George Lucas (left) and Bob Iger at the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge Media Preview at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California.
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George Lucas hasn’t exactly hidden his feelings about Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the first in the franchise’s sequel trilogy. In 2015, when the movie released, he very carefully said, “I think the fans are going to love it.” That was the same year he’d said Disney’s handling of his films, which he referred to as “kids,” made him feel like he’d “sold them to the white slavers.”
Now, four years later, Disney CEO Bob Iger is reliving Lucas’ disappointment all over again. Lucas “didn’t hide his disappointment” over The Force Awakens, Iger said in his autobiographical memoir Iger’s The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company, released Monday.
Lucas felt there was “nothing new” about the J.J. Abrams directed sequel.
“In each of the films in the original trilogy, it was important to [Lucas] 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,'” Iger said.
But now we also know how Iger feels about Lucas’ take.
“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.
“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.”
Disney bought Lucasfilm in 2012 for $4.05 billion. In 2015, The Force Awakens arrived and mostly fared well with critics and fans. However, some found it derivative of the original trilogy.
The next big Star Wars release will be The Mandalorian series, arriving on Disney Plus Nov. 12. Then we get The Rise of Skywalker, the final movie in the sequel trilogy, arriving Dec. 20.
Will Lucas be a fan?
At least he liked The Last Jedi.