At some point, someone is going to clarify just how much involvement George Lucas has had with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. While Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy has said that the creator of the franchise is unlikely to ever become actively involved with a galaxy far, far away ever again, conflicting reports have also claimed that Lucas had to step in and essentially rework the entire movie after some early test screenings yielded disastrous results.
To be fair, nobody knows Star Wars as well as the guy who created the entire thing, but let’s not forget that he also sold the rights to Disney for $4bn, and allowed a new team of filmmakers to create new movies and TV shows set in the universe, despite his objections with how they planned to handle the direction of the story.
J.J. Abrams has promised that The Rise of Skywalker would bring a definitive end to the nine-film arc started with A New Hope in 1977, and Kathleen Kennedy admitted in a recent interview that in an attempt to tie up so many story threads, some of which had been going on for over 40 years, the key creatives involved with the ninth installment held a meeting with Lucas to hear his opinions, and ended up taking plenty of notes.
“We sat down with George for a long meeting before we ever put pen to paper on this final episode, so we had the benefit of his thoughts. We took a lot of notes.”
At this point, it seems that George Lucas is the Godfather of Star Wars more than anything, the wise old sage that people turn to for advice or counsel when dealing with new chapters in the saga. However, at some point either Disney or Lucas himself will have to stop relying on each other in order to generate new content, especially given the high turnover of filmmakers on the franchise in recent years, along with recent developments making the future of Star Wars more unclear than ever, with even the studio admitting they don’t know what comes next.