George Lucas felt Disney “betrayed” him and the franchise with Star Wars: The Drive Awakens
George Lucas has lengthy expressed muted indifference to the path Disney has taken his iconic Star Wars franchise. There’s the occasional “I actually favored it” or a nod to how “fantastically made” the brand new motion pictures are, however the filmmaker has stored his stronger opinions near the chest. Now, Disney CEO Bob Iger has revealed in his new memoir how Lucas actually felt when the studio introduced him with The Drive Awakens.
It’s no secret that when Lucas authorized of Disney’s takeover of Lucasfilm, he included story remedies for the trilogy he envisioned closing out the Skywalker saga. There was loads of wacky stuff about immortal Whills and in depth exploration of the microscopic midichlorians, issues Lucas readily admitted followers who didn’t just like the prequels would have “hated.” Although Iger and the studio bought the outlines, they made it very clear there was no obligation to truly use any of the concepts.
Sadly, Lucas apparently assumed the brand new Star Wars caretakers would keep on with his plans anyway. In the long run, author/director J.J. Abrams, screenwriter Michael Arndt, and Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy selected to disregard what Lucas had laid out, and that didn’t sit properly with the creator of the galaxy far, distant. When Iger and that trio met with him at Skywalker Ranch to speak about The Drive Awakens, Lucas instantly felt “betrayed.” As Iger wrote in his memoir (through Esquire),
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“George instantly acquired upset as they started to explain the plot and it dawned on him that we weren’t utilizing one of many tales he submitted through the negotiations… George knew we weren’t contractually certain to something, however he thought that our purchasing the story remedies was a tacit promise that we’d observe them, and he was upset that his story was being discarded. I’d been so cautious since our first dialog to not mislead him in any approach, and I didn’t assume I had now, however I might have dealt with it higher.”
Issues didn’t enhance as soon as the movie was launched, both. Not solely was Lucas perturbed that they hadn’t used any of his new concepts, however he was upset they’d merely rehashed his outdated ones. Iger wrote,
“In every of the movies within the unique trilogy, it was necessary to [Lucas] to current new worlds, new tales, new characters, and new applied sciences. On this one, he stated, ‘There weren’t sufficient visible or technical leaps ahead.’ He wasn’t incorrect, however he additionally wasn’t appreciating the stress we have been underneath to provide ardent followers a movie that felt quintessentially Star Wars.”
That over-reliance on nostalgia and fan-service has been the form of criticism many have hung their lightsabers on, even those that typically loved Drive Awakens. Lucas himself alluded to as a lot throughout an interview across the movie’s 2015 launch: “…In the end, they seemed on the tales and so they stated, ‘We wish to make one thing for the followers.’”
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It’s true that The Final Jedi not less than took some extra dangers and added new facets to the Star Wars mythology (hello, Porgs!), however hopefully the forthcoming The Rise of Skywalker can discover the steadiness that’s been lacking from the brand new trilogy. We’ll discover out when the movie hits theaters on December 20th.
Star Wars followers even have Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian sequence, the Rogue One prequel present with Diego Luna, and the Ewan McGregor-starring Obi-Wan Kenobi spin-off to look ahead to. All three are coming to the brand new Disney+ streaming service, with Mandalorian debuting on the November 12th launch day. In the meantime, Sport of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are additionally engaged on a brand new movie trilogy set to kick off in 2022.