Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Lucas has been somewhat front and center recently in regard to The Force Awakens, and I as a fan am trying to reconcile my gratitude for having him create this incredible series of stories with the fact that he’s no longer involved in it.
Here’s what he had to say to CBS Sunday Morning about it:
“The issue was ultimately, [Disney] looked at the stories and they said, ‘We want to make something for the fans,'” Lucas said. “People don’t actually realize it’s actually a soap opera and it’s all about family problems – it’s not about spaceships. So they decided they didn’t want to use those stories, they decided they were going to do their own thing so I decided, ‘fine…. I’ll go my way and I let them go their way.'”
This marks the first time Lucas is not intimately involved, which Lucas compared to a breakup.
“When you break up with somebody, the first rule is no phone calls. The second rule, you don’t go over to their house and drive by to see what they’re doing,” he said laughing. “The third one is you don’t show up at their coffee shop and say you are going to burn it… You just say ‘Nope, gone, history, I’m moving forward.'”
And said this to the Washington Post:
“I call it like a divorce,” Lucas says candidly. He always knew that at some point he’d have to part with “Star Wars” in order for the franchise to go on living.
“There is no such thing as working over someone’s shoulder,” he says. “You’re either the dictator or you’re not. And to do that would never work, so I said ‘I’m going to get divorced.’ . . . I knew that I couldn’t be involved. All I’d do is make them miserable. I’d make myself miserable. It would probably ruin a vision — J.J. has a vision, and it’s his vision.”
He even talked about it with Vanity Fair:
Why all this, and why now? And why do I feel badly that he’s not involved at all, that he couldn’t reconcile the dictatorial thing that seemingly only came into play on the prequels, but not on the originals?
Trivia Time!
Test your knowledge of the Star Wars universe!Yesterday’s answer: The Emperor
Today’s question: What did the Tydirium transmit to gain passage to Endor?