George Lucas

by Brian Jay Jones

  As Muren and his team at ILM began assembling digital effects, Lucas was working with editors Paul Martin Smith—another alumnus of Young Indiana Jones—and Ben Burtt on a first cut of the film, laying in the animatics until the corresponding digital effects were complete. Editing was still Lucas’s favorite part of the filmmaking process, and now he had complete control over nearly every aspect of the film, from the placement of actors and props to the color of draperies or a cloak. “Because of the technology we used to edit the film, we were able to manipulate everything in the frame,” said Burtt. “We could immediately interpret what George wanted to see.” And as he had done while making Young Indiana Jones, Lucas could immediately note where there might be any holes in the story he could fill, or whether additional pickup footage was required for clarity. Several times, in fact, he would return to Leavesden—where his sets were still in place—to film needed scenes, including a brief sequence in which Anakin says good-bye to Padmé’s handmaiden, who had disappeared without explanation in the first cut. Over the next eighteen months, Lucas, Burtt, and Smith would continue to tighten and refine the story, which Lucas would see as still in flux right up until the end. “The script is just a rough sketch of what I’m going to do,” he explained, “and the filming is just gathering the materials—but the editing is how I create the final draft.”54

  The rest of the movie was still being processed at ILM. Most Tuesdays, Lucas would drive down to ILM—still working out of the Kerner warehouses in San Rafael—to review the shots that had been completed during the past week. There was more computer programming than model making going on at ILM these days; the sound of circular saws and the smell of glue had largely given way to the hum of servers and occasional whiffs of ozone. While some sequences would utilize both old and new technologies, integrating both digital and model spaceships into a few dogfights, most effects would be entirely digital. “Of course, you don’t want to fall into the trap of technology driving your vision,” warned graphics supervisor John Berton, but Lucas was reveling in the new technology, asking ILM to fill the screen with a dazzling number of spaceships and battle droids.55 Creating virtual sets and gigantic crowds was becoming old hat to the ILM crew; more and more now they were being asked to create believable characters who wore believable clothing and carried believable props and weapons. If Lucas thought a character didn’t look convincing, or moved in an unrealistic way, he’d scrap the shot and ask ILM to try again. “[Lucas] always said that he only directed half of the movie during principal photography,” said ILM supervisor John Knoll. “The rest he directed afterward, here at ILM.”56

  Lucas, however, had more than just his movie to attend to during post-production. There were licensing deals to finalize, and Lucas found that toy companies were falling over themselves to grab a piece of the new Star Wars universe. Both Hasbro and Galoob announced gigantic deals to market toys and action figures, with the companies giving Lucasfilm stock valued at more than $225 million. The Lego Group waded into the licensing waters for the first time, earning the right to produce the enormously popular Star Wars–themed Lego sets that would, by 2012, help make Lego the world’s most valuable toy company. There would also be the usual fast food and candy deals, with Episode I Happy Meals, Jar Jar Binks Pez dispensers, and a billion-dollar arrangement to put nearly every major character on Pepsi cans.

  Distribution was another prize up for grabs. Because Lucasfilm had paid for the movie itself, however, distribution would be largely a matter of bragging rights. Most of the major studios began wooing Lucas. (“He ain’t easy to woo,” said one studio executive. “He’s not easy to get to.”) The rights eventually went to Fox, which paid $80 million without seeing a single frame of the movie.57 The deal made sense—after all, Fox had distributed the original trilogy—but Lucas had taken the opportunity to gouge an additional pound of flesh out of the studio, demanding it transfer all remaining rights to the original Star Wars back to Lucasfilm, which already held the rights to Empire and Jedi. And like that, Lucas owned all of Star Wars outright. The circle, as Vader had said, was now complete.

