman was well deserved in its own right, as well his fellow alumni, Dave Elsey, who was supervisor of the creature shop in Empire Strikes Back and creator of the Boba Fett costume back then, but has so many creations under his belt before and after.
By the way, if the announcer at the Oscars sounded familiar, it was Tom Kane, voice of Yoda and Narrator in the Clone Wars series. While we are sure his current stint didn’t hurt him when being asked to do the announcing, he’s had a long career of over 25 years doing voice and announcing work, so he was certainly a welcome addition to the proceedings whether he’d been in the animated series or not.
We are certainly not trying to belittle Lucas’ significant impact on the whole industry and pop culture. The opposite is true. We think that the fact that fans associate these connections at all is a great tribute to Lucas’ vision and excellent eye to get the characters and performances that he wanted, despite the odds. We just feel that some of the actors and artisans should be recognized for what they are, great talents and not just famous because they were in or worked on Star Wars.
