George Lucas

by Brian Jay Jones

  Spielberg, however, wasn’t coming on board to direct the film; instead, Lucas had invited him to participate in the editing of some of the extensive animatics Ben Burtt had prepared for a number of key sequences. “I said [to Steven], ‘We’ll give you a laptop and we’ll give you the program, and I’ll give you some scenes,’” said Lucas, “‘and you can direct the scenes while you’re just sitting by the pool.’ He loves to do that.” Spielberg would tinker mostly with the climactic lightsaber duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan on the volcano planet Mustafar. “I want these guys pouring, dripping sweat,” Spielberg told Lucas excitedly. “Their hair at some point should be smoking.” Lucas loved it. “We have very, very similar sensibilities,” he said.42

  With filming scheduled to begin at Fox Studios in Sydney at the end of June, Lucas arrived in Australia on June 15, bringing along the third draft of his script, which he was still revising. He also brought his children; Revenge of the Sith would be something of a family affair for the Lucases, with all three kids—and Lucas too—making cameo appearances in the film. Lucas would make his screen debut as the blue-faced Baron Papanoida, walking outside a theater box at the opera house, with fifteen-year-old Katie—also in blue face—as his daughter. Amanda, now twenty-two, would be seen huddling with senators, while ten-year-old Jett—who had played a Jedi youngling named Zett Jukassa in Attack of the Clones—reprised the role for Episode III, doing some very minor stunts as he flipped and battled stormtroopers with a lightsaber and, to his delight, would even get to die heroically on-screen.

  Lucas completed the fourth and final draft of Revenge of the Sith in Sydney on June 26; four days later, he began filming on Stage 2 at Fox Studios. Bocquet and his team had constructed seventy-one sets this time—about as many as he had for Episode II—in an attempt to help Lucas keep his promise that Episode III would be smaller and less expensive than the film before it. It was—though just barely: Lucas would top out his budget for Revenge of the Sith at $113 million, compared to the $120 million he’d spent on Attack of the Clones.

  He was shooting entirely digitally again, which gave him the ability to review a shot instantly on the numerous high-def plasma screens he’d set up in what came to be called the “video village,” a small camp of folding chairs, video monitors, and equipment set up on the soundstage. Here Lucas could see every camera angle at once, displayed across the various monitors, then select the shots he wanted and transmit them immediately to Burtt at Skywalker Ranch for editing. Lucas also used the village as a kind of home base, holding court as he reviewed the shooting schedule each morning, tweaked the script, huddled with actors, or oversaw a costume adjustment. While Lucas consulted regularly with McCallum and other crew members, the final decision on anything was his and his alone. McCallum understood perfectly. “Film is a director’s medium. Television is a producer’s medium,” said McCallum. “Working with George is a George medium.” Lucas didn’t disagree. “I guess I’ve been accused of being a micromanager, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s what making a movie is all about,” he said. “I’m really responsible for every single detail on the picture.”43

  On July 2, Anthony Daniels, once again reprising his role as Threepio, made his first appearance on set, picking his way around cables in his gleaming gold costume. Lucas shook his hand warmly, calling out loudly, “Star Wars has arrived!” The same could probably have been said of the amiable Peter Mayhew, whose appearance in the full Chewbacca costume was met with audible gasps as he loped his way across the soundstage. Actor Ewan McGregor admitted to being starstruck, even getting a bit emotional as he shot a final scene with R2-D2 in August. “I find myself quite choked up about it, about this little robot, you know.”44

  Lucas was continuing to improve in his interactions with his actors, more often telling them when takes were good, and giving them actual directions on the delivery of lines or the pacing of a scene. And yet, some habits were hard to break; during one particularly difficult scene requiring multiple takes, even as his actors asked for a moment to collect themselves, Lucas could be heard muttering, “Oh, I just want to get through it.”45 Still, it was better than the days of “Faster, and more intense.”

