I’m pretty sure that on paper, my relationship with George Lucas looks a lot like an abusive romantic relationship. Back in the day, George and I had it going on. A New Hope, Empire and Jedi were three home runs that are easily the three movies that captured my imagination more than anything and transformed me into a fan of science fiction, specifically, but the magic of movies, entirely. It’s a typical story. Entire generations of movie goers feel the same way about them as I do. It’s the reason that Star Wars is such an institution. But somewhere in the 90′s, our relationship started to go south. George became a different man. A lot of the movies he had produced were proving to be critical failures and he became angry and unpredictable. I drifted away and to win me back he brought back the three movies that made me fall in love with him in the first place but the cracks in his sanity were showing. The original trilogy had been, I don’t know, spoiled. George added all these special effects that had no business being there. It was nice to fall back on familiar territory, though. He did something weird, though. He made it so that I could only see these new versions of the movies. I couldn’t buy the originals. It seemed strange to me but I didn’t mind the special editions.
Then he announces that he was making a new trilogy of Star Wars movies, a series that explored the origins of everything and told the story of Anakin Skywalker before all that Darth Vader stuff. Oh, happy day! I’d have my George Lucas back! Unfortunately, he’d clearly gone to the dark side because Episode 1, which I’d been so excited for, was like a slap in the face. Many slaps, actually. I left the theater with a false sense of satisfaction. While everyone called him an asshole, I steadfastly defended Episode 1 because I loved him but it didn’t take long for my actual disappointment to turn into anger and I cast him out. A couple of years later, George came back with a new and exciting trailer. It had Yoda fighting and Boba Fett. He promised not to hit me any more and I let him back in but as soon as I saw Episode 2, the hitting and slapping started up again. I threw him out and told him I never wanted to see him again but it wasn’t long before he was back with another trailer for the last movie. I was skeptical this time. George was hateful and violent but I’d invested so much time and money in our relationship that it was too late for me to stop. I had to see Star Wars to the end but this time I would keep my distance from George and keep my arms folded and eyebrow arched. The final installment didn’t fool me, though and it ended on a disappointing note that I was able to predict. George was surprised that I didn’t take him back immediately. I was done with him. Or so I thought. Soon after the close of the film series, Lucasfilm announced that a weekly TV series was planned and that it would fall between the two sets of films, chronicling the rise of the rebellion.
I was excited and ready to take George back again. The fool that I am. I am a sucker for George Lucas and always will be.
Unsurprisingly, production of the show is now on hold. It was still in early phases of preproduction but according to Digital Spy, Lucas admitted at a recent screening of The Empire Strikes back that they weren’t sure how to proceed.
“The live action TV show is kind of on hold because we have scripts, but we don’t know how to do them. They literally are Star Wars, only we’re going to have to try to do them [at] a tenth the cost,” he confirmed. “And it’s a huge challenge, [a] lot bigger than what we thought it was gonna be.”
George may be a schmuck and his actions sometimes make me think he has Asperger’s but if you can count on one thing, the man doesn’t skimp on his vision, even when it sucks. Color me skeptical, though. How involved are these shows? Special effects on TV have been catching up to the big screen in a big way. CGI for shows like Firefly and Battlestar Galactica were astonishing and expansive. However, in typical abused spouse form, I’m going to defend Lucas in this instance because I’ll tell you what, whenever Industrial Light and Magic hit an effects roadblock, they always found an innovative way to make the magic happen and somehow change the entire industry in the process. So while the production is on hold, it’s a safe bet that Lucas and his people are busily working on finding a way to make Star Wars grade special effects happen on a TV budget scale.
Be patient.











