I wouldn't waste my bandwidth grabbing either Spiderman or Star Wars from Bittorrent.

"Before then we'll have the fourth Indiana Jones film, whose plot Lucas and co-creator have managed to keep under wraps."

CAST:

GOOD GUY: (smiles a lot, tells jokes, likes kids and dogs, demonstrates rebel, antihero streak by not shaving regularly and refusing to wear a brilliant white hat)

LOVE INTEREST: (hot chick, young enough to be GOOD GUYS granddaughter, invariably put at imminent risk by VILLAIN (see below), surrenders her life as a chattel to GOOD GUY)

VILLAIN: (seers a lot, attempts to smile end in seer, hates kids and dogs, flaunts wealth and power, risks much to defile LOVE INTEREST, wears black hat and likes it)

POWER THINGY: (world ending thingy)

TIME: (always running out and putting world, GOOD GUY and LOVE INTEREST at risk)

PLOT:

World ending POWER THINGY discovered [FX] (subplot, if in hands of VILLAIN then GOOD GUY assaults VILLAIN's stronhold [FX]; if not in hands of VILLAIN then RACE between GOOD GUY and VILLAIN [FX]). LOVE INTEREST holds knowledge (key) [FX] to POWER THINGY; if LOVE INTEREST employed/ensnared by VILLAIN [FX] then GOOD GUY must "woo" her; if LOVE INTEREST not employed/ensnared by VILLAIN then LOVE INTEREST [FX,FX] captured by VILLAIN (much evil laughing and threats of defilement). TIME running out. GOOD GUY must not only capture [FX, FX] POWER THINGY but save LOVE INTEREST; TIME must conflict GOOD GUY leaving him to choose between saving world or LOVE INTEREST. GOOD GUY exhibits superpowers [FX, FX, FX...(see budget limitations) to save world and LOVE INTEREST. VILLAIN dies. The End.

Saw it last night - best part of the movie was when the credits started to roll, the lights came on and someone shouted out 'that sucked!' repeatedly, which was greeted with laughter and a round of applause.

You might enjoy it if your mind is switched off completely before entering and you enjoy hammy acting with an extra helping of cheese.

The creator of Jar Jar Binks has surely lost his right to call anything else vacuous.

As for lacking story, well, so little happens in the Star Wars prequels my memory has fused it into one rather boring film. With a rubbish ending.

Quote "Star Wars creator George Lucas has slammed Spider-Man 3 as vacuous."

Quite amusing considering Episodes 1-3 were some of the most vacuous films I've seen.

Great article from a comedy point of view, made me chuckle, thanks !

Haven't seen spiderman 3 yet, though I 'spect it's pretty fluffy.

However, we should listen to George Lucas when he says Spidey lacks substance. Lucas knows what he's talking about. Lucas knows how to milk a franchise with high-budget eye candy. Lucas oughtta stick to space navies pummelling each other and not try to direct action with more emotional content than "It's them! Blast 'em!".

meet Mr Kettle...

...without his involvement. That's the issue here. He wanted a piece of the pie and he couldn't get it, so he says that's not good.

"Commenting on Spidey's third outing, Lucas said: "It's silly. It's a silly movie. There just isn't much there. Once you take it all apart, there's not much story, is there?""

Sure he wasn't commenting on Star Wars Episode I, II or III ?

Episode I especially. Just where is the story in the long and dull pod race?

think pot calling other pot black.

They should have started with Spiderman 4, 5 and 6. Then kept the fanbase waiting so many years for 1,2 and 3 that enough of them would watch any old crap.

They should also add a few pointless new scenes and special effects to the original 4,5 and 6 too so they could be re-released and sold at a premium.

Oh and not forgetting recycling the whole lot into Blu-Ray, Ultraviolet-Ray or holographic memory whenever.

I lost respect for Lucas at the end of Empire. Sure, his contribution to the entertainment industry has included ILM and THX, but let's face it... As far as writers/directors are concerned he's nothing to write home about. He just happened to be in the right place when lightening struck and had the wits to license the hell out of everything and was able to cash in on damn near everything that was even remotely star wars related. Had he been 5 minutes earlier or 5 minutes later, most of us would probably be saying "George who?".

The prequels to "Star Wars" were a travesty that were sugar coated heavily with visual effects, to compensate for shoddy writing.

Same applies with the Spiderman series... The first was reasonably successful, followed by a reasonably successful sequel... The third is nothing more than an attempt to ride the cash train as far as they can, with complete disregard to providing a quality product to the consumers.

So, I don't think Mr. Lucas has any high ground to be criticizing Sony for trying to squeeze another couple of drops out of the Spiderman franchise...

Was Spiderman 3 the best movie ever, probably not. But it was entertaining and had some drama & emotion. Not just cool battles.

"People thought Star Wars was silly, too," said Lucas... "But it wasn't," he added.

No, Mr. Lucas people just think the last three Star War movies were just unnecessary and tainted the franchise.