  If asked, Lucas would probably admit that he had mellowed a bit over the past thirty years. Partly it had to do with age. His beard was white now, though it would always be meticulously trimmed. His hair, by contrast, could sometimes get long, and he would comb it back a bit into his pompadour, now wavy and white. The intensity and stubbornness were still there too, but Lucas found he could relax more on the set, a change he attributed mostly to the presence of his children, who ensured that he never took himself too seriously. (Children, and teenagers in particular, he joked, were “the key to a nervous breakdown.”)46 By the time principal photography was completed on September 17—five days ahead of schedule—Lucas would even call Revenge of the Sith “the most fun film I’ve ever worked on.”47

  Still, he wasn’t going to get too sentimental. As some crew members hugged or dabbed at their eyes as they bade one another good-bye, Lucas remained remarkably unemotional; fleeting friendships were simply part of moviemaking. “You’re all friends, you know each other,” he explained. “But I have a tendency to not let my private life and my professional life mix—and once the movie finishes, everybody goes their own way. When you’re together, you’re together, and when you’re not, you’re not.” And besides, for Lucas, it was still far too early to celebrate; Revenge of the Sith wasn’t even close to being finished. As crew members passed around congratulatory drinks, Lucas pulled aside ILM’s John Knoll, who would oversee much of the post-production work. “I’ve been working on it for eighteen months,” he told Knoll, “and I have exactly eighteen months to go.”48

  Special effects work at ILM was proceeding at a slower pace than Lucas hoped, so he enacted the only solution he understood: he hovered over people, dropping in daily to review footage while he ate his lunch—a sandwich and a soda in a to-go box, prepared by the downstairs kitchen. Other times, Lucas would plant himself at an animation station, watching as the computer animator moved elements in and out of the frame and offering suggestions on different angles from which to “film” the sequence. In December, Lucas invited Coppola to the ranch to observe firsthand how the digital process worked; after Coppola’s earlier failed experiments with technology, Lucas wanted his mentor to see how it could be done right. Coppola, looking dapper in a gray suit, watched with fascination as Lucas demonstrated his ability to direct the movie digitally, moving characters out of one scene and into another, raising a character’s arm, even inserting a blink. Typically, Coppola was concerned about the impact such spontaneous editing might have on the story. “Are you changing the script much,” he asked Lucas, “or is it holding up pretty well?”

  Lucas considered for a moment. “It’s holding up.”

  Coppola nodded, then looked around the editing room approvingly. “You’re doing what you like to do most,” he told Lucas warmly. “Having fun.”49

  As Lucas continued the editing, he made notes for several pickup shots and additional footage. While the script was holding up, there were places where clarification was needed, and Lucas had scheduled time for additional filming at Shepperton in London for late August 2004, his first time back at the studio since filming the throne room ceremony for the first Star Wars film twenty-five years earlier. It was here Lucas would film a final shot of Anthony Daniels dressed as Threepio. Even with the improvements built in to the costume over the past two decades, it was still difficult for Daniels to hear much, and Lucas stood by patiently for several takes until Daniels finally got his lines right and hit his marks. Lucas called “Cut!” and flashed a thumbs-up to Daniels, who felt as if he had been repeatedly and patiently incarcerated inside Threepio’s shell for decades.

  “It’s only been twenty-five years,” Lucas told Daniels kindly.

  “And we’re still not getting it right,” teased Daniels.

  “Thank you,�
� Lucas said, as the two men shook hands. “Thank you for everything.”50

  Lucas had plenty of other nooks and crannies of the Star Wars universe to attend to in the months leading up to the release of Revenge of the Sith. In September 2004 he’d released the original trilogy on DVD for the first time—and typically couldn’t keep his hands off it, inserting several new tweaks to the films he’d already modified. During filming on Episode III, he’d taken the opportunity to record Ian McDiarmid reading the Emperor’s dialogue from The Empire Strikes Back—which had been made several years before McDiarmid had even been cast in the role—and dubbed his voice over the original dialogue, thus ensuring consistency with the prequels. Curiously, he also digitally removed actor Sebastian Shaw from the final scene in Jedi—where the redeemed Anakin materializes to join Yoda and Ben Kenobi at Luke’s side—and replaced him with Hayden Christensen. (He had been only half-joking when he suggested to ILM that they insert Liam Neeson’s Qui-Gon Jinn into the scene as well.) While fans would continue to gripe about Lucas’s changes—and the HAN SHOT FIRST movement would rumble back to life again, especially as many home viewers were seeing all of Lucas’s tweaks to their beloved films for the first time—they would still buy anything Star Wars, spending more than $100 million for the DVDs on their first day of their release.

