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'Star Wars' is life, but 'Star Wars' is also not very good, which is why 'Rogue One' - a Frankenstein's monster assembled from a butchered first cut and an excessively large space antenna that only exists to add another 30 minutes to the film - is one of the better 'Star Wars' movies.
The story being told in 'Star Wars' is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again. Power corrupts, and when you're in charge, you start doing things that you think are right, but they're actually not.
I have three daughters who grew up while I was working on the special editions and the prequels. They got to be big 'Star Wars' fans. And, you know, I would see them identifying with a lot of the male characters, and I just thought, 'Star Wars' could use more good strong female leads.'
I just watch movies I like over and over. It seems to be a lot of sci-fi stuff. My favorites are probably - besides the first two 'Alien' films, I watch '2001', I watch 'Star Wars', the first ones, because those actually had a huge effect on me as well, 'Empire Strikes Back' especially.
We look at Marvel, but we're not trying to emulate that in any way. In fact, we talked often about how distinctive what we're trying to do with 'Star Wars' is from Marvel. They've been extremely successful in exploiting the characters in that universe, and we have a place. We have the galaxy.
From the time I was in first grade or so, my dad collected 'Star Wars' toy figures from the 1970s and '80s, and we'd take weekend family trips to antique shops and to toy stores. My father collected a crazy amount of 'Star Wars' stuff over the years, and he and I traveled to many conventions.
In college, I was a cartoonist at 'The Daily Northwestern.' So I draw myself. I was an animator. But basically, I went to Northwestern to major in English, wound up in college for two years. Studied animation there. Came to Disney. My first week at Disney was the week that 'Star Wars' came out.
I think to this day, 'Superman/Wonder Woman' is probably one of the trickiest things I've been working on. It's like being asked to write a 'Star Wars' movie or something like that. You don't know how you're going to handle it; you don't know if you can. You don't know if you should be the guy.
You can only see 'Star Wars' for the first time once, and people are watching it again and again and again, and it's a testament to the strength beyond the plot twists that it has. The narrative strength that it has is that it can be enjoyed even though you know the biggest plot elements in it.
I saw 'Star Wars' for the first time when I was four years old. Sure, I thought Princess Leia was awesome. But the character I identified with most was Luke Skywalker. I left the theater certain the Force was strong with me, that I could train to be a Jedi and wield a lightsaber just like Luke.
Nothing will turn you into more of a 'Star Wars' fan than being on a 'Star Wars' set. When you see how lovingly that world is rendered by the set designers, costume designers, props department, art department, they genuinely build an actual world. That is not an exaggeration. They build a world.
I grew up in the '70s and in Los Angeles during the new blockbuster era. 'Star Wars' was the first film that I saw in the movie theater. I wanted to be an actor; then it turned out to be this 'Wizard of Oz' story: I was 10 or 11 years old, and it turned into something that I didn't think it was.
I'm building a career as big as humanly possible so I can be in a 'Star Wars' project. My life goal is to have a character in the 'Star Wars' universe, film or other media. I just want to go to my grave knowing I played some character or some character based on my likeness was part of that world.
There was an enormous revival of pulp fiction that started in the '60s and continued into the '70s, which in large part gave rise to things like 'Star Wars' and 'Indiana Jones,' among others. But I developed an appetite for the original stuff at the time, and that appetite has never really abated.
For me, Glasgow is all about the people and the spirit of the place. You have enough Gregg's bakers, though, I'll say that. The opening of the 1977 'Star Wars' movie was possibly the only time I've seen a longer queue round the block than in Glasgow for sausage rolls. That was quite an eye-opener.
Some people get very successful for something they're very cynical about - like Alec Guinness in 'Star Wars.' He thought it was ridiculous. Whereas for me, I'm so proud of 'Stranger Things.' I'm so proud of everyone's work in it. And it's become so successful. So for those two to meet is incredible.
In terms of the film itself, there was nothing much very new about 'Star Wars.' 'Star Wars' was a trailblazer for the kind of monumentalist pastiche which has become standard in a homogeneous Hollywood blockbuster culture that, perhaps more than any other film, 'Star Wars' played a role in inventing.
