George Lucas Not Happy With Direction of Star Wars

Star Wars creator George Lucas doesn’t seem too fond of the approach to the latest title in the film series, Star Wars: The Force Awakens. In an interview with Charlie Rose, via IndieWire, he discussed the franchise’s legacy and also shared his thoughts about the new film.

Lucas sold his franchise to The Walt Disney Company for $4 billion in 2012. In the interview, he discussed filmmaking and his career, his Star Wars films (referring to them as his “kids”), the Star Wars sale, the current box office blockbuster and his diverging vision from Disney for the franchise.

“They looked at the stories, and they said, ‘We want to make something for the fans,’” Lucas said of Disney. “They decided they didn’t want to use those stories, they decided they were going to do their own thing.”

Lucas also said Disney wasn’t interested in his ideas for sequels. “They weren’t that keen to have me involved anyway, but if I get in there, I’m just going to cause trouble, because they’re not going to do what I want them to do. And I don’t have the control to do that anymore, and all I would do is muck everything up,” he said. “And so I said, ‘OK, I will go my way and let them go their way.’”

As for how Star Wars: The Force Awakens turned out, he would have approached it differently, as he contended he did when the franchise was in his hands. “They wanted to do a retro movie. I don’t like that. Every movie, I worked very hard to make them different,” Lucas said. “I made them completely different – different planets, different spaceships to make it new.”