Why George Lucas sold Star Wars: "All you do is get criticised"

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With Indiana Jones and Star Wars, it's safe to say that George Lucas has been responsible for many of our best cinema experiences during the course of his 50+ year career. However, the next instalment of the latter franchise - that's Star Wars: The Force Awakens if you didn't know - won't see much involvement from its creator.

Lucas has been speaking to Vanity Fair ahead of the release of the highly anticipated film, and it looks like he has no plans to return as a director in the franchise any time soon, saying "all you do is get criticised". Check out the clip below...

The key quote here - aside from the burning question of "what happened to Darth Vader's grandkids?" - is when Lucas states: "You go to make a movie, and all you do is get criticised. And people try to make decisions about what you’re going to do before you do it. It’s not much fun, and you can’t experiment, you can’t do anything, you have to do it a certain way."

There's a strong likelihood that Lucas is referring to the intense criticism the Star Wars prequels received which, depending on who you ask, may or may not be warranted. There's no question that cinemagoers will forever be indebted to Lucas's creativity though, and you get the sense that he's just as excited as we are to see what his Padawan, JJ Abrams has crafted in his stead.

Directed by Abrams and starring Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Mark Hamill, Oscar Isaac and Gwendoline Christie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is released in UK cinemas on December 17 2015, before opening in US theatres a day later. Check out our analysis of the international trailer below...

Amon Warmann
Amon Warmann

Amon is a contributing editor and columnist for Empire magazine, but is also a Film and TV writer for GamesRadar+, Total Film, and others. He has also written for NME, Composer Mag, and more, along with being a film critic for TalkSport. He is also the co-host of the Fade to Black Podcast, and a video mashup creator. Can also do a pretty good Bane impersonation.