  Even with Fox on board, Lucas would maintain total control over the promotion and distribution of the film; any course of action, any decision, would need his approval. Deftly gauging fan excitement—and shrewdly utilizing the newly ascendant Internet to spread the word—Lucas was dribbling out information in parsimonious thimblefuls on the new starwars.com website. In September 1998 came the announcement that the official name of the upcoming film was not Shadows of the Empire, as fans had speculated, but rather Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace, a title that sent Internet chat rooms into frenzies of debate and conjecture.58

  Then, in late November 1998—exactly six months to the day before the film’s release date—Lucas deftly released a two-minute, ten-second trailer in only twenty-six cities, creating, according to the New York Times, “a film event that had no precedent.”59 Showings of Meet Joe Black and The Waterboy were suddenly sold out, the tickets scooped up by fans who paid full admission just to catch the trailer for The Phantom Menace, applauded and cheered for three minutes, then left as soon as the main feature began. Several days later the trailer went up on starwars.com, where it was downloaded more than 10 million times, in an era when fans still relied on agonizingly slow dial-up connections to surf the Web. A second trailer went up in March 1999, with eager fans grabbing it up so quickly—there were nearly 340 downloads each second—that the website crashed. Undeterred, enthusiasts dissected each trailer shot by shot, trying to guess at plot elements.60 Still other devotees reported weeping openly while watching the trailers. Star Wars was coming back—and fans were certain it was going to be better than ever.

  “What can I say?” said one admirer after watching the trailer. “George Lucas must be a superior form of life!”61

  Lucas was feeling good about The Phantom Menace. For the first time ever, he felt he’d been able to make a movie look on the screen exactly the way it had looked in his head. Final touches—John Williams’s score, Ben Burtt’s sound effects—were still going in as late as March 1999, but Lucas felt happy enough about what he was seeing to wrap his arms around ILM supervisor Chrissie England, who’d been with him since the Parkhouse days, and thank her for her hard work. “[He] gave me a big hug,” recalled England, “and said, ‘You really did a great job. I’m really proud of you’”—words he had never once spoken to Marcia.62

  Still, in the weeks leading up to the release of The Phantom Menace, Lucas was doing his best to manage expectations. “For every person who loves Episode I, there will be two or three who hate it,” he said. “All I can do now is throw it out there in the real world—and wait to see what everyone thinks.”63 Still, Steven Spielberg’s very public assessment—“Oh my God. Your jaw will hang open for a week”—had only served to further spike expectations upward, and fans were waiting in line for tickets more than a month in advance.64

  With that swell of anticipation behind it, it was no surprise that The Phantom Menace would premiere to enormous business. Its May 19, 1999, opening day take of $28.5 million broke all records, as did its $132.4 million opening week. By the end of the year, it would make more than $926 million worldwide, most of it going right back into the coffers of Lucasfilm.

  While success at the box office was probably inevitable—even the most casual of Star Wars fans was going to check this one out—most critics were unimpressed. “The movie is a disappointment. A big one,” wrote David Ansen in Newsweek. “[Lucas’s] rhythm is off.… He doesn’t seem to care about building a character.”65 Ansen admitted to being impressed with the design and digital effects, a feeling that was shared by Roger Ebert, who hailed The Phantom Menace as “a visionary breakthrough.”66 But while fans had initially jumped to the film’s defense—this was the church of Star Wars critics were burning down!—they too would eventually concede that Episode I had been underwhelming, with too much backstory and talk about trade and taxes, and that the overreli
ance on digital effects—“endless scenes of computer-generated talking frogs fighting computer-generated robots”—left the film looking sterile and lacking in any real heart.67 Even Ewan McGregor, starring as a younger Obi-Wan, would eventually concede that the film was “disappointing” and “flat.”68

  Lucas had gambled and lost badly with the character of Jar Jar Binks. Despite all efforts to make the character a breakout star—he was even on the cover of Rolling Stone beside the headline “JAR JAR SUPERSTAR”—fans immediately found him annoying rather than endearing. Worse, with Binks’s pidgin English and comically lazy demeanor, there were immediate accusations of negative stereotypes and racism; Lucas took a particular beating from Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal, who called Jar Jar “a Rastafarian Stepin Fetchit on platform hoofs, crossed annoyingly with Butterfly McQueen.”69 While Lucasfilm spokesperson Lynne Hale would dismiss such accusations as “absurd,” the charge stung actor Ahmed Best, who had played and voiced Jar Jar, and also happened to be African American.70 “Even though you play characters, you put a lot of your own personality into it, you get emotionally and personally invested in the work that you do, it’s your work and you take pride in it,” said Best. “So when your work is criticized negatively, you feel a hit.”71

