Comment by slg
2 hours ago
It's reminiscent of the difference between the Star Wars prequel and sequel trilogies. Regardless of your opinions on the quality of those movies, the biggest differentiator is that the prequels were the singular vision of a self-funded artist while the sequels are a corporate product of a global media empire. Even if the latter produces a better movie, it ends up sanding off many of the edges and those edges are where a lot of us found the magic of Star Wars. The Lucas Museum is similar in that it very clearly is the product of an excentric billionaire rather than the same type of curatorial thinking you will find in other art museums.
These are two crappy choices, and it's not a coincidence that a resource strapped filmmaker having to engage with many skilled artisans to sharpen their "singular vision" resulted in much better films (the original trilogy) than either of those two.
Let’s not forget though, the prequel trilogies were—not good. Lucas is at his best when he has collaborators who can help take the half-baked ideas and fully bake them.
Yes, but while I may prefer "good" when it comes to the multiplex, I much prefer "interesting" when it comes to my art museums and Lucas's prequels and museum are both very interesting.