George Lucas Defends His Star Wars Prequels: “Most People Didn’t Understand the Style”

The Star Wars prequels ("Phantom Menace," "Attack of the Clones," and "Revenge of the Sith") don't exactly have the greatest reputation with movie fans, there is, of course, a subculture that absolutely adores them, including none other than James Cameron, but their reputation for being the weakest SW films is well known.

Of course, George Lucas does not agree with the critics who have bashed these prequels. The writer-director says in the new book “The Star Wars Archives 1999-2005” that such complaints miss the entire style of the space franchise. (via NME)

“It is presented very honestly, it isn’t tongue-in-cheek at all, and it’s played to the hilt,” Lucas said of the “Attack of the Clones” dialogue. “But it is consistent, not only with the rest of the movie, but with the overall ‘Star Wars’ style. Most people don’t understand the style of ‘Star Wars.’ They don’t get that there’s an underlying motif that is very much like a 1930s Western or Saturday matinee serial.”

“It’s in the more romantic period of making movies and adventure films. And this film is even more of a melodrama than the others,” Lucas continued. “There’s a bit more soap opera in this one than there has been in the past, so setting the scenes up and staging them was more complex than it usually is.”

Watching “The Phantom Menace” in a theater for the first time, back in the summer of 1999, was one of the most painful cinematic experiences I’ve ever had to endure. Just painful. No, I was never a “Star Wars” superfan, but I got caught up in the hype, I mean who didn’t? We all desperately wanted to love it, but the end result was, quite frankly, although visually stunning, narratively boring. George Lucas tried to expand and build up a new world of characters, but we ended up getting Jar Jar Binks. and Jake Lloyd as young Anakin Skywalker, both badly written characters.

There had been suspicions for many years that George Lucas may not have been the filmmaking genius that he was. Yes, he started off his career with “THX-1138,” “American Graffiti,” and 1977’s landmark “Star Wars” but the creative juice he may have shown in those films was all but destroyed with the three prequels he wrote and directed in 1999, 2002 and 2005. Hell, even Francis Ford Coppola recently came out and said he felt bad about his friend George’s wasted cinematic potential as a filmmaker.

Lucas’ conception of story is second-to-none, but, as we’ve seen it with his work in Star Wars and Indiana Jones, his directing and writing has always been better handled by the likes of Lawrence Kasdan, Steven Spielberg, and especially Irvin Kershner in “The Empire Strikes Back,” still the best SW film ever made. I thought 1983’s Richard Marquand-directed “The Return of the Jedi” was entertaining and most likely what was used as the blueprint by Lucas to develop “Revenge of the Sith.” The problem with Lucas, however, is simple; whenever he inserts himself into writing and hands-on work on the production of a film, although highly commendable, his mad ambitions tend to get the best of him and completely get out of control.