George Lucas was on Charlie Rose (via Indiewire) recently, where he was about as outspoken as he’s ever been on Star Wars in the wake of selling Lucasfilm to Disney:
“They wanted to do a retro movie. I don’t like that. Every movie I work very hard to make them completely different, with different planets, with different spaceships, make it new,” he said.
George is gonna George, I guess.
An important read for this week – particularly in reflection of these comments – is Devin Faraci’s defense of George Lucas, and the importance of cultural context. (Something which also applies the “white slavers” comment you’re seeing around so much. Though George has apologized.)
This break up is healthy and way overdue. THX1138, American Graffiti and then Star Wars is an insane run of awesome fresh inventive movies and really shows his love of doing something new each time. It seems like his attachment to SW kind of got him stuck, took him away from being a director for a long time and then didn’t bring out his best creatively or really satisfy audiences. I wish he had just overseen the first one or two SW sequels and then handed SW over to others for more sequels back then. He could have made some truly new non-SW movies and we could have had a longer run of fun SW movies in the 80’s. I would love to have seen more non-SW movies directed by him.
I don’t know that he was capable of truly stepping away without taking drastic measures, though.
I think his true feelings were the hard core pre-apology interview. I have no doubt, actually.