From 1977 to 1983, George Lucas unleashed what would become the greatest sci-fi trilogy that would not only ingrain itself into the cultural zeitgeist, but would also change the way movies were made, thought of, marketed and most of all, obsessed over. (obsessed over should lead to this link) http://egotvonline.com/2010/06/24/if-star-wars-were-set-in-civil-war-time/ Those films would be Star Wars Trilogy: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi.

From 1968 to 1985, George A. Romero was busy creating his own masterful trilogy. In fact, his Living Dead films are widely considered the finest zombie trilogy of all time. With Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, Romero basically wrote the bible on zombies. I can’t think of one single zombie film today that doesn’t take major cues from Romero’s zombie construct, and believe me, I think about zombies a lot!

For years fans clamored for the promised prequel trilogy Lucas had talked about for decades. Similarly, fan boys wanted more Romero zombie films. And for the longest time, it seemed like neither would ever come to be.

Then something incredible happened. From 1999 to 2005, Lucas wrote, directed and produced what would become as “The New Trilogy.” Three new Star Wars films. Each one terrible in its own way. From The Phantom Menace, to Attack Of The Clones to the grand finale Revenge Of The Sith.

Then, crazier still, Romero finally received financing and from 2005 to 2010 cranked out a new zombie trilogy of his own. First up was Land Of The Dead, then Diary of the Dead and most recently, Survival of the Dead.

While I’m a bit more of a zombie-head myself, I loved both original trilogies. But for people like me, the Romero zombie films were just as big a deal as the new Star Wars.

After just seeing Survival of the Dead, the question I pose is this: who failed worse? What was more disappointing to the fans of the genre, the new Star Wars or the new Romero zombie films?

1. Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Vs. Land Of The Dead

Here was the promise of great things:

STAR WARS: PHANTOM MENACE TRAILER:

STAR WARS: PHANTOM MENACE: the first 10 minutes:

LAND OF THE DEAD TRAILER:

LAND OF THE DEAD: the first 10 minutes

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace: featured the performance of Jake Lloyd, who plays the young Anakin Skywalker who would later grow up to become the original trilogy’s villain, Darth Vader. Jake’s acting was about as bad as it gets. The film also involved one Jar-Jar Binks, a jive-talking CGI creation meant for comic relief that the fans generally loathed. Next to Jar-Jar, those Ewoks weren’t half bad. And even with fine actors like Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman and Ewen McGregor populating the film, the tin-eared dialog and overly complicated story points exhausted even the most ardent fans. (I swear I think the whole thing was about a tax issue.) There are also moments that clearly contradict established realities in the earlier films. The film made a billion dollars and re-launched the entire franchise, but nobody is talking today about how good it was. The effects were state of the art, but without real human characters, like Luke and Han, who felt lived in and real, it became a bloated failure with actors running around like they were in a bad Shakespeare production. The only thing worse than Natalie Portman’s line readings are Hayden Christensen’s. I can’t really remember who or what the bad guy was, and the use of certain modern phrases “That gotta’ hurt!” did nothing to endear the film to the fanboys, who roundly hated it.

Land Of The Dead: featured an all new cast, as is the case for all Romero zombie films. Only this time, Romero was working with the biggest budget he’s ever had for a zombie flick: $16 million. And, for the first time, Romero hired known actors for central roles, as opposed to unknowns, which always helped the documentary feel of his earlier work. There was Dennis Hopper as they guy who owned a fancy mall that he charged people to live in. There was John Leguizamo (playing a character named “Cholo”) and Simon Baker playing the hero – of what I’m not sure. I don’t even know what the film was about, because instead of his basic survival plotline, Romero set out to visit themes of commercialism and classism and the film suffers greatly for it. While the critics were kind to the film and many filmmakers who (rightfully) worship Romero thought this was like the 2nd coming of Michelangelo, the truth is that the film itself is very hard to sit through. Instead of surviving Zombie attacks, this film was about class and money, and the effects were not particularly memorable. (Lots of CGI work instead of good old fashioned squibs and stunt work.) That said, there is a very good fan-cut available on the web that removes money as a motivating factor and gets rid of most of the unfunny humor that permeates the film. Also, Tom Savini shows up to basically reprise Blade from Dawn (in a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo.)

So, two massive disappointments. The Star Wars movie had tons of effects, but, to quote Mel Gibson, “no soul.” The zombie movie had great zombies and real actors, yet again, “no soul.”

2. Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones Vs. Diary Of The Dead

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones: The second Star Wars film introduced Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker and takes place 10 years after the first film. While Jake Lloyd morphed into Hayden Christensen, Natalie Portman as Senator Amidala didn’t seem to age one day in 10 years. Worse still, things keep happening to contradict the earlier films. (Like say, if Anakin really hand-built R2D2, why in the later films, would the older Darth Vader not even recognize the robot he built as a boy?) I couldn’t tell you what the Clone Wars were about, I just know they underscored the big problem here: that the only interesting thing that Lucas has in store for us is for nice-guy Anakin to turn into Darth Vader. And since that’s not even touched upon in this film, we just get nearly 2 ½ hours of mind-numbing dialog and empty action. However, the scene of Anakin and Amidala being romantic had the theater I was in howling, so there was the gratuitous sexual element that kept a slight juvenile interest. I digress…

Diary Of The Dead: This one actually has a pretty cool opening. We’re in the middle of a newscast and during a live interview the dead return to life and kill the reporter. It’s good stuff, but about 10 minutes later, we’re on the set of a fake horror film that some college kids are making. Then when the zombies come to life, the kids now grab their digital camera to record the zombie-phenomenon as it happens. It’s a Blair-Witch approach with none of the wit, scares or reality that the aforementioned film had. It doesn’t help that Romero thought he was being young and hip when he keeps having his kids in the film refer to “uploading to the net!” By the time this rolled to a conclusion, it’s apparent that Romero had lost his mojo somewhere along the way.

Diary Of The Dead Trailer:

Diary Of The Dead first 10 minutes:

Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones Trailer:

Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones first 7 minutes:

Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith Vs. Survival Of The Dead

Revenge was actually the best entry in the new Star Wars because it finally confronted nice-guy Anakin going to the Dark Side and becoming, by film’s end, Darth Vader. Did he get there convincingly? No. Did it make tons of sense? Not at all. Was it satisfying? Not particularly. But there was something undeniably cool about seeing Anakin get into the Vader outfit for the first time. If only they would have built a better character arc and storyline so that we actually gave a shit. Still, this was the best of the lot by far. And Yoda steals the film in his short light-saber fight scene.

Survival of the Dead, on the other hand, might have been the worst of the new lot. It started out in typical Romero fashion, with some gruesome zombie kills at the hands of a few military types, and finishes the sequence with a CGI zombie kill that still looked pretty damn good. The problem: once the plot started, it turned out to be a variation of the Hatfields Vs. The McCoys. I’m not kidding. It was about warring Irish families. One old Irish man wanted to keep the zombies alive, the other wanted them dead. And Romero drove home his social commentary in ways that hit you on the nose with a hammer. And while it did have some cool ideas to show off, ultimately this was about these two older Irish characters with dodgy Irish accents. And as the film went on, the CGI effects got worse, particularly the water zombies. The thing is, the earlier Romero zombie films made you feel like you could get bit at any second, also you cared about the characters as well as you got into the story itself. These newer films feel just so very after the fact.

Star Wars episode 3 Trailer:

Star Wars episode 3 Revenge of the Sith first 10 minutes:

Star Wars episode 3 Revenge of the Sith: Yoda Vs. Sideous

There are many factors to who delivered less to the intended audience. Music, for one thing. Night of the Living Dead used library music exclusively, but it worked very well within the context of the film. Dawn used a fantastic score by Goblin, punctuated with a few other library cues and riffs. Day used a score by John Harrison, which raised the intensity of the film and gave it an edgy feel.

What can we say about John William’s Star War’s scores? They were all brilliant, although ending Jedi on a thumping disco Ewok beat was probably not the best choice. For the sequels, Lucas had a no-brainer. Just re-do the classic Star Wars themes. That was probably the one thing he got indisputably right.

Romero used completely generic scores in all three films that are as forgettable as the plots to his new movies.

Lord Of The Rings, Harry Potter and Twilight are the new Star Wars. These are multi-film sagas that have now captured the imagination of the movie-going audience. If Lucas wants to do another Star Wars, he’d do best to forget the trilogy idea (which might go sharply against his sense of commerce) and maybe get Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill to do one last go-round as the classic characters.

As far as Zombie films go, the Dawn Of The Dead 2004 remake was great, 28 Days Later was terrific and AMC’s The Walking Dead looks awesome. I would not discourage Romero from making his zombie films if he has the money and the drive, but the truth is, the zombie film has grown past him. If he really wants to make one of these work at this point, he needs to watch those original films and remember why people loved them in the first place.

So who did it worse?

I went into this thinking Romero would be the loser. But here’s the thing: Romero is doing simple variations on the zombie films that he created. And while he might be going through the motions, they are a lot easier to take than an 8 hour space epic that is filled to the brim with pretension, bad acting and actual ties to the original films that negate things that have been established. Not to mention Lucas had money. All the best special effects and acting money could buy. And he had the whole world waiting for him to make these films.

And this is what he delivered!

Sorry, but George Lucas is the one who betrayed his fans in a much deeper way than Romero. Why? Because now when you watch the original Dead trilogy, you don’t think about the newer films. You’re kind of happy that Romero can still do his thing, even if it’s not in the same class as his earlier work.

But with the new Star Wars informing everything that eventually happens in the older films, you can’t get those shitty movies out of your head. Whenever we see Vader and know that he turned to the “Dark Side,” we know it was over some stupid misunderstanding that Lucas never quite spelled out.

They both did it bad.

Though, George Lucas did it worse.

Much worse!