…and a bit more majestic.
george lucas
To my eyes George Lucas is the one individual who can be credited with creating the playground in which we Star Wars fans continue to congregate nearly 40 years later. He is the person who synthesised millennium of story-telling, myth and religion. He created a joyous world of escapism at a time of bleak post-Modern film making. To me he created a modern mythology from his own mind that provided for America what the Greek and Roman myths did for those societies. He should be revered as a creative genius and as someone who developed groundbreaking storytelling by harnessing the skills of his colleagues in design, art, music and storytelling.
I’m very proud of all the movies I made. I am very happy with everything I’ve done. I like to watch my movies. Some of them work. Some of them don’t. Some of them people like, most of them they don’t.
George Lucas (x)
“If Star Wars is a fairy tale, what is the moral of the story?”
Episode I, we learned that young force sensitive children are taken away from their families to be trained by the Jedi. Even Anakin at 9 years old is already almost too old to be taken away from his mother. But Anakin’s mother is presented easily as the most perfect character in all of Star Wars. She is wise. She’s virtuous. She’s good, loving. And Anakin in her care is all these things as well.
And you have to ask, if he had just stayed with his mother, even as a slave, wouldn’t that have been better for him than to be taken away from her? But that’s what the Jedi do. And the Jedi think they know best taking away those kids from their families.
And I think that what’s most telling about that then is when you get to the end of the prequel trilogy, when you get to the end of Episode III, you have Obi-Wan and Yoda, two of the greatest Jedi Masters, who could train anyone, and they have in their care Luke and Leia, who are the hope for the galaxy. I mean, two offspring of Anakin, the have more midichlorians and all that. These are potentially the greatest Jedi that they could ever teach.
And instead of teaching them, like the Jedi have always done, they say “You know what? We need to give these kids to families.” And so they put them in families with mothers and fathers. And the images Lucas ends on are not, you know, are not great Jedi Warriors training the next generation. But it’s these two babies in the care of these loving families. And that is the hope for the galaxy.
— Joshua Sikora “The Prequels Strike Back”
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the prequel trilogy makes so much of adoptive families considering Lucas’s background as an adoptive parent, but it’s still kinda nice to see. I really loved how the final scene of ROTS wasn’t anything dramatic as such, just Luke being handed over to parents who were obviously gonna love him. (Beru’s big smile when she sees baby Luke always breaks my heart.) It could’ve ended with Vader and the Emperor looking out over the Death Star, but nope, it ends with the good guys getting a tiny but incredibly significant win.
“Star Wars” has had a lot of different lives that have been worked on by a lot of other people. It works without me.
George Lucas on the EU (from here)
His character is basically a cynical loner who realises the importance of being part of a group and helping for the common good…compromising and sacrificing his own welfare for those of others. I had a list of about thirty five themes that I wanted to explore in the film, and giving up your own personal gratification for the good of others was one of them.
George Lucas on Han Solo (from The Annotated Screenplays)