Entrevista a George Lucas por Leonard Molten
PART 3 - RETURN OF THE JEDI
HELLO, I'M LEONARD MOLTEN. YOU KNOW IN THE OLD DAYS OF THOSE
SATURDAY MATINEE CLIFF-HANGER SERIALS, THE AUDIENCE HAD TO WAIT AN
ENTIRE WEEK TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO IT'S HERO. GEORGE LUCAS
WENT WELL BEYOND THAT, HE KEPT HIS AUDIENCE WAITING YEARS BETWEEN
STAR WARS, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK AND FINALLY RETURN OF THE JEDI.
THANKS FOR BEING HERE GEORGE.
BY THE TIME YOU GET TO EPISODE THREE DID ANYTHING FROM PUBLIC
FEEDBACK OR YOUR OWN SECOND THOUGHTS CHANGE YOUR VISION OF WHAT
THE THIRD INSTALMENT SHOULD BE OR IS IT THE WAY YOU THOUGHT IT WOULD
COME OUT?
No, It's pretty much the way it was always thought to come out. I mean, I had to make
certain changes to things because in the original screenplay the Ewoks were Wookies and
Chewbacca really wasn't the co-pilot so, um so when I did the first film I loved the Wookie so
much, I said "I gotta get a Wookie in here, because those may never get done." So I took
the Wookie out of the battles and made him the co-pilot. Because originally they were a
primitive race of people who couldn't fly or couldn't do anything, and that was the whole
point, and so I had to figure out how I was going to do Wookies, and basically cut them in
half and called them Ewoks. It was, A lot of that stuff is all there, but in the original it was an
ground battle and air battle altogether.
HOW DID YOU EVER THINK OF JABBA THE HUT?
Well Jabba, it's one of those things, I needed a gangster, I mean I had to, he was I the first
film and in the special edition we're putting back a lot of material with Jabba in the first film.
So he was in that you know, he's just this big gangster, and it wasn't until later, because we
couldn't do that sequence because we didn't have the time but when we got to the third one
Jabba appeared and then we had to do the whole thing of designing the big repulsive
character. We had a lot of designers coming up with various versions of Jabba the Hut.
WAS IT A CONSCIOUS DECISION TO MOVE A GOOD CHUCK OF THE ACTION FOR
PART THREE INTO AN EARTHLY OUTDOOR TERRAIN? IT'S SO DIFFERENT FROM
ANYTHING YOU SEE IN THE FIRST TWO FILMS.
Well, it was, I'm very conscious of the environments and I try to have at least three
environments in a movie, and I try to have them as different as possible and then from
movie to movie I try to have them as different as possible. Um, you know on the first movie
it was a kind of sand thing, it was all kind of a brown colour and so in the second one I put it
in the snow and it was all kind of white and then I did the green, you know swampy kind of
thing and in the third on you know what can you do in terms of environment. You have to
shoot it somewhere on this earth, unfortunately we can't go somewhere else so a forest was
really about the only thing I had left and originally even with the Wookies. The wookies lived
in a forest, they lived in the same kind of tree houses an they did that and they were sort of
earth people, but the whole motif, like Luke's planet, everybody is brown, there's lots of
browns and earth tones, everything is earth tones, light tan, light brown, flesh colour. It's all
very warm, warm tones and then we go to the Death Star and it's all black and white,
everything is black and white all the time, it's all very harsh and contrasty and black and
white and I use that a lot and in this last one it was all the same way. With the Wookies it
was all sort of green and brown. I added that in, it was sort of a motif that went from a green
brown to a tan brown and so that still exists in the actual film. There's a whole colour and
environment motif that goes through, the good guys are all earth colours an the bad guys are
all colourless.
YOUR MANY MANY FANS, AND THE MANY AVID FANS AS YOU KNOW OF THE STARS
TRILOGY ARE WONDERING ABOUT THE NEXT THREE FILMS AND WHY'S IT TAKING
SO LONG. WHY DOES IT TAKE SO LONG AND HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
Well, I'm working on the next three films and it's, I am in the process of writing the three
screenplays now and it takes a white to write the screenplays, to write the first Star Wars took
me about two years and I'm writing three scripts at once. It won't take that long but it takes
along time to prep them, and hopefully we'll have one finished for '98 if not it'll be '99, but
the, we're doing all these three at once and the first three are based on the back story that
relates to where everybody came from and how they got there, what their relationships are.
HAS THIS BACK STORY BEEN IN YOUR HEAD ALL ALONG FROM THE BEGINNING?
Yer, I had to do the back story in order to write the first three, I had to know where Darth
Vader came from, what his relationship to Luke was, I had to know how Ben Kenobi figured
in all this. I had to realise, to understand that they were twins. The whole arc of the story in
the three that are out there now is really the redemption of Anakin Skywalker. And the first
three, which I'm writing now are about Anakin Skywalker. So now you have a redemption of
someone you don't really even know. He's just in a black suit but you don't know how he fell
from grace and the trauma he went through to get him there, his son brings him back, you
know but in the real story it hasn't really been told yet.
WHAT WOULD PERSUADE YOU TO GO BACK ON TO A SOUND STATION AND DIRECT
A FILM YOURSELF?
Well, I'd like to direct again, I'm still very interested in directing and there is a possibility I
may direct one of the next Star Wars. If I do direct again it'll be the first one so I can set the
stage, how everything works for the other directors to follow.
BUT AS WE APPROACH THE MILLENNIUM WE CAN LOOK FORWARD TO THE
PREQUEL TRILOGY?
Definitely.
