Tom Shillue

This interview with George Lucas, specifically this response, is a wonderfully succinct answer to “Why were the last three Star Wars films so terrible?”

Q: But the second trilogy certainly had a built-in audience.

GL: Yeah, everyone says the second trilogy was a slam dunk. But there was a lot of controversy around here about the fact that I wasn’t doing the obvious — I wasn’t doing the commercial version of what people expected. People expected Episode III, which is where Anakin turns into Darth Vader, to be Episode I. And then they expected Episodes II and III to be Darth Vader going around cutting people’s heads off and terrorizing the universe. But how did he get to be Darth Vader? You have to explore him in relationships, and you have to see where he started. He was a sweet kid, helpful, just like most people imagine themselves to be. Most people said, “This guy must have been a horrible little brat — a demon child.” But the point is, he wasn’t born that way — he became that way and thought he was doing the right thing. He eventually realizes he’s going down the dark path, but he thinks it’s justifiable. The idea is to see how a democracy becomes a dictatorship, and how a good person goes bad — and still, in the end, thinks he’s doing the right thing.

OK, so he admits that he realized we all wanted to see Darth Vader cutting peoples heads off, and he does just the opposite, forcing everyone to “explore relationships.” You know who likes to explore relationships? My wife. And she walked out of Star Wars, when she was in junior high school! I love that Lucas reported that most people said “This guy must have been a horrible little brat — a demon child.” Really? What people, all the parents at your local PTA meeting?

The whole interview at Wired.