卢卡斯告别星战传奇

The announcement came this week that George Lucas, who directed Apocalypse Now (1970) and American Graffiti (1973), but who never realised his one-time dream of a sequence of science fiction fantasies titled Star Wars, has sold his company Lucasfilm to Disney for $4.05m?.?.?.?

导演乔治·卢卡斯(George Lucas)近日发表声明称，将自己的公司卢卡斯影业(Lucasfilm)以405万美元的价格出售给迪斯尼(Disney)。卢卡斯曾执导过电影《现代启示录》(Apocalypse Now, 1970)和《美国风情画》(American Graffiti, 1973)，但他未能实现自己曾经有过的拍摄《星球大战》(Star Wars)系列科幻电影的梦想...

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Movie history could be so different. It didn’t happen this way, yet so nearly did. The richest film-maker on the planet (his Forbes-estimated fortune is $3.2bn, with half of that pledged as a future gift to charity) never made Apocalypse Now, though he set out to direct it as a documentary-styled feature in 1970, during the Vietnam war and nine years before Francis Ford Coppola. He did make American Graffiti, his calling-card critical and popular hit. And goodness knows he made, and made history with, the Star Wars saga. This week Mr Lucas sold his company to Disney for – smoke-ring three additional zeros – $4.05bn.

电影史本可以如此不同。事情最终并未如此发展，虽然近乎快要走上了这条路。作为全球最富有的电影制片人（据《福布斯》杂志估算，卢卡斯的财产总额高达32亿美元，他宣布未来将把半数财产捐献给慈善事业），卢卡斯从未执导过《现代启示录》，虽然他于1970年开始筹备采用纪录片的风格导演这部影片。当时越战仍未结束，距离弗朗西斯·福特·科波拉(Francis Ford Coppola)开拍这部影片尚有九年。卢卡斯的确执导了《美国风情画》，这是他重要而又广受欢迎的一部代表作。但真正使卢卡斯影史留名的是他所执导的《星球大战》系列传奇。卢卡斯将自己的公司转让给迪斯尼的售价是上文中405万美元的1000倍——40.5亿美元。

Myths and legends are made from might-not-have-beens; from the feats and marvels that turn likely and lowly outcomes into unlikely, transcendent ones. Theseus might not have defeated the Minotaur. Nelson might not have won at Trafalgar. And Mr Lucas might never have made the 1977 space fantasy, which redefined box-office success and has regularly polled as the world’s best-loved film. Thirty-five years ago Alan Ladd Jr, the president of 20th Century Fox who greenlit Star Wars after its rejection by nearly every other Hollywood studio, told this writer: “The script came to me at a time when science fiction was deadly at the cinema. No one made those films. I looked at it and said, well, it’s not only science fiction. It’s also a western. It’s a pirate film. It’s many of the things I enjoyed when I was a kid. So why shouldn’t it work today?

神话和传奇来自“原本也许不会如此式的假想，来自将司空见惯的寻常小事转化为难得一见的超然成就的惊人绝技。忒修斯(Theseus)也许并未打败半人半牛怪兽弥诺陶洛斯(Minotaur)。纳尔逊(Nelson)可能无法赢得特拉法加之战。卢卡斯或许也没能制作出1977年上映的太空幻想片《星球大战》，这部影片刷新了票房纪录并频繁被票选为全球最受欢迎的电影。二十世纪福克斯(20th Century Fox)的总裁小艾伦·拉德(Alan Ladd Jr)给《星球大战》的电影剧本开了绿灯，此前这部影片遭到了几乎所有其他好莱坞制片厂的拒绝。拉德在35年前对剧本作者表示：“当我收到剧本时，科幻电影在院线已经濒临绝迹。没有人制作这类电影。我读完剧本之后感到，这不仅是一部科幻片，还是一部西部片和海盗片，融合了当我还是一个孩子时喜爱的多种元素。因此当今的观众又怎会不喜欢《星球大战》呢？

End of story. Or beginning. Star Wars won seven Oscars, begat five spin-offs (to date, with more to come in Disney’s production pledge) and made an eventual billionaire of the young man who forewent his director’s fee, opting for 40 per cent of the box-office take and ownership of merchandising and sequel rights.

