Choose Wisely

It would be tempting to think that George Lucas's reported belief that the world will end in 2012 is a sign that he has lost whatever insight into things he once had. Tempting, but unwarranted.

No, not because Lucas never had such insight. If you watch his first feature as a director, THX-1138, you find him predicting a future world in which people medicate themselves into a passionless, placid society. In order to remove worry and anxiety from their lives, they take state-dispensed drugs that also eliminate joy, desire and pretty much everything else. Their "religion" is superficial feel-goodism that's designed to be the spiritual equivalent of the tranquilizers that pacify their emotions. Their entertainment consists of realistic hologram shows of mindless, sadistic violence, degraded sexual activity or equally mindless streams of blabbing talk shows (meaning that Eli Roth has hit two-thirds of a THX trifecta). You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist or HD Luddite to see that a good deal of modern entertainment on large screens and small fit in the same kinds of categories.

At one point in his career, Lucas definitely had vision. Even his inability to write realistic interactions between people that went beyond the realm of banter doesn't hurt him here, because he's writing about those kinds of interactions happening between people whose unfamiliarity with them makes them as stilted as the words Lucas gives them to say.

No, we can't say Lucas always lacked insight and therefore could have none now. The reasons this story can't be taken as evidence that Lucas lacks vision are twofold:

1) It comes to us via Seth Rogen, who with The Green Hornet single-handedly wrecked one of the most interesting comic-book characters ever, rivaling Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin, Mark Johnson's Daredevil, Pitof's Catwoman and Frank Miller's The Spirit for sheer high-budget waste. At this point in his career, I would not trust Seth Rogen to get a pizza order right, let alone a quote.

2) Lucas still does have insight, or at least did about 10 years ago. With Jar-Jar Binks in 1999's The Phantom Menace, he created a character represented entirely by computer-generated imagery whose existence was without any point whatsoever. If that's not a prophetic warning against Avatar, I don't know what would be.