‘Star Wars’ Editor Marcia Lucas Says the Disney Trilogy Made Her ‘Furious’
The recent Star Wars sequel trilogy seems to have a limitless ability to generate controversy and annoy some segments of the Star Wars audience — and even a few Star Wars creators.
The latest Star Wars alum to voice her displeasure with Disney’s Star Wars movies is Marcia Lucas, who was one of the three editors on the original Star Wars from 1977. Lucas shared an Academy Award for Best Film Editing for the movie, and she also edited such classics as Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and George Lucas’ American Graffiti. (The two Lucases were also married until 1983.)
As quoted in the new book Howard Kazanjian: A Producer’s Life by J.W. Rinzler, Marcia Lucas was very displeased when she saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens. (Kazanjian was the Vice President of Lucasfilm in the 1980s, and a producer on Raiders of the Lost Ark and Return of the Jedi.) “Furious” is the word Marcia Lucas uses to describe her reaction to the treatment of Han Solo in particular. She said:
I like Kathleen. I always liked her. She was full of beans. She was really smart and really bright. Really wonderful woman ... Now that she’s running Lucasfilm and making movies, it seems to me that Kathy Kennedy and J.J. Abrams don’t have a clue about Star Wars. They don’t get it. And J.J. Abrams is writing these stories — when I saw that movie where they kill Han Solo, I was furious. I was furious when they killed Han Solo. Absolutely, positively there was no rhyme or reason to it.
Lucas didn’t have kind things to say about the prequels in the book either, adding “I remember going out to the parking lot [after a screening of The Phantom Menace], sitting in my car, and crying. I cried. I cried because I didn’t think it was very good.”
While I don’t necessarily agree with all of Marcia Lucas’ comments, I’m always fascinated by the reactions to these later movies from people who were deeply involved with Star Wars’ success in its early days and then, for one reason or another, moved on from the franchise and then had to watch what it became, sometimes to their own horror. That must be very difficult.
The late J.W. Rinzler’s Howard Kazanjian: A Producer’s Life is available now.