这就是故事的结尾，也是一系列新传奇的开始。《星球大战》赢得了七座奥斯卡奖杯，到目前为止共有五部续集（迪斯尼在此次收购之后还计划拍摄更多的星战系列电影），并使执导该片的卢卡斯成为了亿万富翁，因为他放弃了自己的导演费，转而选择了40%的票房分成、电影衍生商品的特许权以及续集制作权。

With that historic decision Mr Lucas proved himself a business prodigy, even if some of his perceived priorities, including the tie-in toys, maddened early partners. Gary Kurtz, producer on Star Wars and a Mormon who believed the sci-fi saga had a mythological-spiritual subtext (and that the Methodist-raised Mr Lucas was singing from the same hymn sheet), left Lucasfilm after the follow-up film, The Empire Strikes Back (1980), feeling the gadgets were taking over the vision. The debate went on, factionalised between the typeset word and the turnstile dollar. Reviewers habitually knocked successive Star Wars films, not least the one that launched a prequel franchise in 1999, Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, Mr Lucas’s ill-greeted return to direction after two films of delegating that job. But audiences kept coming and adoring. Not even Jar-Jar Binks, a Rasta-style space creature widely ridiculed for racist stereotyping, put off the devotees.

这一历史性决策证明了卢卡斯是一位商业奇才，即使电影衍生玩具等他认定的某些优先要务令早期的合作伙伴感到颇为头痛。《星球大战》的制片人加里·科茨(Gary Kurtz)是一名摩门教徒，他认为科幻传奇中蕴含着一种神秘的、有关精神的潜台词（成长于卫理公会教徒家庭的卢卡斯也持同样观点）。科茨在星战续集《帝国反击战》(The Empire Strikes Back, 1980)推出后离开了卢卡斯影业，因为他感到琐碎小事已经取代了精神意象。但有关卢卡斯电影的争议仍在继续，形成了媒体风评与票房表现分化对立的局面。影评人习惯性地抨击《星球大战》的续集电影，1999年开启了前传系列的《星球大战前传I：魅影危机》（Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace）也遭到了批评，虽然这是卢卡斯在交出了前两部续集导演权之后重执导筒的作品。但电影观众一直热捧并喜爱星战系列电影。即使像加·加·宾克斯(Jar Jar Binks)这样被普遍批评为是带有种族主义色彩的塔法里教徒式太空生物都没能影响观众的热情。

Mr Lucas himself had too thick a hide, some opined, or too many hiding places in his prodigally expanding empire, to be hurt. In the early years of Star Wars’ success the subsidiary companies and state-of-art facilities spinning out from Lucasfilm kept Hollywood dizzy. Industrial Light and Magic was the last word in visual effects. Skywalker Sound raised the bar for sound-mixing and editing. The Lucasfilm computer graphics division was sold to Apple’s Steve Jobs, then morphed into the spectacularly successful Pixar Animation (bought by Disney in a warm-up deal for $7.4bn).

一些人认为，卢卡斯本人脸皮太厚，或者在他快速扩张的媒体帝国中有太多可供隐藏的地方，以至于外人无法对他构成打击。在《星球大战》取得成功的最初几年，从卢卡斯影业拆分出的子公司以及尖端设备令好莱坞目不暇接。工业光魔(Industrial Light and Magic)在视觉特效领域做到了极致。天行者音效(Skywalker Sound)提高了混音与剪辑的行业标准。卢卡斯影业的电脑图形部门被出售给了苹果(Apple)公司的史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)，并演变成为大获成功的皮克斯动画（Pixar Animation，被迪斯尼出资74亿美元收购）。

The Lucas story is all the more remarkable for those might-not-have-beens. Born in 1944 and raised on a walnut ranch in Modesto, California, the young Mr Lucas had no evident qualification to live down or move beyond that humbly named home town. Cinema was his second choice. A teenage drag-racer, he wanted to be a professional driver. Deterred by a 1962 road accident, he entered the University of Southern California’s film school. His sci-fi short THX 1138 won top prize in the 1967-68 National Student Film Festival. He met and befriended Mr Coppola and remade THX 1138 (1971) as his debut feature for Zoetrope Studios, cofounded with Mr Coppola in 1969. In 1971 he went independent to found Lucasfilm.

