If he didn't care much about sound why did THX come about?

Elf

I've had to think about a reply to this for a while and I think I'm ready.

From an artistic perspective, Lucas is a visual director meaning that he relies on images more than dialogue to convey his story and to elicit emotion from the audience. Other visual directors would be Ridley Scott and Akira Kurosawa. Some good example of directors who are dialogue driven and NOT visual would be Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino. Their films are ALL about the dialogue.

THX was created as a sound design studio to not only provide sound for the SW films but also to provide sound editing/engineering/design services for other films. So of course sound design was important in the SW films from the beginning but it was not the driving force behind Lucas' story-telling. The visuals were.

But that of course begs the question, if Lucas isn't focused on the dialog, why add to or change the existing dialog?

He's off his rocker? Hell I don't know! lol

You may be confusing Skywalker Sound (the original studio where the techniques were created) with the THX certification.

Lucas initial intent was to have consistency between what he produced in his studio and what the audience got in the theater... and since SW was such a moneymaker for cinemas, he skillfully blackmailed theater chains to pay to convert their sound systems or miss the chance to screen the openings of his movies. (they would get to show the movies eventually anyway if they did not convert). They did this significantly for the TPM, though the standard was first used in theaters for ROTJ.

Once the standard was "accepted" it made sense to keep pushing it to other outlets such as consumer home theaters manufacturers.

I remember seeing my first THX theater around the time Jurassic Park came out. Almost simultaneously DTS appeared, although it never really gained traction.
I would say it was the mid 90s before I could be confident that when I went to see a film the sound would be good. Prior to that it was really hit or miss.



The Jedi Master