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Star Wars: The Force Awakens: Why Disney scrapped George Lucas' episode 7 ideas

'The issue was, they looked at the stories, and they said we want to make something for the fans'

Jack Shepherd
Sunday 22 November 2015 11:45 EST
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George Lucas
George Lucas (Getty)

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George Lucas recently told Vanity Fair of how he did not want to be involved with making another Star Wars film as it was “not much fun” when you "go to make a movie and all you do is get criticised.”

It turns out, the director did have a couple of ideas of where Star Wars episode VII should go, they just didn’t sit well with the new rights owners at Disney.

“The issue was, they looked at the stories, and they said we want to make something for the fans,” he told CBS. “All I wanted to do was tell the story of what happened.

“They decided they didn’t want to use those stories, they decided they were going to do their own thing, so I decided fine.

“They weren't that keen to have me involved anyway. If I get in there I’m just going to cause trouble because they’re not going to do what I want them to do, and I don’t have the control to do that anymore. All that would do is muck everything up.”

The 71-year-old went on to describe the long-running franchise as a family based soap-opera that revolves around family problems (i.e. Luke vs Anakin Skywalker) rather than focussing on spaceships.

He then compared moving on from the saga to breaking off a relationship with another person: “It all comes down to a simple rule of life. When you break up with somebody, the first rule is no phone calls.

“The second rule, you don’t go over to their house and drive by to see what they’re doing, The third one is you don’t show up at their coffee shop and say, ‘You are going to burn it…’ You just say ‘Nope, gone, history, I’m moving forward.’”

Are we glad Lucas didn’t get to direct the film? We’ll have to see what JJ Abrams does with The Force Awakens. Hopefully he won’t have any floppy eared characters from an underwater city.

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