George Lucas' Biggest Career Regret Involves A 1986 Marvel Movie Flop

It's a bit of trivia that you can use to stump friends at parties, especially those folks who fancy themselves a know-it-all about how the film industry works: doesn't a major motion picture based on a Marvel comic produced by "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" guru George Lucas during the peak of his filmmaking career sound like a sure-fire hit? Of course, it's a trick question, as the movie in question, 1986's "Howard the Duck," was a notorious flop, one which sent Lucas back to the "maybe I should think about making some 'Star Wars' prequels" drawing board and very likely helped keep more Marvel properties off the big screen for several years. Although the film was certainly not a complete waste of time — its long research & development process regarding the title character eventually led to what became Pixar — its status as a flop tarnished the careers of Lucas, director/co-writer Willard Huyck, and the Marvel characters.

As with most unfairly maligned movies, it turns out that "Howard the Duck" was more ahead of its time than hopelessly flawed. Its attempt to translate the comic character written and created by Steve Gerber to the screen resulted in a movie with a very subversive sense of humor, one which would've been better received in a post-"South Park" and "Adult Swim" world. As it is, the movie has steadily been reappraised and revisited since its release, and while elements of the film have kept it from being fully embraced as a hidden gem, there's no denying that it helped unwittingly pave the way for more daring television and cinematic fare, both in the comedy and comic book movie genres. Due to the movie being Lucas' biggest regret of his career, the filmmaker has tried to get some perspective on it over the years, and he's come up with an idea in hindsight that he feels would've been the sure-fire solution to have made "Howard the Duck" a hit. Yet, as we all know (or should know), there is no such thing as a sure-fire success in Hollywood.

According to a quote from Lucas collated by the Telegraph on the filmmaker's 70th birthday in 2014, Lucas came to believe that none other than John Landis should've taken the reins on "Howard" for it to be a success:

"My greatest regret in my career is that John [Landis] was unable to direct 'Howard the Duck.' I feel the movie would have been far more successful and saved me the years of hardship following its release."

Before you cry "John Landis, the guy whose actions helped lead to the deaths of several people on the set of 'Twilight Zone: The Movie?' Him??," it's important to remember the context. Although the "Twilight Zone" tragedy had indeed occurred several years before "Howard the Duck" was made, Landis hadn't yet been fully canceled (to use the parlance of our time), and was still on a run of making very successful comedies such as "Spies Like Us" and "Coming to America." In fact, the primary reason he wasn't available for "Howard the Duck" was because he was making "Three Amigos," which was famously the first on-screen pairing of the beloved "Only Murders in the Building" duo Steve Martin and Martin Short. In addition to his track record still being strong in 1986, Landis also had a past working with bringing fantasy creatures to credible life on screen, best seen in his collaboration with special effects makeup artist Rick Baker on movies like "Schlock!" and "An American Werewolf in London."

To be fair, the guy who ended up directing "Howard the Duck," Willard Huyck, had a background in both comedy and horror, too. His resume includes co-writing "American Graffiti" (with his partner Gloria Katz and Lucas) as well as directing the Dudley Moore comedy "Best Defense" and the brilliantly surreal "Messiah of Evil." It's why "Howard" really is very funny and, at times, genuinely disturbing, making for a bizarro cocktail of a movie that was destined to be a cult favorite. So, perhaps what Lucas is referring to with regards to hoping for Landis isn't the tone or approach of the film itself, but rather the creation of the Howard character, as the producer was never a fan of what ultimately was the solution: putting an actor in a duck suit.

While a more plausible Howard could've helped the movie become more widely embraced by audiences in 1986, my belief is that "Howard the Duck" was always destined to be one of these stepping-stone movies. After all, a failure can be just as progressive as a success (and the reverse can certainly be true). While Lucas certainly has the right to lament what might have been, he should take some pride in paving the way for more subversive material that "Howard" influenced. Heck, Marvel Studios continues to flirt with giving the duck another cinematic go-round in some form, and that wouldn't happen if there were zero interest in the character. Who knows — perhaps there shall come a day when Lucas won't see the misadventures of the Duckworld dude as his biggest regret.