  Worse, Lucas had made a tweak to the Star Wars mythos that many would consider as unforgivable as Greedo shooting first: a biological explanation for the Force. To explain Anakin’s unique status as “the Chosen One” who would bring balance to the Force, Lucas had introduced the concept of midi-chlorians, intelligent microscopic forms that exist symbiotically in the cells of living beings and help tune them in to the power of the Force. It was an ill-advised explanation that drained the Force of its mystery and awe, making it a mere biological attribute like blue eyes. Gary Kurtz, whose own spiritual views had helped shape the concept of the Force two decades earlier, called the idea “the destruction of the spiritual center of the force, turning [it] into DNA and blood.” Kurtz was also quick to note, however, that “George has a very clear idea of what he wants. And whether you agree with that or not, he goes about getting that.”72

  Lucas’s relationship with his audience was changing in the movie’s aftermath. The film was a monster hit, but Star Wars true believers were losing faith both in the franchise and in Lucas—and with the rise of the Internet, those same fans could make their opinions widely and loudly known in a way that hadn’t existed even fifteen years earlier, when Jedi had been released to some muted grumbling about Ewoks. While Lucas had cleverly used the Internet to co-opt fandom for the promotion of the film, he was unprepared for the way the same technology, and the same fans, could just as quickly turn on him after the movie was released. While Lucas would always insist that online carping never bothered him, chalking it up to “one person typing out their opinion,” the sniping and snarking clearly irritated him—a flashback to the studio executives who complained about his movies and demanded they be recut. When fans groused about midi-chlorians or griped about Anakin building C-3PO, Lucas—unwisely rising to the bait—dismissed them as “nitpicky.” “I’m sorry if they don’t like it,” he said with palpable annoyance. “They should go back and see The Matrix or something.”73

  Clearly, the criticism had gotten under his skin, to the point where he dreaded doing one more promotion or sitting for one more interview. Eventually, he would abandon the Internet altogether. “I want people to like what I do. Everybody wants to be accepted at least by somebody,” he insisted. “But we live in a world now where you’re forced to become part of this larger corporate entity called the media.… Since I’m doing the films myself, I don’t have quite that obligation. I’d just as soon let my own films die than have to go out and sell them on a circuit. And I do as little as I have to, to feel responsible.”74

  That sort of apathetic attitude, however, wasn’t going to sit well with the licensees who had paid a fortune for the rights to Star Wars merchandise, saturated the market with goods, and expected Lucas to deliver. Hasbro, which paid $650 million for the toy rights to all three prequels, suddenly saw its stock tumble by 25 percent on countless bins of unsold action figures and spaceships. Privately, Lucasfilm executives conceded that the movie had likely been too aggressively marketed—did anyone really want a necktie with Qui-Gon Jinn on it?—and further admitted to Hasbro and others that the movie “did not live up to expectations.”75

  By this point, however, Lucas was already looking ahead to Episode II—and also had his eye on a spectacular vista near the base of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.

  In 1776 the Spanish established a garrison—their northernmost outpost in the Americas, in fact—at the tip of the San Francisco peninsula, guarding the mouth of San Francisco Bay. By 1822 that fort, in a state of disrepair, passed into Mexican hands, where it remained until 1846, when it was captured by a small group of American soldiers as part of the Bear Flag Revolt. The U.S. Army promptly took over, setting up a permanent post on the site though maintaining the fort’s original Spanish designation, the Presidio. The army occupied the Presidio for the next 148 years, erecting hospitals and housing, until the base was finally shuttered by the federal Base Reduction and Closure Commission, which deemed the facility no longer of use for military purposes. With the departure of the army, the Presidio site—1,500 acres of prime waterfront territory, quite literally in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge—was turned over to the administration of the National Park Service in 1994.

  Maintaining the site under public stewardship, however, would prove expensive. In 1996, then, Congress created a new federal agency, the Presidio Trust, to preserve and maintain the park and—in a directive unique among national parks—work to attract non-federal resources that would eventually support and maintain the park without the need for annual federal funding. The direction came with an ultimatum: if the Presidio failed to become self-sufficient by 2013, it would be sold off as excess property. With that sort of shadow hanging over its head, it was little wonder, then, that the Presidio Trust was actively seeking bids for private use of the property.

