During a Sundance Film Festival sit-down this evening with Robert Redford, producer George Lucas, who single-handedly destroyed the Arthurian-legend aspect of the Star Wars franchise by trivializing Return of the Jedi with furry Ewoks and a happy bonfire ending and particularly by turning the intensely disliked prequels into kid-friendly merchandising machines, complained that today’s movies “are more and more circus without any substance behind it.” True, but when’s the last time Lucas stood up and delivered a film with serious substance? Answer: 34, 35 years ago when he produced The Empire Strikes Back (’80). Which Lucas once called the least effective or satisfying Stars Wars film of the six…brilliant.