It's gonna be weird how there are going to be new 'Star Wars' movies every year starting in 2015. I don't know what that's going to be like, having one every year. Maybe it'll be perfect. Maybe it'll be just the right amount of time to have something to look forward to. Maybe it'll be too many at once.
I'm British; I live here, and I've always made my films here. And we're on a journey in British filmmaking right now. We're attracting big films again. 'Star Wars' filming here will employ thousands of people. We're world-class in so many of the craft elements, and the vibrancy of our filmmaking is strong.
I came up during the 'Star Wars' generation and that was sort of the thing I plugged into much more. It was a little before my time and I think it was sort of grappling with these intellectual ideas that were a little advanced for my young mind. At the time. But now I have a much deeper appreciation for it.
In high school and college, I'd set a bunch of goals for myself. I wanted to be the lead effects supervisor on one of these really big, innovative visual effects productions, something on the scale of a 'Star Wars' movie. And I wanted to work on a project that wins the Academy Award for best visual effects.
If 'Star Wars' wasn't enough to prepare me for a dark future, there was the 'Planet of the Apes' franchise, conveniently repeated for me in Los Angeles on KABC's Channel Seven 3:30 movie. Apes enslaving humans! Mutants with boils and an atom bomb! Ape riots in Century City! They killed baby Caesar's parents!
Doing a 'Star Wars' TV show could be prohibitively expensive because 'Star Wars' requires a lot of prop building and a lot of character building, so we wanted to - with ILM's help - be able to make it a financially viable option to solve all the problems that you have with shooting a blue screen environment.
I believe that this idea of story or myth or this thing that Joseph Campbell writes about is sort of an inter-connective spiritual force - like The Force in 'Star Wars' - where it doesn't matter where you were raised, or what your background is, there are certain elements of story that totally appeal to you.
I think, actually, any morality system that rewards only the extremes is a flawed system. Players don't approach life that way, they don't approach games that way, and they shouldn't be trained to approach games that way. They shouldn't be in the 'Star Wars' mode where, 'I've got to choose every good option.'
I have tremendous brand experience. What I do a lot for Disney is manage the great brands of this company, whether it's Disney, ESPN, ABC, Pixar, Marvel, 'Star Wars.' And I'm very engaged in technology and its impact on the consumer, either what experience you deliver for them or how to market and sell to them.
Because I grew up on 'Star Wars', that was the best example of creating a full and rich world to me as a writer. When I was watching those movies as a kid, I wanted to know more about every damn character in that universe. There was always a hint that there was a story there that you just weren't getting to see.
I have never fanned out at all, actually. I mean, there's only a few people that I have fanned out about before: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, pretty much anyone from 'Star Wars.' But I don't usually fan out at all, just because they're all people just doing their jobs. It's exciting because they do very good work!
One of the beautiful things about being a part of 'Star Wars' is that it's one of those few things that are community-building in that way. Maybe that way of putting it is a little self-important. But it is something we all have a connection to, something everybody knows about. There aren't that many of those things.
Ever since 'Star Wars,' there was a rash of how a movie was made. I remember that as a kid. I never really understood how movies were made until that movie, because it was such a technical accomplishment. Since then, you've seen more and more and more, for all different kinds of films, about what goes into the process.
I've said that I would play anything to do with 'Star Wars.' But really, deep down, I would love to come back as Darth Maul - that's what I want to do. I would go crazy, go mental, lock myself in a cabin, you know. Do the whole 'method' for two or three months, spear-fishing and stuff, just to play the character again.
You know how they say that old people with Alzheimer's, they kind of go back, and they revert to the most emotional part of their life, what they did when they were younger... I think I am going to be cursed with reliving 'Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope' in my mind. And playing 'Dragon's Layer' when I enter Alzheimer's.
Lucasfilm called me out of the blue, and I almost hung up because I thought it was a practical joke. This was right before 'Revenge Of The Sith' came out. Here you are, a big 'Star Wars' fan, talking about 'Star Wars' all the time, and you have your master replica lightsaber, and then you get a call from Lucasfilm for a job?
