Since the premiere of ‘The Phantom Menace’ in a very, very distant 1999, much of the ‘Star Wars’ fandom has loaded hard on more than a few occasions against the prequel trilogy and, especially, against the last three numbered episodes released to date, which have closed the so-called Skywalker Saga.
This dynamic has been the bread and butter for the last two decades and is not the least bit surprising at this point, but what is less common is that a member of the technical or artistic team of the galactic saga take out the heavy artillery against the franchise created by George Lucas in 1979 the way Marcia Lucas has.
The magic of ‘Star Wars’
Luke, editor of the original ‘Star Wars’ trilogy and prestigious titles such as ‘American Graffiti’ or ‘Alicia no longer lives here’, has given a good review of the way in which Disney and LucasFilm have brought the creativity of episodes VII, VIII and XI under the leadership of Kathleen Kennedy. It has been in the book ‘Howard Kazanjian: A Producer’s Life’, and his statements are not wasted.
“I like Kathleen. I’ve always liked her. She was full of enthusiasm. She was very smart and brilliant. A wonderful woman. And I liked her husband, Frank. I liked them very much. Now that she’s directing Lucasfilm and making movies, I get the feeling that Kathy Kennedy and JJ Abrams have no idea about ‘Star Wars’. They don’t get it. And JJ Abrams is writing those stories … when I saw that movie where Han Solo was killed, I was enraged. It was enraged when Han was killed. alone. There was no single reason whatsoever to do it. I thought, you don’t understand the history of the Jedi. You don’t understand the magic of ‘Star Wars.’
But beware, as they say in the teleshopping, there is still more. Because Lucas also dedicated a few words to Rey, protagonist of the last trilogy —which omit what was seen in ‘The Rise of Skywalker’—
“Are you getting rid of Han Solo? And then at the end of ‘The Last Jedi’ they disintegrate Luke. They killed Han Solo. They killed Luke Skywalker. And they no longer have Princess Leia. And they are spitting movies every year. And they think it’s important to attract female audiences, so now their protagonist is a woman who supposedly has Jedi powers, but we don’t know how she got them or who she is. It sucks. The plots are terrible. Just terrible. Horrible JJ Abrams, Kathy Kennedy, talk to me. ”
If you thought that the prequels have come out unscathed from Marcia Lucas’s verbose fury, you are very wrong, because the editor too has told how it was the experience of seeing ‘Episode I’. Spoiler: it ended in tears — not joy — after the screening.
“George is, in body and soul, a good guy and a talented filmmaker. I wish he had continued directing other types of films. But when I went to see ‘Episode I’, I remember going out to the parking lot, sitting in my car and crying. I cried. I cried because I didn’t think she was too good. And I thought she had a great vein to mine, a very rich palette to tell stories with her. She had all those characters. And I thought it was strange that the story was about that little boy that she looked like she was six years old, but then she should be with this princess who looked like she was twenty years old. There were things that I didn’t like about the casting, and things that I didn’t like about the story … “
Of course, there is no doubt that your experience with ‘Star Wars’ left a deep enough mark on Marcia Lucas’ heart enough to feel the drift of the galactic narrative as little less than a personal betrayal.