“Star Wars” creator George Lucas sees his separation from his beloved franchise as a “divorce,” but deemed it a necessary one.
“I call it like a divorce,” Lucas told The Washington Post. “There is no such thing as working over someone’s shoulder. You’re either the dictator or you’re not. And to do that would never work, so I said ‘I’m going to get divorced.’ ... I knew that I couldn’t be involved. All I’d do is make them miserable. I’d make myself miserable. It would probably ruin a vision — J.J. [Abrams] has a vision, and it’s his vision.”
Lucas directed four of the installments, including the original “Star Wars,” as well as “The Phantom Menace,” “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith.” Richard Marquand directed one, Irvin Kershner helmed another, but Lucas was always involved in one way or another — until “The Force Awakens.”
Previously, Lucas told Vanity Fair that “You go to make a movie and all you do is get criticized, and people try to make decisions about what you’re going to do before you do it. You know, it’s not much fun.”
Lucas will now watch the film, starring Daisy Ridley and John Boyega, as a civilian; his name doesn’t even appear on the credits.
“Now I’m faced with this awkward reality, which is fine,” Lucas says, again using nuptials as a metaphor. “I gotta go to the wedding. My ex will be there, my new wife will be there, but I’m going to have to take a very deep breath and be a good person and sit through it and just enjoy the moment, because it is what it is and it’s a conscious decision that I made.”
Yet he looks forward to watching “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
“I never got to see the spaceship come over [in 1977],” he added. “I never got that experience that everyone else got to have. I never got to see ‘Star Wars.’ So this time I’m going to.”
“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” hit theaters on Dec. 18.