“Steven [Spielberg] saw the rough cut,” Lucas says, sitting at home at a table in his kitchen. “I felt I needed to show it to Steven to figure out what the reality was, because we’d earlier had a rough-cut screening for ILM to test the film, and some of the people had strong opinions about things that were contrary to the way I was going. Some people were having a hard time with the reason that Anakin goes bad. Somebody asked whether somebody could kill Anakin’s best friend, so that he really gets angry. They wanted a real betrayal, such as, ‘You tried to kill me so now I’m going to try and kill you.’ They didn’t understand the fact that Anakin is simply greedy. There is no revenge. The revenge of the Sith is Palpatine. It doesn’t have much to do with Darth Vader; he’s a pawn in the whole scheme.
So I had to ask myself, What was I trying to say and didn’t I say it? Did it just get missed or is it not there? I had to look at it very hard. I had to ask myself, Is this how the audience is going to react? Fortunately, Steven confirmed that most of everything was working. So, I may lose a certain demographic—maybe, maybe not. But I had to make a decision, and I decided that I’m not going to alter the film to make it more commercial or marketable. I have to be true to my vision, which is thirty years old, but I have to be true to it.”
I respect this about Lucas: he made the films he wanted to make, with the story he wanted to tell. It was his vision that Anakin fell through greed, and he saw it through to the end. He made that decision knowing that it would be unsatisfying to a certain demographic, and that they might reject it. It makes RotS all the better for it, the prequels better for it.
He actually had something to say, and stuck to it, even if it wasn’t what would have been expected or sensational or what a studio like Disney would have pressured him to do. That certain demographic rejected the message both then and now, but their dissatisfaction and discomfort with the told story doesn’t make their alternate readings and headcanons accurate—it was always about Anakin’s greed.
“It is the dark that seeds cruelty into justice, that drips contempt into compassion, that poisons love with grains of doubt… Eventually, even stars burn out.” ~ “Star Wars, Episode III. Revenge of the Sith.” Revenge of the Sith, by Matthew Stover and George Lucas, Del Rey Books, 2005, p. 147.
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This was actually from a while ago, but this time in a GIF format!
People in their late teens or early 20s, those people who were kids who we made those films for, they loved them. To them, they’re their Star Wars films, you know? For us, it was the original films of the 70s, but for them, it was our films were their Star Wars. So to step back into his shoes again now and do a series, a whole series about Obi-Wan Kenobi for those fans, it just makes me really happy.
Ewan McGregor doing promotion for Obi-Wan Kenobi and Validating™ my teenage self
Man, it’s hard to keep up with new TV shows once you’re an adult, even if they’re set within a world you already love. I admit that A LOT OF TIMES during this show I had to stop and go, “Wait, had they already met?” or “Do we know that guy already?” I’m a bad Star Wars fan, I know. But I did like this show! In fact, I think I liked it more than most people did? Yeah it had some silly parts but it’s Star Wars, the silliness has been built-in since the beginning. And I really liked getting to see some characters, locations and events I assumed would never show up in live-action again!
But yes, like everyone else I was also confused when the show suddenly turned into The Mandalorian season three. I really wish they hadn’t done that, both for the sake of Boba and his supporting cast and for the Mandalorian’s cast, for a start there are plenty of scenes in this show where we absolutely should have seen Din’s face and we couldn’t because Pedro Pascal was off filming other things. A very odd choice that, and one I suspect motivated mostly by Disney’s desire to shift Grogu toys, posters and stickers until no surface in the world is un-Grogu’d.
Obi-Wan Kenobi, a limited Original series, starts streaming May 25 on Disney+
#I CANNOT BELIEVE THE DAY IS FINALLY HERE #AN ANNOUNCEMENT DATE AND A POSTER #AND IT’S GORGEOUS OH MY GOD??? #THE TWIN SUNSETS AND OUR SAD DESERT HERMIT #I’M NOT GONNA SURVIVE!!!
I can’t believe I Feel So Much about a teeny tiny blurry figure walking in some sand
George Lucas on Anakin’s deal with Palpatine: “Anakin got sold a bill of goods because he wanted it so bad that he’d believe anything anybody would sell him”
GEORGE LUCAS: Anakin wants to have a family. He wants to be married to Padmé and have children. When he sees in his dreams that Padmé is going to die, he doesn’t know how, but it’s preordained. He’s in love with her. He doesn’t want her to die. He wants to possess her, to control that. He keeps getting himself deeper and deeper into this pickle. He wants a family but at the same time he knows he can’t have one. Now the greed has taken over and the fear of losing his wife and baby. The whole point is you can’t possess somebody because they are their own person. You can’t dominate and make them do everything you want them to do.
PAUL DUNCAN: He had dreams about his mother as well, and he could not save her.
GEORGE LUCAS: Right. He’s walking into a death trap. And there’s no way out.
PAUL DUNCAN: Palpatine has been grooming him by saying how powerful he is.
GEORGE LUCAS: And also saying that ‘My mentor told me that there was a way that could stop death.’ Which was a lie. They can’t. Anakin got sold a bill of goods because he wanted it so bad that he’d believe anything anybody would sell him.
PAUL DUNCAN: Palpatine’s a snake oil salesman.
GEORGE LUCAS: It’s a scam. Anakin’s made a pact with the Devil: “I want the power to save somebody from death. I want to be able to stop them from going to the river Says, and I need to go to a god for that, but the gods won’t do it, so I’m going to go down to Hades and get the dark lord to allow me to have this power that will allow me to save the person I want to hang on to.” Ultimately, it’s about power. He traded his soul for power. It’s Faust. The more power he wants, the more power he gets, the more he loses. The Devil says, “You can become more powerful but you mustt pass this first test. The first test is you must kill your mother. The second test: you have to kill your wife. And the third test: you have to kill your best friend.” In the end you have all this power but you have nobody to share with, expect some wizened old man who’s even more evil than you are. If you’re going to sell your soul to save somebody you love, that’s, as we say in the film, unnatural. You have to accept the natural course of life. Death is obviously the biggest of them all. Not only death for yourself but death for the things you care about.
…is also my probably most unpopular Star Wars opinion.
It isssss: Revenge of the Sith-era Hayden Christensen would have made an absolutely amazing Enjolras.
“Enjolras was a charming young man, who was capable of being terrible. He was angelically handsome. He was a savage Antinous. One would have said, to see the pensive thoughtfulness of his glance, that he had already, in some previous state of existence, traversed the revolutionary apocalypse. He possessed the tradition of it as though he had been a witness. He was acquainted with all the minute details of the great affair. A pontifical and warlike nature, a singular thing in a youth. He was an officiating priest and a man of war; from the immediate point of view, a soldier of the democracy; above the contemporary movement, the priest of the ideal. His eyes were deep, his lids a little red, his lower lip was thick and easily became disdainful, his brow was lofty. A great deal of brow in a face is like a great deal of horizon in a view. Like certain young men at the beginning of this century and the end of the last, who became illustrious at an early age, he was endowed with excessive youth, and was as rosy as a young girl, although subject to hours of pallor. Already a man, he still seemed a child. His two and twenty years appeared to be but seventeen; he was serious, it did not seem as though he were aware there was on earth a thing called woman. He had but one passion—the right; but one thought—to overthrow the obstacle.”
Ok so I was stuck thinking about how Boba probably had to step over hundreds of corpses that looked exactly like his father right after watching him get beheaded and it ruined my day so here you go