I've always liked Spiderman, and I wasn't expecting any Dicken like plot.. this movie is based on a COMIC BOOK for crying out loud! And anyone who actually likes Spiderman will already know the loose plo of what happens with Venom. I remember seeing the scene on the cartoon series where he gets rid of Venom in the clock tower. The film didn't do it quite as well in my opinion, but I found it entertaining nevertheless. Thinking about it, it did get me emotionally involved in Peter's troubles and problems with the venom symbiont - the emotional depth wasn't the same as the first film, but it was still pretty good, and the plot was adequate. There's only so much you can do with Spiderman without inventing new villains and plots. You have to tell the core story first though. Maybe they'll come up with new stuff later, but then it will be slammed for not being 'classic' Spiderman, unless maybe Steve Ditko and Stan Lee write it (they'd better hurry though, they're getting a bit long in the tooth!).

I'm an X-Gen and like all were roped into the first StarWars, even saw it 5 times the first month. But that wore off quickly as I realized with the second release in the series that the acting was HORRIBLE, the plots were "vacuous" the special effects were YAWNERS and character building was EMPTY.

Samuel L Jackson, New Y'Awk accent as a Jedi .... yeah sure!

StarWars is to Spiderman, as the original StarTrek is to Dune, Alien or the original War of the Worlds. Excuse the pun, Worlds apart!

George Lucas ... your jealous and a has-been, go stick a light sabre where the sun don't shine

The last paragraph of the main section is interesting. It seems to suggest that the amount of money a film makes on it's openning night is an indicator of how good it is. Lets just see if Spidey 3 has legs.

George Lucas said so.

Made me laugh :-)

"It's silly. It's a silly movie. There just isn't much there. Once you take it all apart, there's not much story, is there?"

How rich is that, coming from the creator of Jar-Jar Sodding Binks? How d'you like the taste of them there sour grapes George?

Granted, Spidey 3 wasn't a brilliant movie, especially as it was (IMO) about an hour and twenty minutes too long and was heavy on gratuitous eye candy (both human and CGI), but at least I was able to sit through it without wanting to gouge my eyes out with dirty teaspoons.

Unlike "Phantom Menace" ...

THX 1138, shirley?

Heck, this is sounding like a rant on Harry Knowles' website. Any case, Lucas can bitch all he wants, he may be right on two counts, I will see the film this weekend. It's a statement he was bound to come up with as he's had no involvement. I would say though, he is a big comic fan, and this may suck for him as a viewer who loves Spider Man. I hope it's good as I really liked the Venom series. But again dear reader, it's a US film for a US audience; lowest common denominator and all that.

I wouldn't possibly be able to comment on the relative merits of the Star Wars prequels and Spiderman3. The Star Wars films were so incredibly pompous and boring I think the most I managed was about 15 minutes before falling fast asleep.

I did try, honest, 3 times I tried to watch the first effort.

Hey, are there any opinions on X-Men series of movies ?

The only thing sillier than the creator of "Star Wars" calling "Spiderman 3" vaccuous is the consumers of *both* brands of brainless crap arguing over which is worse. Its rather like sheep comparing castration scars, or rubes arguing that Starbucks is better than Dog Urine... meaning that it is only funny if you aren't a cretin, but it palls rather quickly.

Seriously, if you take any aspect of either the Star Wars or Spiderman franchises seriously it is time to extract your head from your bottom and try reading a book. Either that, or apply for a job as a farm animal.

What would bethe best way to describe Jar Jar Binks?

They are both silly - George Lucas and Spiderman 3.

Spiderman 3 made money because lots of people went to see it hoping it might be good.

I assume it wasn't - I'm not going to watch it because the first two were silly.

Come to think of it, I haven't seen many decent Marvel films at all. X Men was ok, but not as good as the cartoons.

George Lucas is silly because the Star Wars prequels were all rubbish and had no substance themselves.

He is right though, S3 stole 2 hours of my life I'll never get back. And I LIKE those sorts of films. I LIKE eye-candy and action sequences. I don't like lots of time spent on what the writers obviously thought of as profound character development but in fact was vacuous teen-drama no more worthy than any episode of Home And Away. If you're going to focus on character development, at least make it worthy or you just look a tit. It comes to something where I pay 6 quid to see a movie, and have to go out for a ciggie half way through because I'm literally squirming with embarassment at how bad it all is.

Get a life people!

"Just where is the story in the long and dull pod race?"

it started after the release and involved selling a lot of long and dull console games

If Spiderman three stole three hours of your life, what about the 20 or so hours those boring star wars pre-quels went on for...? At least this is a single movie that went bad (allegedly), Lucas managed to repeat that task three times in a row! Unforgiveable what he managed to do extricating all the fun, excitement and adventure from Star Wars - he should shut up and do penance somewhere. Preferably somewhere a long way from a cine camera ...

If 'Spiderman III' is "silly", I'd like to know what adjective George would use to describe the adaption of 'Judge Dredd' by comparison.

Here's my suggestion: Megash*tydung.

Having reworked the entire 30 year Star Wars history to create more sequels from sequels and creating Jar Jar Binks (or whatever), you lose the right to call ANYTHING silly. And that includes Barney The Movie.