Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson recently described George Lucas’ Star Wars prequel trilogy as children’s movie about fascists.
Johnson responded to a tweet from Scott Malthouse who stated, “Say a genuinely nice thing about the Star Wars prequels.”
Say a genuinely nice thing about the Star Wars prequels
— Scott Malthouse ☕ (@trollishdelver) June 27, 2020
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Johnson responded writing, “Lucas made a gorgeous 7 hour long movie for children about how entitlement and fear of loss turns good people into fascists.”
He added, “And did it while spearheading nearly every technical sea change in modern filmmaking for the past 30 years.”
Lucas made a gorgeous 7 hour long movie for children about how entitlement and fear of loss turns good people into fascists, and did it while spearheading nearly every technical sea change in modern filmmaking of the past 30 years.
— Rian Johnson (@rianjohnson) June 29, 2020
Johnson’s comments about Lucas’ prequel trilogy come after a number of rumors indicate that Lucas did not like Johnson’s The Last Jedi film at all.
A rumor back in May from YouTuber Doomcock indicated that Lucas attended a screening of the film and said, “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
Doomcock then detailed that “Lucas was appalled. Even more appalled than he was with The Force Awakens.”
Related: Rumor: George Lucas and Jon Favreau Hated Star Wars: The Last Jedi
A separate rumor from Bionic Woman producer Kamran Pasha details that Lucas hated The Last Jedi.
Pasha told Geeks + Gamers host Jeremy Griggs, “I don’t have an internally knowledge. I do have people who know George Lucas personally and well, who have said to me that he hates The Last Jedi and he is horrified by what’s happened.”
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“I have had people, screenwriters that have worked with Lucasfilm that have told me directly that he hates it,” Pasha elaborated.
As for Lucas’ official comments on the film, he issued a statement through his spokeswoman Connie Wethington who stated that Lucas described the film as “beautifully made.”
Wethington also added, “And in speaking with director Rian Johnson after viewing was complimentary.”
Lucas had previously described Disney as “white slavers” in an interview with Charlie Rose in December 2015. And former Disney CEO Bob Iger detailed in his memoirs that Lucas reacted to The Force Awakens by saying, “There’s nothing new.”
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Iger explained, “Just prior to the global release, Kathy screened The Force Awakens for George. He didn’t hide his disappointment. ‘There’s nothing new,’ he said.”
“In each of the films in the original trilogy, it was important to him to present new worlds, new stories, new characters, and new technologies. In this one, he said, “There weren’t enough visual or technical leaps forward. He wasn’t wrong, but he also wasn’t appreciating the pressure we were under to give ardent fans a film that felt quintessentially Star Wars,” Iger added.
Iger continued, “We’d intentionally created a world that was visually and tonally connected to the earlier films, to not stray too far from what people loved and expected, and George was criticizing us for the very thing we were trying to do.”
He concluded, “Looking back with the perspective of several years and a few more Star Wars films, I believe J.J. achieved the near-impossible, creating a perfect bridge between what had been and what was to come.”