  A year earlier, starting in November 2003, he’d also begun managing at arm’s length a successful animated “micro-series”—twenty-five episodes, running from three to twelve minutes each—called Star Wars: Clone Wars, which followed Obi-Wan and Anakin on adventures occurring between Episodes II and III. It was Lucas’s intention to use the cartoon to “bridge the gap” between the two movies, and he had provided director and animator Genndy Tartakovsky, the creator of Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack, with a story line and ground rules, then left him largely alone. Lucas had been so pleased with the resulting cartoons—which were fast, witty, and exciting—that he permitted Tartakovsky to introduce one of Revenge of the Sith’s villains, General Grievous, in a March 2005 episode, two months before the premiere of Episode III.

  By the time the episode aired on the Cartoon Network on March 25, fans were already lining up for Revenge of the Sith. In Seattle, one young fan had set up an elaborate camp with a powder-blue couch at its center. From here he would post daily live updates to his blog until he was evicted by the mayor for camping on public property. (He was later relocated to a private sidewalk outside another theater.) In Los Angeles, Star Wars lovers lined up outside a theater where the movie wouldn’t even be playing, hoping to persuade Fox to premiere the film at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. The ploy didn’t work, but fans had a great time anyway, staging lightsaber fights, raising money for charity, and maintaining a genial party atmosphere. “Nerdy Gras,” one fan called it.51

  Lucas and McCallum attended the May 16 premiere of Revenge of the Sith at the UCI Empire Theatre in London, which showed the movie as the final installment of a six-film Star Wars marathon. Lucas had been concerned that people might find the movie too downbeat; the violence, in fact, had earned Revenge of the Sith the first PG-13 rating for a Star Wars film. “It’s not a happy movie by any stretch of the imagination,” Lucas admitted. “It’s a tragedy.… It will probably be the least successful of the Star Wars movies—but I know that.”52

  He was wrong; Revenge of the Sith set a single-day record of $50 million, on its way to an opening weekend of $108 million and a worldwide gross of $848 million. Furthermore, the movie’s darker themes didn’t seem to turn off fans or critics at all; in fact, many thought Lucas had returned to form. A. O. Scott, who had eviscerated Episodes I and II in the New York Times, thought Episode III was not only the best of the prequels but also even better than the original Star Wars. The critic for Variety, too, thought Lucas had redeemed himself after the disappointment of the first two movies, declaring that “despite fans’ varying degrees of loss of faith that set in with Menace and Clones, most will be inspired enough to believe again.”53

  Over at Newsweek, David Ansen compared the film favorably with The Empire Strikes Back and applauded Lucas himself for his artistic consistency. “For all the technological changes Lucas has embraced, his wide-eyed, childlike approach to storytelling… has remained the same,” wrote Ansen. “You can argue whether it’s for better or worse. What you can’t argue with is that he’s stayed true to his vision, and that that vision has changed the cultural landscape irrevocably.”54 Still, even Ansen and Scott noted they had also had to put up with Lucas’s usual bad dialogue, as well as the complete lack of chemistry between the two romantic leads, and way too much digital showing off—though everyone, as always, loved Yoda, a testament to the animation skills of Rob Coleman.

  Lucas was delighted with the response to Revenge of the Sith—but he was even more thrilled to finally cut the ribbon at the grand opening of his digital arts center at the Presidio in June. The compound was officially designated the Letterman Digital Arts Center, for the Letterman army hospital that had stood on the site since 1898; architects had even designed some of the buildings to use the recycled remains of the hospital, blending the Presidio’s unique history into the center’s very DNA. The twenty-three-acre campus featured four five-story buildings made of brick and terra-cotta, totaling about 850,000 square feet—and all of it financed solely by Lucasfilm to the tune of $350 million. Here, among Japanese maples and weeping willow trees, and with views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Palace of Fine Arts, Lucas would relocate ILM, THX, Lucas Arts, the George Lucas Educational Foundation, and the headquarters of Lucasfilm—about 2,500 employees in total.

