Lucas Museum takes a light saber to pretentious art museums — force yourself to go

An Imperial Star Destroyer has touched down next to the LA Memorial Coliseum.

It is useless to resist.

This battle station is not taking aim at pesky Rebel scum — but rather, at high art. 

Astonishingly, a world-class art museum has been designed not for intellectuals, but for the masses.

In fact, George Lucas’ latest creation might be the most unassuming, unpretentious, anti-elite museum of all time. 

With his newly opened Lucas Museum for Narrative Art, the Star Wars filmmaker has championed the kind of art that ordinary people have embraced on a daily basis. 

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The collections on display include that of comic books, pulp novels, children’s books and of course — Hollywood blockbusters.

It’s true: The complex, which opened last month to huge crowds, resembles a spaceship from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. 

And what can be found inside is a bold statement about what art is and which art deserves celebration. 

The Lucas Museum is straightforward, nostalgic — and a temple for the “everyman.” 

It’s clear Lucas and his wife, financier and former Dreamworks SKG executive Melody Hobson, have tastes that are vastly different from those at a typical museum curated by Ivy League-trained art historians.

From arresting novel covers to muscular superheroes darting through the panels of comic books, this museum features work that would be laughed out of the Louvre. 

The “everyman” treasures include the work of comic book illustrator John Romita Jr., known for his run on Spider-Man. 

There are also the epic dreamscapes of Frank Frazetta, who crafted the covers of pulp fantasy novels, like Edgar Rice Burroughs’ ‘John Carter’ books. 

These John Carter drawings had a huge impact on many later sci-fi properties — ‘Dune’ and ‘Star Wars’ included.

Then there are, well, paintings of Scrooge McDuck. 

Can anyone imagine McDuck, Donald Duck’s miserly uncle (and parody of Ebenezer Scrooge), in a fancy art museum?

Granted, the Lucas Museum does include traditional big-name artists among all the pop. 

It features respectable American pop art standard-bearers like Norman Rockwell and Thomas Hart Benton. 

However, it’s the workaday artists that are the stars of the show.

Many of these popular artists help fuel Hollywood’s dream factory — and Lucas’ own projects in particular. 

In Hollywood, where we often celebrate charismatic actors and visionary directors (like Lucas himself), the public rarely gets to know the work of all the talented craftspeople below-the-line. 

As it turns out, movie-making is a team sport. 

And in the Lucas Museum, you can get a feel for Lucas’ team players — another cool departure from your typical high-brow museum.

Consider Lucas’ centerpiece Star Wars exhibit. 

The room elevates the artists who made the sci-fi saga the iconic visual feast that inspired devoted generations of fans.

(They also inspired real-life empires, in terms of toy lines.)

Such figures include Ralph McQuarrie, who developed the original design concepts for iconic characters like C-3PO and Darth Vader.

Also featured is the artwork of Doug Chiang, who conceived of many of the spaceships and gizmos in the prequel films like ‘The Phantom Menace.’ These prequels were hated by critics, but wildly popular in their own way.

Lucas couldn’t have done it without people like them. 

He’s giving credit where credit is due — and showing fans how the process came to life.

The unifying thesis of Lucas’ palace is the concept of “narrative art” — visual art that explores, as a museum press release put it, “how artists depict the essential myths that help us make sense of the world.”

People get that instinctively, if not conceptually. And they connect with the museum’s down-to-earth sense of humor. 

Despite its startling glass elevators and ornamental oculus, the Lucas Museum is cheeky and self-aware. 

Within the grounds’ public gardens, a statue of Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) throttling the slug gangster Jabba the Hutt instantly went viral, as did a neighboring bronze of Padme (Natalie Portman) battling an alien beast (from ‘Attack of the Clones’). 

Truly wonderful, the mind of a Lucas is. 

There never has been a museum quite like this. And you’ll know it as soon as you arrive. 

When the docents scanned my ticket at the entrance, their device emitted the instantly recognizable sound of a Star Wars blaster (“pew-pew!”).

Shots fired. I smiled. The Empire had my attention. 

Harrison Blackman is an editorial assistant at The California Post.