Well, when I said I was going to do the prequels, everybody said, ‘That’s great, we get to see Darth Vader kill everybody.’ And I said, ‘That’s not the story.’ When I announced that the first story was going to be about a nine-year-old boy, everybody here said, ‘That’s insane, you’re going to destroy the whole franchise, it’s More American Graffiti all over again.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but this is the story.’
I don’t have energy to just make hit movies. I’m not going to make James Bond Pt. 21 – I’m just not interested. Everybody said to drop the stuff about the midichlorians, it makes it too confusing. But it’s a metaphor for a symbiotic relationship that allows life to exist. Everybody said it was going to be a giant turkey: ‘This isn’t going to help LucasFilm at all.’ I said, ‘This is about the movie and the company is just going to have to deal with whatever happens.’
George Lucas on audience expectations, George Lucas and the Cult of Darth Vader, Rolling Stone, 2 June 2005 (via catie-does-things)