(UTV | COLOMBO) – Marcia Lucas won an Oscar for her editing work on the original “Star Wars” back in 1977 and went on to edit both sequels of the original trilogy.
Since then though she hasn’t been involved in the franchise. This week, an excerpt from an interview with her from J.W. Rinzler’s novel “Howard Kazanjian: A Producer’s Life” has popped up over at Indiewire and she makes it clear she’s no fan of the Disney-era of the franchise.
The interview, conducted before the release of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” back in late 2019, calls out some of the decisions by producer Kathleen Kennedy and director J.J. Abrams. She also discusses how upset she was in regards to how the old characters have been handled in the new films:
“I like Kathleen. I always liked her. She was full of beans. She was really smart and really bright. Really wonderful woman. And I liked her husband, Frank. I liked them a lot.
Now that she’s running Lucasfilm and making movies, it seems to me that Kathy Kennedy and J.J. Abrams don’t have a clue about ‘Star Wars’. They don’t get it.
And J.J. Abrams is writing these stories – when I saw that movie where they kill Han Solo, I was furious. I was furious when they killed Han Solo. Absolutely, positively there was no rhyme or reason to it. I thought, ‘You don’t get the Jedi story. You don’t get the magic of ‘Star Wars’. You’re getting rid of Han Solo?’”
They have Luke disintegrate. They killed Han Solo. They killed Luke Skywalker. And they don’t have Princess Leia anymore. And they’re spitting out movies every year.
And they think it’s important to appeal to a woman’s audience, so now their main character is this female, who’s supposed to have Jedi powers, but we don’t know how she got Jedi powers, or who she is. It sucks. The storylines are terrible. Just terrible. Awful. You can quote me…J.J. Abrams, Kathy Kennedy – talk to me.’”
After the box-office failure of “Solo” and the critical drubbing of “Rise of Skywalker,” Disney essentially abandoned its yearly “Star Wars” film plans with the next one not due until “Rogue Squadron” in 2023. The franchise remains ubiquitous though thanks to multiple series for the Disney+ service.