The latest Homing Beacon has arrived and today George Lucas talks
about Darth Vader and the Star Wars Saga. With the successful
release of Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith,
filmmaker George Lucas says that he hopes this extensive backstory
of Anakin Skywalker's transformation to the iconic figure of Darth
Vader will influence fans' future viewings of the original
trilogy.
"When I finished with Return of the Jedi I thought
that was the end of it," Lucas confesses. "I thought I
was going to go and raise my kids, then I'll come back and direct
little artsy movies that I always wanted to do. So by the time my
kids were old enough where I could go back and direct, I realized
that I could tell the story the way I wanted to. And I thought it
might be interesting to tell a story that changes and influences
the way the first three films are viewed because it really is
about Darth Vader, and not about Luke and Leia. And that would be
more apparent when you see what the backstory really was."
However, in telling the backstory the way he felt was best,
Lucas had to take what he regards as risks with the prequels.
"The first trilogy -- Book One -- is about the father,
while the second trilogy -- Book Two -- is about the
children," Lucas says. "When you combine them together
they become one big piece. When I told people that Episode I was
about a ten-year-old boy, people panicked, and they said it wasn't
going to work because everyone wanted to see Darth Vader going
around and killing people. But I really wanted to be thorough
about telling the story about where Darth Vader came from. When I
did the second film, people were mortified that it was going to be
a love story. But we got through both of those films, and people
were excited for Episode III to see the rest of the story."
One of the larger issues that surfaced in the telling of
Anakin's fall to the dark side and his rise to becoming a corrupt
figure was that of the fall of democracy at the hands of the very
people who initially fought oppression.
"You have the personal issue of Anakin and his turn to the
dark side, but then the children later bring him back to being a
human being," Lucas says. "But the larger issue is that
you've given up your democracy, and that the bad guys never took
it -- it was handed to them. That theme was there 30 years
ago which came out of the Vietnam War and Nixon wanting to change
the rules so he could get a third term."
"I'm a big history buff and I was really into Caesar at
the time," Lucas recalls. "I always wanted to know why
the Roman Senate gave Caesar's nephew a dictatorship after they
had gotten rid of Caesar. Why after the revolution in France did
they create an Emperor? Why did the Germans after they had a
Democracy after World War I, turn it into a dictatorship? Those
were my initial questions 30 years ago."
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