  While Lucas hadn’t gotten ILM to the ranch, he had finally brought the ILMers into the fold, not only providing them with the best equipment and a state-of-the-art facility, but also putting them where they could easily interact and collaborate with their counterparts at THX and LucasArts, two of the company’s most profitable subsidiaries. As he had done by hiding ILM in plain sight at the Kerner building, Lucas would give little indication at the Letterman compound of what was really going on inside each of the four rather prim-looking buildings; the only giveaway was a bronze statue of Yoda near the front entrance. After twenty-five years of gawking at Skywalker Ranch in the hills of Nicasio and aching to get in, the public, for the first time, was welcome to take a look inside a Lucasfilm compound, even if it was just the smallest of peeks. Visitors would be permitted into the lobby of Building B, where they could see Star Wars props and other memorabilia, including life-size replicas of Darth Vader and Boba Fett. And proving once and for all that Lucas wasn’t above poking a little fun at himself, there stood off to one side an immense “carbonite” block encasing not an anguished Han Solo but rather a tongue-lolling Jar Jar Binks.

  Lucasfilm president Micheline Chau thought the company’s very public presence in the San Francisco community was good for Lucasfilm, and good for the region—especially since declining revenues had recently forced both Coppola and producer Saul Zaentz to shutter their own studios in the area. “We spent a lot of years hidden away, and I’m not sure it was good for the company as a whole,” said Chau. “The world has changed. To be the epicenter of the digital revolution, we have to be out here, evangelizing the cause.”55 There was also speculation that the company’s higher profile meant that Lucas was preparing to take the company public—a rumor Chau quashed immediately. There would only ever be one stockholder at Lucasfilm: George Lucas.

  On the evening of June 9, 2005, Lucas donned a rare tuxedo to receive the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award, given annually to an individual whose career “has contributed to the enrichment of American culture.”56 In the eyes of many, it was a long time coming; Harrison Ford had received the same award in 2000, and Spielberg had been a recipient in 1995. Whether one enjoyed Lucas’s films or not, it was impossible to deny that he’d enriched American culture; over the past three decades, he’d practically created it, whether via major technological and merchandising innovation
s or just the characters and stories of his movies themselves.

  While Lucas was generally disdainful of awards, he seemed genuinely touched by the pomp and circumstance surrounding this one. After a heartfelt introduction by Spielberg—“You have done more for the collective consciousness of this planet than you will ever know”—Lucas took the stage to a thunderous standing ovation, then hoisted the award victoriously over his head for a moment. He thanked the crowd warmly—“I halfway expected to have a room full of stormtroopers and Princess Leias,” he joked, getting his first of many laughs—and bowed to Spielberg as “my partner, my pal, my inspiration, [and] my challenger.” He gave high praise to Coppola for giving him his start. “He never gave up on me,” Lucas said fondly; “he took me from not being able to write a word to being the king of wooden dialogue,” a line at which Harrison Ford laughed harder than anyone else. His biggest thanks, however, were reserved for his children, “who have made my life extra special.” Amanda and Katie, seated next to Spielberg, wept openly.57

  “I love cinema,” Lucas concluded. “All kinds… no matter how big, no matter how small. I love to watch them. I love to make them. But if I didn’t have anyone to enjoy them or appreciate them, there wouldn’t be any point. So, thank you all for going to the movies,” he said warmly, “especially mine!”58

  And they would keep going to the movies—especially his—all summer long. Revenge of the Sith would finish the year as the highest-grossing film in the United States for 2005, and the third-highest-grossing of the six Star Wars films. It was also the culmination of two trilogies that had taken up more than thirty years of Lucas’s life. He was “happy and relieved” to be done with the series, he told a local reporter, and now that it was over—especially now that he had the new digital playground out at the Presidio at his disposal—he was ready to move on. “I’m going to do other types of projects,” he told American Cinematographer, “things that I’ve wanted to do for a long time, definitely a very different kind of filmmaking than what I’ve been engaged in.”59