从“原本也许不会发生的角度来看，卢卡斯本人的经历显得更加不寻常。他出生于1944年，在加利福尼亚州莫德斯托(Modesto)的一处核桃园农场上长大，年轻时的卢卡斯并未明显展现出能使他定居在或者走出籍籍无名的家乡小镇的特质。电影是他的第二选择。青少年时期的卢卡斯是一名直道赛车手，并希望参加职业比赛。1962年的一起公路事故打破了卢卡斯的赛车梦，他进入了南加州大学(University of Southern California)的电影学院。他的科幻短片《THX 1138》获得了1967-1968年的全美大学生电影节(National Student Film Festival)大奖。他遇到了科波拉并与之成为了朋友，1969年两人共同成立了西洋镜工作室(Zoetrope Studios)，随后卢卡斯重新拍摄了《THX 1138》(1971)并将其作为自己加入该工作室的首部剧情片。1971年，他独自成立了卢卡斯影业。

From zero to hero in three years. No wonder, as writer-director, Mr Lucas virtually invented the bumbling-dashing accidental superhero. Star Wars’ Han Solo (partly based also on Mr Coppola) was followed by Indiana Jones, another Harrison Ford role, dreamt up with Steven Spielberg while the two holidayed together. In the years following Raiders of the Lost Ark this pair practically owned the all-time top 10 movie list. “We joked about it, Spielberg says today. “One day Beverly Hills Cop crept into the list and George said (mock-sonorous voice), ‘Steven, you are charged with the responsibility of knocking Beverly Hills Cop from the top 10.’

卢卡斯用三年时间实现了从无名小卒到英雄的转变。无可置疑的是，作为一名编剧加导演，他事实上创造出了经常出错而又英勇高尚、并偶然成为了超级英雄的银幕形象。继《星球大战》中的汉·索罗（Han Solo，部分以科波拉为原型创作）之后，卢卡斯又创造出了名为印第安纳·琼斯(Indiana Jones)的角色，这是他与史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格(Steven Spielberg)在一起度假时构思的。和汉·索罗一样，印第安纳·琼斯也由哈里森·福特(Harrison Ford)扮演。在《夺宝奇兵》(Raiders of the Lost Ark)上映后的许多年间，史上票房最高的前十部影片几乎完全由卢卡斯和斯皮尔伯格包揽。斯皮尔伯格表示：“我们就此开过玩笑。某日《比佛利山超级警探》(Beverly Hills Cop)登上了榜单，乔治用他洪亮的嗓子调侃道：‘史蒂文，现在你有责任将《比佛利山超级警探》挤出票房前十。

The Indiana Jones series became a blue-chip franchise like Star Wars. Mr Lucas had now climbed too high for even his flops, as producer or director, to bring him down. There was the grisly Howard: a New Breed of Hero (1986), the tale of an unfunny animated duck. There was Willow (1988), a Tolkien-lite folklore whimsy. More recently Mr Lucas signed the cheque for Red Tails (2011), a cumbersome second world war flying drama.

印第安纳·琼斯系列影片和《星球大战》一样成为了蓝筹特许经营品牌。卢卡斯现在已经爬得太高，就算他担任制片人或导演时出了什么差错，也很难对他的声誉构成打击。卢卡斯参与制作的烂片包括《天降神兵》(Howard: a New Breed of Hero, 1986)，这是关于一只并不有趣的动画鸭子的故事；《风云际会》(Willow, 1988)，一个托尔金作品风格的古怪民间传说。卢卡斯最近投资的一部影片是《红色机尾》(Red Tails, 2011)，一部关于二战时期飞行员的冗长剧情片。

It is not true (Mr Lucas has said) that he cannot be hurt by failure or criticism. Before the Disney deal he discussed the Star Wars films with the New York Times. “Why should I make any more when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?

卢卡斯曾说自己不会受失败或者批评打击，但这不是真的。在与迪斯尼达成交易之前，卢卡斯曾和《纽约时报》讨论过自己的《星球大战》系列电影。他表示：“如果每个人都冲我大叫、批评我是一个糟糕的人，我又有何必要继续拍片呢？

The wish to escape that – and to find a place to protect and perpetuate a near-priceless legacy – surely explains the announcement that Luke Skywalker has shaken hands with Mickey Mouse. “I’ve always believed Star Wars could live beyond me, Mr Lucas says. Who can doubt him? Who can doubt that, in a century far, far away, audiences will still be watching these films?

卢卡斯希望从一份近乎无价的创作成果中解脱，并找到一个能够保护及延续这份成果的地方。这一愿望无疑解释了卢克·天行者(Luke Skywalker)与米老鼠握手的原因。卢卡斯表示：“我一直相信，《星球大战》在我死后仍将具有生命力。谁能在这点上质疑他呢？谁能怀疑在遥远的一百年后，电影观众仍将观看这些影片呢？

The writer is the FT’s film critic

作者是英国《金融时报》的电影评论员