Lucas not only toiled for years to create the plot-hole pocked, ill-conceived, and ridiculously tedious prequels, he also relentlessly re-edited the films in the beloved original trilogy (Episodes IV through VI) until they too became unwatchable. Yet to his shock and dismay, the public's loyalty was unshakable.
"They continued to watch. I couldn't believe it. But it's too hard to keep tinkering with perfection -- to transform the diamond back into coal," he lamented. Lucas needed to find a director so contrived, so loose, and so self-indulgent that the films would be "horrific from day one, not after decades of expensive reworking."
Disney, which now owns the rights to "Star Wars," agreed with Lucas. On Thursday, executives with the studio announced the hiring of director J.J. Abrams to helm Episode VII in much the same manner as Captain Edward Smith helmed his equally famous vehicle.
Sources inside Disney confirmed that initial conversations for the project had involved Ben Affleck.
"At George's insistence, we were seeking somebody incapable of carrying a good idea through to fruition without destroying it," one member of the production team said on condition of anonymity. "Ben seemed the perfect choice. Of course, that was before he released 'Argo.' It was during the Golden Globes ceremony that George, frantic and lost, stammered: 'What about the hack who did Cloverfield and Star Trek and those awful TV shows about the girl spy and Gilligan's Island in Purgatory?' It was a truly inspired idea. So we called Abrams that night."
Lucas expressed relief that an unoriginal, formulaic director of low caliber would be taking stewardship of his pet project -- destroying one of the most iconic and lucrative properties in film history.
Desperate to see "Star Wars" fail, Lucas returned to the series in the late 1990s and penned three prequels based on early treatments.
"I was hobbled by 'Star Wars,' imprisoned within it," Lucas grieved. "I couldn't make another picture with 'Star Wars' standing in the way. So I thought three godawful prequels could slay the beast."
"But they weren't bad enough on their own, even with Jar Jar," he added.
Lucas fired the directors, script doctors, and other production geniuses who had helped fashion his first three "Star Wars" outings into box-office bonanzas, opting instead to take control of everything himself.
"Even then, people kept dumping money into the franchise," Lucas confided. "On my own, I'm terrible. You know why Darth Vader originally wore the mask and cape? It was supposed to be a spacesuit. In the initial scripts, he was a normal guy who could fly through space using his special cape and helmet. Stupid, right? But the experts around me fixed all that. So I figured that left to my own devices, Episodes I through III would be covered in that same sickly patina of juvenile dross. Absolute disasters. But no."
Lucas then squandered years and a veritable fortune corrupting the original versions of the films by adding unnecessary scenes, creating glaring and offensive inconsistencies in the story, and inserting the most cringe-worthy moments from the prequels into the established canon, such as Vader screaming "Nooooooo!" at the conclusion of Episode III.
"All that effort, and failure remained an elusive and intangible specter," Lucas said. "I burned the negatives of the original movies just to ensure that adoring fans would never again see the films they grew up with. But it didn't matter. And it was too expensive, too labor intensive. I needed a scatalogical King Midas -- a man who could turn gold into turds: J.J. Abrams."
Although the screenplay had already been penned by "Little Miss Sunshine" writer Michael Arndt, Disney encouraged Abrams to take "huge liberties" with the script.
Abrams claims to have introduced a contextually confusing and largely out-of-place apocalypse device, a shadowy cabal of Bilderberg-esque puppet masters operating beyond the grasp of the New Republic, a terrifying space serpent made of ionized gas that inexplicably disappears from the movie in the third act, and a series of pivotal events that alter the course of time, thereby revising the entire history of the preceding episodes.
"Think of Episode VII as a flash forward from 'Attack of the Clones,' and then back to 'A New Hope' after everything that happened in 'Revenge of the Sith' is wiped out," Abrams beamed.
As a result, Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader become two separate and independent characters. Darth Vader utters but a single line of dialog in all his scenes throughout Episode VII: yelling "Nooooooo!" in response to anything said by the other actors on screen.
(c) 2013. See disclaimers.
Sources inside Disney confirmed that initial conversations for the project had involved Ben Affleck.
"At George's insistence, we were seeking somebody incapable of carrying a good idea through to fruition without destroying it," one member of the production team said on condition of anonymity. "Ben seemed the perfect choice. Of course, that was before he released 'Argo.' It was during the Golden Globes ceremony that George, frantic and lost, stammered: 'What about the hack who did Cloverfield and Star Trek and those awful TV shows about the girl spy and Gilligan's Island in Purgatory?' It was a truly inspired idea. So we called Abrams that night."
Lucas expressed relief that an unoriginal, formulaic director of low caliber would be taking stewardship of his pet project -- destroying one of the most iconic and lucrative properties in film history.
Desperate to see "Star Wars" fail, Lucas returned to the series in the late 1990s and penned three prequels based on early treatments.
"I was hobbled by 'Star Wars,' imprisoned within it," Lucas grieved. "I couldn't make another picture with 'Star Wars' standing in the way. So I thought three godawful prequels could slay the beast."
"But they weren't bad enough on their own, even with Jar Jar," he added.
Lucas fired the directors, script doctors, and other production geniuses who had helped fashion his first three "Star Wars" outings into box-office bonanzas, opting instead to take control of everything himself.
"Even then, people kept dumping money into the franchise," Lucas confided. "On my own, I'm terrible. You know why Darth Vader originally wore the mask and cape? It was supposed to be a spacesuit. In the initial scripts, he was a normal guy who could fly through space using his special cape and helmet. Stupid, right? But the experts around me fixed all that. So I figured that left to my own devices, Episodes I through III would be covered in that same sickly patina of juvenile dross. Absolute disasters. But no."
Lucas then squandered years and a veritable fortune corrupting the original versions of the films by adding unnecessary scenes, creating glaring and offensive inconsistencies in the story, and inserting the most cringe-worthy moments from the prequels into the established canon, such as Vader screaming "Nooooooo!" at the conclusion of Episode III.
"All that effort, and failure remained an elusive and intangible specter," Lucas said. "I burned the negatives of the original movies just to ensure that adoring fans would never again see the films they grew up with. But it didn't matter. And it was too expensive, too labor intensive. I needed a scatalogical King Midas -- a man who could turn gold into turds: J.J. Abrams."
Although the screenplay had already been penned by "Little Miss Sunshine" writer Michael Arndt, Disney encouraged Abrams to take "huge liberties" with the script.
Abrams claims to have introduced a contextually confusing and largely out-of-place apocalypse device, a shadowy cabal of Bilderberg-esque puppet masters operating beyond the grasp of the New Republic, a terrifying space serpent made of ionized gas that inexplicably disappears from the movie in the third act, and a series of pivotal events that alter the course of time, thereby revising the entire history of the preceding episodes.
"Think of Episode VII as a flash forward from 'Attack of the Clones,' and then back to 'A New Hope' after everything that happened in 'Revenge of the Sith' is wiped out," Abrams beamed.
As a result, Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader become two separate and independent characters. Darth Vader utters but a single line of dialog in all his scenes throughout Episode VII: yelling "Nooooooo!" in response to anything said by the other actors on screen.
(c) 2013. See disclaimers.
 -- In 1977 George Lucas changed the face of cinema, the lives of an entire gen...){kind=link}