When George Lucas finally sits down to watch "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," he'll experience it just like the rest of the world...with fresh eyes and completely oblivious as to what will happen next.
That's due to the fact that when the franchise's creator, and founder of Lucasfilm, sold his galaxy far, far away to Disney in 2012, he relinquished all creative control on "The Force Awakens" and all future "Star Wars" films.
But according to Lucas, it almost didn't turn out that way. In an interview with USA Today (via the Verge), Lucas disclosed that he had already begun development on "Episodes VII-IX" with Lucasfilm before he sold the studio to Disney. His original plan, according to the article, was to create "Episode VII," and then sell "Star Wars" off to the highest bidder.
But as fate would have it, Disney stepped in at the right moment, Lucas said, prompting him to ditch the plan and make a clean break from the franchise. Besides, Lucas said in the interview, he was already hesitant to embark on the 10-year commitment that a new "Star Wars" trilogy would have required.
"The time is more important to me than the money," he told the newspaper.
My personal thoughts on this are, and I'm going to use a quote from the original film here, "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."
And I think I speak for most fans when I say that would have been the overwhelming reaction if Lucas did indeed helm a new "Star Wars" feature. His uneven and ham-fisted prequel trilogy left a very bad taste in most people's mouths. Continuing on in Lucas' vein would have been bad...very bad. It's a damn good thing that Lucas moved on when he did because he had completely lost touch with his audience, and more tellingly, his audience had lost touch with him.
Lucas' next film, an animated feature about Shakespearian fairies titled "Strange Magic," opens Jan. 23. "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" will roll into theaters Dec. 18.
