Confessions of a Madman

(Excerps from Entertainment Weekly's recent interview with George Lucas)

1) Fans are not going to win a debate with Lucas about his creative choices for the prequels, which, tone and technology aside, are grounded in the aesthetic of his original trilogy- a blend of "1940's-style storytelling and acting, which verges on the operatic- and something that's contemporary and has weight to it." More than anything he believes the clash of these modes is why Menace and Clones "got killed" by critics. He blames everyone but himself. "I don't mind [the style]. If anyone wants to go back into film history they can go, 'Oh, I see.'...But that's the style , and unfortunately, I've been trapped in it for 30 years."

2) (referring to Episode I) "I didn't care. I said, "This is the story. I know I'm going to need to use Hamburger Helper to get it to two hours, but that's what I want to do.'"

3) Having more time with the script might have helped: On each film, Lucas didn't complete the screenplay until the start of production due to his disdain for wordsmithing. Lucas says his creative strategy for the prequels was to find the film in postproduction. Principal photography was just another draft of the script; the real polish would occur through a back-and-forth process of editing and reshooting. With Sith, Lucas pushed this approach to the edge: "I kept [the script] looser. There were things I hadn't worked out, which was a dangerous thing to do."

4) Sith's most pivotal moment occured last summer, when the FX artists at Industrial Light & Magic told Lucas they didn't think it was clear why Anakin went bad.

5) ...he volunteers that his prequel storyline- derived from material he'd brainstormed over 30 years ago to inform his writing of Star Wars- was "thin...It was not written as a movie. It's basically a character study and exhibition piece about politics- two things that are not dramatic. [Not like] the dramatic story that was constructed for Star Wars. But I wanted to be faithful to it, so I didn't construct other stories. It is what it is."

6) By Lucas' own calculation, 60 percent of the prequel plot he dreamed up decades earlier takes place in Sith. The remaining 40 percent he split evenly between Menace and Clones, meaning each film contained a lot of...filler. Or in Lucas parlance, "jazz riffs...things that I enjoy...just doodle around a lot"- mostly in the form of blending live action and animation to create exotic worlds and emotionally resonant characters. You know, like Jar Jar. "That's the whole point to me. Making it the way I want it to be. That's what it comes down to," he says. "Somebody's got to be happy out of all this. It might as well be me."

Blogger's Note: Well that explains a lot, doesn't it? The prequels turned out so poorly due to George Lucas basically not giving a shit. That'll do it everytime.