December 2025 | Eyesore

Behold, the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Exposition Park, Los Angeles. Of course the darn thing had to look like a space ship, because George Lucas made the very $5.3-billion fortune that enabled him to aggrandize himself in this museum on the space movie franchise Star Wars. The 300,000 square-foot building contains 35 galleries and two movie theaters. Note the “environmental” roof-scape! What’s that narrative? Answer: The “green” roof is there simply to mollify the climate zealots on the LA planning board and allow Hollywood bigshots to enjoy their luxury-belief boost. It does furnish a clue, though, to the ironic heart of George Lucas’s story as a movie mogul: the guy really doesn’t know how to tell a story.

No, really, he can’t. The Star Wars saga is largely incoherent and has only gotten worse with each iteration. Lucas doesn’t really understand the function of dramatic action in narrative art. Here’s how you can tell: he marches characters onstage to babble about things that happened in the past. Then you get a big battle scene, a lot of visual effects dazzle and violence. Then another character traipses onstage to babble some more about things that happened long ago. That’s George’s understanding of narrative art, which is to say, he doesn’t understand it. By the way, Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings movies) has exactly the same problem. George’s museum building doesn’t tell a coherent story about architecture, either. It’s just another visual effect.

Prediction: by year 2035, The museum will be converted into a homeless shelter.

Thanks to Deborah Bachner for the nomination!