Star Wars creator George Lucas secured his place as a filmmaking legend in 1977, and he’s got thoughts about the state of movies today and where they’re heading.
He opened up about the film industry during a conversation with Brut at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Now at 80 years old, Lucas has had a lot of time to examine movies both up close and from afar, which is why he had a lot to say when asked about what cinema will become in 10 years.
"Same thing as it is now. What happens now - and it happens in streaming probably more than features, but features, it's the same thing - nobody knows what to do,” he said. “The stories they're telling are just old movies. 'Let's do a sequel, let's do another version of this movie.' And it's not just in movies, but in almost everything, there's almost no original thinking.”
"J'étais à la plage, à faire des châteaux de sables avec Steven Spielberg. Des amis m'ont appelé en disant : regarde les infos […], c'est là que j'ai compris que Star Wars était un vrai succès."
— Brut FR (@brutofficiel) May 24, 2024
Conversation entre @ATrapenard et George Lucas, qui reçoit une Palme d’or d’honneur… pic.twitter.com/uXMN78AktA
Star Wars is maybe the most notable property to receive a constant feed of sequels and spinoffs. There have been a total of five Star Wars movies sent to theaters since the release of Episode VII – The Force Awakens in 2015. That doesn’t count spinoff shows, which include Disney+ outings like The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Andor, and Ahsoka.
“It's like, 'I saw something, let's do something like that,’ ” Lucas added. “It's also a way that movies are sold. If you go in and say, 'I've got something that you've never seen before and you don't understand it,' it's very hard to get a deal."
Lucas has a lot of thoughts about film today and where it’s heading, but he hasn’t been heavily involved in his unstoppable sci-fi franchise in quite some time. He sold his Lucasfilm empire to the Walt Disney Company for just over $4 billion in 2012, and with multiple films, games, shows, and more spinoffs now under its belt, Star Wars has evolved into an entirely different beast.
Reflecting on the sale (via The Hollywood Reporter), Lucas spoke about how the galaxy far, far away has changed under Disney’s watch for better or worse.
“I was the one who really knew what Star Wars was…who actually knew this world, because there’s a lot to it. The force, for example, nobody understood the force,” he said. “When they started other ones after I sold the company, a lot of the ideas that were in [the original] sort of got lost. But that’s the way it is. You give it up, you give it up.”
Star Wars is continuing forward, of course, with projects like The Acolyte, The Mandalorian & Grogu, Skeleton Crew, Dawn of the Jedi, and much, much more. Elsewhere in the Brut interview, Lucas also offered his thoughts about artificial intelligence in filmmaking.
