Star Wars creator George Lucas has been around long enough to see the film industry change and shift into what it is today, and feels thta studios nowadays care more about the audience's opinion than the filmmaker's original vision.
“I don’t like focus groups,” said Lucas in an interview with A Rabbit's Foot. "The audience doesn’t know what they want to see. If they don’t like a character, that’s interesting, and as a filmmaker I want to find out why. But when the studios hear that, they take the wrong message."
The legendary director added, "They let the audience actually make the movie. Of course, now they go crazy with that. Now, it’s all about what the fans think. That isn’t how you make the movie. You make a movie by finding someone that knows how to make movies, that has a story to tell and is passionate about it.”
But in an industry run by box office sales and Rotten Tomatoes scores, Lucas still values the artistry in filmmaking. "You go to the movies because the stories move you emotionally,” he said. “Art is an emotional medium.” Lucas thought back to the criticism he received when he was making the first Star Wars trilogy in the late '70s, and if he had listened, we wouldn't have some of the most beloved characters in the galaxy far, far away.
"The critics and the fans who were 10 years old when they saw the first one and 13 when they saw the second one complained that they didn’t want to see a children’s film," recalled Lucas. "Oh, that’s terrible. Jar Jar Binks is terrible!... Everyone said the same thing about R2-D2 and C-3PO. At the beginning, there was a huge push for me to get rid of C-3PO, and then in the third one [Return of the Jedi], people said the same thing about Ewoks."
However, despite admitting "I’m a stubborn man," Lucas will take criticism from his lifelong friends who just so happen to be celebrated filmmakers in their own right. "I had a group of friends I went to school with: Marty Scorsese, Francis [Ford Coppola], Steven [Spielberg]. We were all students at the same time, and we all know each other really well," said Lucas. "When I show them a movie and they make comments, I know where they’re coming from."
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