10 Directors Suffering From George Lucas Syndrome

1. John Lasseter

His Success: John Lasseter's influence in the world of animation simply cannot be diminished: he serves as chief creative officer at Pixar, and directed a number of the studio's early animated classics such as the first two Toy Story movies and A Bug's Life. He has been nominated for six Oscars, winning one for his 1989 animated short Tin Toy, and also receiving a Special Achievement Award for developing the first feature-length computer animation film in Toy Story. He continues to serve as a producer on the vast majority of Disney, Pixar and DisneyToon Studios projects moving forward. His Failures: 2006's Cars could hardly be deemed a failure either critically or commercially, but it certainly felt like a huge step down from the studio's prior movies, and definitely their worst effort to date. Lasseter also directed the 2011 sequel Cars 2, which was Pixar's first critical miss, even though it still made over $500 million worldwide. The feeling, however, was that it was a movie made more to sell lunchboxes and toy cars rather than, as in usual Pixar style, because they actually had a good story to tell. Lasseter will be back again with 2017's Toy Story 4, a prospect which has a lot of people worried. Considering that his last two movies are also the two worst-reviewed of Pixar's 14 movies to date, many are concerned that the director has simply lost his spark and may derail the near-perfect critical favour which the Toy Story series currently holds. Of course, fans are totally part of the problem too, because they're definitely going to see this one, and though Pixar's output is on the whole at a high standard, recent years do suggest a turn towards more sequels and movies aimed to milk the cash cow rather than tell an original story, which is a shame. How He Can Save His Career: Lasseter doesn't really need to prove anything at this point, so he just doesn't need to direct anymore, or better yet, actually direct something new that's a completely unique IP. He's always going to be a legend as a mega-producer, and given his immense status in the industry, that would certainly be enough for him to never be forgotten. Are there any other directors suffering with a case of George Lucas Syndrome? Shout it out in the comments!