I auditioned for this agency. I got an advertisement first, and then something else, which I got fired from. It was soul-destroying. And then the next thing I got, I thought was going to be my big break, and they cut the role. It was only the year that I started auditioning for 'Star Wars' when I really started getting roles.
Throughout the movies' golden age, the Western enriched Hollywood financially and artistically. But in the 1970s, the genre lost its audience appeal to fantasy films of the 'Star Wars' stripe, which told more or less the same story - elemental animosities leading to an armed showdown - but at a faster tempo, and in outer space.
When I was a child, I thought I was going to be a paleontologist because I loved dinosaurs. I loved monster movies and sci-fi, and then 'Star Wars' came out, and I was completely out of my mind with that, with 'Close Encounters,' and then I thought maybe I was going to go into special effects makeup, which I thought was awesome.
I did quite a lot of fencing when I was a kid. I was a swimmer, and I played a lot of basketball. I was a fencer for Great Britain, but I only did that because I watched 'Robin Hood,' 'Star Wars,' 'Highlander' and 'The Three Musketeers,' and I wanted to emulate Richard Harris and the great British actors that I grew up watching.
I'm not interested in doing 'Star Wars.' It's an amazing movie, but that's not my gift. I tell the stories that I tell that relate to the people who love what I do. That is the place and the path that I know I am supposed to be on. The minute I try and go do something else, it will be amazing to watch how quickly that don't work.
When I played Darth Maul, it sort of came from inside. I'm not saying it was natural, but I really enjoyed it, and I think I was tapping into my childhood, growing up with 'Star Wars.' And I grew up with G.I. Joe as well. Same as 'Thundercats' and 'Transformers' and 'He-Man.' And so I think it was the inner kid in me just came out.
I have been in 'Star Wars' since I was 20. And they're not just doing some goofy sequel, like, to service the hunger of it. It actually has been thought out and it has integrity and they took it seriously, which they didn't have to do, you know? It's hard to do, given the appetite and the angles from which everybody's coming at it.
I think the arc of history is long, and it bends toward justice. And I think that's what the 'Star Wars' message is. You know, the dark side is in the human heart. And chaos is very troubling for an individual or for a culture, which can lead you to authoritarian leaders. But the arc of history is on the right side. I believe that.
While the emphasis on effects became a catastrophe for science fiction, it was a relief for the capitalist culture of which 'Star Wars' became a symbol. Late capitalism can't produce many new ideas any more, but it can reliably deliver technological upgrades. But 'Star Wars' didn't really belong to the science fiction genre any way.
My relationship with 'Star Wars' is that I'm old enough that I saw it when it first came out - 'A New Hope,' that is - and it was like when Dorothy steps out of black and white into Technicolor. I was transported from a gray, miserable 1970s London into a different galaxy, and I didn't know what it was, but I wanted to be a part of it.
My folks made me a Jawa costume for the Halloween after 'Star Wars' opened in '77. In '78, when it was re-released, I was hired by the local cinema to be the Jawa: to dress up all summer long, and I could frighten people with my Jawa sounds and my Jawa outfit and watch 'Star Wars Episode IV' all summer long and get paid with movie passes.
My agent called me up and said, 'There is a tremendous female lead in the new 'Star Wars' film, and I think you're really going to like it.' The opportunity to play someone determined, who's trying to find her skills as a leader; to be in a fantasy movie; to be able to do a leading female role in a film of that scale - that's very, very rare.
The key for me with 'Star Wars' is to stay in their world. Don't get in the way of what is already known and what works. I think of the basic nature of the filmmaking process that worked so well for the original trilogy. No stylistic flights of fancy for the sake of showing off. Tell the story, get the shot, get the performances, and move on.
At the time that George Lucas made the first 'Star Wars,' space was always presented as pristine. And he wanted to show that they may be fabulous vehicles, but they've been driven some miles. And, without anyone thinking about it or thinking that was going to help make it a pop hit, everybody believed in that world, because it looked inhabited.