  Lucas was interested. After more than a decade of trying to bring ILM onto Skywalker Ranch, Lucas had changed his mind—and changed his plans. Instead, he’d create a stand-alone digital arts complex—housing ILM, THX, LucasArts, and the main offices of Lucasfilm—and he’d do it in plain sight, in the Presidio compound on the site of the decommissioned Letterman Army Medical Center. Or that, at least, was the plan. While Lucasfilm was perhaps one of the most widely recognized and most successful companies in the world, as Lucas had learned in his dealings with his Marin County neighbors, not everyone wanted to live or work next door to him or his company. Several years earlier in Modesto, there had even been some objections to a proposed statue in Lucas’s honor, with some city officials cloaking their objections behind an argument against the use of city funds to erect a statue honoring anyone—even the town’s most famous resident. Money would be raised privately instead to erect a sculpture of two teenagers leaning on a ’57 Chevy, a tip of the hat both to Lucas’s days cruising Modesto’s streets and to American Graffiti. The dustup had been minor, but the message was clear: not everyone loved George Lucas.

  Lucas had submitted the proposal for his digital complex to the Presidio Trust in 1998, bidding against several local developers, including the powerful Shorenstein Company. Lucasfilm CEO Gordon Radley was lobbying hard for the project, assuring skeptics that “this isn’t about Star Wars at all” and comparing the proposed site to an artists’ commune. While Lucas planned to keep the footprint small and build everything in as environmentally sensitive a manner as possible, many locals weren’t so sure. “I don’t believe the public interest is served by having Lucas as a tenant,” argued one critic, though he admitted that “it will be nicer to have Lucas than a bunch of venture capitalists.”76

  Such objections, however vocal, were in the minority. On June 14, 1999, the Presidio Trust approved Lucas’s plans to turn the Le
tterman site into a digital arts complex. Here, at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge—not far from the warehouse where Lucas and Coppola had established American Zoetrope forty years earlier—Lucas would construct the rest of his cinematic empire.

  At last, he said, he would “create an organization to make the kind of movies [he] wanted to make.”77

  But first, he had more Star Wars to attend to.

  12

  Cynical Optimism

  1999–2005

  At the time of the release of Episode I in May 1999, Lucas had been writing the script for Episode II for nearly a year. He was struggling with this one more than others, mainly because the second film would largely be a love story, driven by character and dialogue, neither of which was Lucas’s strong suit. By his own estimate, it would take fourteen or fifteen drafts before he was comfortable enough with it to pass his handwritten pages over to his assistant to type. At the center of the title page, dated March 13, 2000, Lucas had scrawled

  EPISODE II

  JAR JAR’S GREAT ADVENTURE

  The title was a joke, Lucas’s way of making the point that he had taken to heart one of the key criticisms of The Phantom Menace. For Episode II, Binks would be relegated to a minor supporting role, and any larger plans Lucas had had for the loping Gungan were shelved. Lucas would always defend the much-loathed character; he would even suggest at a Disney Expo in 2015 that Binks had been inspired in part by the look and mannerisms of Goofy. (“I know that you will look at him differently now,” Lucas said with a grin. “I love Goofy and I love Jar Jar.”) Fans delighted in theorizing that Lucas’s abandoned storyline would have revealed the bumbling comic relief to be a cold-blooded Sith Lord.1 Lucas would offer only coy silence in response.

  He had also decided he was indeed done using film, and publicly announced that Episode II would be filmed entirely digitally. After careful review of the small bit of digital footage he had shot during The Phantom Menace—about six minutes’ worth of lightsaber duels—Lucas was convinced that digital footage would be just as clear and stable as film. In some cases, in fact, it was even clearer, requiring digitally shot footage to be lit differently in order to soften hard edges between objects in the foreground and the background. Making everything look right and work properly required special cameras and lenses, which Sony and Panavision obligingly delivered.2 There was some hand-wringing in the industry—mostly from those “down there” in Hollywood—who fretted for the future of filmmaking. One reporter wondered aloud if movies would even be called films anymore. Lucas thought that was taking things too literally. “It will be called cinema,” he said reassuringly.3