UPDATE 12/31/15:
After George Lucas' comments on Disney's handling of the Star Wars franchise went viral with the quickness, Disney themselves issued a statement from Lucas to Variety in which he, you guessed it, backs away from that whole "white slavers" thing. Peep an excerpt of that backpedaling below:
I have been working with Disney for 40 years and chose them as the custodians of Star Wars because of my great respect for the company and Bob Iger’s leadership. Disney is doing an incredible job of taking care of and expanding the franchise. I rarely go out with statements to clarify my feelings but I feel it is important to make it clear that I am thrilled that Disney has the franchise and is moving it in such exciting directions in film, television and the parks.
See original story below.
George Lucas has been dropping somewhat vague comments about Star Wars: The Force Awakens for months now, but in a new, 50-plus minutes interview with Charlie Rose, the creator of the Star Wars universe really got into his feelings about J.J. Abrams' sequel and what he has called a "break up" with the greatest pop culture franchise of all time.
Lucas, as we now know, had his own story ideas for the Star Wars sequels, but Disney basically said thanks but no thanks to those.
"They looked at the stories, and they said, 'We want to make something for the fans'... They decided they didn't want to use those stories, they decided they were going to do their own thing," Lucas told Rose. "They weren't that keen to have me involved anyway — but if I get in there, I'm just going to cause trouble, because they're not going to do what I want them to do. And I don't have the control to do that anymore, and all I would do is muck everything up," he said. "And so I said, 'Okay, I will go my way, and I'll let them go their way.' "
"They wanted to do a retro movie. I don't like that. Every movie I work very hard to make them completely different, with different planets, with different spaceships, make it new," he added.
Lucas goes on to say that the only way to definitely make money is make something that's proven instead of taking chances, which is what Disney definitely did not do with the new film. If there's one thing that nearly every critic has said, it's that The Force Awakens is practically a remake/reboot of Lucas' original film.
He also makes a weird comparison between selling the franchise to Disney for $4 billion to selling his kids to "white slavers."
If you're a fan of Star Wars, the whole interview is definitely worth a watch. Lucas, for his part, still doesn't seem to be over the Disney sale. Not even close.
