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George Lucas: "I'm Done With Star Wars"

HughPickens.com writes: Entertainment Weekly reports that George Lucas has compared his retirement from Star Wars to a break-up – a mutual one, maybe, but one that nonetheless comes with hard feelings and although Lucas came up with story treatments for a new trilogy, those materials, to put it bluntly, were discarded. "They decided they didn't want to use those stories, they decided they were gonna go do their own thing," says Lucas. "They weren't that keen to have me involved anyway. But at the same time, I said if I get in there I'm just going to cause trouble. Because they're not going to do what I want them to do. And I don't have the control to do that anymore. All I would do is muck everything up. So I said, 'Okay, I will go my way, and I'll let them go their way.'" Lucas says he was going to tell a story about the grandchildren of figures from the original trilogy. "The issue was, ultimately, they looked at the stories and they said, 'We want to make something for the fans,'" says Lucas. "So, I said, all I want to do is tell a story of what happened – it started here and went there. It's all about generations, and issues of fathers and sons and grandfathers. It's a family soap opera."

Although the team behind The Force Awakens acknowledges they're taking the story in a different direction from what Lucas intended, they maintain affection for his original creations and the man himself. "Before I showed up, it was already something that Disney had decided they wanted to go a different way with," says J. J. Abrams. "But the spirit of what he wrote, both in those pages and prior, is everything that this movie is built upon." Some fans question why there was no "Based on" credit for Lucas in the poster for The Force Awakens. "I don't know why it isn't on the poster, but it's a valid point. I'm sure that that will be a credit in the film," says Abrams. "We are standing on the shoulders of Episodes I through VI."

5 of 424 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Surprised? by roc97007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "and just to complete it" -- I know the feeling. Lucas was starting to go off the rails with RotJ. Then with TPM he went off the bridge, tumbled down the mountain, careened into the chasm and plunged into the magma.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  2. Re:Surprised? by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He also ruined the first three movies when he shamelessly screwed with them.

    Han shot Greedo first. End of story.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  3. Re:Surprised? by PRMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And it's not just a preference. Han Solo can't be redeemed if he's not a cold-blooded killer to begin with. He has nothing to be redeemed from...

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    Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
  4. Re:Surprised? by Nogami_Saeko · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You are absolutely, 100% correct. It was painfully obvious watching the behind the scenes footage that Lucas had been surrounded by a platoon of "Yes Men", rather than people who would give him honest feedback.

    And here's the thing, I think that Lucas did have some really great ideas, but he also had some terrible ones. And without the filter to remove the terrible ones, you got a mashed-up mess.

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    "Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
  5. Re:Jar Jar Binks by RobinH · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Natalie Portman is an award winning actor and quite good in other movies. Hayden Christensen might be terrible, but you can't come to that conclusion solely on his performance in episodes 2 and 3 because clearly even a really good actor couldn't act well in that situation. The blame has to fall on Lucas. He thought he was inventing a new form of film-making where he could fix everything in post production so he didn't push for good performances. He was wrong.

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    "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain